Aggressors may deliberately destroy the educational, scientific, and theological institutions of an Indigenous people. Eliminating local academic schools, banning the publication of literature, and officially declaring the works of local thinkers heretical or extremist allows the colonizer to artificially sever intellectual continuity. This deprives the colonized society of its own cultural foundation and creates a vacuum that is immediately filled by the educational and ideological standards of the metropole.
The liquidation of education in the native language: in 1859–1862 the intelligentsia and students founded 111 Sunday schools in Ukraine to teach adults literacy, with instruction conducted in Ukrainian; in 1862 the authorities closed these schools "for the alleged presence of revolutionary propaganda"[3].
The destruction of the basis for teaching children in their native language: "By a special circular of the Main Administration for Press Affairs in 1895, the printing of any books or collections in the Ukrainian language for children's reading was forbidden, 'even if in the substance of their content they appeared well-intentioned.'" The censor's resolution on a children's collection: "Obviously written for children, but they must learn in Russian. — Forbid"[4].
By prohibitive acts of 1925-1929 the Russian colonizer destroyed the children's schools of the Chechen people. The khyuzhar is the elementary school at the mosque: a mullah (clergyman) or a qadi (judge of Islamic law) taught children to read the Quran, to write in Arabic and to count; no permit was needed to open one, and the school lived on parents' money and believers' donations[5]. Such a school stood in nearly every settlement, and the people had no other. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "Literally at every mosque there operated schools teaching the Arabic language and script, as well as the basics of arithmetic"[6]; and of the first Soviet years: "while religious schools at the mosques existed in the overwhelming majority of settlements, the secular school had yet to be created anew, since the few 'highlander' schools that had existed in the Terek oblast before the revolution had closed"[6]. The ministries of internal affairs and of education of the RSFSR, by a secret instruction on the teaching of the Muslim creed of 21 August 1925, permitted the Muslim creed to be taught "only in mosques" and "exclusively to persons who have reached the age of 14", with a separate permit from the local imperial organ for each case and with particulars on every teacher - down to his social estate before the revolution; as for the teaching of general subjects under the guise of the creed, the ministries ordered it watched for and prevented[7]. For a school that took children and taught them writing and counting, this was a ban on working. The Chechens did not submit and went on building schools. Nagayev, chairman of the krai commission that inspected the Chechen oblast, in a secret memorandum to the presidium of the North Caucasus krai executive committee of 4 August 1928 cited the tally: on 1 January 1927 Chechnya had 138 Arabic schools with 2,068 pupils, on 1 January 1928 - 180 schools with three thousand pupils, against 105 Soviet schools; the growth of the Arabic schools Nagayev called "the most serious political question"[8]. The Chechens also thwarted closures by force - Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "attempts to close the schools at the mosques by force provoked protests of the population, often accompanied by a refusal to build Soviet schools, as happened in the auls of Gudermes and Achkhoy-Martan"[6]. The supreme organ of the occupation power and the government of the RSFSR, by the resolution "On religious associations" of 8 April 1929, forbade religious associations to hold children's gatherings, groups and circles "for the teaching of religion" and resolved: "The teaching of any religious creeds whatsoever in state, public and private educational and upbringing institutions is not permitted"[9]. Displacing the khyuzhar at once did not succeed: by May 1930, 168 religious schools were still operating in Chechnya and Ingushetia[6]. In the khyuzhar's place the USSR installed its own school and shifted it to the Russian language - Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "If in the 1928/29 school year 79.8% of all schoolchildren in Chechnya were taught in their native language, in 1930/31 it was already only half"[6]. Historian K. G. Dendiev places the closing of the religious schools in one row with the imposition of income tax on the mullahs, the abolition of the sharia courts and the handover of mosques "for economic needs"[10]; the colonizer also handed over the zakat - the Muslims' donations on which the school lived - from the mullahs to its own committees in 1929.
On 13 November 1937 the bureau of the oblast committee of the party (the "obkom VKP(b)") approved two lists not subject to disclosure: No. 25/97 - on the removal of literature published in the republic - and No. 31/107 - on the mandatory removal of books from libraries and the book trade; the ban covered the works of 29 authors, among whom the historian K. G. Dendiev names D. Madayev, Kh. Yandarov, N. Muzayev, D. Malsagov and Kh. Oshaev[10]. The first Chechen literary works had appeared in the early 1920s[6] - the colonizer was removing and banning a literature not yet twenty years old.
The USSR left the exiled Chechens without schooling in their native language and without a written language, and struck the people out of the encyclopedias. Schooling was conducted in Kazakh and Kirghiz. Historian A. B. Kuznetsova cites the words of former exiles: "the written language in Chechen and Ingush was liquidated"[11]. The MGB (predecessor of today's FSB) counted, as of 1 January 1952, "children of the nationalities deported from the North Caucasus - 33,702" not covered by compulsory schooling and explained this by "the absence of winter clothing and footwear, owing to the hard material position of the parents, the absence of schools in a number of places of settlement or the remoteness of schools from places of residence"[12]. In the summer of 1956 inspectors toured the places of exile and reported to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR: "Teaching of children in schools in the native language was not conducted," in the 1955/56 school year "of 61 thousand children of school age only 50 thousand, or 81%, were being taught," and among the illiterate "in some districts their number reaches 40-50%"[8]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that "from all the reference books and encyclopedias of the Stalin era any mention of the Chechens and Ingush was carefully expunged," while the linguist Yu. Desheriev "committed, for those times, a real 'ideological diversion' by publishing in Moscow in 1953 the study 'The Batsbi Language'" - the historians write that in this way he "tried to preserve for posterity the language of the Vainakh people, which by the decision of the 'father of the peoples' [Stalin] was to vanish from the face of the earth" (the Batsbi of Transcaucasia, they explain, spoke one of the dialects of Chechen)[6]. The same historians write that the Chechen intelligentsia itself held on to the language: by its efforts the first issue of the Chechen newspaper "Qinkhyegaman bayrakh" ("Banner of Labor") came out in the summer of 1955[6].