Hostage-Taking

As a guarantee of submission, the occupation administration detained representatives of the Nokhchi elite: historian E. N. Kusheva writes that «his nephew Batai was left as an amanat (hostage) in the Terek town»^[1].

As a result of the devastation of their settlements, the subordinated communities handed people over to the occupation administration: in a petition to Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, the Kabardian prince Sunchaley Yanglychevich Cherkassky records that they «gave amanats (hostages) to Tersky Town»^[1].

The occupation administration used the taking of hostages from among the Indigenous population to guarantee the loyalty of the mountain societies of the Nokhchi: a dispatch from the Terek voivode Prince Venedikt Andreevich Obolensky and his associates to the Posolsky Prikaz in 1647 officially records the fact of «the giving of an amanat to the Terek town»^[1]; the metropole instructed the voivodes «to order that amanats be taken from them — kinsmen of notable people»^[1], as a result of which the Highlanders «gave a good amanat to the Terek town, Kasa»^[1][2].

The occupation administration set itself the task of extracting hostages from the mountain societies of the Nokhchi (the Shibutians), but the attempt did not succeed: in 1658 the central apparatus of the Posolsky Prikaz directly instructed the Terek voivodes «to order that amanats be taken from them — kinsmen of notable people»^[1], after which the Terek voivodes Melenty Kvashnin and his associates ordered their military emissary «to take an amanat to the Terek»^[1]; however, the extract for the report of the Posolsky Prikaz to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of 1660 records no handover of new hostages and merely states the old fact that «on the Terek [there is an amanat] of theirs»^[1].

The occupation administration of the Russian Empire institutionalized a system of holding relatives of the local elite: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov records that «In 1735, two amanats from the Chechen domain were already being held in Kizlyar: from Aidemir - Bardykhan, and from the Chechen lord Alisultan Kazbulatov - Bamat»^[3].

The occupation administration of the Russian Empire continued to physically hold relatives of the Nokhchi elite: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov records the existence of a document from 1738 identified as a «Letter from the Chechen lord A. Bartykhanov to Lieutenant Colonel Bunin regarding his loyal service to Russia and requesting the release of his sister from Kizlyar»^[3].

The occupation administration of the Russian Empire expanded the system of holding relatives of the nobility: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that, to control the territories, «amanats are handed over as a pledge of fidelity to the oath to the Russian authorities»^[3].

The Russian Empire held hostages from among the Nokhchi inhabitants as a guarantee of submission. Under the resolution presented by the commander of the Caucasus Line, General Bulgakov, the Chechen elders undertook: "we give the foremost among us as amanats, at the choice of the Russian commander in this region"; the villages of Bolshaya Ataga, Malaya Ataga, and Gekhi "gave 3 amanats from the best families," whom the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, ordered "to send to Kizlyar… to keep watch over them and to issue for their maintenance 10 r. per month each"^[4].

The Russian Empire used the devastation of villages to force the Nokhchi to hand over hostages. The imperial historian Potto writes that after Colonel Eristov had laid waste to the villages along the Sunzha, the Nokhchi «gave amanats (hostages), promising to trouble the Russian borders no more»^[5].

The Regular Army of the Russian Empire held representatives of the villages along the Sunzha as a pledge of submission. Imperial general Yermolov testifies in his "Notes" that when the troops advanced to the Sunzha, "amanats (hostages) from their villages were taken into the camp"^[6]. Imperial historian Potto confirms that Yermolov "took amanats from all the auls sitting along the Sunzha"^[7].

The Russian Empire held hostages from among the Nokhchi and used them to compel submission. Historian D. A. Khozhaev cites Yermolov's «Address» to the Chechens containing a direct threat: at the slightest disobedience, «the amanats are hanged, villages are exterminated by fire, wives and children are slaughtered»^[8]. The imperial historian Potto confirms that Grekov, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, compelled submission precisely through hostages: any attack on a detachment «will inevitably entail the death penalty or exile to Siberia for the amanats», and therefore «the Chechens willy-nilly reconciled themselves to the fact that the forests — their age-old protection — were falling and disappearing»^[7].

