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175-507: The deportation of the Chechens and Ingush ( Chechen : До́хадар, Махках дахар , romanized:  Doxadar, Maxkax daxar , Ingush : Мехках дахар ), or Ardakhar Genocide ( Chechen : Ардахар Махках , romanized:  Ardaxar Maxkax ), and also known as Operation Lentil ( Russian : Чечевица , romanized :  Chechevitsa ; Chechen: нохчий а, гӀалгӀай а махкахбахар , romanized:  noxçiy ə, ġalġay ə maxkaxbaxar ),

350-514: A glottal stop before a " pharyngealized " (actually epiglottalized) vowel. However, it does not have the distribution constraints characteristic of the anterior pharyngealized (epiglottalized) consonants . Although these may be analyzed as an anterior consonant plus / ʢ / (they surface for example as [dʢ] when voiced and [ pʰʜ ] when voiceless ), Nichols argues that given the severe constraints against consonant clusters in Chechen, it

525-774: A "holy conquest day" to celebrate the beginning of the end of Russia's successful invasion of Circassia. The same day is observed annually as the Circassian Day of Mourning , which consists of ceremonies and marches in memory of the victims and, sometimes, protests against the Russian government. Today, the Circassian diaspora is primarily concentrated in Turkey and Jordan , with some 750,000 living in Russia's North Caucasus Economic Region . Surviving Destroyed or barely existing In

700-631: A "re-education of a people is a centuries-long process" and claimed that Russia was at a pivotal moment in its history towards the total assimilation of the Caucasus region into the Russian empire. Fadeyev supported the extermination of half the population, stating that Russians intended to "exterminate half the Circassian people in order to compel the other half to lay down their arms". Sentiments for expulsion existed among prominent Russian politicians such as Prince Kochubei . Kochubei said to Americans visiting

875-574: A Russian commission decided that in order to end Circassian resistance against the Russian Empire, the Circassians would need to be eliminated from their homeland. In February 1810, General Fyodor Bursak's forces entered a Circassian village near the Sop River and proceeded to burn the village. They decided to postpone their plans to attack the next village when the river began to overflow. In December,

1050-664: A belief that Circassians would have to be entirely expelled from regions for the security of Russian rule. Yermolov wrote that "resettlement of intractable mountaineers" to Turkey would be the easiest way to "give freedom" to those who "prefer death to allegiance to the Russian government". The Circassian resettlement plan was eventually agreed upon at a meeting of the Russian Caucasus commanders in October 1860 in Vladikavkaz and officially approved on 10 May 1862 by Tsar Alexander II and

1225-453: A campaign of mass deportation to get rid of the bulk of Circassia's surviving population. By 1867, a large portion of the Circassians had been expelled from their ancestral homeland; many died from epidemics or starvation among the crowds of deportees and were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death, while others were killed when their ships sank during storms. Most sources state that as little as 3% of Circassia's population remained after

1400-403: A consonant; as a consonant, it has an allophone [ v ] before front vowels. Approximately twenty pharyngealized consonants (marked with superscript ˤ ) also appear in the table above. Labial , alveolar and postalveolar consonants may be pharyngealized, except for ejectives . Except when following a consonant, / ʢ / is phonetically [ ʔˤ ] , and can be argued to be

1575-550: A destroyed and no longer existent historical treasury of writings. The Chechen diaspora in Jordan , Turkey , and Syria is fluent but generally not literate in Chechen except for individuals who have made efforts to learn the writing system. The Cyrillic alphabet is not generally known in these countries, and thus for Jordan and Syria, they most use the Arabic alphabet, while in Turkey they use

1750-539: A feature of the vowels. However, Nichols argues that this does not capture the situation in Chechen well, whereas it is more clearly a feature of the vowel in Ingush : Chechen [tsʜaʔ] "one", Ingush [tsaʔˤ] , which she analyzes as /tsˤaʔ/ and /tsaˤʔ/ . Vowels have a delayed murmured onset after pharyngealized voiced consonants and a noisy aspirated onset after pharyngealized voiceless consonants. The high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/ are diphthongized, [əi], [əy], [əu] , whereas

1925-573: A figure of at least 100,000 Chechens who died from starvation and diseases in exile, but does not give a figure for the Ingush casualties. Tom K. Wong, Associate Professor of Political Science, estimates that at least 100,000 Vainakhs died in the first three years in exile, excluding those who perished during the transit and the round-ups. Historian William Flemming released calculations giving a minimum of 132,000 Chechens and Ingush who died between 1944 and 1950. In comparison, their number of births in that period

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2100-435: A flood of refugee movements began as Russian troops advanced in their final campaign. Although the order given by Tsar Alexander II was to deport the Circassians rather than to massacre them, the Russian commanders instead preferred the idea of massacring large portions of the Circassian population. Richmond has noted that "reports abound" of massacres in the final stages of the Caucasus campaign. In 1859, three years before

2275-404: A great final step in creating a modified Arabic script that represents Chechen consonants. However, the Arabic alphabet still was not suitable in representing Chechen vowel sounds. Arabic script itself is an impure abjad , meaning that most but not all vowels are shown with diacritics , which are in most cases left unwritten. The process of transforming Arabic script into a full alphabet for use by

2450-560: A higher number of deportees. A higher percentage of Chechens were killed than any other ethnic group persecuted by population transfer in the Soviet Union . Chechens were under administrative supervision of the NKVD officials during that entire time. The exile lasted for 13 years and the survivors would not return to their native lands until 1957, after the new Soviet authorities under Nikita Khrushchev reversed many of Stalin's policies, including

