Aggressors may carry out the systematic physical or political elimination of leaders, intelligentsia, and members of local elites who oppose colonization. Through mass arrests, extrajudicial executions, exile, and fabricated criminal cases, the colonizer liquidates the political leadership of an Indigenous people, paralyzing its capacity for coordination, organized struggle, and systemic resistance.
The appointed occupation administration used unlawful arrests to suppress the resisting Indigenous population: a petition submitted to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich by the service Okochans of the Terek town stated that the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky «orders us to be thrown into prison and beaten with the knout without your sovereign knowledge and without guilt»[1][2].
The destruction of the political leadership that supported the hetman: "the entire (!) general starshyna" followed Mazepa, and of the Left-Bank colonels only four remained loyal to the tsar[4]. The investigation of the officers was directed from the tsar's headquarters, where "being at Lebedyn and Sumy, Peter and Menshikov in January 1709" oversaw the reprisals[4]. The ecclesiastical punishment was arranged by the tsar's direct order - by a letter of 31 October 1708 (No. 2795) Peter I instructed metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky: "be pleased to have him, for such a deed of his, publicly cursed in the cathedral church..."[4][5].
The arrest of the acting hetman and officers in St. Petersburg for petitions defending autonomous rights. Peter was preparing a demonstrative reprisal: "Peter I planned to hold a show trial of Polubotok and his associates, accuse them of 'high treason,' and liquidate the Ukrainian autonomy. A special General Court was created for this purpose"[6]. Only the prisoner's death derailed the plan: the hetman "died on December 21, 1724 (O.S.) of pneumonia"[6].
The arrest and exile of the Sich's top leadership: "In July 1775, after the destruction of the New Sich, by order of Empress Catherine II, Kalnyshevsky was arrested and sent to the prison of the Solovetsky monastery"[7]. Kalnyshevsky spent more than 25 years in confinement; formally freed in 1801, he died in the monastery.
A years-long campaign of force against the peasant movement in Podillia: "In 1833–39 a special investigation into the case of Karmaliuk and his associates operated – the 'Haluzyntsi commission'… During its activity, about 20 thousand people passed through it as accused or suspected of ties with Karmaliuk"[7].
The otaman's defection left the Cossacks remaining beyond the Danube exposed to the Porte's retaliation and put an end to the last free Cossack host: the Danubian Sich "existed from the last quarter of the 18th century until 1828"[8].
The Russian Empire eliminated the leadership stratum of the resistance by luring it in under the pretext of an inquiry. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that under the guise of a «demonstrative execution», «318 respected men from the Aksai (Kumyk and Chechen) villages» — elders and revered men of the communities — were summoned to the Gerzel-aul fortification; General Lisanevich, «calling out those assembled one by one», after the killing of the generals ordered their extermination: «after Lisanevich's command „Stab them!" the mass extermination by the soldiers of all the unarmed highlanders present in the fortification began»[9].
In the spring of 1829, Commander-in-Chief Paskevich neutralized the leading stratum of the Chechen resistance by luring Beibulat Taimiev and 60 elders of his party to Tiflis under the pretext of negotiations and holding them there by force. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "On arriving in Tiflis, Beibulat learns that Paskevich is with the army in the field. Realizing that he has been deceived, he tries to return to Chechnya immediately, but he is forcibly detained in Tiflis"[9]. Paskevich admitted the deception in his own hand in his instruction to Emanuel of August 2, 1829: "I at once resolved to summon to myself, under the guise of explanations, their elders and the elder Bei-Bulat known to you, so that, having drawn them away here, I might deprive this tribe of the possibility, in case of discontent, of undertaking anything hostile"[10].
On July 14, 1831, near the Tashkichu fortification, Beibulat Taimiev, leader of the Chechen resistance and head of the uprising of 1825–1826, was killed from ambush — eliminated after open repression had been deemed too dangerous by the command. The historian D. A. Khozhaev wrote: "The tsarist command intended several times to do away with Beibulat, but feared to repress him openly... Preparations for the murder of Beibulat began, and it was soon carried out"[9]. The killer — Prince Sali, who was in imperial service — went unpunished, although other cases of blood vengeance were harshly prosecuted; commander-in-chief Paskevich wrote back that Beibulat "was a traitor to the end, and therefore the killer should not be punished"[9].
