Terror

At the start of the twentieth century the Terek authorities began to bring in military detachments and Cossack units for mass searches of highland auls - formally to confiscate weapons and to "detain fugitives"^[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write what this turned into: sweeping searches of mountain villages "were as a rule accompanied by looting and other unlawful acts by soldiers and Cossacks, which was encouraged in every way by the Terek authorities, who constantly sought a pretext for applying harsher measures against the highlanders"^[1]. How literally this encouragement worked is visible in November 1902: during a search staged by Cossacks at the bazaar of the village of Shaami-Yurt mass disturbances broke out, the ataman of the Samashkinskaya stanitsa, Gridnev, forbade his men to use firearms, and the clash ended without bloodshed - after which the head of the Terek oblast removed Gridnev from his post and expressed displeasure to the Cossacks who had taken part in the disturbances for their "passivity"^[1]. The sanction came from the very top: when the head of the Terek oblast reported that the clashes between Chechens and Cossacks were bringing material damage and human casualties and that these groups of the population should be kept apart, Nicholas II replied that "it is precisely this neighbourhood that keeps up in the Cossacks their old ancestral daring, and therefore there is no need whatever to take measures to soften the situation"^[2]. Bloodshed in Chechen villages was for the authorities not an incidental cost but the working condition of the land.