Aggressors may apply collective punishment: for the actions of individuals, reprisals fall on the entire community - villages and districts are subjected to monetary levies, troops are quartered at the residents' expense, families and relatives are exiled, dwellings are demolished, hostages are taken. The prohibition is entrenched in every key codification of the law of war: Article 50 of the Hague Regulations on the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1899, 1907) forbids general penalties imposed on the population for the acts of individuals; Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) expressly prohibits "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism"; Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (1977) extends the prohibition to non-international armed conflicts, and the ICRC study of customary international humanitarian law (2005, Rule 103) records it for conflicts of any kind.
In the autumn of 1830, General Velyaminov introduced collective property levies on Chechen villages that bore no responsibility for the actions of others: for the driving off by Chechens of ten head of cattle from the stanitsa of Chervlennaya, he "immediately ordered that ten head of cattle likewise be taken from the inhabitants of the two villages of Braguny and Novy-Yurt, past which the party had traveled, and returned to the Cossacks"; for the driving off of a herd of horses in the Nogai steppe, "Braguny once again paid with exactly the same number of head"; and Shakh-Girei, the owner of Novy-Yurt, was confined to a casemate — a prison cell of the Groznaya fortress — for the inaction of the village watch. This was recorded by the imperial historian Potto[1].
By the April 1837 raid on the Gertli settlement the troops of General Feze imposed a collective property levy on the whole village: according to Rozen's report to Minister of War Chernyshev of 30 May, on top of the livestock taken during the raid "a fine of 132 head of livestock was imposed on the settlement"[2] - the settlement paid as a whole, with no regard to the personal involvement of its residents.
Following the Chervlyonnaya conferences of 1905-1906 the Russian Empire established a mechanism of circular monetary responsibility: fines on the guilty, "and in the event of their financial insolvency - the penal sanctions passed to the village community to which the guilty party belonged"[3]. Starye Atagi was fined twice for sheltering its fellow villager, an abrek - 3, then 6 thousand rubles; the same village was ordered, within three days, to hand over "100 rifles, two thousand cartridges and 500 daggers", to give up the abreks Tomayev and Khorsiev who were sheltering in the village, and "to collect funds for equipping the village police station with telephone communication"[3]. Tsatsan-Yurt in 1908 paid a "contribution" for undelivered weapons - 7 thousand rubles[3]. In 1911, by order of the Viceroy, "100 thousand rubles were exacted" from the entire Chechen population of the Grozny and Vedeno okrugs in compensation to those who had suffered "...during the attack of Zelimkhan's band"[3].
On 29 June 1919 the central organ of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the VUTsIK) resolved: "To take the most energetic measures to suppress kulak uprisings and the actions of bands, applying the imposition of contributions on rebellious localities and the taking of hostages"; the resolution was signed for the chairman of that organ by Polozov and by its secretary Lapchinsky[4]. Under this resolution it was not the one who rose who had to answer - in money and in hostages - but the whole locality at once.
By the end of the year Moscow fixed the practice for the entire army: on 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, and Kamenev, commander-in-chief of the RSFSR armed forces, signed secret order No. 579 - every army "undertakes, in its area of operations, to disarm the population with the help of all means at its disposal (agitation, agent intelligence, payment for surrendered weapons in money and in kind, house-to-house searches, fines in money and in kind, collective responsibility, the hostage system, the shooting of culprits, etc., etc.)," and the order, as stated in it, applies "first of all to the armies entering Ukraine"[5].
On 26 July 1919 Skrypnyk, plenipotentiary of the same administration's Defence Council, telegraphed from the area of Zeleny's uprising - in the same words as the orders: "The uprising of the peasants of the Trypillia district has been suppressed... there now remains... the exaction from it of all the expenses borne by the workers' and peasants' state for the suppression," specifying: "It is necessary to carry out the exaction in produce, the exaction from the peasants of the expenses caused by the uprising"[6]. In Mohyliv-Podilskyi, which Soviet troops captured on 5 April 1919 without a fight, the town was at once subjected to a forced payment - a telegram to the Bureau of the Ukrainian Press over the signature of Ivanitsky reported: "there is exemplary order in the town, with which even the bourgeoisie is content, despite the imposed contribution of one and a half million"[7]. The reports of the Special Investigative Commission attached to the Whites' command (the AFSR) record of Odesa: "400 people have been sent to forced labour for non-payment of contributions," and of Izium in Kharkiv province: "eyewitnesses told of the wholesale robbery of families whose relatives had gone over to the 'Kadets'"[8].
In Fastiv in Kyiv province the forced payment imposed on the town under the Soviet authority was paid by the Jewish community - Kh. Hofman, an officer of the Editorial Board, the body collecting testimony on the pogroms, recorded: "The entire imposed contribution was paid almost wholly by the Jews, notwithstanding that they are poorer and considerably fewer than the Christians. Many Jews were taken hostage, sat long in prison, many had to leave Fastiv altogether"[9].
Even before the operation the village assemblies together with the revkoms (unelected committees installed in place of elected Soviets - campaign C1176) drew up lists of the "vicious element" - inhabitants noted in robberies; historian E. F. Zhupikova writes: "They and their relatives bore material responsibility for all cases of theft on the territory of Chechnya"[10] - the relatives paid for others' thefts by the fact of kinship and an entry in the list. One could leave the list only by an oath with an obligation to inform: "If the 'vicious element' took an oath that for a year he would not rob and would inform on thieves, he was struck from the list"[10]. When the troops reached the mountains, the destroyed was counted by the same category: as the result of the bombing of 16 auls "119 houses of the 'vicious element' were blown up"[10]; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov confirm the number - "119 houses were blown up"[3]: a house was blown up because its owner was entered in the list.