In 1838-1840 the empire eliminated leaders of the Chechen resistance by contract killings and arrests. General Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (head of the empire's troops and administration in the Caucasus), by a secret instruction of 17 November 1838 ordered general Pullo, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), to arrange the assassination of Shamil (Shamil - the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest): "Among the highlanders devoted to us there will doubtless be daring men who, for a good monetary reward, will undertake to deliver the head of the instigator. I charge you to try this measure, secretly offering to kill Shamil... promising a reward of up to 1,000 chervonets" (chervonets - a gold coin of the empire)[11]. In autumn 1839, after the rout of Akhulgo (Shamil's mountain stronghold in Dagestan), Ullu-bey of Erpeli - a highlander in the empire's service, installed as pristav (superintendent appointed by the empire) over the Koysubu community - twice sent poisoners to Shamil in the Chechen village of Vedeno: Shamil's chronicler Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi recorded that "Ullubiy sent Shamil's nephew Ibrahim, son of Bartikhan, with poison, together with two companions... while the latter was in the village of Vedeno of the Chechen vilayat" (vilayat - an administrative province of the Imamate)[12]. During the winter expeditions of December 1839 - January 1840 Pullo's troops took from the auls people whom the empire had outlawed: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write - "In December 1839 major-general Pullo passed through 28 villages without a single shot, collected 4 thousand rubles in silver from the Chechens, confiscated 455 rifles and seized 97 abreks" (abrek - the empire's label for an outlawed highlander)[13]; in the January march along the Michik the troops took 30 more people[14].
On 29 January 1841 general Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps (head of the empire's troops and administration in the Caucasus), instructed general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), to organise the assassination of Akhverdy-Magoma, Shamil's naib in Lesser Chechnya (the deputy of the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest): "it may be supposed that for good pay men will be found who will resolve on the destruction of Akhverdy-Magoma. There is no doubt that through the elimination of this enterprising associate of Shamil we would rid ourselves of one of his most dangerous instruments, and the pacification of Chechnya would then be a far less difficult matter"[15]. Golovin allotted a budget and an executor: Grabbe was granted "the right to employ at your discretion up to two thousand rubles in silver from the extraordinary sums", and "the execution of this affair is most fittingly to be laid upon maj.-gen. Olshevsky", commander of the left flank of the line[15]. The death of Akhverdy-Magoma is not connected with this order: in the summer of 1843 he died in a fight near the village of Shatili on the border with Georgia - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "To the satisfaction of the Russian command, Akhverdy-Magoma perished in the summer of 1843 in a clash near the Khevsur village of Shatili"[13]. Participants of the resistance the empire handed over to military courts with expedited punishment. The commands of emperor Nicholas I of 29 December 1843 and 14 February 1844, conveyed to the troops on 24 May 1844, prescribed: "Officers from among the highlanders who took part in the revolt, as well as qadis and other chief instigators, are to be handed over to a military court under the field criminal code... The sentences of the court, upon final confirmation by me, are to be carried out without delay" (qadi - a Muslim judge)[15]. Under this norm it was not enemy soldiers who went before the field court-martial, but spiritual and communal leaders - "qadis and other chief instigators".
Arrests, interrogations – the gendarmes "resorted to brutal pressure" and "applied refined methods of psychological processing"[7], and reprisal against the leaders: the sentences were set out in the report of the chief of gendarmes Orlov to the emperor of May 26, 1847, with Nicholas I's resolution "Execute"[16]. Shevchenko was sent into the army "with the institution over the poet of 'the strictest surveillance with a prohibition on writing and drawing'"[17][16]. Hrushevsky: the brotherhood "was seized while still in the midst of its very formation" after a student's denunciation; "The heaviest punishment fell on Shevchenko: he was given over to the soldiery and exiled to the trans-Caspian desert, forbidden to write and to paint," and "persecutions and prohibitions previously unheard of descended upon Ukrainian thought and the Ukrainian word… the very words Ukraine, Little Russia, Hetmanate were deemed criminal"[18]. The brotherhood's co-founder Mykola Hulak "was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg fortress (1847-50), then exiled to Perm under strict police surveillance (1850-59)"[19].
