Taxation

The USSR ruined the Chechen peasants with taxes and forced deliveries of grain and meat. Officials taxed those entered as "kulaks" at a higher rate by a special list ("individual taxation"), and Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, held in February 1930 that too few households made the lists: in the Vedeno okrug, "of 8,513 households only 80 households were taxed on the individual basis"; in Tsentoroy "of 464 households, 406 are exempted from the unified agricultural tax", in Belgatoy 295 of 335, in Dargo 439 of 501. The tax struck at random, to the point of absurdity - of the village of Day Larin said: "a kulak in Day was assessed at 4 kopecks, while a Komsomol member there was assessed at 4 rubles 39 kopecks"^[1]. The colonizer laid "grain assignments" - delivery quotas of grain - on the mountain auls, though there was hardly any grain there. Larin reported: the oblast committee of the party gave the Nozhay-Yurt okrug an assignment of 15,000 poods - about 240 tonnes of grain; further in Larin: "and on the spot they raise it to 25,000, and on the single aul of Benoy, where there are hardly 5 thousand poods to be had at all, fall 5 thousand poods"; for non-delivery the colonizers inventoried property for confiscation and imposed fines - in Shali, Larin reported, "a decision was passed to fine 60 households"^[1]. In 1932, write historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, on top of the confiscated livestock "a meat procurement plan was also handed down, which meant, in essence, the confiscation of a significant part of the livestock"^[2]. The colonizer taxed the clergy as well: historian K. G. Dendiev places the imposition of income tax on the mullahs as the first step of their displacement from the life of Chechnya^[3].