In the winter of 1826–1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, extorted amanats (hostages) from the village of Geldigen, using a captured young man of Geldigen as leverage. The young man agreed to a staged "captivity" in order to avert the strike being prepared against the village: the occupation left the village no other way to buy safety than by handing over hostages. The imperial historian Potto admits: Laptev, having got the man into his hands, "rejected all offers and demanded one thing only — amanats. Willy-nilly this condition had to be accepted, and the people of Geldigen, who had always stood at the head of bloody movements, left in our hands the hostages of their tranquility"^[9].

From spring until the end of summer 1829, Commander-in-Chief Paskevich forcibly kept with the field army the Chechen elders who had been summoned for negotiations, directly calling them hostages. In his instruction to Emanuel of May 16, 1829, he wrote: "The mere absence of these people, who will be with us in the manner of amanats, will restrain the unpacified Chechens from any hostile attempts"^[10]. He summed up the result on August 2, 1829: "The Chechen elders, having been graciously received by me, remained with the detachment and were with me in military operations against the Turks. Having kept them in this way for a whole summer, I secured tranquility for the Line on their part"^[10]. By the same document, hostage-taking was entrenched as a system of governing Chechnya: "As a pledge of the submission of the said Chechens, the amanats presented by each eldership are to be kept in the fortress of Grozny; and if from any one an amanat has not yet been delivered, then the elder, until the amanat is delivered, is obliged... to remain himself as a pledge in the fortress of Grozny"^[10].

In August–September 1832, corps commander Rosen coerced the villages of Chechnya and Ichkeria into handing over amanats (hostages) under direct threat of extermination. Rosen reported to Minister of War Chernyshev regarding the village of Miskit: "when it was announced to them that in the event of the slightest resistance the entire village, the grain and the hay would be exterminated, they immediately presented amanats"^[11]. Rosen summed up the result in the same report: subjugation through hostage-taking covered "more than 80 Chechen and Ichkerian villages"^[11].

In 1836-1840 Pullo, commander of the Sunzha Line and then of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), made hostage-taking the load-bearing institution of the amanat-and-tribute system in the auls of Chechnya seized by the empire. An amanat is a person whom the empire took away from a family or community as a hostage; the threat of reprisal against the taken one held the relatives and the whole aul in subjection. In a memorandum of 1840 Pullo described the method: "I took amanats not indiscriminately, as was done before, but from the most respected or least reliable families, and by this means many auls plotting revolt were repeatedly kept in obedience" - and the scale of the institution: "up to 20 thousand rubles... were spent yearly on the upkeep of amanats"^[12]. The taking of hostages went in waves as the troops advanced: the imperial historian Yurov recorded of December 1839 that under the pressure of the detachment even the villages that barred the entrance to the Argun gorge "humbled themselves, handed over amanats" - the troops took people as a "token of submission"^[13]. Yurov described the conditions in which the hostages were kept: "prisoners and even amanats were treated inhumanly, kept in a damp pit, where they often fell ill"^[13]. In the same memorandum Pullo demanded that hostageship be made perpetual: for the offenses of those under warranty, amanats "must without fail, according to their age, be transferred into cantonists or convict companies, replacing the departed with other amanats" - child hostages to be handed into the cantonists (a military estate into which the empire forcibly enrolled minors), adults into convict companies (forced labor under military escort); in the memorandum of 1840 this is recorded as a plan^[12].

In the course of the annihilation of Lesser Chechnya by Feze's expedition in January 1837, the troops took hostages from auls faced with the choice between subjugation and the fate of their neighbors. According to the expedition journal presented by Rozen to Minister of War Chernyshev on 11 February 1837, on 26 January 6 amanats "from the families of the most honored elders" were taken in Achkhoy, and 4 in Phan-kichu (amanat - a person whom the empire took from a community as a guarantee of subjugation; the journal frames the seizure of people with the word "handed over")^[11]. Hostages from the most influential families made every community answerable to the empire with the lives of its own people.