Baysangur of Benoy was taken prisoner by the troops on 17 February 1861: General Kempfert reported to the Minister of War on 28 February - "...Despite desperate resistance, [we] took prisoner Baysungur and four of his companions... the families of Baysungur and Sultan-Murad were also seized — 14 people in all"[9]. In March 1861 a field court-martial in Khasav-Yurt sentenced him to hanging; the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova relays the Chechen oral tradition about the execution: none of those standing by the gallows agreed to act as executioner, and "only after the officers in charge of the execution offered a monetary reward to a volunteer executioner did one of the Dagestanis standing in the crowd take this role upon himself"[20]; Baysangur's family and sons were exiled to Siberia[9]. The leaders of the uprising who surrendered - Atabi-Mullah Atayev, naib of Lesser Chechnya, whom the imperial papers call Atabai (14 November 1861), and Uma Duyev (14 December 1861) - Emperor Alexander II ordered exiled to the inner provinces - separately: "Uma... is to be sent to reside in provinces distant from the Caucasus... but on the condition that he not be in the same town as Atabai"[21]. Sheikh Kunta-Haji, a Muslim preacher who taught that God should be remembered aloud, in chorus, with singing and circling in a ring (such remembrance is called zikr - hence the imperial nickname of his followers, the zikrists), who had been under permanent police surveillance since the beginning of 1862, was arrested on 3 January 1864 in Serzhen-Yurt by order of the Viceroy. His followers had a single demand: "The main demand of the zikrists, as before, was the immediate release of those arrested and an end to new arrests. In that case the Kunta-Haji followers promised to obey the authorities once more"[13]. The head of the Chechen district, General Tumanov, rejected the demands and pressed for the surrender of those who had escaped arrest; on 18 January 1864, near Shali, the matter ended in a shooting. Those who came had left their firearms behind deliberately - the decision to go with blades alone is attributed to Machik-Mullah, who announced that Kunta-Haji, having appeared to him, would fill the soldiers' rifles with water[13]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "the Kunta-Haji followers advanced on the dense squares of regular troops with nothing but shashkas and daggers in their hands. Tumanov allowed them to attack, and then gave the order to open rifle and artillery fire"; they put the dead at "over 150"[13]. The historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova gives the count at the site of the slaughter: "164 dead remained at the site of the clash. Among those bayoneted there proved to be 5 women's bodies"; the detachment's losses - 8 dead and 33 wounded[20]. Eighteen people were exiled in this case - the sheikh himself, indefinitely, to Ustyuzhna in Novgorod province; his brother Movsar - to the Vyborg fortress; the vekils, the sheikh's trusted men, - to Smolensk province; nine rank-and-file zikrists - to fortress labor with subsequent settlement in Siberia[13][20]. In the archival register of persons under surveillance in Novgorod province for 1865 the sheikh is entered in a single line: "Chechen Shikh-Kunty. Age 35. Exiled for spreading the fantastical teaching of 'zikr'... Receives 1 rub. 80 kop. a month"[20]. Having lived in exile a little over two years, Kunta-Haji died of starvation[13].
The field court-martial sat in Grozny on 4-6 March 1878: "Of the 17 persons tried, 11 were sentenced to death, among them Alibek-Haji, Uma Duev, one of his sons, and Dada Zalmaev"[13]; historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova counts 18 tried and 13 sentenced to death, the rest - to 20 years of katorga (penal labor)[20]. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "On 9 March 1878, at 6 o'clock in the morning, in the town of Grozny, on the fairground square, they were hanged and buried in a common pit" - and gives the list of the eleven by name[9]; Akhmadov and Khasmagomadov add: the execution took place "amid dead silence and the evident sympathy of the assembled townspeople for those being executed"[13]. A participant in the suppression who was present at the execution admitted: "I was struck by the calm with which these people died"[20]. The bodies, buried by the authorities in a common pit, were secretly reburied by Chechens at night according to Muslim rites - historian D. A. Khozhaev relays the tradition of a cemetery near Samashki, historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova - of the Tyrtov grove near Grozny[9][20].
In January 1908 the head of the Terek oblast, by a secret circular, ordered "to establish secret surveillance over the activity of the Muslim clergy, '...and likewise over the appearance of emissaries from Turkey'"[13]. In 1911 "the Russian authorities took an unprecedented step - in 1911 eight sheikhs at once, of both the Qadiri and the Naqshbandi tariqats, were exiled from the Terek oblast by administrative order (a sheikh is a spiritual mentor; a tariqat is a religious brotherhood of disciples around such a mentor)... Zelimkhan's chief protector - Bamatgiri-Haji Mitayev, as well as the Ingush sheikh Batal-Haji Belkhoroyev, died in exile"[13].
