From Conquest to Deportation The

North Caucasus under Russian Rule

Jeronim Perovic
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FROM CONQUEST TO DEPORTATION
 JERONIM PEROVIĆ

From Conquest to
Deportation
The North Caucasus under
Russian Rule

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jeronim Perović.
Title: From Conquest to Deportation: The North Caucasus under
Russian Rule / J eronim Perović.
Description: Oxford [UK]; New York: Oxford University Press, [2018]

ISBN 9780190889890 (print)

ISBN 9780190934675 (updf)
ISBN 9780190934897 (epub)
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Glossary, Acronyms and Abbreviations ix
Note on Transliteration and Dating xix
Foreword xxi

Introduction 1
1. Conquest and Resistance 21
2. Musa Kundukhov and the Tragedy of Mass Emigration 53
3. The North Caucasus Within the Russian Empire 75
4. Revolutions and Civil War 103
5. Illusion of Freedom 145
6. State and Society 185
7. The North Caucasus During Collectivisation 227
8. At the Fringes of the Stalinist Mobilising Society 255
9. Conformity and Rebellion 289
10. After Deportation 315
Conclusion 325

Notes 329
Bibliography 407
Index 437
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps

1. Physical map of the Caucasus

2. The Caucasus in the Russian Empire, 1903–14
3. The Soviet Caucasus, 1921
4. Ethnic groups of the Caucasus, 1926
5. The Chechen autonomous region, 1928
6. Administrative structure of the Caucasus, 1936–8
7. ‘Operation schedule’ (Einsatzplan) contained in Reinhard Lange’s
report on the ‘Special operation “Shamil”’ of 5 January 1943 (BArch
Abt. MA, Blatt 1/36). Published with courtesy of the Bundesarchiv,
Abt. Militärarchiv.

Photographs

Figure 1: The village of Tindi in Dagestan. Photo taken in 1897.

Source: Hoover Institution Archives, Maurice de Déchy, Vue du
Caucase: portfolio of photographs, 1897, 1 manuscript box.
Figure 2: Lezgins from the village of Echeda in Dagestan. Photo taken in
1897.
Source: Hoover Institution Archives, Maurice de Déchy, Vue du
Caucase: portfolio of photographs, 1897, 1 manuscript box.
Figure 3: Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee, talks to Terek Cossacks while visiting a Red Army

vii
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

barrack in the North Caucasus. Photo taken in 1921.

Source: RGAKFD, cypher D–150.
Figure 4: Anastas Mikoian, Iosif Stalin, and Grigorii Ordzhonikidze.
Moscow 1926.
Source: RGAKFD, cypher G–21.
Figure 5: Ali Mitaev after his arrest. Photo undated, ca. 1924.
Source: Museum im. A.Sh. Mamakaev in the village of
Nadcheretnii (Lakha-Nevre), Chechnia. Published with courtesy
of the Archive’s Department of the Government of the Chechen
Republic (AUP ChR).
Figure 6: Reconciliation of two families involved in blood feud, Chechen-
Ingush ASSR. Photo taken in 1936.
Source: RGAKFD, cypher 0–266255.
Figure 7: Inhabitants of Dagestan performing the national dance. Photo
taken in 1936.
Source: RGAKFD, cypher 0–24290.
Figure 8: Shepherd Sherip Suliev of the kolkhoz ‘20 Years of the Red
Army’ in Vedeno with his breeding bulls. Vedenskii district,
Chechen-Ingush ASSR. Photo taken in 1940.
Source: RGAKFD, cypher 0–46148.
Figure 9: Khasan Israilov. Undated photograph.
Source: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4425/11206178.1e/0_9
5f98_82a11398_orig (last accessed 30 October 2017).