Every oath of Feze's spring tour (February-April 1837) was paid for in people: the troops took amanats (amanat - a person whom the empire took from a community as a guarantee of subordination) from every community that submitted. Rozen's reports to Minister of War Chernyshev record the mechanism: Shali - "presented amanats as its pledge", Geldigen - "handed over amanats chosen from the best families", the Yaman-su and the Aksai - "with amanats as its security", the Goyta forest and the Martan gorge - "presented amanats as security for their submission"; the summary of 4 March 1837 counts: for 12-22 February "52 amanats were taken"^[11]. In April, in the Gertli settlement, according to the report of 30 May, "Feze ordered the elder's family and 12 more souls to be taken into custody"^[11].

While suppressing the uprising of 1840, the imperial troops kept taking hostages (amanat - a person whom the empire took from a family or community as a hostage; the threat of reprisal against the taken kept the relatives and the whole aul in subjection). On 15 March 1840 general Pullo, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), took hostages in the aul of Aldy by the Groznaya fortress - captain Pushkin reported to Traskin, chief of staff of the troops of the Caucasus Line: "gen. Pullo... entered there himself and took five new amanats"^[12]. The "Conditions prescribed to submitting highlanders", issued by general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line, on 15 June 1840, open with a demand for hostages: "Immediately hand over amanats from these auls. The commander of the troops reserves to himself to designate how many and from which families the said amanats must be handed over" - and close with a threat: "the amanats of unsubmissive auls are exiled to Siberia"^[12].

Hostages were taken not as punishment for a rising but on suspicion - before an aul had done anything. On 9 January 1842 the commander of the Sunzha Line, in a report to general Olshevsky, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), described his order for the Kumyk plain (the lowland to the north-east of Chechnya): ""I instructed Colonel Freitag... if there is a suspicion that some village wants to flee, then at once to take from it a large number of amanats, so that the inhabitants themselves should feed them"" (an amanat is a person whom the empire took from a community as a hostage; the threat of reprisal against the one taken held the family and the whole aul in submission)^[12]. The same report admits what the empire holds the people with: ""Winter and the amanats restrain them, at the present time, from fleeing to Chechnya""^[12]. Hostages from Vainakh communities were also taken by the empire's civil administration in Georgia - on the mere news of a defection to the resistance. On 26 May 1841 the civil governor of Georgia-Imereti reported to Brayko, administrator of the civil department of the Transcaucasian region, that on news of the defection of the Kistins (a Vainakh community on the border with Georgia) to the side of Shamil (the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), provincial secretary Limmerman instructed the district assessors (officials of the district administration) ""to detain here, under a plausible pretext, all the Kistins who wintered in Tusheti and on the Alvani field"" (Tusheti and the Alvani field are a mountain region and a plain in north-eastern Georgia)^[12]. Those detained were not the ones who had defected but those who had come for the winter; the pretext for the detention is called ""plausible"" by the document itself.

Those resettled down to the fortifications were held by hostages. General Sleptsov, in a report of 4 October 1850, stated that he was holding in the Cossack stanitsa Sunzhenskaya, planted on the site of the Chechen aul Dibir-Yurt, hostages (amanats) - people the empire took from the families of the resettled in order to hold their communities in obedience under the threat of reprisal against those taken: "The amanats, taken by me in assurance of the unconditional submission of the resettled, I keep in the stanitsa Sunzhenskaya"^[14]. A hostage also secured the massacre of the hamlet of naib Duba (a deputy of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest) on 6 March 1847: imperial officer Poltoratsky wrote of the naib's two bribed nephews - "while one of the two was, as an amanat (hostage), held under arrest in the guardhouse at Vozdvizhenskoye, the other... was leading the enemy detachment into his own native nest"^[15].