The purge of Ukrainian institutions and the persecution of the movement's leaders. Hrushevsky was "arrested by the gendarmerie in Kyiv on December 11, 1914, and accused of Austrophilia and involvement in creating the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. He was sent into exile to Simbirsk"[19], then transferred to Kazan with a teaching ban and stripped of his professorship.
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"[22]. 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[13]. 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"[13]. 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"[22]. 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[13][23]. 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"[13].
Coercion of legal Ukrainian parties into self-dissolution (in particular, the Borotbists in the spring of 1920) and their absorption by the CP(b)U through political blackmail and the bribery of their leaders with official posts[24].
Over Sheikh Ali Mitaev, a member of the Chechen revkom, the GPU set "thorough surveillance", and in the spring of 1924 it "took the decision 'on the removal' of A. Mitaev from Chechnya. The official agreements with him were treacherously broken; he was suddenly arrested, taken to Rostov-on-Don and, after a brief investigation, shot"[13]; historian E. F. Zhupikova dates the arrest to 19 April 1924 and cites the GPU's formula of accusation - "for his connection with counter-revolutionary organizations"[25]. The historians call the character of the reprisal and its perpetrators by their proper names: "The murder of A. Mitaev by the Chekists," write Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov[13].
In the two months of the operation of 1925 the USSR arrested and shot the leaders of the resistance of Chechnya and Dagestan. Imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, the spiritual head of the resistance in Dagestan and Chechnya, was arrested by the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) on 5 September 1925. His hiding place was given up by the old men held hostage in the Sharoy district under the threat of the shelling of their villages. On the same day Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai, and Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, reported to Moscow: "The operation in the Sharoy district has ended successfully. After 5 days of repressions and agent work, today at 14 hours a report was received through the aircraft that Gotsinsky has been taken"[26]; he was arrested by an operational group of the GPU under the command of M. Ushaev[13]. Historian T. U. Elbuzdukayeva writes: "N. Gotsinsky was urgently taken to Rostov-on-Don, where on 15 October 1925 he was sentenced to be shot"[27]. Arrests are provided for by the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 as well - it allows "the conduct of arrests of influential persons of the aul, reactionarily disposed", with the proviso to resort to this measure "as an extreme one, with the observance of maximum tact"[28]. Under shelling even the innocent surrendered: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that in Urus-Martan, "after the artillery and aviation shelling of the settlement, the sheikhs Solsa-Haji Yandarov and Bilu-Haji Gaytayev surrendered to the authorities - soon, incidentally, released owing to their complete innocence"[13].
The USSR arrested, exiled, disenfranchised and hounded the authorities of the Chechen people - the sheikhs, the mullahs, the revered elders. The national commission of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party resolved on 28 June 1927: "The sheikhs in most cases are themselves kulaks and traders... they not only economically enserf the poor and middle peasants but, using the religious prejudices of the masses, exercise their political influence as a kulak stratum over a significant part of the toiling masses"[29] - thus the party designated the people's spiritual mentors "kulaks", class enemies. In the summer of 1927 the USSR broke off relations with Great Britain and expected war - and the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested sixteen religious authorities across Chechnya. Yevdokimov, the OGPU plenipotentiary in the North Caucasus, in his secret report for 1927 tied the arrests to the war scare: "The days of military danger of the summer period unusually inspired the Chechen musduh [Muslim clergy] in the sense of bold and open agitation for aid to external forces, for the preparation of an uprising", - and explained the operation thus: "The c/r [counter-revolutionary] propaganda of the clergy, which was shaping a panicky-defeatist mood in the Chechen peasantry, obliged our organ to be forestalled into a mass operation against the most active religious top layer. Rarely subjected to repressions and confident in the strength of his influence over the broad public - the Chechen mullah found himself caught unawares. The removal of 16 reactionary representatives of the Chechen religious world therefore made an enormous impression on him and for a time paralyzed his activity"[30]; "removal" was what the empire called a person's arrest. Yevdokimov measured success by the disintegration of the spiritual stratum: "a whole series of mullahs began to renounce their rank (up to 30 cases), and a number of religious authorities, compromised by a/s [anti-Soviet] sabotage in the past, to hide from the authorities"[30]. The Chechens answered with intercession, and the report admits: "the campaign for organizing public petitions on behalf of the arrested had significant success"[30]. Among those under arrest was Sheikh Gaysumov of Shali - one of the most revered men of Chechnya; Yevdokimov wrote: "The exception was the sect of Sheikh Gaysumov, whose activists, in connection with the latter's arrest, acted very energetically in the field of mobilizing public sympathy"[30]. The assembly of the village of Shali - 800 people - vouched for the arrested man: "to confirm that citizen Gopsumov