Hostage-Taking

Hostages figured as a separate accounting line in the final report on the punitive operation of 1930: Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, reported to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)") verbatim: "Seized across Chechnya: of active counter-revolutionary and bandit element, 122 people, of them ringleaders - leaders of the movement - 9; ringleaders who appeared voluntarily - 7; hostages - 35. Rank-and-file participants who appeared voluntarily are not counted, they number hundreds"^[1]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov quote this line of the report: among those arrested in the course of the operation - "leaders of the insurgent movement - 9, hostages - 35"^[2]. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, described why the Chekists took hostages and what awaited them: "To the old tsarist system of taking 'amanats' (hostages) to force 'bandits' to surrender the Chekists resorted constantly, and on a wider scale", but "in the history of Soviet Checheno-Ingushetia there was not a single case of the 'amanats' being released when the 'bandit' appeared"; of the fate of both Avtorkhanov writes: the man who appeared voluntarily, "contrary to the solemn promise to spare his life, - was shot, while the 'amanats' were exiled to Siberia, including women and children"^[3].