Even when receiving defectors from the top of the Imamate, the empire insured itself with hostages. When at the beginning of February 1854 Umayev, naib of Lesser Chechnya (a deputy of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest), was coming over to the imperial side, the pristav (an imperial superintendent) demanded a guarantee - Lieutenant Colonel Predemirov, in a report to General Vrevsky of 6 February 1854: "fearing treason on his part and not wishing thereby to suffer a loss in men because of him, I demanded that he first give an amanat. On 3 February the son of Endirey was delivered as an amanat to the pristav" (an amanat is a person whom the empire took from a community as a hostage)^[12]. The naib's child became the price of the father's right to surrender.

In devastated Dzhumsoy in June 1860 the troops spared those who handed over hostages: "left untouched were those houses and plowlands whose owners appeared at their places and handed over amanats" (an amanat is a person whom the empire took from a community as a hostage, to keep it in obedience by the threat of reprisal against the one taken)^[16]. After the Shali shooting, according to the historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, "The families of the zikrists who had not been caught were taken into custody and deported to Yekaterinograd. Because of this, one zikrist gave himself up so that his family would be released" - Yekaterinograd here is not the Kuban Yekaterinodar but the stanitsa of Yekaterinogradskaya on the Terek, now in Kabardino-Balkaria; the auls of Chechnya "were bound by mutual responsibility", with lists of those answerable to the government^[17].

Svistunov, head of the Terek oblast, ordered the head of the Argun okrug on 20 August 1877: "In the event not only of any aul receiving the mutineers, but of the slightest disorder in it or disobedience to the authorities, you will send the amanats of that aul to Grozny, and I will have them shot" (amanat - a person the empire took from a community as a hostage)^[18]. Colonel Batyanov, according to historian Z. Kh. Ibragimova, declared that he considered it "a useful measure to shoot five of the amanats of every aul that had broken away"^[17].

In 1906 the head of the Vedeno okrug, Lieutenant colonel Dobrovolsky, as historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write, "found nothing smarter than to give the command to seize the women relatives of the abrek Zelimkhan in Kharachoy"^[19]. "In the autumn of 1910 Zelimkhan's family was seized and exiled", and in November 1911 "24 relatives of Zelimkhan were exiled together with their families, after they failed to comply with the demand to hand over or kill Zelimkhan" - by the authorities' report, these people had also "...agitated among the rest of the population of Khorochoy that this should not be done"^[19].

On 25 May 1919 Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the RSFSR's Ukrainian Front, disarming the villages, ordered the armies: "beforehand, to take hostages from the kulak elements"^[20]. On 29 June 1919 the central organ of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the VUTsIK) legalized "the taking of hostages" by its resolution on general mobilization^[21], and on 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, included "the hostage system" in the list of means by which the armies "entering Ukraine" were obliged to disarm the population^[22].

In Zhytomyr, during the nine days of Soviet rule in March 1919, hostages sat in the secret police "until payment of the contribution" - until the town paid the sum imposed on it; so recorded Livshits, commissioner of the Central Committee for Aid to Pogrom Victims, noting that a considerable part of those arrested "as hostages" were Jews^[23]. So it was in Fastiv too: until the contribution imposed on the town was paid, Jews sat as hostages^[24]. The occupation secret police in Kyiv held hostages as well: Rakovsky, head of the Soviet colonial administration of Ukraine, wrote to Lenin on 9 August 1919 that after the proclamation of "red terror" over the Hryhoriv uprising it had shot 30 hostages - former members of the monarchist organization "Union of the Russian People," which staged pogroms, and former tsarist officials; when it prepared to shoot 15 more and Rakovsky with Latsis, chairman of the Ukrainian secret police, checked their biographies, only two turned out to be dangerous enemies^[25].

