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 empire felled the Qachqalyq forest, the shield of eastern Chechnya, in a month and a half. General Baklanov, the executor, recorded in his memoirs: "On 5 January 1852 I concentrated... three battalions of infantry... set about felling the forest; within a month I reached the Michuk... having cleared by 16 February 1852 the forest 100 sazhens from the bank, and 300 sazhens along the river" (a sazhen is slightly more than two meters)[1]. The result was recorded by imperial historian Volkonsky: "the ancient, dense forest that had served the highlanders as their chief defense and protection fell forever, and the Qachqalyq ridge was laid bare"[2]. The calculation was set out in writing by Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, in a letter to the Emperor of 1-20 March 1854, as he was handing over affairs before his leave. The felling he described as a system of many years: "This important business, well begun by Gen. Freytag and then strongly advanced by the annual expeditions for the felling of forests by Generals Nesterov, Kozlovsky and Prince Baryatinsky"[3], and the result he reckoned thus: the Chechens, forced off the plain into the Black Mountains, would not be able to feed themselves there and "must in a short time come over to us, or declare submission where they are; then the weak population of the Ichkerians alone will not be able to hold out"[3].