Legal Segregation of the Population

The legal enserfment of Ukrainian peasants by Catherine II's decree of May 3, 1783, depriving them of the right of free movement: "For the certain and reliable collection of treasury revenues in the viceroyalties of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Novhorod-Siverskyi and for the prevention of any flights… each of the villagers is to remain in the place and station where he is registered by the current last revision"^[1].

The introduction of territorial discrimination: by the decree of 1791, the Jewish population's right to burgher and merchant status was confined to specific viceroyalties – Ekaterinoslav and Taurida^[2] – the legal foundation of the future Pale of Settlement, which confined the area of residence and economic activity to the colonized governorates.

By orders for the Terek oblast of 15 August 1890 and March 1897 the Russian Empire forbade the Chechen village communities "to enter into any agreements with mining industrialists" without the government's permission - "The guilty, in the person of village officials, were brought to account, and suits were brought in the courts to annul the concluded contracts"^[3]. The ground of the ban is formulated by historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova: "The aul communities were deprived of the right to lease out oil-bearing plots - the land was granted to them not by right of property but only into use with the right of surface working; its subsoil was considered the property of the treasury"^[3]. When the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed rules that allowed peasant communities to lease out their own land for the working of the subsoil, the head of the Terek oblast, General Kakhanov, in 1894 "categorically objected to the extension to the Chechen lands" of these rules - and demanded that, even if the communities' rights were recognized, the resolution on leasing the land be confirmed by the uchastok chief and a third of the income go "to pay the podymnaya tax of the communities concerned"^[4]. For the Cossacks the opposite rule was in force: from 1891, when subsoil passed to the treasury, stanitsas were entitled to replacement land or compensation - "For the Chechen communities no reserve land allotments were provided by the state. Still less was there any question of material reward"^[3].

From 1882 "especially important" cases in which the accused were highlanders were transferred to the field court-martial; in 1893, with the emperor's permission, a significant share of highlanders' criminal cases was withdrawn from the general civil courts - into whose jurisdiction these cases passed, the source does not specify^[5]. Punishment could also be imposed without any court: the head of the oblast jailed highlanders for up to one month at his personal discretion, and imposed penalties on aul communities for harbouring^[5]; on 19 November 1893 the rules of administrative deportation to Eastern Siberia on accusation or suspicion of stealing horses and livestock were extended to the Terek oblast^[5], and according to historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov the decision on administrative exile for a term of up to five years was taken by the commander of the Caucasus Army, and the place of exile was Chechen Island in the Caspian^[4]. The 1894 "Temporary Regulation on Measures to Restrain the Native Population of the Terek Oblast from 'Predation'" - its draft was submitted for approval by the head of the Terek oblast, general Kakhanov - according to historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, wrote the collective liability of the village community for committed crimes into law^[5]; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov record the mechanics: mountain villages paid for stolen livestock "if the tracks of the stolen livestock turned out to be lost near the given village", while "the possibility that the thieves might not be highlanders at all was completely ignored"^[4]. Indigenous inhabitants were barred from holding the posts of pristav and okrug head and from serving as justices of the peace^[5]; the 1888 regulation on the administration of the Terek and Kuban oblasts established, in the words of historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, "a narrowly caste-based military-Cossack administration, without the participation not only of representatives of the mountain peoples but of the non-Cossack element as well... the highlanders were placed outside the operation of the general laws"^[5]. In the 1890s the administration, by a separate order, forbade Cossacks to keep kunachestvo with highlanders (kunachestvo - sworn brotherhood, an institution of friendship between households)^[5]. Service was segregated too: the "political unreliability" of the Caucasus Muslims led the authorities to give up forming line units from them, and from 1886, by order of the Minister of War, recruits from the Terek oblast were assigned only to troops stationed in the Caucasus^[5]. Zemstvos were never introduced in the oblast at all; the proposal on zemstvo institutions in the Terek oblast, submitted to the State Duma in 1914, was not adopted before the revolution^[5].

The allotment norm was written out by estate and origin: "Cossacks are allotted 30 desiatinas (a desiatina is a little over a hectare) per soul, while natives get no more than 2-5 desiatinas"^[3]; the gap was also entrenched by the general rules of allotment: by the count of the newspaper Kazachy Vestnik for 1884, on which historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova relies, Russian residents of the Caucasus krai received "24–30 desiatinas of land allotment per soul, whereas natives got 12–18 desiatinas per dym, which on average numbered 5 men" (a dym is a hearth, a household)^[3]. In 1886 in the Grozny okrug "an average Chechen family with many children... had 11 desiatinas of land, while the average Cossack family owned more than 92 desiatinas"^[4]. By Order No. 418 of the viceroy of 1863, "the right to buy land plots from the local population was received by Russian officers and officials of the oblast administration"^[3] - an ordinary Chechen could not be a buyer of that same category of land; the rules of 1 March 1902 instituted the buying-up of privately owned lands "for the needs of the Caucasus Cossack hosts, at the expense of their capital funds"^[3].

