in the campaign “"Neither plow nor sow": the pogrom of Chechnya, organized famine, the buying-up of elites and the institutions of subjugation (1852-1857)”
Over the captured part of Chechnya the empire built its own governing institutions. Historian N. I. Pokrovsky writes of the project of Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi): "the statute on the governance of the Chechens worked out by Baryatinsky, partially reviving justice by the adats: tsarism feared the sharia court... This 'Statute' was confirmed by Nicholas I and put into effect" (adats are the customary law of the highlanders; sharia is the Islamic law on which the court of the Imamate was built)[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov describe the implementation: "As early as 1852 in the Groznaya fortress the so-called 'Chechen People's Court' was instituted, headed by a Russian staff officer... as a counterweight to sharia, implanted in Chechnya by Imam Shamil, the Russian authorities strove to strengthen the influence of customary law - the adats"; the first chairman of the "Chechen" court was the Russian colonel Bartolomey, the interpreters - Bata Shamurzayev and Kasim Kurumov, and the execution of sentences was controlled by the "Administration of the Chechen People" with the right of coercion[2]. The court also worked out a written code of subordination - the "Rules for the Governance of Submissive Chechens": articles "providing punishment for disobedience to the authorities, for harboring abreks, for contact with 'unpacified' compatriots, the conditions of 'coming out with submission' from the territory of the Imamate" ("unpacified" in the imperial lexicon means those who had not submitted to the empire; abrek is the imperial label for a highlander outside the law); in 1854 the "Rules" were supplemented[2]. The result was recorded from inside by General Muravyov, commander-in-chief in the Caucasus - in February 1855 he wrote from the Groznaya fortress to General Yermolov, who had commanded in the Caucasus in the past: "Here five naibstvos have already been instituted, there is a pristav and a court established in imitation of your Kabardin court" (a naibstvo is an imperial administrative unit copied from the institution of the deputies of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest; a pristav is an imperial superintendent)[3].