Date:  Thu, 17 Feb 2000 20:35:45 -0800
From: AMILAnet <amila@mpac.org>
- From Firas Jandali,
NZZ Background on World Affairs, February 2000

Mass Deportations, Book Burnings and Censorship

Konstantin Gamsakhurdia

 The history of the Chechens is significant not only for that people of 1 million souls, it is also a hallmark of Russian power politics during the czarist, Communist and post-Communist periods. From the perspective of Chechnya's South Caucasus neighbors, the Georgian-born, Swiss-based  author of this article analyzes the deep-rooted Chechen drive for independence through the centuries, which, like that of numerous other mountain peoples, has often involved banditry and freebootery. The author, an orientalist and historian, is the eldest son of Sviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first freely elected president.

 The history of Chechnya is little known. A glance at the literature on the subject issued during the Soviet era shows little beyond descriptions of numerous battles and ethnographic sketches. Many important historical and cultural elements in the picture remain unexamined, largely because of czarist and later Soviet censorship, but also due to a lack of sources and literature. In archives in St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, Baku and Makhachkala, there are reports documenting military confrontations between the Russians and North Caucasians from the 16th through the 19th centuries, but the archives in Chechnya itself were almost entirely destroyed during the Stalin era and the war of 1994-96.

 

Libraries and Museums Destroyed

 To at least partially fill that gap, Chechen author and historian Mussa Geshayev wrote the book "Prominent Chechens," which was published in the Russian language in Belgium in 1999. Almost the entire printing of this work was confiscated at the Russian border by the Russian secret service. In the book, the author recalls the February 1944 deportation of the Chechen population, which he himself experienced as a child. Almost the entire people was herded together and carted off to Central Asia in cattle cars. For three days, Geshayev writes, books burned in the center of Grozny, as if history itself was to be destroyed. All libraries and museums were reduced to rubble and ashes by the minions of Stalin's NKVD (secret service).

 The Chechen language is not part of the Indo-European, the Turkic or the Semitic language groups; it is categorized among the East Caucasian languages as part of the so-called Nakh language group. ("Vainakh" means "our countrymen.") This group includes the closely related dialects of Chechens who live in Aki (a district now part of neighboring Dagestan) and the flatlands of Itshkeria, of the Ingush, the Khist mountain tribes and the Bazb living in Georgia. Prior to the Russian revolution, the Chechens had no written script of their own. The efforts of the NKVD and of its present-day successor, Russia's Federal Counterintelligence Service (FCS), to eradicate the Chechens' national memory, have not prevented Chechen history from being handed down in song and story from generation to generation.

 With the establishment of Soviet rule, the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic; books, newspapers and periodicals were published in the Chechen language, but in Cyrillic letters. Most scholars and some poets and writers, however, preferred to use the Russian language. The dissident author and researcher of Soviet history, Abdurahman Avturkhanov, who lived as an emigré in West Germany during the postwar era, wrote his books (e.g., "The Technology of Power" or "The Secret of Stalin's Death") in Russian rather than in Chechen. These works, incidentally, along with Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and Orwell's "1984," were prominent on the banned book index in the Soviet Union.

 Until well into the 19th century, the Chechens were not a unified people, but merely a loose community of clans that traced their descent to a single male ancestor. A kind of ancestor worship was cultivated, but one which in no way negated the value of the individual. Its central tenet was that everything is good which elevates the individual and maintains the honor and reputation of the family and the line of ancestors; evil deeds harmed the ancestors in the afterworld. Chechnya never had princes or feudal lords. The clan groupings ("teipan") were all considered equal and their lands were clearly demarcated from one another. The elder of each "teip" constituted a moral authority to be treated with respect.

 According to their own tradition, the Chechens were Islamized in the first half of the 18th century. Prior to that, most of them were Christians who had presumably been missionized from nearby Georgia. (There are still certain sacral buildings in southern Chechnya whose architecture bears clear Georgian influence.) After the Kingdom of Georgia lost its regional dominance, the North Caucasus came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire. There were intensive contacts with the Ottoman-dominated khanate of Crimea and with Persian-influenced khanates in what is today Azerbaijan. A personage named Termaol is considered the one who introduced Sunni Islam to Chechnya; he was an eloquent speaker who gained great influence over the populace. Tradition has it that conversion to Islam was violent at first, but then became more peaceable.

