Destruction of Historical Memory

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 destroyed the museums, research institutes and ancient monuments of the Chechens.

During the storming of Grozny, Russian artillerymen shelled, and pilots bombed, the center of the city, where the museums and research institutes of Ichkeria stood^[1][2]. Russian pilots fired rockets at ancient towers and settlements in the mountains in the south of Ichkeria^[2]. The occupiers occupied the ruins of museums and looted what had survived (see: "Theft of Cultural Property")^[2]. Russian troops burned almost the entire Central State Archive of the Chechen Republic and the republican libraries in Grozny (see: "Burning of Books and Archives")^[1]. Soldiers of the occupation troops destroyed mosques and leveled ancient burial mounds (see: "Destruction of Shrines and Necropolises")^[2].

In January 1995, Russian troops destroyed the Chechen National Museum in Grozny. The museum held about 320 thousand exhibits, among them archaeological finds of the ancient and medieval Caucasus, traditional Chechen clothing and old manuscripts^[1][2]. The museum's director Isa Adayev told the public tribunal of the Russian Glasnost Foundation in Prague in May 1996: "From 1 to 4 January 1995, the museum building was shelled quite deliberately from several directions". When the director got to the museum on 7 January, "it was no longer a museum — nothing was left of it — only ruins". On 18 January, Russian special forces seized the ruins^[2]. Khotin, deputy director of the museum center of the Russian Ministry of Culture, who inspected the ruins of the museum in late March 1995, told the public tribunal of the Glasnost Foundation in Moscow in February 1996: "The nature of the destruction shows that barrage fire was used there. Next to the museum there is a small park of about 50 fairly old trees. Well, all those trees are cut in half. All of them!"^[3].

In early 1995, the occupiers destroyed in Grozny the Research Institute of the Humanities of the Chechen Republic, founded in 1907^[1]. In 1995, Russian pilots fired rockets at and bombed Kogo-Maista, an old settlement in the mountains in the south of Ichkeria, far from the fighting. In the strikes, the occupiers destroyed six towers that had stood for thirteen centuries, killed the Chechen boy Deni Murtazov and wounded a woman of his family so badly that she became disabled^[2].

The human rights defenders of "Memorial" write that Russian troops destroyed or irreparably damaged in Grozny the university, the pedagogical and petroleum institutes, and the geological museum. In "Memorial's" assessment, Russian troops did not take the rescue of cultural property into account and inflicted irreparable damage on the culture of the Chechen people^[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].