Aggressors may carry out large-scale and systematic confiscation of natural, financial, and material assets in the captured territory. In the course of implementing this technique, industrial equipment is removed, the treasury is seized, food is confiscated, and mineral resources are exploited without restraint, solely for the extraction of benefits and to meet the needs of the metropole.
Representatives of the metropole confiscated the personal property of a deceased Nokhchi delegate into the state treasury: a memorandum from the Posolsky Prikaz to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace prescribed an investigation into the death of the drowned Okotsky murza Kokhostrov Biytemirov, while of what was found they «took his clothing and all his goods into our treasury»[1].
Destruction of the military-economic base of the Lower Dnipro Cossacks. The Sich "was a kind of military base housing the fleet, artillery, and arsenal"[4] – all of this infrastructure was destroyed or seized during the assault.
The secularization and confiscation into the imperial treasury of the lands of Ukrainian Orthodox monasteries: "in 1786, during the secularization, the monastery was closed, and its property and lands passed to the state treasury"[5] – the fate of the Sviatohirsk monastery is typical of the entire 1786 campaign, which deprived the local church of its economic base.
Following the campaign of August - September 1832, the troops of corps commander Rosen exacted tribute and fines in money and livestock from the Chechen villages: Rosen reported to Minister of War Chernyshev that in total over the campaign "tribute and fines in money and livestock have been paid... about 5 th. r. s. [five thousand rubles in silver]"[6].
The empire seized the Chechens' property and land by decree. In April 1840 an imperial directive prescribed "to sequester the Aukh herds wherever they are found at pasture in the Kumyk domain" (the Aukhovites - a Chechen community in the north-east, by the Kumyk border)[7]. The land of the Chechens the empire handed out to loyalists: a contemporary's letter from Tiflis, cited by historian N. I. Pokrovsky, names among the causes of the 1840 uprising "the endowment of prince Bekovich-Cherkassky with lands owned by the Chechens" (Bekovich-Cherkassky - a Kabardian prince in Russian service)[8].
After the inhabitants of twelve Terek-side villages (Chechen settlements of the left bank of the Terek) fled to the insurgents in June 1840, the empire gave their property to the Cossacks. The "Report of the chancellery for the administration of peaceable highlanders", drawn up not earlier than July 1841, lists the villages - Stary Naur, Novy Naur, Emingulovskaya, Murdarova, Boyan-Yurt, Kacherman-Yurt, Nagai Mirza-Yurt, Mizhi-Yurt, Kozhakhi, Kalauzova, Mamakai-Yurt and Guneshki - and records the regime: "the grain left standing in their fields the line Cossacks were permitted... to gather for their own benefit, the houses remaining in the localities to be dismantled and carried off to the stanitsas" (line Cossacks - the Cossack troops of the empire's border line)[7]. The same report records the division of spoils: 800 rams seized by lieutenant-colonel Bekovich-Cherkassky (of a Kabardian ruling family, in Russian service) while pursuing the fleeing inhabitants of Mizhi-Yurt and Kozhakhi "were ordered to be distributed as a reward to those inhabitants of the said two villages who remained devoted to us"[7]. The land taken from the expelled the empire handed over to the Cossack host. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov record: "to the Cossacks were given in Lesser Chechnya the 'ancestral' lands of the inhabitants of Karabulak and Galashki" (Lesser Chechnya - the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya; Galashki - a Vainakh community in the valley of the Assa)[9]. The word "ancestral" comes from the imperial papers themselves: what was being given away was not wasteland but land on which people had lived for generations.
The Russian Empire took the oil wells near the Groznaya fortress away from the Chechens and on 16 February 1845 sealed the seizure by law: paragraph 154 of the "Regulations on the Caucasus Line Host", confirmed by Emperor Nicholas I, read: "as a mark of special favor…the host is granted the income most graciously bestowed upon it from the oil springs near the Groznaya fortress"[10]. Before the seizure the oil fed the Chechens themselves - historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova writes from the documents: in 1788 the Chechen ruler Kazbulat "traded and had a certain income from the oil wells located in his domains"; the Mozdok Cossacks recalled in a petition of 1811 how oil "was brought for sale... and sold at a free price"; "Later, the oil was taken away from the Chechens and became the property of the Caucasus Line regiment, which farmed it out"[10]. Over the 57 years of the tax-farming system, from 1833 to 1890, the host received 152,500 rubles in silver of net income[10][9].
The land of the evicted communities of Lesser Chechnya (the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya) passed to the empire. General Sleptsov, in a report to General Ilyinsky of 4 October 1850, summed up the displacement of the mountain auls: "the rich lands between the Sunzha and the Russian road have passed into the unaccountable possession of the government, so that the entire plain of Lesser Chechnya is now completely cleared of the hostile population"[11]. "Unaccountable possession" is the report's own formula: the land was taken without any registration of the former owners' rights.
