in the campaign “Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936)”
The USSR took livestock and land from the Chechen peasants. In one year of the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization") Chechnya lost 184 thousand head of livestock. The report on the inspection of the party organization of the Chechen Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, carries a table of oblast statistics: total livestock in the oblast in 1929 - 993,200 head, in 1930 - 809,063. The report admits: "The growth of livestock numbers in all categories that had begun in 1929 found no continuation in 1930; on the contrary, a significant decline in numbers occurred, sparing only the horses"[1] - and the cause is named right there: the decline occurred "chiefly in the spring of 1930, when the kulaks, offering frenzied resistance to the growth of kolkhoz construction, predatorily destroyed the livestock"[1]. That is how the colonizers described the peasants' actions: people slaughtered their own livestock rather than hand it over to the kolkhozes. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov put the loss higher still: "Forced to join the kolkhoz, the peasants strove to shelter at least part of their household from socialization, and if that failed, simply rid themselves of it. Thus collectivization was accompanied by a sharp reduction of livestock numbers - in the single year 1930 they shrank in Chechnya by almost 300 thousand head"[2]. The Central Committee of the party (the "TsK VKP(b)") likewise admitted that the livestock was being taken by force: in the resolution "On the forced socialization of livestock" of 26 March 1932 it recorded that "in a number of districts a practice is observed of socializing the cows and small livestock of individual kolkhoz members by in fact coercive methods", and demanded that such attempts be "cut short"[3]. The colonizer took land from the Nokhchi as well. In the redistribution the Russians called "land settlement", write Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, "in the Vedeno, Itum-Kali and Shatoy okrugs about 1.5 thousand hectares of land were seized from the kulaks and the mosques"[2]. The directive to "curtail" the Chechen peasants declared well-off when seizing land stands in the same VTsIK report[1].