viii
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

abrek Probably derived from the Pahlavi (Iranian) word

aparak, ‘robber, ‘vagabond’; a frequently used term
in the Caucasus to denote an outlaw exile; the
word may also refer to a bandit or a renegade hero.
adat Arabic: ʿādāt, ‘customs’; Customary law.
AO Autonomous region (avtonomnaia oblastʼ). A
relatively small, ethnically defined administrative–
territorial unit of the Soviet Union, often part of
larger republics (SSR), and created to grant a
degree of autonomy to some ethnic minority
groups.
ASSR Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
(Avtonomnaia Sovetskaia Sotsialisticheskaia
Respublika). Ethnically defined administrative–
territorial unit of the Soviet Union, with reduced
legal status compared with a full SSR. Created to
grant a degree of autonomy to some major ethnic
minority groups.
ataman Cossack leader.
aul A mountain village in the Caucasus.
AUP ChR Archive Department of the Government of the
Chechen Republic (Arkhivnoe upravlenie
Pravitelʼstva Chechenskoi Respubliki).
bedniak Plural bedniaki, from the Russian bednyi, ‘poor’; a
poor peasant, owning some land but usually not

ix
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

enough to support a family. In the Bolshevik

terminology, the bedniak ranks in the lowest
category of the three-level tier of ‘poor’ (bedniaki),
‘middle’ (seredniaki) and ‘rich’ peasants
(zazhitochnyi and kulaky).
Bezbozhnik ‘Godless’; the title of a journal edited by the organ
of the central council of the League of the Militant
Godless (Soiuz voinstviuiushchikh bezbozhnikov),
which was issued during the early Soviet period
(1920s up to the early 1940s).
CC Central Committee (Tsentralʼnyi komitet).
Central ruling body (‘executive’) of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Cheka Chrezvychainaia komissiia; ‘Chk’. Political police
created by the Bolsheviks in December 1917;
Cheka is the abbreviation of ‘All-Russian
Emergency Commission for Combating
Counterrevolution, Speculation and Sabotage’
(Vserossiiskaia chrezvychainaia komissiia po borʼbe
s konterrevoliutsiei i sabotazhem; ‘VChK’). In
February 1922, the Cheka was formally dissolved
and reconstituted under the name GPU.
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza).
desiatin Russian measure of land, 2.7 acres or 1.1 hectares.
dhikr Arabic: dikr, also zikr, literally ‘remembrance’; the
term used to denote a form of prayer in Islam, in
which short phrases are repeatedly recited within
the mind or aloud. In the North Caucasus, this
form of prayer is usually accompanied by loud
singing, clapping and dancing, widespread among
the followers of the Qādiriyya in Chechnia.
dobrovolʼstvo Voluntary service; an alternative to regular military
service during the Second World War.
Duma Council; name of the parliament of the Russian
Empire established under Tsar Nicholas II in 1906.
Name of the parliament of the Russian Federation
since 1993.

x
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

FSB Federal Security Service (Federalʼnaia sluzhba

bezopasnosti). The principal security agency of the
Russian Federation.
GARF State Archive of the Russian Federation
(Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii).
gazavat Transliterated from Russian spelling; an Arabic
term referring to ġazw (or ġazwah) meaning battle,
a military expedition or raid. The English term
‘razzia’ derives from ġazw. In the context of the
Caucasian wars, the term is usually equated with
jihad (‘holy war’).
gortsy Singular gorets, ‘mountaineer’, ‘highlander’; a term
used from the early nineteenth century to
collectively designate the non-Russian peoples of
the North Caucasus.
Gosplan State Planning Committee (Gosudarstvennyi
planovyi komitet). Established in 1921, the agency
was primarily responsible for central economic
planning in the Soviet Union.
GPU State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe
politicheskoe upravlenie). The secret police,
successor organisation to the Cheka.
grazhdanstvennostʼ From grazhdanstvo, ‘citizenship’, and grazhdanin,
‘citizen’; in the Russian imperial context of the
nineteenth century, the term refers to the spirit of
duty and allegiance towards the imperial state and
its laws.
Hajj Arabic: H . ağğ; the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the
five pillars of Islam.
HPSSS Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System.
imam Muslim political and religious leader; in the North
Caucasus historical context, it also refers to the
spiritual and political head of a theocratic state
(imamate).
inogorodnye Literally ‘outlanders’. In the North Caucasus, a
denomination for all non-autochthonous
inhabitants or those who moved to the region
from outside (mostly Russians and other Slavs).