The removal of hostages from Kyiv during the evacuation at the end of August 1919 was described by the eyewitness Kateryna Koval-Medzvedska: "Doctors, engineers, topographers were put on record, and in the last days, under threat of execution, they were carried off by force to Moscow. Besides that, landowners and the bigger merchants were carried off by the hundreds as hostages"^[26].

In 1923-1924 the Chechen revkom made hostage-taking an official practice of the fight against "banditry": "Measures were taken to register all criminals present in Chechnya, and the practice was introduced of taking hostages from among the close relatives of bandits in hiding"^[19].

To get at imam Nazhmuddin Gotsinsky, who was sheltering in the mountains of Chechnya, the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) took old men from the villages and held them hostage under the threat of destroying the villages with artillery. Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, described it himself: "to catch him, the Chekists invited to their quarters old men from the villages where he might be hiding and, declaring them hostages, warned them that if they did not say where Gotsinsky was, they would destroy the villages with artillery, and would arrest them and put them on trial. For a whole day they tried to persuade the old men, but all was without result. Then an aeroplane was sent to that district. They were terribly afraid of the aeroplane. Only after several shells had been fired at the village so that, without destruction of the houses, the inhabitants should feel its power, did the old men say in which gorge Gotsinsky was hiding"^[27]. The word "hostages" is also in the documents of the operation itself: on 4 September 1925 Mironov, head of the Chechen oblast department of the OGPU, reported: "I report: the population is giving up Nazhmudin. I am now conducting negotiations with the representatives. The matter is being conducted through the hostages I have released... Let aeroplanes appear at 15 hours, but not strike. For effect let some 6-7 of them come"^[28]. For the Sharoy district the count of hostages is known from the documents of the military archive: historian A. Yu. Lashkov writes that "the command of the military grouping demanded of the population of the Sharoy district the surrender of the well-known bandit Gotsinsky. In doing so, 40 men from among the honored elders were taken hostage. However, the demand to surrender Gotsinsky was not satisfied within the appointed time, and therefore the troops resorted to intensified repressions. In two days 22 puds of bombs [about 360 kilograms - like 22 rounds of a modern 120 mm mortar] were dropped on the district"^[29]. The surviving companion of Gotsinsky names a different number and adds what is not in the Soviet papers: from the destroyed aul of Khakmedy "105 hostages were taken", and the hostages were threatened with shooting - his account says: "the Bolsheviks wrote of the shooting of the hostages in the event of resistance in their proclamations"^[30]. The word "hostages" is not in the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925, approved by the operation's commanders, - it allows only arrests of "influential persons of the aul" as an extreme measure: the hostage-taking was done over and above what was written, and its traces remained in the dispatches of the executors and the memoirs of an organizer.

Hostages figured as a separate accounting line in the final report on the punitive operation of 1930: Belov, commander of the occupation troops of the North Caucasus Military District, reported to the krai committee of the party (the "kraikom VKP(b)") verbatim: "Seized across Chechnya: of active counter-revolutionary and bandit element, 122 people, of them ringleaders - leaders of the movement - 9; ringleaders who appeared voluntarily - 7; hostages - 35. Rank-and-file participants who appeared voluntarily are not counted, they number hundreds"^[31]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov quote this line of the report: among those arrested in the course of the operation - "leaders of the insurgent movement - 9, hostages - 35"^[19]. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who worked in Chechnya in those years and later wrote about it in emigration, described why the Chekists took hostages and what awaited them: "To the old tsarist system of taking 'amanats' (hostages) to force 'bandits' to surrender the Chekists resorted constantly, and on a wider scale", but "in the history of Soviet Checheno-Ingushetia there was not a single case of the 'amanats' being released when the 'bandit' appeared"; of the fate of both Avtorkhanov writes: the man who appeared voluntarily, "contrary to the solemn promise to spare his life, - was shot, while the 'amanats' were exiled to Siberia, including women and children"^[32].