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)”
In May 1916 the Russian Empire mobilized into the army the striking workers of the Grozny oil fields - those who held a deferral from military service and took part in the strike. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "an order was issued on the immediate mobilization of all Grozny workers holding a deferral from military service and taking part in the strike"[1]. The strike began with a wage dispute: on 12 May the workers handed the Council of the Congress of Terek Oil Industrialists written demands for a wage rise of 50% on average, on 21 May at two in the afternoon the oil fields stopped at the alarm whistles of the plants, and on 31 May, the same historians write, "the workers everywhere began to return to work"[1]. Those already recruited did not want to fight either: of the one and a half thousand men of the fourth draft of the "Savage Division" training in the reserve regiment, only 553 reached the combat units - the rest the military command returned to the Caucasus "in view of their 'unreliability'"[1].