xi
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

inorodtsy Singular inorodets, ‘alien’. Inorodets was a legal term

referring in the mid-nineteenth century to all
non-Russians, non-Orthodox and non-Slavs of the
Russian Empire. It initially included also the
‘mountaineers’ (gortsy) of the North Caucasus. The
inorodtsy were not subject to the same legal
provisions as the other inhabitants of the Russian
Empire.
ispolkom Executive committee (ispolnitelʼnyi komitet). An
elected Soviet government organ.
jihad Arabic: jihād, literally ‘striving’. In the context of
the conflicts in the North Caucasus of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries usually referred
to as ‘holy war’, i.e. the warfare of Muslims against
infidels.
Kavburo Caucasian Bureau (Kavbiuro). The Kavburo was
created in April 1920 and had its seat in Rostov-
on-Don. The Kavburo was the plenipotentiary
representative of the Central Committee of the
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (CC RCP
(b)), and was responsible for building up party
cells and state institutions in the region. The
bureau was dissolved in February 1922.
KKOV Committees for Farmers’ Social Mutual Assistance
(Komitet krestʼianskoi obshchestvennoi
vzaimopomoshchi).
kolkhoz Plural kolkhozy; contraction of ‘collective farm’
(kollektivnoe khoziaistvo). The kolkhozy were
cooperative agricultural enterprises operated on
state-owned land by peasants from a number of
households belonging to the collective and being
paid as salaried employees on the basis of quality
and quantity of labour contributed.
korenizatsiia Literally ‘taking root’, from Russian koren’, ‘root’.
The term is sometimes translated as ‘indigenisation’
or ‘nativisation’, referring to the early Soviet policy
of promoting members of the non-Russian ‘titular
nations’ into the upper ranks of administration or

xii
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

other positions of power in their ethnically defined

administrative–territorial units.
KPSS See CPSU.
krai Large administrative–territorial units, usually
border regions, or large, territorially defined
military and/or political structures.
kraikom Krai komitet; committee of the Communist Party
at the krai level.
kulak Literally ‘fist’. The term has existed in Russia since
the nineteenth century and refers to relatively
wealthy peasants. The Bolsheviks used the term to
denote all those who hired labour, denouncing
them as ‘capitalist’ peasants and ‘exploiters’ of
poorer peasants. The term was eventually applied
to any peasant opposing collectivisation.
madrassa Arabic: madrasa, literally ‘place of study’; a higher
institute of Islamic scholarship.
medzhlis Arabic: mağlis, ‘place of gathering’; in a political
context, the term refers to a council or a large
meeting.
mufti Arabic: muftī; Muslim legal scholar, qualified to
give authoritative legal opinions (known as fatāwā,
singular fatwā).
mukhadzhirstvo From the Arabic muhāğir, meaning ‘refugee’ or
‘émigré’. The term refers to the mass emigration
of North Caucasians, namely the Cherkessians,
to the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the
Caucasian wars in the mid-1860s.
mullah Honorary title for a person with a religious
education.
murid Arabic: murīd, literally ‘committed one’. In
Sufism, the term refers to an adept of a tariqa, an
Islamic (Sufi) brotherhood.
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo
vnutrennykh del).
naib Arabic: nāʼib, ‘deputy’, ‘delegate’. Arabic title in
use since the Middle Ages. In the context of the
Caucasus wars of the nineteenth century, naib