On 24 October 1905 the Russian Empire imposed martial law "in the Grozny, Vedeno and Khasav-Yurt okrugs of the Terek oblast, that is, in the whole of Chechnya", and on 23 December extended it to the entire oblast^[4]. The weapons ban "applied exclusively to the highlanders and the out-of-town settlers and did not extend to the Cossacks. Moreover... the Viceroy of the Caucasus ordered that 10 thousand single-shot Berdan rifles and a million cartridges be distributed to the Cossacks of the Terek oblast free of charge"^[4]. On 22 June 1909 martial law was lifted - but "in the Terek oblast a 'state of reinforced protection' was introduced at the same time", whose ordinances "effectively reduced to 'nought' the democratic rights and freedoms 'granted' by the imperial decree of 17 October 1905"^[4].

The official classing of the indigenous population as aliens: Stolypin prescribed to the governors to refuse the registration of "any alien societies whatsoever, including Ukrainian and Jewish ones, regardless of the aims they pursue"^[6].

On 13 August 1914 the Russian Empire placed the Terek oblast under the regime of "extraordinary security" - an imperial regime that handed the residents over to the extrajudicial powers of the administration - and then the oblast administration issued an order "on the protection of tranquility at the enterprises", under which the fate of "violators of tranquility" was decided by military courts^[4]. How this worked can be seen from the strike of May 1916 at the Grozny oil fields: the administration brought armed Cossacks onto the fields, they arrested 13 workers, and, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov remark, "all those arrested turned out to be Muslims"^[4]. The police arrested nine more workers on the first day of the strike - for sounding the alarm whistles of the plants^[4].

A "kulak" was what the colonizers called a peasant they deemed "well-off". In Chechnya officials entered a person into the "kulaks" without any trial, and the colonizer then stripped him of his rights. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "To limit the political influence of the kulaks such a measure was applied as deprivation (temporary or permanent) of voting rights. In 1926, 1.3% of the voters were thus barred from taking part in the elections, and in 1927 - already 4.5%"^[4]. The report on the inspection of the party organization of the Chechen Autonomous Oblast, sent on 7-9 March 1931 to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, states: "The lishentsy [people stripped of the vote] in the re-election campaign of 1928/29 numbered 11,279 people, on average 6.8% across the oblast; in some settlements of the okrugs the percentage reached 30, and in the Galanchozh okrug up to 40%"^[7]. In January 1930 the leadership of the krai committee of the party (the "North Caucasus kraikom VKP(b)"), preparing a resolution on the expulsion of peasant families, wrote into the draft: "subject to expulsion are exclusively those deprived of voting rights, and also kulaks who by chance have not been deprived of voting rights"^[8]. Officials drew up the lists of "kulaks" at random, and the party's own oversight admitted it. Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, reported in February 1930: in Avtury and Shali, "of the 18 households listed for individual taxation [a punitive higher tax], 4 households turned out to be not kulak at all: one poor-peasant and three middle-peasant"; in Kurchaloy 12 poor-peasant and 7 middle-peasant households were entered into the "kulak list", while 89 households that the colonizer himself counted as well-off in his own tax rolls did not make it into the "kulak list"^[9]. Larin also named the purpose of the "grain assignments" - the quotas of grain the colonizer ordered the auls to hand over: "The aim was benign: to introduce stratification into the mountain auls by these assignments, but what came of it was exactly the opposite"^[9]. Peasants entered as "kulaks" and middle peasants were put on trial by the colonizer for failure to deliver grain and pay taxes - and even the imperial courts found no guilt in those cases: by Larin's count, 40% ended in what amounted to acquittal. Up to November 1929 "265 cases against kulaks were heard, and 132 against middle peasants"; of the 265 cases against "kulaks", "30 were acquitted and 26 sentenced conditionally", another 58 people received forced labor, and such verdicts Larin also counted among the acquittals: "40% were acquitted"^[9]. The empire vetted even its own village soviets - the organs it had planted in the auls in place of Chechen self-government - and expelled from them Chechens with the "wrong" past. Larin reported: "In 5 mountain okrugs, 215 persons of clearly alien element have been found in the composition of the village soviets. There are kulaks, and traders, and former elders, and former policemen, and former bandits, and clergy"; the resolution of the oblast party conference, which had proclaimed "the complete cleansing of the composition of the village soviets from alien and kulak elements", he corrected: "To put it mildly, that was said incautiously"^[9]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "If in 1928 62 kulaks were repressed across the whole of Chechnya, a year later the number of the repressed reached 356 people... As a result of these repressions, by the end of 1931 the number of kulak households in Chechnya had shrunk threefold compared to 1929"^[4]. Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, who fought against the insurgent Chechens, in his report to the krai committee of the party named among the causes of the uprising "the incorrect disenfranchisement of middle peasants, and in a number of cases of poor peasants as well", which in the Itum-Kali okrug had become mass practice^[7].

