The metropole deliberately sows and sustains enmity between neighboring Indigenous peoples so that they weaken one another and do not unite against it. Instead of confronting a united resistance, the colonizer divides it: it sets one people against another, arms and rewards the loyal against the defiant, and converts the shared hostility toward the empire into mutual discord among those being subjugated. The mechanism relies on already existing or artificially inflamed differences — clan-based, territorial, confessional — and entrenches them as a permanent line of division, depriving Indigenous peoples of the ability to act together. The metropole meanwhile preserves its own troops, shifting part of the suppression onto the incited side and presenting itself as an arbiter.
The Russian Empire set neighboring Indigenous peoples against one another so that their mutual enmity would weaken the resistance of each and prevent them from uniting. For the 1807 campaign against the Chechens, the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, coerced Kabardians into marching against the Nokhchi: for failure to appear, those "designated from the ranks of uzdens and begauls" faced a fine "of 50 r. in silver and 2 oxen." General Delpozzo reported that he had "inclined the Kabardians to set out on the campaign and to assist together with our troops in punishing the Chechens," and although "it was very difficult to persuade them," he gathered over 3,500 men who "crossed the Terek River and arrived… at the Sunzha River" against the Chechen and Karabulak villages; at the same time, the Kabardians themselves refused to go directly "against the Chechens," as their co-religionists, agreeing to act only "against the Karabulaks alone." General Gudovich stated the aim of this incitement outright — "to set these two peoples at odds with each other and bring them into enmity against one another, and thereby weaken them over time"[1].
The Russian Empire set neighboring Indigenous peoples against the Nokhchi in order to weaken Chechen resistance through their enmity. In July 1810, while pursuing a retreating Chechen party, the commanding general Ivelich, according to the imperial historian Potto, «talked the nearest Ingush auls, in view of the prospect of great gain, into cutting off its retreat»; the incited Ingush attacked the Chechens, and the latter «suffered such a loss that they abandoned even the body of their leader on the battlefield»[2]. The commander of the Caucasian Line, General Delpozzo, reported that the peaceful elders who had pledged to act against the Chechens were «promised rewards according to their merits»[3].
The Russian Empire set neighboring peoples against the Nokhchi in order to weaken the Chechens through their enmity. In 1816, the Nokhchi led by Beibulat Taimiev took Major Shvetsov prisoner[4]. In response, the commander on the Terek, General Delpozzo, in a letter to the Kumyk lords of Endirey, Aksai, and Kostek, pressed them to go to war against the Chechens: «I ask you, I advise you, I order you to form among yourselves one council, one will, to return immediately by force of arms the captive Major Shvetsov, to put an end to the brigand people… to adopt such a resolution as would reduce the Chechens to weakness, to obedience to us, to complete slavery before you»[5]. The Kumyk lords signed «Obligations» in which they pledged «to cease all mutual enmities… and to form a brotherhood», «to receive none of the Chechens… but wherever any of them is encountered, to kill him or deliver him alive to the nearest Russian authorities», and to let no goods pass through to them[5].
The Russian Empire set a neighboring people against the Nokhchi in order to weaken their resistance. Historian D. A. Khozhaev writes that Yermolov, «attempting to provoke a clash between the Chechens and the Ingush… forcibly conscripted the Ingush into a militia and sent them together with tsarist detachments against Chechen auls», although the Ingush «refused to go against their kin… deserting from the militia»[4].
In Feze's annihilating expedition through Lesser Chechnya in January 1837, the empire led highlanders against highlanders. The expedition journal, presented by Rozen to Minister of War Chernyshev on 11 February 1837, names the composition of Colonel Shiroky's column: "a hundred Cossacks and 800 horsemen of Ossetians and Ingush" (the Ossetian and Ingush militia - auxiliary units of highlanders in the empire's service)[6]. The use of neighboring peoples in a punitive campaign shifted part of the suppression onto the colonized themselves and entrenched enmity between them.