xiii
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

refers to people who were appointed by Imam

Shamil as governors of a certain district
(naibstvo).
namestnichestvo Institution of viceroyalty governed by the
namestnik. In the Caucasus, the namestnichestvo
existed from 1845 to 1881 and 1905 to 1916.
namestnik The vice-regent (governor) appointed by the
tsar.
Naqshbandiyya Major Sufi order of the Sunni branch of Islam,
widespread in Chechnia since the eighteenth
century.
NKVD People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs
(Narodnyi kommissariat vnutrennykh del).
obkom Regional committee (oblastnyi komitet);
executive body of the Communist Party at the
regional (oblast’) level.
oblastʼ Plural oblasti, ‘region’. Administrative–territorial
unit, already used in tsarist times; after the
abolishment of the tsarist system of
governorates, the oblast’ was the most common
administrative–territorial unit in the Soviet
Union. The okrug and later the raion were
subunits of the oblasti.
OGPU Joint State Political Directorate (Obʼʼedinёnnoe
gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie); the
state’s secret police, successor to the GPU in
1923.
okrug Plural okruga, ‘district’. Low-level territorial–
administrative unit subordinated to the
republics, oblasti and kraia. Almost all okruga
were replaced by raiony in the early 1930s. An
okrug may also refer to a larger unit, e.g. the
North Caucasus Military District (okrug).
OPKB Special Party of Caucasian Brothers (Osobaia
partiia kavkazskikh bratʼev).
Orgburo Organisational Bureau of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union. Founded in 1919, it existed in

xiv
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

parallel with the Politburo and had similar

functions. The institution was dissolved in 1952.
Politburo Political Bureau of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Founded in October 1917, it was to become the
de facto most important decision-making body
during Soviet times.
PP Plenipotentary representative (polnomochnyi
predstavitel’, polpred). In our context, this refers
to the PP of the secret police (OGPU) in the
Caucasus.
pristav Headman of a pristavstvo, an institution existing
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries in non-Russian, Muslim-populated
areas of the Russian imperial borderland.
pud Old Russian measurement unit; 1 pud = 16.38
kilogrammes.
qadi Arabic: qād. ī, ‘judge who applies sharia law’. A
Muslim judge authorised to speak on legal
matters and qualified to issue a judgement
according to the sharia.
Qādiriyya One of the oldest Islamic-mystic Sufi-
brotherhoods. Large following in Chechnia
since the mid-nineteenth century.
raion Plural raiony; from French rayon, ‘district’.
Administrative–territorial unit (district); a
low-level territorial and administrative
subdivision for rural and municipal
administration. During the 1920s, raiony
replaced the uezdy and volosti (existing from
Tsarist times), from the early 1930s the okruga.
RCP (b) Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
(Rossiiskaia kommunisticheskaia partiia
(bol’shevikov)). Name of the Russian
Communist Party until 1925.
revkom Revolutionary committee (revoliutsionyi
komitet); non-elected governments created by
the Bolsheviks during the civil war period,

xv
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

meant for a temporary duration until replaced

by elected soviets.
RGAKFD Russian State Archive of Film- and Photo-
Documents (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv
kinofotodokumentov).
RGANI Russian State Archive of Contemporary History
(Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei
istorii).
RGASPI Russian Archive of Social and Political History
(Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialʼno-
politicheskoi istorii).
RKP (b) See RCP (b).
RSFSR Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
(Rossiiskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia
Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika).
sejm Parliament.
seredniak Plural seredniaki, from srednii, ‘middle’. Middle
peasant; in the Bolshevik classification of the
peasantry, the seredniak constituted the average
wealthy peasant, who before collectivisation
constituted the peasant mass.
sharia Arabic: sharīʿah. Islamic law; series of religious
principles that are part of the Islamic tradition.
sheikh Arabic title of honour for revered men, both
non-religious (chief of a clan or village elder)
and religious leaders. In Sufism, it refers to a
religious authority, i.e. the leader of a Sufi order.
SKVO North Caucasus Military District (Severo-
Kavkazskii voennyi okrug).
South Eastern Bureau Iugovostochnyi biuro; Iugovostbiuro.
Plenipotentiary representation of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party in the
North Caucasus. This institution, seated in
Rostov-on-Don, was separated from the
Kavburo in March 1921 and existed until May
1924. After this, the North Caucasus krai
Committee of the Communist Party (Severo-

