in the campaign “Collectivization of Chechnya (1927-1936)”
The Nokhchi rose in arms three times against the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization"), and all three times the USSR sent troops against the auls. In December 1929 Shali, Goity and Benoy revolted. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, names the leaders of the uprising: in Shali it was headed by Shita Istamulov, in Goity - by Akhmat-Mullah and Kuriev, in Benoy - by Yaroch and Khodzhas. Shita Istamulov explained why he was taking up arms: "we cannot look on while the Chechens' grain is taken away, while they are ruined and their last property is taken. Fines, searches - if the authorities keep all this up, they will force me to come out with weapon in hand... If we keep looking on at this, they will take everything, down to your last trousers, and kill you naked. Better to die, at least you will know you will be buried in trousers"[1]. Avtorkhanov writes of the first days of the uprising: "The insurgents occupied all the village and district institutions, burned the state archives, arrested the district authorities, including the chiefs of the GPU [the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB], in Benoy they also seized the oil fields, and established a provisional people's power"[2]. The insurgents sent their demands to Moscow. As the first point they demanded "Stop the unlawful confiscation of peasant property", as the second - "End the trial-less arrests of peasants", as the third - "Recall the heads of the GPU from Chechnya, replacing them with a civil administration"; by two more points - to abolish the "people's" courts introduced by the Soviet power, with the return of sharia justice, and to restore the powers of the Chechen Congress. They agreed to lay down arms if these conditions were met[1]. The first attempts of the Soviet troops to seize the auls failed - Shali and Goity fought them off; the staff of the North Caucasus Military District admitted in its memorandum on the first operation of 30 March 1930 that "the successful armed resistance to the local authorities in the auls of Shali and Goity during the seizure of inventoried property served as the final push" toward calling in field units[3]. The OGPU recorded in its survey of the political condition of the USSR for December 1929: on 7 December "two teips [clans] of the aul of Goity, led by the son of Sheikh Khadzhiev, shut themselves in their quarters, posting an armed guard", and "on 8 December in the village of Shali, over the inventorying of the property of kulaks [peasants declared well-off], the militia was disarmed"; the OGPU calls Shita Istamulov "the former Minister of War of the government of Uzun-Haji" [the North Caucasus emirate of 1919-1920]; the arrest count in the same survey: "220 people arrested in Shali and 144 in Goity. The leaders of the Shali and Goity outbreaks Istamulov, Khadzhiev and Kuriev have gone into hiding"[4]. The Russian command moved against the peasants, disarmed four years earlier, a detachment formed in Grozny. At its head stood Burichenko, former head of the Vladikavkaz infantry school. After the first failures the command reinforced the detachment with battalions, an artillery divizion and a "detachment of airplanes". On 11 December the troops seized Shali, on the morning of 12 December - Goity, and from 20 to 27 December they attacked the mountain auls of Benoy, Tsentoroy and Zandak. The staff memorandum states: "in the operation as a whole there took part, together with the units of the VOGPU [OGPU troops], 1,904 fighters with 75 heavy and light machine guns"; artillery pieces and seven airplanes are named there as well; the outcome, in the same document: "Over the operation 450 bandits were seized. Up to 60 people killed and wounded"; the troops' losses - 43 men, of them 21 killed or dead of wounds[3]. On the end of the uprising the sources diverge: in the staff memorandum the seizure of Shali and Goity is dated 11 and 12 December 1929, while the historians place the fall of both centers in mid-January 1930; of the leaders' fate some sources write that they escaped, others - that the insurgent staff in Goity perished[2]. In the spring of 1930 the mountain okrugs rose again, and the Soviet troops again marched on the auls, now in greater force. The occupation command of the district admitted the scale of the outbreak in its report to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)"): "In Chechnya, as in Karachay, we had not isolated bandit counter-revolutionary outbreaks, but a direct uprising of entire districts (Galanchozh), in which almost the whole population took part in the armed action"[3]. By the district staff's memorandum on the second operation in Chechnya, by 14 March rifle battalions with batteries, cavalry divizions and an aviation flight had been massed into Chechnya: "in all, 3,920 fighters with 16 [artillery] pieces were drawn into the operation"[3]. By the final report of Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the district, to the krai committee of the party, 1,500 units of weapons were seized across Chechnya, 122 people arrested, 19 insurgents killed[3]. Avtorkhanov describes the end of the march on Benoy: "At the end of March 1930 Belov, having received fresh units from Transcaucasia, unfolded a large mountain offensive with the task of taking the insurgents' last point - Benoy. After two months of heavy fighting and great losses, in April 1930, Belov entered Benoy, but found not a single inhabitant in the aul: all of them, including women and children, had evacuated further into the mountain wilds. The victor Belov sent envoys to the insurgents with an offer of honorable peace: to all who voluntarily returned to the aul with the surrender of weapons, an amnesty was declared. The insurgents replied that they would return to their auls only when Belov left with his troops"[2]. In March 1932 the Nozhay-Yurt district revolted; the uprising was led by Mutsu Shamilev (the Nokhchi know him as Motsu of Shuani), Ibragim Ninakhadzhiev, Usman Ushkhaev, Khusein Istamulov and Dada Kebetov; on 20 March, 300-400 insurgents attacked the oil extraction site on Mount Sterch-Kertch, another 700-800 dug in on the mountain ridge, covering the uprising's district from the direction of Khasav-Yurt, a town in neighboring Dagestan[5]. Kashirin, commander of the occupation troops of the district, in a memorandum of 31 March 1932 reported to the Minister of War of the USSR Voroshilov: "The band is headed by a certain 'imam' Mutsu from the aul of Shuani"[3]. For nine days the district remained in the insurgents' hands. Units of the 28th Mountain Rifle Division and the national cavalry regiment approached the district on 26-27 March, fighting began at midday on 28 March, and by 29 March the Soviet troops had seized the district. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "the number of killed reached 333, of wounded - 150. The units of the Red Army and the operational groups of the GPU lost in all 27 men killed and 30 wounded"[5].