Against Chechnya the empire mobilised the other peoples of the Caucasus it had conquered. In the army of Vorontsov, viceroy in the Caucasus, in the Dargo march of 1845 historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov count "1 thousand men of the Georgian militia, 16 sotnias of Cossacks and highland militia (Kabardian and Ossetian)" (militia - armed detachments of highlanders and Georgians in the empire's service)[7]. The colonised peoples the empire put into the ranks against their neighbours - so that Caucasians would fight Caucasians for the imperial conquest.
The viceroy in the Caucasus, Mikhail Romanov, expressed the wish to bring the Dagestani militia (militia - armed detachments of highlanders in the empire's service) into the military operations in Chechnya, and on the Dagestan side, near the village of Botlikh, a detachment of regular infantry and 12 sotnias of mounted and foot Dagestani militia was concentrated[7]. At the beginning of May a detachment under Colonel Nakashidze was assembled in neighboring Dagestan - two battalions of the Apsheronsky and Samursky regiments, 6 druzhinas and 3 sotnias of militia with guns[7]. The rout was completed in the same manner: the village of Sogratl in Dagestan, where the leaders of the uprising had taken refuge, was surrounded by Russian troops and the Dagestani militia[4]. Part of the suppression the empire shifted onto the colonized themselves, keeping for itself the role of arbiter and entrenching enmity between neighbors.
The Chechens lived through the exile under constant attacks and provocations. The empire itself made them the target - by the brand of "traitors," by the connivance of local officials and by a secret police that named the Chechens themselves guilty after every pogrom. On 16 June 1950 in the town of Leninogorsk in Kazakhstan the Chechens were attacked by workers recruited to the lead mines, their ringleaders criminals released from Kazakhstan's camps. The pogrom was prepared in secret and caught the Chechen community off guard: most of the killing came on the first day, when the Chechen men, alone or in small groups, had driven off to congratulate their relatives on the end of Ramadan (for Muslims, a major religious holiday). The local authorities, the occupier's police and the special commandant's office did not stop the attackers; the Chechens organized the defense themselves and, after two days of street fighting, by 18 June pushed the pogromists to the town's outskirts, while Soviet troops entered only on 19 June. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "In all, 36 Chechens were brutally killed, including women and children"[7]. The Directorate of Special Settlements of the MGB (predecessor of today's FSB) of the Kazakh SSR admitted that same summer to "mass brawls between deportee-Chechens and local residents (at Kushmurun station, Kustanai oblast, and in Ust-Kamenogorsk and Leninogorsk, East Kazakhstan oblast), accompanied by killings and grave injuries" - and laid the blame for them on the Chechens themselves[8]; of Ust-Kamenogorsk the 9th directorate of the MGB of the USSR reported in 1952: "a mass brawl broke out involving up to 150 Chechens and about 300 workers. This mass disorder was put down only after the intervention of an MGB unit"[8]. The Special Settlements Department of the police ministry, in a memorandum drawn up in July 1950, dated the Leninogorsk pogrom to 17 June and counted the dead its own way: "In the brawl 34 special-settler Chechens were killed" - and placed the attack in Ust-Kamenogorsk on 27 June[9]. In December 1954 in the village of Yelizavetinka, Akmolinsk oblast, students of the mechanization school called the Chechens "traitors and betrayers of the motherland" - and with these accusations Russians went into a mass clash with the Chechens[8]. On 15 May 1955 in Ekibastuz workers mobilized to the mines through the military enlistment office beat two Chechens in the street; the police sheltered the beaten men in the station house, but the workers came there and demanded they be handed over. Kruglov, Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, reported to the leadership of the Bolshevik party and to the government: "Having been refused, the former soldiers pushed aside the officers of the militia station, dragged the Chechens out into the street by force and beat them. After that a number of other Chechens living in the town were beaten by the workers. As a result of the brawl 3 Chechens were killed and 4 injured"[8].