The clearings took from the Chechens the land that fed them, and the empire entered this seizure on its books: the order of Vorontsov, viceroy in the Caucasus, for the Separate Caucasus Corps of 5 January 1853 counted the result of the Qachqalyq clearing: "The construction of this clearing took away from the unsubdued Chechens a significant quantity of land, which could feed up to 1,500 souls"[11].
According to the summary by historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, of the 643 thousand desiatinas (a desiatina is a little over a hectare) of lowland and piedmont Chechnya, Chechen villages were left 347 thousand, Cossack stanitsas were handed 222 thousand - a third, officers as private owners got 28 thousand, fortifications 17 thousand, and the treasury about 30 thousand desiatinas of "reserve" land[9]. The same partition was described by the office itself: the Terek land-survey administration, counting only the lowland part of Greater and Lesser Chechnya (a narrower scope than the lowland and piedmont Chechnya of the historians' summary), summed up: "The entire lowland part of Greater and Lesser Chechnya, with the adjoining Lesser-Chechen forest, comprises an area of 271086 desiatinas. Of it, at various times, 650 desiatinas went to 6 Cossack stanitsas, 1560 desiatinas of forest to the Terek Cossack Host, 8645 desiatinas were granted into private ownership for the services of individual persons, 8266 desiatinas were given to towns and settlements, 234970 desiatinas were allotted to 43 Chechen auls, and 16965 desiatinas were held by the forestry department. Thus, there is no free land left…"[10]. The forests were confiscated wholesale: "in Chechnya and Ingushetia tsarism appropriated forests with a total area of 225.5 thousand desiatinas (they became 'state' forests) and handed another 33.5 thousand desiatinas along the Sunzha and its tributaries to the Cossack host. The forests were placed under armed guard, and the unfortunate peasants caught felling wood were pursued with heavy penalties"[9]. From the mountain auls, according to historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, "50989 desiatinas of pasture were confiscated to the treasury", and the same pastures were then handed back to the communities "on terms of quitrent use"[10]. What people had cleared with their own hands was taken too: in 1874 in the Vedeno okrug the owners of 250 desiatinas of plots cleared from under forest were told to swear on the Quran that the clearing had been done with the permission of the communities - "in the whole okrug only Sh. Dolatmurzayev, a resident of the village of Belgatoy, was able to swear... all the other plots, whose owners to their honor did not risk giving a false oath, were declared communal"[9]; after the uprising of 1877 the residents of Dyshni-Vedeno had 74 certificates for cleared plots taken away "as punishment, for support of the insurgents"[10]. In 1888 the Chechen communities petitioned the emperor: building materials and firewood they were "forced to buy from private owners or from the treasury, whereas formerly they had used them free of charge"[10]. In 1891 the Vladikavkaz Railway Company received a concession for a branch line from Beslan station through Grozny to Petrovsk[12]. On 15 June 1891 Alexander III, by a personal decree to the Minister of Ways of Communication, ordered the expropriation of land for the route: "Having authorized the construction of the Petrovsk railway, in place of its previously indicated direction from Vladikavkaz to Petrovsk, along the direction from Beslan station... to Petrovsk, we command: 1) that the proper arrangements be made for the expropriation... of the lands necessary for this purpose"[13]. The trackbed, the station and the entire railway infrastructure landed on lands that by then were registered to the Terek Cossack Host and the Groznenskaya stanitsa - the very lowland land that had been taken from Chechen auls and handed to the host: historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that "the railway trackbed (and, accordingly, the station and all the railway facilities) passed over lands belonging to the Terek Cossack Host", and "the Grozny city railway station was built on the land of the Groznenskaya stanitsa"[9]. The bargaining over the price went on between the railway, the town and the Cossacks: the town authorities demanded "60 rubles for every square sazhen of town land expropriated for the construction of the station, the locomotive depot with workshops, the goods station and the access tracks", while the Cossacks of the Groznenskaya stanitsa offered the builders their plot free of charge - counting on oil-refining and other enterprises rising around the station[9]. The money for the expropriation went to the holders of what had been seized; the Chechen communities had no part in that settlement.
A report of 6 August 1860 from the commander of the Caucasus Army to the Minister of War records, concerning the deported Akkins: "the land they occupied has been declared state property, and thus the matter of the Akkins has been settled conclusively"[14]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov confirm: the inhabitants of the Akki society "were dispersed over the course of July among the Galash and other neighboring societies. The land of the Akki society was thereby declared 'state property'"[9].
Following the suppression of the 1877 uprising the empire took away the land of the mountain communities: historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova records - "Thousands of inhabitants of mountain villages were resettled onto the plain; their lands were confiscated"[10].
