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, wrote to Smekalov on 18 August 1877: "As for Benoy and Zandak, they must be deported to Siberia to a man, or, if these scoundrels refuse, all of them must be killed off in winter like cockroaches and destroyed by famine"[1]; the same directive of Svistunov is quoted by historian D. A. Khozhaev[2]. In the imperial publication of the correspondence (letter to Smekalov of 18 August 1877, No. 226) the formula reads: "to freeze them all out in winter, like cockroaches, and destroy them by famine"[3]. The food base was being destroyed from the very first days: on 13 April 1877, merely for letting the detachment of Alibek-Haji, leader of the uprising, pass through the village, "the hayfields and maize fields of the inhabitants [of Benoy] were completely burned by the tsarist troops"[4]. Colonel Batyanov, according to historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, "widely applied the destruction of stores of grain and hay," believing that this made many "come to their senses"[4]. In Cheberloy the troops stood for about 20 days - "All this time they were ruining the fields of the Cheberloy villages. Their inhabitants meanwhile were in such a state as if the greatest of floods had struck them"[5].