 Arabic is thought to have then become the written language in the area, though no Arab-language Chechen writer is known today. In any case, there is no doubt that Islam brought Arabic with it, to serve as a lingua franca among the at least 50 languages spoken in the North Caucasus at that time, some of them vastly different from others. Above all, Islam linked Chechnya with Dagestan, where traces of Islamic missionary activity go back as far as the 9th century.

 An ideological substratum of pre-Islamic society in the region was the "adat" - an unwritten moral code of behavior which remained in effect even after Islamization and is still binding on both Muslim and Christian mountain peoples on both sides of the Caucasus range. Some elements of the adat are: a hospitality which insists on the inviolability of the guest; laws of courtesy and of sworn brotherhood, even between members of different ethnic groups. After the Islamization of the region, the adat served to a degree as a counterweight to the sharia, the code of Islamic law.

 Chechnya's Islam is of the sunni persuasion and bears aspects of sufism, a dervish theosophy which had its source in the Arab-Persian region. But it is a poor basis for the fundamentalism of which the Chechens are repeatedly accused. They have been influenced by muridism since the 18th century, a term which means something like "the search for truth" - a heresy in the eyes of Islamists, who believe that all truth is already laid down in the Koran. As a result, the Wahhabite fundamentalism imported into Chechnya in recent years has attracted no great following there; the only town in which the Wahhabites have succeeded in taking over the government is Urus-Martan.

 

Russian Conquest in the 18th and 19th Centuries

 A look at the Caucasus wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, which lasted for decades, reveals the tactics used by the two sides. At every advance, the Russians built Cossack settlements, fortified positions and large fortresses. Grozny, the capital built by General Yermolov, was originally such a Russian outpost. These positions served as bases from which Russian forces could advance further into the interior. The Chechens defended themselves against progressive Russian colonization with small, mobile fighting units, which resulted in a war from 1785 to 1791 in which the Chechens, led by Sheikh Mansur, also sometimes engaged in open combat. The Russians won that war, Sheikh Mansur was taken captive and exiled to Solovky Island, where he soon died.  During the great Caucasus war of 1833-59, the Chechens and Dagestani, led by Imam Shamil and fighting against the czarist army, felt themselves completely surrounded. Georgia had lost its independence to Russia in 1801, and the Georgian nobility fought on the side of the Russian colonialists. Shamil's resistance was broken in 1859, but the Chechens fought on for two more years, led by Boiskar Beno.

 

The Soviet Era and Deportation

 In 1847 the Chechen population was about 1.5 million. In 1864 hundreds of thousands were expelled and driven into the Ottoman Empire, and by 1867 their number on home soil had dwindled to only 116,000, mostly widows, children, old men and cripples. The Russian victors openly described what happened as an expulsion. The descendants of those who were driven out back then still constitute a Chechen diaspora in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

 In a recent book, Alexander Solzhenitsyn generalized broadly that, during Russia's civil war, the Chechens supported the Bolsheviks. The accusation is inaccurate, and can only be explained by Solzhenitsyn's desire to reestablish a Greater Russian Empire in which the Chechens would be nothing but a disruptive element. While it is true that the Bolsheviks had some Chechen support in the northern part of Chechnya, anti-Bolshevik groups retained their strength in the south, especially after dissolution of the independent Caucasus Mountain Republic, which at that time extended from Cherkessiya to Dagestan. These groups had links to the Georgian partisan movement which developed after Georgia's forced Sovietization between 1921 and 1924. It may be assumed that the anti-Bolshevik mood in southern Chechnya was connected both to Islam and to the adat tradition.

 In 1940, a rebellion broke out in the Chechno-Ingushetian Republic and spread rapidly. A political figure named Khasan Israilov proclaimed a war to liberate the Caucasus and formed a "provisional revolutionary people's government" which gained control of several districts. Although Stalin sent in regular troops and even the air force, the uprising lasted for years. The situation was so grave that an order was issued in April 1942 that all Chechen and Ingush were to be discharged from the Red Army as completely unreliable elements. Under serious pressure, the rebels established contacts with the advancing German army, as a number of other peoples did after experiencing Stalin's terrorist regime. Many individuals from the Caucasus cooperated in a German operation whose mission it was to prevent the destruction of oil facilities. Naturally, such "treachery" was counted as a heavy black mark against the Chechens and Ingush, who became the victims of mass deportations starting in 1944. Some 100,000 special NKVD and Interior Ministry troops were employed in carrying out their deportation to Kazakhstan, but those Soviet forces were bitterly fought by Chechen partisans who had retreated into the mountains. As late as the 1960s, a 100-ruble bounty was placed on the heads of the remaining guerrillas, the last of whom surrendered in 1972.