Sungant [thus is Gaysumov recorded in the document], aged 107, has been an honored elder in the present village and has never been noted in anything discreditable, either criminal or political"[31]; Nagayev, inspector of the North Caucasus krai executive committee, filed this assembly into his report as evidence - "in the person of these 'assemblies', led by the kulaks and the clergy, the outlines of a real organization opposing our party are beginning to crystallize"[31]. The empire entered the intercession for an old man into its own file of incriminating material. In the autumn of 1927 the Prague journal "Volnye Gortsy" ["The Free Highlanders"] printed a letter from the Caucasus about the same wave: "The Bolsheviks, striking the pose of saviors of our national freedom, are in fact little by little killing all the living forces in the country, tearing from our ranks the most capable - our intellectual forces"; "Such an explosion of new terror took place here after the Anglo-Soviet rupture. Numerous arrests of the intelligentsia, the clergy and even whole families took place in almost every locality on the highlanders' territory. The GPU is working flat out"[32]. The OGPU in the same report named the next target as well: "the national-democratic movement appears to us as that new kind of highlander c/r [counter-revolution] with which we shall have to contend in the coming years and months"[30]. The empire struck at the authorities' rights as well: at the elections of 1928/29 in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast it disenfranchised 11,279 people, and in the breakdown of the lishentsy stand the lines: "Servants of religious cult, 1,569" and "Members of lishentsy families, 5,658"[31]. By 1930 the colonizer had counted the whole stratum head by head - the report on the inspection of the oblast party organization, sent in March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The strength of the mullahs in the Chechen aul is still enormous. On 1 May 1930 there were in Chechnya... communal mullahs - 450, kub mullahs - 800, sheikhs - 34... descendants of Muhammad and other religious authorities - 250, folk healers - 150"; the conclusion, in the same place: "In order to wage a struggle against such a huge army of mullahs, sheikhs and the like, it is necessary to have trained cadres"[31]. In the autumn of 1931, after the killing by the Chekists of Shita Istamulov - leader of the 1929 uprising in Shali, - the arrests of the authorities became mass; the Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes: the killing "was the beginning of a large GPU operation in Chechnya for the liquidation of 'kulak-counter-revolutionary elements and mullah-nationalist ideologues'"[33]. The Grozny and Rostov krai GPU, Avtorkhanov writes, set the arrest quotas, and the government of the USSR confirmed those quotas[33].
Mass arrests of peasants during the dekulakization campaign: according to the 1930 directives, in addition to deportations, tens of thousands of people were sent directly to concentration camps for isolation[24].
Physical annihilation and isolation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, writers, and scholars, as well as of the party opposition (national communists), in the course of targeted repressions. Fabrication of cases (including the "UNC" case) and driving representatives of the national elite to death, including the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the writer Mykola Khvylovy, and People's Commissar Mykola Skrypnyk[24].
The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, writes: "At the beginning of October 1937, accompanied by a large Chekist staff, there arrived in Chechen-Ingushetia a candidate member of the Politburo, chairman of the Party Collegium of the KPK under the TsK and Yezhov's deputy – Shkiryatov"[33]. Shkiryatov convened an enlarged plenum of the oblast committee of the party in the Lenin House of Culture in Grozny - by the archival protocols the plenum ran on 8-10 October 1937, with 194 participants[34] - and summoned there also the senior officials of the city and the districts. Avtorkhanov continues: "Shkiryatov gave the order to arrest all Chechens and Ingush who were members of the Chechen-Ingush oblast committee"[33]. The Chekists arrested them right there, in the hall of the plenum. Avtorkhanov writes of what followed: "Then Shkiryatov's order was extended to all Chechen-Ingush officials, from the chairman of the republic's government down to the chairman of a village soviet"[33]. In October and November 1937 the NKVD (a predecessor of today's FSB) arrested Ali Gorchkhanov, chairman of the government of the republic; Abdul-Khalim Salamov, his deputy; Khasi Vakhayev, second secretary of the oblast committee; Magomed Mamakayev, head of the culture and propaganda department of the oblast committee; Khamid Okuyev, People's Commissar (minister) of education; Musa Khaniev, chairman of the Supreme Court; Khasan Mekhtiev, prosecutor of the republic; and Said Baduev, chairman of the Union of Soviet Writers. Avtorkhanov writes also of the lower floors: "Arrested were also the chairmen of the district executive committees (in the Chechen-Ingush republic there were up to 28 districts), almost all chairmen of village Soviets, of kolkhozes, and their party organizers"[33]. Of the 23 heads of the district NKVD departments only Goytiev was a Chechen, and the NKVD arrested him too. The NKVD arrested, and the party organs removed from office - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "In all, in October 1937, 30 of the 76 members and candidate members of the Chechen-Ingush obkom were repressed, including all the Chechens and Ingush; 20 of the 28 secretaries of district party committees; 77 members of district committees and 192 senior officials of the rural districts of the republic"[13]; in 1938 the colonizer removed almost all heads of the district land departments, 19 chairmen of district executive committees and 22 secretaries of district committees[13].
