in the campaign “"Only Pardoned": Alien Rule and the Suppression of Chechen and Ingush National Life (1965-1989)”
After the return of the Chechens from exile the coloniser did not allow a single mosque to be opened and, through its officials, decided who could pray and where. Muzarov, an official supervising religion, wrote in a report of 25 August 1983: "In Chechen-Ingushetia in the pre-October period [before 1917] Muslim ideology reigned supreme. There were 2,675 mosques, 60 thousand murids [members of religious brotherhoods], 38 sheikhs [religious mentors, heads of brotherhoods], 2,850 mullahs [Islamic clergymen] and 140 religious schools. After the restoration of the republic's autonomy in 1957 it so happened that on the territory of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR there was not a single mosque"[1]. The mosques did not vanish by themselves. Most of them the coloniser had closed before the war: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that religious schools "after the closure of most mosques… moved into the homes of mullahs and Islamic scholars"[2]. Historian Dalkhan Khozhaev writes that during the exile "medieval crypts and pre-revolutionary mosques, tombs and shrines… were blown up"[3]; historians Akhmadov and Khasmagomadov add that in Grozny "the city mosque was destroyed"[2]. The surviving buildings the coloniser took over as clubs and warehouses. On 21 January 1967 277 believers of the Nazran district submitted an application to open a mosque in the village of Barsuki; Asaulka, an official supervising religion, reported to Moscow that the district administration, by its decision of 10 June 1967, had refused "to consider the application on the grounds that, as established by an inspection, 'many signatures under the application were made not by the persons indicated in the application but forged, and the surnames of some persons are fictitious'"[4]. On 11 November 1969 the government of the region, subordinate to Moscow, in a resolution "On Measures to Strengthen Control over Observance of the Legislation on Religious Cults", recorded that in the districts "ministers of the cult in a number of cases arbitrarily engage in building and opening prayer houses, hold collective rites in public places, organise pilgrimages of believers to so-called 'holy places'", while "effective measures aimed at the gradual cessation of their activity are not being taken"[5]. On 18 May 1977 Bobov, an official supervising religion, reported to Kerimov, the head of that government: "in the republic there are no Muslim religious associations or ministers of the cult registered with the authorities, while at the same time, contrary to the law, 263 Muslim religious societies and groups operate unofficially"[6]. On 19 August 1980 Bobov reported to Moscow: in the republic "there are 62 buildings of former mosques… 17 used as clubs and schools, 25 as storage premises, 8 as factory workshops, post offices, shops, 2 handed over to the use of believers"[7]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that the region's occupation authorities "directly forbade the opening of mosques in Chechen and Ingush villages, and did not allow the numerous murid [religious] communities to perform religious rites openly either"[2].