Aggressors may systematically confiscate weapons from the colonized population in order to break its capacity for self-defense and revolt. The confiscation is formalized through per-household quotas (for example, one gun from every ten houses) and disguised as a fiscal measure ("in lieu of tribute") or as a "pledge of submission", but the goal is neither revenue nor loot: a disarmed society is left defenseless before the aggressor's troops and the collaborators the aggressor has cultivated, and every new demand can then be imposed without resistance. Disarmament also prepares deeper forms of subjugation - enserfment, conscription, resettlement - which cannot be forced upon an armed society. For societies in which weapons are part of the dignity and status of a free person, their seizure is also a social punishment.
The amanat-and-tribute system of Pullo, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line (a chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), included the systematic confiscation of weapons from the inhabitants of the seized auls of Chechnya. Pullo in a memorandum of 1840 called it a program of his own: "the power of the pristavs was consolidated, and at the same time a beginning was laid to the system of disarming the highlanders, by exacting from all auls one gun from every 10 saklias. In all, upward of 1900 guns were collected - a circumstance important both for the quantity of weapons collected and especially because for the first time the thought was instilled in the highlanders that the government has the right to deprive of weapons those who have used them for evil" (saklia - a highlander's house; pristav - a superintendent over the auls appointed by the empire; the figure of 1900 is Pullo's self-report; the historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov count about one and a half thousand from the archives)[1]. The historian D. A. Khozhaev writes: "The expeditions of general Pullo in December 1839 and January 1840 to uphold Russian administration, and the disarmament of the Chechen lowland auls that had begun, when Pullo demanded the surrender of one gun from every ten houses, aroused indignation in broad layers of the Chechen people"[2]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov name disarmament the trigger of the uprising: "The fear that after the disarmament the authorities would introduce in Chechnya the all-Russian serfdom order, shameful for people of noble standing, which practically all Chechens considered themselves to be, made the highlanders take up arms"[3].
The winter expeditions of general Pullo, who commanded the left flank of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), in December 1839 - February 1840 carried out the physical seizure of weapons from the inhabitants of Chechnya's auls. The system was conceived by Pullo himself: in his 1840 memorandum he wrote that it was then that "a beginning was laid to the system of disarming the highlanders, by levying one gun from every 10 saklias from all the auls"[1]. The imperial historian Yurov recorded of the December 1839 march: the inhabitants "unquestioningly paid the tribute or, instead of money, handed over weapons"[4]. Historian Sh. A. Gapurov gives the tally from the archives: 455 rifles for the December march through Lesser Chechnya and 545 for the January march along the Michik[5]; Pullo himself, in his memorandum of 1840, reported the seizure of "upwards of 1900 rifles"[1]. In June 1840 the seizure of weapons was fixed as a norm: point 9 of the "Conditions prescribed to submitting highlanders", issued by general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line, on 15 June 1840, prescribed "To hand over one good rifle from every 10 saklias, as a pledge of their submission" (saklia - a highlander's house)[1].
On 17 August 1884 the "Binding Decree on the Sale, Storage and Carrying of Combat Firearms in the Caucasus Krai" was approved: combat rifles - only under police permits, and the sale and purchase of army-pattern weapons were banned[6]. On 1 July 1899 the decree was tightened: previous permits were annulled, annual renewal was required, and weapons without a permit were confiscated and sold for the benefit of the treasury[6]. In 1892, by order of the head of the Terek oblast, all weapons with which highlanders appeared in Russian settlements were confiscated, including weapons brought for sale; from 1893 the authorities were allowed to search homes for weapons[6]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov record the contrast: highlander militiamen in imperial service carried weapons at all times, "unlike ordinary highlanders, who could not appear armed outside their villages"[3].
On 26 May 1919, at the height of the uprising of Ukrainian peasants under Hryhoriv against the Soviet authority, Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, telegraphed to Kyiv to Rakovsky, head of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR), and to Kharkiv to Mezhlauk, its deputy war minister: "Decree and carry into effect the complete disarming of the population, shoot on the spot mercilessly for any concealed rifle. The whole crux of the moment: a quick victory in the Donbas, the collection of all rifles from the villages, the creation of a solid army"; he ordered the telegram read "to all prominent Bolsheviks"[7]. A day earlier Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the RSFSR's Ukrainian Front, had ordered the armies "to disarm the local population" in their areas of operation[8].