The neutralization of the politically active stratum through mass arrests: immediately after the "People's Assembly" came "the arrests of leading figures of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, by lists prepared in advance, drawn up in the Soviet consulate"[35]; "in all, in 1939—1941 the NKVD organs arrested 21,982 Poles, 23,163 Ukrainians and 13,160 Jews"[35], and those arrested faced execution, prison or the GULAG camps: "in total, during 1939—1941, between 16 and 35 thousand OUN members were shot or imprisoned"[35].
Mass arrests of UPA fighters, OUN members, and those suspected of aiding them, followed by dispatch to the GULAG camps, upon which the regime placed "the isolation of 'unreliable elements'" as one of its key tasks[19]. During Operation "Vistula," for civilians suspected of assisting the underground there was provision for "the introduction of courts-martial and concentration camps, in particular at Jaworzno"[36]. By 1951 Ukrainians had become the second-largest nation of the GULAG: according to the agency's own statistics, the "National composition of GULAG prisoners (as of January 1, 1951)" counted 506,221 Ukrainians out of some 2.5 million prisoners - about 20%[37].
Fabricated repressions against figures of the Ukrainian and Jewish intelligentsia: in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, "on July 18, 1952 the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court passed death sentences on 13 people, including 5 natives of Ukraine, the well-known Jewish writers and poets D. Bergelson, D. Hofshtein, L. Kvitko, P. Markish, I. Fefer. On August 12, 1952 they were all executed"[8].
Targeted arrests of the new Ukrainian intelligentsia, dissidents, and protest participants (including after the premiere of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors") to suppress the nascent resistance[38].
Mass arrests of members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and the fabrication of criminal cases: Vasyl Stus was "arrested on January 12, 1972 together with other Ukrainian writer-human rights defenders: I. Svitlychny, Ye. Sverstiuk, Ihor and Iryna Kalynets," and after joining the Helsinki Group in October 1979 he was "arrested a second time on May 14, 1980" and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and 5 years of exile[39]. He "died in the punishment cell of special-regime camp VS-389/36" and was buried "in a nameless grave under No. 9 in the camp cemetery"[39].
The forcible neutralization of movement activists at the hands of the security structures and party apparatus: the dispersal of commemorative actions with beatings ("dragged out of the car, beaten") with the participation of the KGB and the militia[40], the hospitalization of the beaten political prisoner Vasyl Ovsienko[41], and the death of Rukh member Yevhen Melenivsky - after a "conversation" at the regional MVD directorate he "died on his way home"[42], and later - the law enforcement bodies' demonstrative disinterest in solving crimes against Rukh functionaries: they "demonstratively displayed disinterest in solving the crime"[43].
An attempt to physically eliminate the leader of the democratic opposition V. Yushchenko at the height of the election campaign by dioxin poisoning: in late December 2004 "a patient presented with TCDD poisoning; the levels in his blood serum (108000 pg/g lipid weight) were more than 50 000-fold greater than those in the general population"[44]. The poisoning led to severe disfigurement of the candidate's face.
The physical elimination of legitimate representatives of local government who resisted the occupation: "the mutilated body of Volodomyr Rybak, a member of the 'Batkivshchyna' party and deputy of the Municipal Council of Horlivka (Donetsk region), was found near the village of Raihorodok," and "Rybak was abducted on April 17 by pro-Russians, following a pro-Ukrainian gathering in Horlivka. He was then tortured and murdered"[45].