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 famine strategy was supplemented by a trade blockade. Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, in a letter to Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), of 21 March 1852, together with the threat "we will not allow them to sow or to mow," prescribed restricting the sale of salt to those who had not submitted to the empire; the letter is cited by historian N. I. Pokrovsky[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov convey, after the chronicle of the Dagestani author Genichutlinsky, a blockade of salt, iron and coarse cotton cloth[2]. In the years of the Crimean War the empire did not loosen the blockade: the same historians write - "Up to 200 thousand soldiers and officers confidently blockade the areas of the highlanders' operations in the North Caucasus - even the heavy defeats in the Crimea did not make the Russian command loosen this blockade"[2].