in the campaign “Colonial oil: the seizure of the Grozny subsoil and the rent of the Cossack host (1845-1917)”
The Terek Cossack Host of the Russian Empire leased out the seized Chechen lands to oil companies and lived on rent from another people's subsoil: in 1899 about 21.9 million of the 26.22 million puds of total output were extracted on the host's lands, and in that year alone the companies paid the host 631.8 thousand rubles[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: the largest owner of the oil-bearing plots turned out to be the host itself; it did no extraction of its own, and the usual terms of a lease were 150 rubles a year per desiatina (a desiatina is a little over a hectare) plus "from 2 to 6 kopecks for every pud of oil extracted"[1]. Historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova records the dynamic: the host's capital grew from 400 thousand rubles in 1877 to 3 million in 1900 - "This was the result of receiving income from the oil-bearing lands"[2]. The scale was set by the field itself: on 27 August 1895 well No. 7 of Akhverdov's company gave "a gusher of incredible force, yielding up to 1 million puds a day... The roar and the smell of oil could be sensed 15 versts from the field"[3].