Mezhlauk, deputy war minister of the Soviet colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR), telegraphed Lenin on 5 April 1919: Ukraine must not be looked upon "as a promised land" of inexhaustible reserves - its resources had to be counted among the all-Russian ones as soon as possible and used under a single plan[15]. In the second half of April 1919 Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, proposed that the Petrograd organizations ship workers to Ukraine to replenish stocks of food and fuel: "Continue the mobilization of workers in Piter, extending it to Ukraine and the Don... I advise sending these workers en masse to Ukraine, the Don, the East for 3 months. It is foolish to starve and perish in Piter when bread and coal can be won back"[16]. By a decree of 12 April 1919 this administration obliged every village to hand over to the state the amount of grain assigned to it[5]. The grain was taken from Ukrainians by the administration's food ministry: it sent armed workers' detachments into the villages, and alongside them the grain was seized by detachments of the Bolsheviks' secret police - the extraordinary commissions (Cheka) - and by units of the Russian army[5]. These detachments confiscated peasants' property and implements, took hostages, and made a whole village answer for a single inhabitant. Detachments of the same ministry and of the Cheka intercepted, on roads and at railway stations, Ukrainians carrying grain for barter or sale outside the state monopoly: the food was seized, and carrying grain was punished up to and including execution[5]. Refusing to hand over property cost lives: in June 1919 agents of the Kherson district extraordinary commission detained Nykyfor Potachenko, a 24-year-old peasant of the village of Roksandrivka in Kherson district, "for unwillingness to provide horses"; by the commission's resolution he was shot on the night of 15 June (a local history publication gives 15 July) in the basement of the Tyulpanov house - twice he climbed out of the filled-in grave alive, and only the third execution killed him[17].
On 14 June 1919 Lenin telegraphed Kyiv at three addresses at once - Rakovsky, head of the colonial administration, Shlikhter, its food minister, and Podvoisky, its war minister - shifting the supply of the Russian fronts onto Ukrainian grain: "In view of the utter impossibility of provisioning the Western and Northern fronts from the exhausted stocks of the Centre, the whole weight of this state task naturally passes to the delegation of Tsekomprodarm, led by Orlov and working under Trotsky's order for the entire Russian army as a whole"; in the same telegram he demanded that the administration's war ministry assist this delegation "so that it can immediately move food freight to the armies of the West and North"[18]. A week later, on 21 June, Lenin sent Rakovsky a telegram marked "out of all turn" and "with verification of the exact time of delivery," setting a deadline: "The Western army absolutely needs three trainloads of bread within the coming days. I urgently request the most energetic measures to meet this need. The extremity is utmost"[19].
The USSR took livestock and land from the Chechen peasants. In one year of the forced merging of households into kolkhozes ("collectivization") Chechnya lost 184 thousand head of livestock. 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 (VTsIK) - the supreme organ of the occupation power of the RSFSR, carries a table of oblast statistics: total livestock in the oblast in 1929 - 993,200 head, in 1930 - 809,063. The report admits: "The growth of livestock numbers in all categories that had begun in 1929 found no continuation in 1930; on the contrary, a significant decline in numbers occurred, sparing only the horses"[20] - and the cause is named right there: the decline occurred "chiefly in the spring of 1930, when the kulaks, offering frenzied resistance to the growth of kolkhoz construction, predatorily destroyed the livestock"[20]. That is how the colonizers described the peasants' actions: people slaughtered their own livestock rather than hand it over to the kolkhozes. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov put the loss higher still: "Forced to join the kolkhoz, the peasants strove to shelter at least part of their household from socialization, and if that failed, simply rid themselves of it. Thus collectivization was accompanied by a sharp reduction of livestock numbers - in the single year 1930 they shrank in Chechnya by almost 300 thousand head"[9]. The Central Committee of the party (the "TsK VKP(b)") likewise admitted that the livestock was being taken by force: in the resolution "On the forced socialization of livestock" of 26 March 1932 it recorded that "in a number of districts a practice is observed of socializing the cows and small livestock of individual kolkhoz members by in fact coercive methods", and demanded that such attempts be "cut short"[21]. The colonizer took land from the Nokhchi as well. In the redistribution the Russians called "land settlement", write Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov, "in the Vedeno, Itum-Kali and Shatoy okrugs about 1.5 thousand hectares of land were seized from the kulaks and the mosques"[9]. The directive to "curtail" the Chechen peasants declared well-off when seizing land stands in the same VTsIK report[20].
Mass dispossession and forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of resisting peasants (the so-called "kurkuls") to remote special settlements in Siberia and the North[22].
The total removal of industrial equipment and food supplies into the interior of the USSR: "550 industrial facilities were moved into the interior of the USSR (190 of all-Union and 360 of republican subordination)"; "From the Right Bank to the left bank of the Dnipro were ferried 4,498 tractors, 680 combines, 690 motor vehicles"[4].