Aggressors may forcibly replace legitimate bodies with their own bureaucratic and administrative structures. The introduction of the metropole's administrative standards allows the colonizer to fully integrate the seized region into its legal and political domain, depriving the local population of the right to self-governance.
The metropole's occupation administration abolished Nokhchi self-governance, forcibly subordinating them to an alien elite: historian E. N. Kusheva states that in 1614 Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich ordered the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky «to be prince over all the Okochans... to judge them and to have charge of them in military organization and in all matters»[1].
The creation of a specialized agency to govern the autonomy: through the Little Russian Prikaz the tsarist government "exercised control over the political-administrative activity of the hetman's administration and the tsarist voivodes in Ukraine"[2] – the governance of the Hetmanate was embedded into Moscow's prikaz vertical.
Removing Cossack regiments from the Cossack hierarchy and placing them under the direct command of imperial officials: Peter I handed the direction of the Ladoga Canal works to B.-C. Münnich, who "took over from Prince A. Menshikov the direction of the construction (digging) of the Ladoga Canal"[2]; Cossack corps were dispatched to these works "by order of Tsar Peter I"[3].
The introduction of the collegium as a parallel organ of power to seize judicial and fiscal functions from the hetman's administration: it acted "as the highest appellate instance and administrative-controlling organ"[2], and "the Little Russian Collegium for the first time channeled Ukrainian finances into the tsar's treasury in full"[2].
Blocking the election of a new leader and creating a hybrid administration for direct control: "The Governance included the tsar's resident in Ukraine, Prince O. Shakhovskoy, with 2 Russian officials… as well as general quartermaster Ya. Lyzohub with 2 Ukrainian officers"[3] – a formally equal collegium actually headed by the tsar's resident.
The establishment of a direct imperial organ – the Second Little Russian Collegium: four Great Russian members, four Little Russian ones, headed by Rumyantsev with the powers of a governor-general; the Zaporozhian Sich was also transferred to its jurisdiction: "the Zaporozhian Sich, which was under the hetman's jurisdiction, shall now be administered by this Little Russian government"[4].
The abolition of traditional local self-government: "The final liquidation of Magdeburg law… in the cities of Central and Left-Bank Ukraine – in 1831 (in Kyiv – 1834)"[2] – the cities were transferred to the empire-wide municipal order.
The empire placed appointed overseers - pristavs - over the seized auls of Chechnya. The empire's Minister of War Chernyshev, by an official communication of 15 January 1839, conveyed to general Golovin, commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps - the head of the empire's troops and administration in the Caucasus, the will of emperor Nicholas I: in the communities that submitted voluntarily, "the authority over them is to be entrusted to natives devoted to us, members of those same communities", while communities "that will be subjugated by force of arms" were "to be entrusted temporarily to the authority of Russian military officials"[5]. The pristavs in Chechnya were installed by Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi): the imperial historian Yurov writes that Pullo "was ordered - for the installation of our pristavs, to uphold their prestige at the outset... to carry out in the winter of 1839-1840 a movement into Chechnya, to the Michik and to the Qachqalyq people", and the pristavs themselves "were chosen predominantly, if not exclusively, from among the militiamen" - from the highland militia, armed units of highlanders in the empire's service[6]. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "Appointed on 30 November commander of the Separate Caucasus Corps... Golovin, on the tsar's instruction, begins to introduce Russian administration on the occupied territory"[7]. The regime of surveillance was described by general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line and Pullo's superior, in a report to Minister of War Chernyshev of 23 March 1840: "When our pristavs entered upon the administration of the tribes entrusted to them, their strict surveillance cut off the constant relations of the peaceful auls with the unsubdued"[5]. The implanting of puppet religious authorities proceeded under the same directive (campaign C1159).
