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)”
The auls of Greater Chechnya (the lowland eastern part of Chechnya) were burned out throughout the period. On 6 January 1852 Avtury was burned - imperial historian Volkonsky, a participant in the pogrom, wrote: "The aul Avtury had at that time up to nine hundred households and belonged to the number of the richest auls," and of the detachment's withdrawal: "all the auls and hamlets that lay on the path of our retreat blazed up like their metropole"[1]. On 27 March 1852, at the storming of the aul of naib Talgik (a naib is a deputy of Imam Shamil), "the aul itself was turned into a heap of ashes and ruins"[1]. In December 1852 the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus ordered Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), to destroy Khan-Kala - Volkonsky conveys the order: "the commander-in-chief insistently ordered Prince Baryatinsky to take this aul and raze it from the face of the earth," and the execution: "The aul, numbering ninety-five houses, was given to the flames, and by the evening of that same day not one sound stone remained of it"[1]. The result of 1853 was summed up by Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus: in a letter to the Emperor of 1-20 March 1854 he reported that Baryatinsky "took possession of the Michik, cut a clearing of enormous width through the Qachqalyq ridge down to the plains of Greater Chechnya and annihilated the greater part of the villages that still remained unsubdued along the Michik and other streams in the direction of Umakhan-yurt"[2]. In January 1854 the auls along the rivers Dzhalka and Khabi-Shovdan were devastated - the imperial chronicle of "outstanding events" counts the resettlement of "418 families of Chechens"[3].