in the campaign “"Mow Down Everything, Beat and Hang Without Mercy": Suppression of the 1877 Uprising and the Executions in Grozny (1877-1878)”
Svistunov, head of the Terek oblast, ordered the head of the Argun okrug on 20 August 1877: "In the event not only of any aul receiving the mutineers, but of the slightest disorder in it or disobedience to the authorities, you will send the amanats of that aul to Grozny, and I will have them shot" (amanat - a person the empire took from a community as a hostage)[1]. Colonel Batyanov, according to historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, declared that he considered it "a useful measure to shoot five of the amanats of every aul that had broken away"[2].