The uprising of 1840 swept away the power of imperial appointees over lowland Chechnya - before it, the auls that had submitted lived under superintendents-pristavs appointed by the empire. The "Conditions prescribed to submitting highlanders", issued by general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), on 15 June 1840, re-established this power as a norm and built it further. Point 3 prescribed: "To fulfil all demands and orders of the Russian pristav who will be appointed by the government" (pristav - a superintendent over the auls appointed by the empire); point 6 obliged every aul: "To elect from among themselves one qadi, who is obliged to fulfil all orders of the pristav" (qadi - a Muslim judge); point 7 - an elder in every aul (elder - the head of an aul community), "who is confirmed by the Russian authorities, watches over public tranquillity and carries out all orders of the authorities". A surrendering aul was accepted under the empire's power only together with this structure[8].
Over the captured part of Chechnya the empire built its own governing institutions. Historian N. I. Pokrovsky writes of the project of Baryatinsky, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi): "the statute on the governance of the Chechens worked out by Baryatinsky, partially reviving justice by the adats: tsarism feared the sharia court... This 'Statute' was confirmed by Nicholas I and put into effect" (adats are the customary law of the highlanders; sharia is the Islamic law on which the court of the Imamate was built)[9]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov describe the implementation: "As early as 1852 in the Groznaya fortress the so-called 'Chechen People's Court' was instituted, headed by a Russian staff officer... as a counterweight to sharia, implanted in Chechnya by Imam Shamil, the Russian authorities strove to strengthen the influence of customary law - the adats"; the first chairman of the "Chechen" court was the Russian colonel Bartolomey, the interpreters - Bata Shamurzayev and Kasim Kurumov, and the execution of sentences was controlled by the "Administration of the Chechen People" with the right of coercion[10]. The court also worked out a written code of subordination - the "Rules for the Governance of Submissive Chechens": articles "providing punishment for disobedience to the authorities, for harboring abreks, for contact with 'unpacified' compatriots, the conditions of 'coming out with submission' from the territory of the Imamate" ("unpacified" in the imperial lexicon means those who had not submitted to the empire; abrek is the imperial label for a highlander outside the law); in 1854 the "Rules" were supplemented[10]. The result was recorded from inside by General Muravyov, commander-in-chief in the Caucasus - in February 1855 he wrote from the Groznaya fortress to General Yermolov, who had commanded in the Caucasus in the past: "Here five naibstvos have already been instituted, there is a pristav and a court established in imitation of your Kabardin court" (a naibstvo is an imperial administrative unit copied from the institution of the deputies of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest; a pristav is an imperial superintendent)[11].
On 1 April 1858 the "Regulation on the Administration of the Caucasus Army" created a special section for the mountain peoples at the Main Staff - historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova calls this "the first legislative confirmation of the system of 'military-popular administration' that had in fact taken shape as the land was being conquered"[12]. In 1859, "in connection with the reform of the local administration and the entry into force of the Regulation on the Main Directorate of the Viceroy of the Caucasus", State Control was "deprived of the ability to monitor the activities of the local authorities": within the viceroy's Main Directorate a special control department was set up, answerable not to the central agency but to the head of the Main Directorate himself[12]. On 16 January 1860 Emperor Alexander II approved the regulation by which the Left Wing of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on Nokhchi land) was renamed the Terek oblast[12]. On 24 May 1860 Baryatinsky, viceroy in the Caucasus, ordered the creation at the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army of a "Chancellery for the Administration of the Caucasus Highlanders" - later it was called the "Caucasus Mountain Administration", then the "Caucasus Military-Popular Administration"[12]. On 25 December 1860 the "provisional staffing tables of the military-popular administration of the Terek oblast" were approved: the oblast was divided into six okrugs (districts) - Kabardian, Vladikavkaz, Chechen, Kumyk, Ichkerian and Argun[12].