xvi
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Kavkazskii kraevoi komitet VKP (b)) took over

its functions.
SSR Soviet Socialist Republic (Sovetskaia
Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika).
SSSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soiuz
Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik);
Soviet Union, created in December 1922.
stanitsa Plural stanitsy. Fortified Cossack settlement.
svodka Plural svodki. Report, digest.
tariqa Arabic: ṭarīqa, ‘path’. Sufi (mystic) spiritual
affiliation with a brotherhood led by a murshid.
A follower of a tariqa is called a murid.
teip Extended family (clan) in Chechen and Ingush
societies.
TOZ Associations for Cooperative Cultivation of the
Land (Tovarishchestvo po sovmestnoi obrabotke
zemli).
TsA FSB Central Archive of the Federal Security Services
of the Russian Federation (Tsentralʼnyi Arkhiv
Federalʼnoi sluzhby bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi
Federatsii).
TsK See CC.
tukhum Political unit of a teip.
tuzemtsy Singular tuzemets, ‘native’. In the North
Caucasus, the term denotes the non-Russian,
non-Cossack indigenous local population.
USSR See SSSR.
VChK See Cheka.
VKP (b) All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
(Vsesoiuznaia kommunisticheskaia partiia
(bolʼshevikov)). Name of the Communist Party
since 1925.
VTsIK All-Russian Central Executive Committee
(Vserossiiskii tsentral’nyi ispolnitel’nyi komitet).
Nominally the highest legislative, administrative
and revising body of the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from
1917 to 1937.

xvii
 GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

waqf Arabic: waqf, ‘endowment’. An endowment

(usually a property in the form of land, buildings
or other assets) made by a Muslim under Islamic
law, to be held in trust and used for a charitable
or religious purpose.
zakat Arabic: zakāt, ‘purity’. Alms tax; an obligatory
payment by a Muslim for a charitable and
religious purpose. The zakat is one of the
principal obligations of Islam.
zikr See dhikr.

xviii
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATING

A particularly problematic area is the correct and consistent spelling in a

region that has been under the influence of various cultures and literary
languages, including Russian, Iranian, Turkic, Armenian, Georgian and
Arabic. Since I work mostly with Russian-language sources, I generally use
Russian transliteration throughout the book. I transliterate non-Russian
terms and names as they appear in the Russian sources. I write Khadzhi (not
H. āğğī) or mukhadzhir (not muhāğir). But I am not always consistent when,
for example, referring to the Sufi orders of the Qādiriyya (not Kadiriia) and
Naqshbandiyya (not Nakshbandiia).
When transliterating from Russian into English, I follow the Library of
Congress system, including diacritics and some of the special characters. This
excludes words that have become established in the English language. I write
Bolsheviks (not bol’sheviki), soviet (not sovet), Moscow (not Mosvka). In
general, I prefer the transliterated spelling of words. I write Groznyi (not
Grozny), Beriia (not Beria) or Chechnia (not Chechnya). In some cases,
however, I have decided to apply the more commonly known versions. For
example, I have opted for Ingushetia (not Ingushetiia) and Ossetia (not
Osetiia). Russian transliterated terms (unless they refer to established terms,
and excluding personal names, names of organisations, geographic locations
or toponyms) are in italics. I generally follow the Library of Congress system
of transliteration in the geographical maps as well, but leave out diacritics and
other special characters.
Dates are given in their chronological order. Events taking place before 1
February 1918 are provided in the Julian calendar (thirteen days behind the
calendar generally used in the Western world); developments after this date
are given in the Gregorian calendar.
xix
 FOREWORD

