in the campaign “First World War in Chechnya: removal of the "unreliable element" into the "Savage Division", extraordinary security and mobilization of strikers (1914-1917)”
With the start of the world war in 1914 the Russian Empire carried off to the front from Chechnya those it considered dangerous. The Chechen writer Kh. D. Oshaev, a native of the Vozdvizhenskaya settlement and a witness of the events, wrote: "As after 1905, the viceroyalty in the Caucasus decided, during the war, to remove from Chechnya all the unreliable element that had no employment for its hands and that could bring the tsarist administration much trouble 'in life's hard minute'. Those hiding from the authorities who expressed the wish to go to war were amnestied"[1]. For this the empire in 1914 created the Caucasus Native Cavalry Division, nicknamed the "Savage Division", - six national regiments of highlanders, four mounted sotnias each: the Chechen, Dagestani, Ingush, Kabardian, Tatar and Circassian[2]. The same goal was later named by General Denikin, who in the Civil War headed the Volunteer Army that occupied Chechnya in 1919 (campaign C1174): "It was all but the striving to remove the most restless elements from the territory of the Caucasus that was the sole reason for this formation"[2]. Those who remained the empire kept under reinforced garrisons - Kh. D. Oshaev wrote: "During the war the garrisons of the fortifications of Vedeno, Shatoy and Vozdvizhenskaya were enlarged; hundreds of cartloads of provisions, weapons and munitions filled the depots of these fortifications in the very first days of the war"[1]. In August 1916 the soldiers of the Ossetian foot divizion (a battalion-sized unit) training at the Vozdvizhenskaya fortress refused to carry out orders and dragged out their dispatch to the front; the military command transferred an infantry battalion from Grozny, and on 26 August it fired on the protest - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "16 were killed and over 30 soldiers of the divizion wounded"; some of those who fled took shelter in Chechen auls and homes[2][3]. For instigation the imperial administration arrested two residents of Starye Atagi - Murda Khamidov and Dzhabrail Tolgaev; the same historians write: "Both were sentenced to death and escaped it only thanks to the February Revolution of 1917"[2].