On 1 June 1919 the central Soviet authority of Russia (the VTsIK) resolved to carry out "a close unification of 1) the military organization and military command, 2) the councils of the national economy, 3) railway administration and management, 4) finances and 5) the commissariats of labour" of Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Crimea - "so that the direction of the said branches of national life be concentrated in the hands of single collegiums." The resolution was signed by Kalinin, chairman of the VTsIK, and by secretary Serebryakov, while preserving the formula of independence word for word: the unification was carried out "standing fully on the ground of recognition of the independence, freedom and self-determination of the toiling masses of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Crimea"[13]. Ukraine's economy, railways, finances and labour passed under Moscow's management; independence remained a word on paper.
The food ministry was not on that list: Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, subordinated it separately and in secret. On 12 June 1919 he sent a note to Kyiv: the food ministry of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR) was passing under the all-Russian one in both money and management - without any announcement; at the bottom of the note stood the instruction to encipher the underlined part and transmit it immediately, and on 14 June the question was put before the plenum of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party[14].
Moscow's seizure of direct control over the punitive apparatus through the decision to liquidate the independent All-Ukrainian Cheka (VUChK) in August 1919 and the appointment of its own special commissar, Ya. Peters[15].
Soviet Russia placed an unelected extraordinary body over Chechnya: on 3 April 1920 a congress in Grozny "proclaimed the transfer of all power to the Chechen Revolutionary Committee of five members"[10]. When at the elections to the Soviets in July 1920 "the overwhelming majority of seats in the Soviets went to... representatives of the so-called 'kulak-mullah and nationalist elements'", the elected Soviets were dissolved - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov record: "within a short span the peasant Soviets were dissolved twice (in August 1921 and in July 1922) and the power of the revkom was restored again"[10]. In the autumn of 1920 "the Aldy congress was dispersed, and several Grozny party workers... arrested" on the orders of Ordzhonikidze, head of the Caucasus Bureau of the Communist Party's Central Committee[10]. The Mountain ASSR, which had given legal form to the highlanders' autonomy, "did not last long and in 1924, having fulfilled its tasks as conceived by the party leadership, ceased to exist"[10].
The colonizer outlawed the Chechen courts by legislative acts and installed its own judicial system. Until 1927 the sharia courts - courts of Islamic law - were the judicial system of the Chechen people and heard all its cases: criminal, land, labor and family. The occupation power at first recognized the Chechen court: in April 1921 the congress of Soviets of the Mountain Republic - the Soviet autonomy into which the empire had then included Chechnya - resolved to recognize the sharia court system. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov call this "a manifest (and temporary) concession to the Muslim clergy"[10]. Just a month later, in May 1921, the leadership of that same republic stripped the sharia courts of budget money and of the support of its organs[10]. But the courts went on working. In December 1925 the party leadership in Chechnya set out to discredit them, and, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write, that attempt "failed completely"[10]. And in 1927 "the sharia courts were curtailed in their rights by an act of will, at the direct demand of the procurator of the Supreme Court of the USSR... Criminal and land cases and labor disputes were removed from their competence, state financing was terminated, and Soviet organs were directly forbidden to apply to the sharia courts"[10]. In their place the colonizer installed its own organs: historian K. G. Dendiev writes that in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast "the all-Union judicial system is introduced, with the subsequent abolition of sharia legal proceedings"[16]. Despite this, the Chechens preferred to settle disputed cases in their own courts. Larin, chairman of the North Caucasus krai control commission, reported in February 1930 that in the Urus-Martan okrug "land disputes are resolved not in the judicial-land commissions" but before the aul elders, of whose influence he said: it is "still not undermined to any more or less significant degree"[17]. In December 1929 the insurgents in Benoy established their own organ of power and sent their demands to Moscow. The fourth point there read: "Abolish the 'people's' courts introduced by order from above, and restore the sharia organs of justice"; the fifth - "End the interference of regional leaders and figures of the central organs of power in the internal affairs of the 'Chechen Autonomous Oblast' and restore the powers of political decision of the Chechen Congress"[16].