The North Caucasus is one of the world’s most turbulent and least understood
regions. Nowhere did Russia’s imperial advance meet with fiercer resistance
than in the mountainous parts of this predominantly Muslim-populated
borderland. In 1859, Imam Shamil, who had led the struggle against the
Russian army in Chechnia and Dagestan for some twenty-five years,
surrendered after decades of bloody warfare. Five years later, Russia defeated
the Muslim tribes in the western part of the region, subsequently driving
hundreds of thousands into Ottoman exile. After the end of military conquest,
the North Caucasus saw repeated armed rebellions against tsarist rule, and it
also presented one of the most difficult to control areas for the Bolsheviks in
the early Soviet period. During the Second World War, amid accusations of
collaboration with Nazi Germany, several North Caucasian peoples, including
the entire Chechen and Ingush populations, were declared enemies of the
people and forcibly deported to Central Asia. Only after Stalin’s death were
these exiled nations allowed to return home. After a short period of
tranquillity and economic recovery in late Soviet times, the North Caucasus
again experienced extreme violence in the course of the two Chechen wars of
secession in the 1990s and 2000s, with the whole region eventually being
transformed into a zone of frequent armed conflict and a hotbed for militant
Islamic extremists.
This book is about a region at the fringes of empire, which neither tsarist
Russia, nor the Soviet Union, nor in fact the Russian Federation, ever really
managed to control. It analyses the state’s various strategies to establish its rule
over populations that were highly resilient to change imposed from outside,
and which frequently resorted to arms in order to resist interference with their

xxi
 FOREWORD

religious practices and beliefs, traditional customs and ways of life. This book
goes beyond existing Western scholarship, which typically portrays
developments in the North Caucasus in the context of an epic struggle
between an expanding Russian power and the resistance of an oppressed
people. In contrast, I argue for an approach that seeks to understand the
trajectories in the framework of the specific North Caucasian cultural setting.
Like other peoples in the Soviet Union, the mountaineer societies of the
North Caucasus suffered from state repression and frequent cruelty at the
hands of the security forces. Nevertheless, the creation of ethnically defined
territories and the introduction of new institutions—public schools,
Communist Party organisations and Soviet state structures—combined with
industrialisation and urbanisation, offered new social prospects and career
opportunities. The questions that need to be addressed are thus not only why
people took up arms against certain measures introduced by the state, most
notably the disastrous attempt at collectivisation and dekulakisation in
1929/30, but also the ways in which people perceived the new opportunities
and sought to take advantage of them. Rather than viewing the history of the
North Caucasus only as a matter of subjugation or resistance to Russian
imperial and later Bolshevik rule, what needs to be examined is the changing
nature of state–society arrangements, the degree of stability these
arrangements produced and the question of why arrangements at times broke
down and conflict erupted.
In order to arrive at a new understanding of developments in the North
Caucasus during the period of Russian rule, this analysis includes not only the
perspective of state representatives at local, regional and central levels but also
the views of people living through this period as direct participants and
observers of events. Through the story of Musa Kundukhov, a Muslim
Ossetian general in the Russian Imperial Army, the famous Chechen Sheikh
Ali Mitaev, the memoirs of party functionary and later dissident
Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, or the unpublished diaries of Chechen resistance
fighter Khasan Israilov, we can get a better notion of how members of the
indigenous society viewed Russian rule and what motivated their reactions to
state policies, and thus come to a general understanding of how Russian rule
affected the identities and loyalties of North Caucasian society over time
and space.
While this book covers the whole of the North Caucasus, its focus is
mainly on the eastern part of the region, and mostly on Chechnia, which
constituted, from the state’s perspective, the most troublesome spot. Although