 Not only Stalin, but also secret service chief Lavrenty Beria and NKVD General Gvishyany played leading roles in the mass deportations. Yet the Georgian ancestry of these men did not arouse the animosity of the Chechens toward their southern neighbors. They understood that their Georgian persecutors were acting on Soviet interests, under which the Georgian people suffered as much as others. On the other hand, today many Chechens remember with gratification that Sviad Gamsakhurdia, post-Soviet Georgia's first freely elected president, was the only chief of state to officially recognize Chechnya's independence in 1991. Driven from Georgia by a coup, Gamsakhurdia lived for almost two years in Grozny, as the guest of Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

 

Post-Stalin Rehabilitation

 After Stalin's death, the Chechens were rehabilitated in 1957 and began returning to their homeland. The Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was restored. The Georgians and Dagestanis who had been settled there organized their return to their own respective homelands themselves and left their homes and other buildings in Chechnya notably undamaged. Subsequently, ethnic Nakhs were named to leading political positions in the autonomous republic, but Chechens were mostly kept out of the administrative bureaucracy; they were not considered trustworthy. Only Savgayev, the republic's last Communist Party chief (who was also appointed head of the pro-Moscow regime during the 1994-96 war), managed in the 1980s to create an administrative apparatus consisting largely of Chechens. But on 15 October 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Savgayev and his Supreme Soviet resigned from office.

 In late October of that year, Air Force General Dzhokhar Dudayev became Chechnya's first elected president, despite a brief, unsuccessful intervention in Grozny by Russian paratroops. Chechnya's declaration of independence followed on 2 November 1991. At that time, Boris Yeltsin issued the following pronouncement to the members of the Russian Federation: "Take as much sovereignty for yourselves as you can swallow." That prepared the ground for the war which broke out in 1994. After several Kremlin-inspired coup attempts against Dudayev had failed, the Russians prepared to march into Chechnya.

 

The Prevalence of Banditry

 In the 18th and 19th centuries, Chechens and Dagestanis often abducted people of other nationalities and demanded ransom for their release. But the assertion that this banditry constituted the backbone of the Chechen economy is a gross exaggeration. Back then, as they always had, the Chechens were occupied largely with livestock and beekeeping, planting grain, hunting, carpet weaving and felt making.

 The end of the war in 1996 brought another outbreak of kidnappings and ransom demands. There were several reasons for this: First, in violation of the terms of the peace treaty, Russian reconstruction aid failed to arrive, the country remained a ruin, unemployment reached close to 95%. During this period of "peace" Moscow isolated the republic from the rest of the world. Its borders were sealed with barbed wire, tanks, minefields and tens of thousands of soldiers. According to Chechen sources, the Russian intelligence service also had its fingers in the creation of criminal gangs. At the same time, as elected President Aslan Maskhadov has repeatedly pointed out, Chechen authorities tried to combat the crime wave, but with little success.

 

The Struggle for Freedom

 The history of the Chechen people has been characterized by centuries of defensive struggle. During that time, this numerically small group has paid a horrendous price in blood. It is sometimes asserted that the Chechens know nothing but a life of warfare. In fact, their situation is not a mark of an obsession with combat or a collective death wish, but rather of a legitimate desire for a life of dignity in freedom.

 This aspect of the Chechen character is best expressed in the symbol of the wolf, the image of which now decorates the official Chechen emblem. Back in 1904, a Russian historian described the symbolism as follows: The lion and the eagle personify physical strength, but they only attack weaker creatures. Among predators, the wolf is the only one that dares to also attack stronger animals. It compensates for its lack of sheer strength by its endless audacity, courage and skill. But when it loses a battle, it dies silently, without displaying pain or fear. And in death it turns its face to its opponent.

15 February 2000 / Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8 February 2000

(Opinions expressed in the above post are those of the author)