The Soviet NKVD (predecessor of today's FSB) obliged the exiled Chechens and Ingush ("special settlers" in the colonizer's terms) over 12 years of age to report monthly to the special commandant's office - the agency's surveillance post at the place of exile; from age 16 the commandant's office opened personal files; the colonizer forbade them to join the Bolshevik party, its youth league (the "Komsomol") and the trade unions, and did not take them into the army^[10]. From January 1945 the commandant could, without trial, arrest "offenders" for up to 5 days or fine them up to 100 rubles^[4]. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 26 November 1948 the deportation was declared eternal: the Chechens and Ingush were "exiled in perpetuity," with up to 20 years of hard labor for escape and up to 5 years of prison for aiding escapees^[4].

By its decree of 11 March 1952 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ordered that even those who had served out their sentences not be released into freedom: Chechens, Ingush and the other deported peoples "having served punishment for various crimes in corrective-labor camps, colonies and prisons" were, "upon expiry of the term of punishment, to be sent by convoy to special settlement, under the surveillance of the organs of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, at the place of residence of their families"^[11]. The nationwide amnesty of 27 March 1953 was a criminal-law amnesty and did not touch the exiles at all. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "the question of restoring the Checheno-Ingush ASSR was not raised even for discussion. To all the numerous letters and appeals of the highlanders to Moscow came the harsh, unambiguous answer that the Chechens and Ingush were to remain in their places of residence forever"^[4]. The empire cut the exiles off from education as well. Children were formally subject to universal schooling, but in 1945 in some oblasts of Kazakhstan up to 70% of the special settlers' children did not go to school: the families, robbed at deportation, had nothing to dress their children in - in the documents this is recorded as "by reason of the absence of warm clothing and footwear"^[4], and in 1946, of the 89 thousand special settlers' children from the North Caucasus obliged to study under the law on universal education, only 22 thousand actually studied^[4]. By 1949 no less than 60% of the North Caucasus special settlers were completely illiterate; 2.1% had a complete secondary education, 0.2% - higher education^[4]. The empire barred the road to university as well: a school graduate needed a special permit from the republican organs of internal affairs, study was allowed only in Kazakhstan, Kirghizia and Uzbekistan, and even after the diploma the Chechens and Ingush still could not leave the places of deportation - and, according to the data of the organs of internal affairs, a significant part of the special settlers with higher education - lawyers, writers, teachers - could not find work in their profession^[4]. The educated grew fewer even in absolute numbers: in 1946 Kazakhstan counted 1,248 people with higher or specialized secondary education among those deported from the North Caucasus; by the beginning of 1948 there remained 1,127^[4]. By its decree of 16 July 1956 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR removed the special-settlement registration - and by the same second article stripped the people of their property and of the right to their homeland^[12]. Even the empire's own audits gave the segregation no justification. In February 1953 Ganenko and Alatortsev, inspectors of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, toured the special settlements of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and the commission that examined their memorandum summarized it thus: "Many local party and soviet organs display a disdainful attitude toward work among the special settlers, pass over numerous instances of arbitrariness toward this part of the population, of infringement of the special settlers' lawful rights, of indiscriminate political distrust toward them, which artificially breeds moods of discontent among the special settlers"^[7]. In 1954 the Ministry of Internal Affairs declared unfounded the complaints that Chechens and Ingush were allegedly terrorizing the local population: 506,043 people deported from the North Caucasus stood on the special-settlement rolls in 1954, and of them only 5,418 - about one percent - had been convicted and were in confinement^[7]. The same ministry counted, as of 10 November 1955, among the Chechens deported "for treason" 2,280 war veterans, 4,455 holders of orders and medals and 2,553 families of men killed at the front; among the Ingush - another 1,085, 1,869 and 871^[11]. The empire amnestied even genuine accomplices of the German occupiers: the decree of 17 September 1955 was so entitled - "On the Amnesty of Soviet Citizens Who Collaborated with the Occupiers in the Period of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." But historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that the highland peoples, repressed "allegedly for 'collaboration with the Germans,'" "were not touched by this decree"^[4]. In August 1956 an inspection that had toured Kazakhstan and Kirghizia reported to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet after the fact: "From 1948 to 1953 the living conditions of the special settlers were burdened with restrictions of various kinds which were not warranted by serious causes from the point of view of the special settlers' own conduct. Many Chechens were dismissed from work, expelled from the party, arrested and then sentenced to long terms of imprisonment"^[7]. By its decree of 9 January 1957 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized "as necessary the restoration of the national autonomy of the Chechen and Ingush peoples," recommended the restoration itself to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and repealed only the ban on returning: "Article 2 of the Decree of 16 July 1956 in the part prohibiting the Chechens and Ingush from returning to their former place of residence"^[13]. A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR restored the republic that same day^[7], but neither of these acts ordered the return of the confiscated property.