xxii
 Foreword

this book offers a longitudinal view of North Caucasian history from the
times of war and conquest in the nineteenth century up to recent
developments, the emphasis is on the early twentieth century, from the late
tsarist period through the period of revolutions and civil war up to the
deportations of 1943/4. It was during the establishment of Bolshevik rule in
the 1920s and 1930s that these societies came into contact with a modernising
state that sought not only submission and loyalty but unconditional support
and active participation in the new socialist project—demands that many of
these peoples, in Moscow’s judgement, failed to live up to. In this respect, the
Stalinist deportations constituted radical measures of a totalitarian state that
was ultimately unsuccessful in enforcing its claim to power and authority over
this difficult to govern part of the Soviet Union.
Unlike most of the extant scholarship, the account presented in this book
relies on a wide range of unpublished archival material (namely from the
Russian state and party archives located in Moscow), Russian-language
document collections, memoirs, as well as new research in multiple languages.
Most importantly, it connects the larger history with the stories of the peoples
themselves, tracing developments through the accounts of state officials,
religious leaders and resistance fighters. Only if macro-history is combined
with concrete life stories and detailed accounts of key events can history be
interpreted without the prejudice and ideology that has characterised the
work of authors in both the West and Russia.

***
This study is a revised and updated version of my German-language book Der
Nordkaukasus unter russischer Herrschaft: Eine Vielvölkerregion zwischen
Widerstand und Anpassung (The North Caucasus under Russian Rule: A
Multi-National Region between Resistance and Adaption, Cologne, Weimar
and Vienna: Böhlau, 2015). Two chapters of this book draw on previously
published English-language articles. Chapter 6 on Ali Mitaev is based on
‘Uneasy Alliances: Bolshevik Co-Optation Policy and the Case of Chechen
Sheikh Ali Mitaev’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol.
15, no. 4 (2014), pp. 729–65. Chapter 8 on collectivisation is an extended
version of ‘Highland Rebels: The North Caucasus during the Stalinist
Collectivisation Campaign’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 51, no. 2
(2016), pp. 234–60.
I thank Christopher Findlay for translating large sections of my German-
language book into English, Tim Page for his careful editing of the text, and

xxiii
 FOREWORD

Lara Weisweiller-Wu at Hurst Publishers for all her help during the
production process. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their
comments on the original manuscript. Most of all, I thank my wife Franca and
our children Louis and Lorenz for their love, support and encouragement
throughout the writing of this book.

Zurich, November 2017

xxiv
 INTRODUCTION
RUSSIA AND THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH CAUCASUS

On 23 February 1944, Stalin received a telegram from the North Caucasus.

The sender of the confidential message was Lavrentii Beriia, chairman of the
People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD*). In his message, Beriia
states that ‘at daybreak today the operation for the resettlement of the
Chechens and Ingush’ had begun and that ‘everything is proceeding
normally’.1 Behind these words lay the unfolding of one of the greatest human
tragedies on Soviet territory at the end of the Second World War. Between the
autumn of 1943 and the spring of 1944, the Soviet regime, on Stalin’s orders,
loaded more than 600,000 people from the North Caucasus into railway
wagons and deported them to faraway Central Asia. Along with Chechens
and the related Ingush, the members of two smaller North Caucasian
ethnicities, the Balkar and Karachai peoples, were also forced out of their

* The NKVD (Narodnyi kommissariat vnutrennykh del) was established as a ministry

of the USSR in 1934. The secret police, formerly a separate directorate, was incorporated
into the NKVD. While the NKVD functioned as an independent power apparatus that
was formally subordinate to the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovet narodnykh
kommissarov; SNK), nominally the highest executive organ of the USSR, it was in fact
Stalin’s most important instrument of power, which he frequently used to achieve his goals
independently of existing party or state institutions. The denomination ‘NKVD’ was in use
until 1946, when the ministry was again reorganised and renamed as the Ministry of Internal
Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennykh del; MVD).

