in the campaign “First Russian-Chechen War (1994–1996)”
In the autumn of 1994, Russia attacked the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria under the name of a puppet opposition, and on 11 December 1994 the Russian army openly invaded the republic. The occupiers burned the archives, libraries, books and manuscripts of the Chechens.
Russian artillerymen shelled, and pilots bombed, the buildings of the archive, libraries and research institutes in Grozny. The documents, books and manuscripts in these buildings burned[1][2]. Russian commanders, with the help of soldiers, carried ancient books away on trucks toward Mozdok, a town in North Ossetia, and toward Ingushetia, both Russian-controlled (see: "Theft of Cultural Property")[2].
From 31 December 1994, the occupation troops stormed the center of Grozny, where the Central State Archive of the Chechen Republic kept about 656 thousand files on the history of the Chechen and Ingush peoples over more than two centuries. One building of the archive stood on Ordzhonikidze Street, a hundred meters from the palace of the president of Ichkeria[1]. Oleg Orlov, a human rights defender of Memorial, who at the start of the storming was in the basement of the palace together with the group of Sergei Kovalyov, Russia's human rights commissioner, told the public tribunal of the Russian Glasnost Foundation in Moscow in February 1996 that on the night of 4 January 1995 he came out of the basement: "We saw that the whole center of the city was already destroyed, practically all the residential buildings had either burned down or were still burning. … We saw that archive – it had burned down completely"[3]. In February 1995, Yeremchenko, deputy head of the Russian archival agency, came to Grozny and established that in the archive buildings on Ordzhonikidze and Chekhov streets the occupiers had destroyed all the documents together with the backup copies on film. The third building of the archive, on Karagandinskaya Street, survived. It kept about 90 thousand files on the Chechens and Ingush whom the USSR had deported to Kazakhstan in 1944. On 21 September 1995, Yeremchenko, deputy head of the agency, wrote in reply to an inquiry that the occupiers had destroyed 87 percent of the 795 thousand files in all the state archives of the Chechen Republic[1].
In early 1995, Russian troops burned down the entire Chekhov Republican Scientific Library in Grozny with shelling[1]. On 24 April 1996, the ethnographer Yan Chesnov, who studied the Chechens and saw the ruins of the library, told the public tribunal of the Glasnost Foundation in Moscow: "The archive and the republican library have been burned. … The entire book collection has been burned. Books in the Chechen language published in the 1930s in Latin script [in Latin letters], ancient Arabic books. A unique library has perished"[2].
In January 1995, the occupiers destroyed the Chechen National Museum in Grozny with shelling, together with its department of ancient books and manuscripts (see: "Destruction of Historical Memory")[2]. In early 1995, Russian troops destroyed in Grozny the library of the Research Institute of the Humanities of the Chechen Republic. The library kept the works of all the known researchers of the Caucasus, the records of expeditions on the languages of the Chechens and Ingush, and the originals of medieval books and manuscripts[1].
Human rights defenders of Memorial write that in Grozny the scientific and technical library, three university libraries, the libraries of all the research institutes, the republican children's library and the archives of the unions of writers, artists, composers and theater workers burned down. According to Memorial, the occupiers destroyed or irreparably damaged the folklore center with its archive[1].
In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table[4]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")[5]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic[1].