Chechnya

### **Research Articles**

* “Highland Rebels: The North Caucasus During the Stalinist Collectivization Campaign” by Jeronim Perovic https://sci-hub.st/10.1177/0022009414562821 [PDF, 228kb, EN]
* “Russian Nationalism and Moscow's Violations of Human Rights in the Second Chechen War” by Oktay Tanrisever https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/BF02912020 [PDF, 708kb, EN]

### **News Articles**

* “Stalin’s Caucasus crimes Putin wants you to forget” by James Oliver http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/02/26/stalins-caucasus-crimes-putin-wants-you-to-forget/ [EN] (funded by Open Society Foundations)

### **Blog Posts**

* "Reflections on Chechnya" by Louis Proyect https://louisproyect.org/2013/05/14/reflections-on-chechnya/ [EN]

### **Documents**

* “A Letter to S. G. Shahumyan” by V.I. Lenin https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/nov/23.htm [EN]; «Письмо С. Г. Шаумян» В.И. Ленин http://libelli.ru/works/48-6.htm [RU]

### **Encyclopedia**

* "Восстание в Чечне (1932)" https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5\_%D0%B2\_%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B5\_1932\_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0 [RU]
* "Forced settlements in the Soviet Union" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced\_settlements\_in\_the\_Soviet\_Union [EN]
* "Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation\_of\_the\_Chechens\_and\_Ingush [EN]
* "Khaibakh massacre" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaibakh\_massacre [EN]
* "1951 anti-Chechen pogrom in Eastern Kazakhstan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951\_anti-Chechen\_pogrom\_in\_Eastern\_Kazakhstan [EN]
* "Chechen–Slav ethnic clashes (1958–65)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheche%E2%80%93Slav\_ethnic\_clashes\_(1958%E2%80%9365) [EN]

### **Books**

* "Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict" by John B. Dunlop http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7611540A75B5490D22AE2019B8A4A09D [PDF, 6MB, EN]

### **Notes**

* The Chechen language, along with many other minority languages of the USSR, was changed from the Arabic script first to Latin, then to Cyrillic, with much opposition. Many adults in rural areas who had learned to read in other scripts became illiterate. The Russian language then replaced Chechen as the primary spoken language in Chechnya as a result of Soviet education policies. Lenin himself said he considered the Russian language to be of “progressive importance” for the “small and backwards nations” such as Chechnya
* By the end of the 1930s almost all of the mosques and all of the Koranic schools in the North Caucasus had been destroyed, including those in Chechnya, despite the Soviets promising them full religious freedom.
* In the mid 1920s the Bolsheviks systematically disarmed the men of the North Caucasus (Chechen peasant men were traditionally always armed), and began confiscating property from peasants who were deemed to be kulaks (arbitrarily of course, none of these people were genuinely “wealthy”).
* In 1930 Stalin promised Chechen fighters in the mountains who were actively opposing the collectivization policy that they would be given amnesty if they laid down their arms, and that any peasant who wanted to leave the collective farms would be freely allowed to do so. Those who did were then hit with a wave of arrests; an estimated 35 000 Chechen people were arrested, then either executed, imprisoned, or exiled.
* In 1944, after the purges and in retaliation for their continued resistance to Russia, the Soviets baselessly accused the entire Chechen nation of collaborating with Nazi Germany (just as the Crimean Tatars were) and began deporting them and the Ingush to Central Asia en masse. By the end of February 1944, 478 479 people had been put on railway cars (91 250 of whom were Ingush), and many died on the journey. In July of that same year, Beria reported to Stalin that 602 193 North Kavkazi people had been sent to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (496 460 Chechens and Ingush, 68 327 Karachai, and 37 406 Balkars). These deportations opened Chechen land to increased settlement by ethic Russians.
* Proportionately to their population, Chechens suffered the highest losses of any group affected by Stalin’s population transfers. The death toll is estimated to be between 170 000 and 200 000 people (a quarter/nearly a third of their total population).
* The first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia described with admiration the Chechen people’s fight against tsarism, calling Imam Shamil “the remarkable leader of the mountain people”, brilliant in both his fighting and his social and political reforms. After the purges and much anti-soviet resistance in the North Caucasus, the 1944 edition only mentioned Chechens in a piece about muridism, saying that North Caucasian resistance to Russia was the work of British agents, and even that Imam Shamil was a British secret service agent.
* In 1945, the North Caucasus’ long history of struggle against Russian imperialism was denounced as an “ultra-reactionary current of militant Islam” at a conference of soviet academics called “the Historical Essence of Caucasian Muridism”.