1
 FROM CONQUEST TO DEPORTATION

mountain valleys and deported. Their republics were dissolved. Tens of

thousands died on the journey and in the first few years of their exile.2
Beriia and his henchmen had already decided on the deportation of the
Chechens and Ingush when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in its decree of 7 March 1944,
cited the following reasons for the dissolution of the Chechen–Ingush
autonomous republic and the resettlement operation: many Chechens and
Ingush had committed treason against their homeland by ‘deserting to the
Fascist occupiers’ following Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union; they
had been placed by the Germans behind the front line of the Red Army as
‘spies and scouts’; and they had formed ‘armed gangs for fighting against
Soviet power at the behest of the Germans’. In addition, it was claimed that
many Chechens and Ingush had joined ‘armed uprisings against Soviet power’,
and instead of practising an ‘honourable activity’, many had been engaged in
‘bandit attacks’ on the kolkhozy, the collective farms, in neighbouring areas
and in the killing and robbing of Soviet citizens.3
The forced displacement of entire populations was not a policy invented by
Stalin. The tsars had repeatedly resorted to resettlement and deportation as a
way of stabilising non-Russian-populated border regions. Following Russia’s
victory over the Cherkess in 1864, for example, almost the entire indigenous
Cherkess (Adyghe) population south of the Kuban, around half a million
individuals, emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. Tens of thousands died on the
voyage across the Black Sea and in the first few months of their Ottoman exile.
However, in terms of their extent and systematic implementation, the crimes
committed by the Soviet regime under Stalin’s rule were unparalleled in
Russian history. During the deportations of 1943/4, Beriia even gave the order
to remove soldiers and officers belonging to the condemned North Caucasian
ethnicities from the ranks of the Red Army; they were arrested and packed off
to Central Asia. The Soviet Union then resolved to dissolve and rename the
home republics of these peoples, transferred parts of their territory to their
neighbours and ordered the destruction of everything that even remotely
recalled the existence of what were now declared to be ‘enemy nations’. Their
memory was to be obliterated forever.
Even though Stalin’s deportations had a genocidal character in terms of the
large number of casualties, they did not constitute an attempt at systematic
annihilation. Stalin and his entourage saw the resettlement of peoples as a
means to create order in what they perceived as one of the most difficult to
control areas in the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership made use of the

2
 INTRODUCTION

special situation created by the war to remove entire populations that had
previously been found to be problematic and whose loyalty was frequently put
to the test due to a long history of uprisings. With the deportation of the
Chechens in particular, as numerically the largest non-Russian ethnicity in the
North Caucasus region at that time (around 400,000 people in all), the
Stalinist leadership was eliminating the same element of the population that
the tsarist administration had already found to be especially unruly and
suspect. To some extent, the deportations under Stalin can be seen as an
expression of the fact that the top Soviet leadership saw their Sovietisation
project in the Muslim-populated parts of the North Caucasus, at least when
it came to the Chechens and some of the other North Caucasian peoples, as
a failure.
This book deals with the reasons for that ‘failure’. It explores the nature of
the state’s rule over the North Caucasus and its peoples, from the time of
Russia’s military conquest in the nineteenth century to Stalin’s deportations
during the Second World War. This book analyses the diverse tensions and
repeated conflicts accompanying the difficult incorporation of the non-
Russian populations into the tsarist and Soviet imperial states. It reconstructs
a past that, despite a spate of publications, generated in particular by a growing
interest in the background to the two Russo-Chechen wars in the 1990s and
2000s, has yet to be systematically analysed.

Identifying problem areas in the historiography on the North Caucasus

So far, the historiography on the North Caucasus has tended to focus mainly
on military and political events, particularly on the armed resistance of the
predominantly Muslim peoples to Russia’s military conquest of and rule over
the region. Few attempts have been made to look into the specific forms of
resistance, as well as modes of adaption, to the state’s policies, or the exact
motivations of the individual protagonists involved. The many and varied
societal changes that took place under Russian and later Bolshevik rule have
yet to attract close scrutiny by historians. The essential nature of the tsarist
imperial and Soviet systems as they took shape on the southern borders of the
multi-ethnic empire has to date remained largely unexplored.
Particularly widespread in the Western literature is a tendency to read
history backwards. In the light of such climactic events as the deportations
during the Second World War or Russia’s two wars against the Chechens
fighting for independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is

3
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