In secret order No. 579 of 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, named the goal in a single clause - "the unconditional and universal disarming of the village population" of Ukraine was declared "the basic condition of success"[9].
On 26 July 1919 Skrypnyk, plenipotentiary of the same administration's Defence Council, telegraphed on the course of the disarmament from the Trypillia district: "The disarming of the population is carried out by searches; all those guilty of concealing weapons and war materiel are handed over to the field revtribunal [the Bolsheviks' military court]"[10].
In the village of Tiutkovychi in Rivne district on 6 July 1919 an assembly of village representatives, in the presence of Soviet military commissar Senichkin, resolved to surrender "rifles, machine guns, cartridges" and asked "to leave the population 15 rifles and cartridges for the defence of the population against bandits"; in the same protocol the assembly complained that Soviet soldiers were taking property arbitrarily, without a warrant[11].
Soviet Russia disarmed Chechen villages by military operations through all five years of the campaign. Historian E. F. Zhupikova writes: the Caucasus Labor Army "conducted" disarmament operations "...in 1920; in March-August 1921 the Chechen auls of Gordali, Tsentoroy, Belgatoy, Dargo, Benoy, Vedeno, Groznensky and Shali, which had taken part in the mutiny of N. Gotsinsky, were disarmed"[12]. In May 1922 the troops sent into Chechnya were headed by Gikalo - secretary of the Mountain oblast committee (obkom) of the party[13], who in the war with Denikin had commanded insurgent detachments in the mountains of Chechnya[12]: "The villages of Makhkety, Goity and Katyr-Yurt were subjected to disarmament, with combat aviation used against the latter. Besides the seizure of a significant quantity of weapons, up to 30 'bandits' were captured and shot, and their property was confiscated by the authorities"[3]. The year 1924 "ended in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast with a large military operation to seize weapons, in the course of which almost 3 thousand rifles and about 400 revolvers and pistols were collected"[3].
Over the three weeks of the operation, from 25 August to 12 September 1925, the troops of the USSR took from the inhabitants of Chechnya 25299 rifles, 4319 revolvers and pistols, a machine gun and about 80 thousand cartridges[3]; the OGPU (the political police, a predecessor of today's FSB) reported to Stalin in rounded numbers: "In Chechnya during the operation 24000 rifles, 4000 revolvers, about 70000 cartridges, 2 machine guns were removed"[14], while Mikoyan, secretary of the North Caucasus krai committee of the party and one of the operation's organizers, counted in his memoirs "more than 30 thousand rifles, more than 10 machine guns"[15]. By the assessment of historian E. F. Zhupikova, what was removed amounted to "approximately 75% of what the population had before the start of the operation and approximately half of the weapons removed in all the highland oblasts"[16]. Under the disarmament instruction of 4 August 1925 the inhabitants were announced "the exact figure of the firearms and ammunition subject to removal", taken from the OGPU questionnaires, and given no more than two hours to surrender them[17]; Mikoyan describes the same quota with the words "they would present each village with the demand to surrender all weapons in the quantity known from agent intelligence"[15]. The taking of weapons began even before the troops went in, with the inhabitants divided up by lists: from those entered in the lists of the "vicious element" and their relatives "the local revkoms took the weapons away, while registering those of the remaining inhabitants"[16]. The inhabitants themselves asked to give up their weapons without shelling: in early September 1925 the delegates of the Goity society Eski Karlagov, Khatu Dobriyev and Dzhabi Otgayev appealed to the district's Revolutionary Military Council with a request: "Now, at the disarmament, which we consider right, we ask that this be taken into account and petition that an exception be made by allowing the voluntary surrender of weapons without the taking of repressive measures"; the answer came by telegram, "most urgent", over the signatures of Uborevich, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, Volodin, member of the district's Revolutionary Military Council, and Yevdokimov, plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU for the krai: "The Red Army knows well the revolutionary services of the village of Goity. The surrender of weapons must be carried out voluntarily on 9 September with delivery of the weapons to Grozny. The weapons necessary for self-defense will be left to the aul of Goity"[18].