2625-612: A large number of postpositions to indicate the role of nouns in sentences. Word order is consistently left-branching (like in Japanese or Turkish ), so that adjectives , demonstratives and relative clauses precede the nouns they modify. Complementizers and adverbial subordinators , as in other Northeast and in Northwest Caucasian languages , are affixes rather than independent words. Chechen also presents interesting challenges for lexicography , as creating new words in

2800-605: A letter to Bematiqwa stating that he, as caliph, ordered all Muslim peoples of the Caucasus to officially make war against Russia. The Ottoman Empire lost its protector status with the Crimean Khanate with the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca . Following these events, Russian presence in the region increased, and the Circassians requested help and alliance from the Ottomans. The Russians introduced courts in Kabarda (Eastern Circassia) in

2975-581: A low of 285,000 and the Ingush to 78,800 people in October 1948. However, despite these heavy losses, the Chechens subsequently increased their fertility rates , which is seen by some as a manifestation of their resilience and determination to survive. The Checheno-Ingush ASSR was dissolved and transformed into Grozny Oblast , which included also the Kizlyarsky District and Naursky Raion , and parts of it were given to North Ossetia (part of Prigorodny District ), Georgian SSR and Dagestan ASSR. As

3150-540: A majority (55%) of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, while 300,000 Russians comprised 22% and 163,700 Ingush 12% of the population. Chechens started to gain control by the 1970s. Ultimately, the attempt to make Checheno-Ingushetia more multi-ethnic in order to discourage potential uprisings failed due to the higher birthrate of the Vainakhs. A local report from 1961 indicated that out of 524,000 Vainakhs, 432,000 had resettled to

3325-541: A month inside the homes of the Chechens, who considered them guests. On February 20, 1944, Beria arrived to Grozny to supervise the operation. On February 23, 1944 (on Red Army Day ), the operation began. The NKVD troops went systematically from house to house to collect individuals. The inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker US6 trucks , before being packed into unheated and uninsulated freight cars . The people were given only 15 to 30 minutes to pack for

3500-557: A national parliament in Sochi, but Russian General Kolyobakin quickly overran Sochi and destroyed it, while there was no action to stop this by any major power's government. Russian geographer Mikhail Ivanovich Venyukov , who was co-operating with Russian military at that time for cartographic purposes; was shocked by Yevdokimov's plans for exterminating the Circassians and other natives. In his memoirs, Venyukov reported that Count Yevdokimov pursued all means to sabotage communications between

3675-474: A neighborhood: The savages panicked and started fleeing from their homes, leaving their weapons behind attempting to escape to the forest but most of them were killed by the Cossacks ;... with the soldiers lined up ready to fight, the cleansing continued with artillery shells, and I sent there two infantry brigades, but they could only capture 11 more people, and since the fire was in flames in many places,

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3850-559: A non-Arabic language has been a common occurrence, and has been done in Uyghur , Kazakh , Kurdish and several more Arabic-derived scripts. Thus a final revision on Chechen Arabic script occurred, in which vowel sounds were standardized. Table below lists the 41 letters of the final iteration of Chechen Arabic Alphabet, as published by Chechen Authorities at the time, prior to 1925, their IPA values, and their Cyrillic equivalents. The single letters and digraphs that count as separate letters of

4025-480: A permanent exile in those distant regions. This decree was not only mandatory for Chechens and Ingush, but also for Crimean Tatars , Germans , Balkars and Kalmyks. The settlers were not allowed to travel beyond three kilometers of their new place of residence. The authorities also prohibited any public mention or documentation of the deportations and its murders. A great number of historical Vainakh were manuscripts were burned or carried off by Russians. The settlers were

4200-519: A permanent scar in the memory of the Chechens and Ingush is today regarded by some historians as "one of the most significant ethnic traumas of the Soviet period". Some descendants of the peoples of the North Caucasus are even today in fear of a new deportation. One historian named it "the central defining event in modern Chechen and Ingush history". It also played a role in the Chechen and Ingush mistrust at

4375-558: A permanent scar in the memory of the survivors and their descendants. February 23 is today remembered as a day of tragedy by most Ingushs and Chechens. Many in Chechnya and Ingushetia classify it as an act of genocide , as did the European Parliament in 2004. The Chechens and the Ingush speak languages that are closely related and have a degree of passive intelligibility, both being Vainakh languages . The Chechen-Russian conflict

4550-626: A rate of almost 350 freight cars per day. Some 40% to 50% of the deportees were children. The Chechens were the second most numerous repressed peoples in the USSR, after the Volga Germans . Tens of thousands of Kalmyks , Balkars , Meskhetian Turks and Karachays were also deported from the region. Only Chechen and Ingush women married to non-punished peoples were spared from the deportation. However, Russian women married to Chechen or Ingush men were subject to deportation unless they divorced. Their livestock

4725-553: A result of long-distance assimilation between vowel sounds. Additionally, the Himoy dialect preserves word-final, post-tonic vowels as a schwa [ə]. Literary Chechen is based on Plains Chechen, spoken around Grozny and Urus-Martan . According to the Russian Census of 2020 , 1,490,000 people reported being able to speak Chechen in Russia. Chechen is an official language of Chechnya . Chechens in Jordan have good relations with

4900-436: A result, Georgian SSR "grew" from 69,300 to 76,400, North Ossetiya from 6,200 to 9,200 and Dagestan from 35,000 to 38,200 square kilometers . Names of repressed nations were totally erased from all books and encyclopedias. By the next summer, a number of Chechen and Ingush placenames were replaced with Russian ones; mosques were destroyed, and a massive campaign of burning numerous historical Nakh languages books and manuscripts

5075-416: A small percentage of Circassians, namely those who accepted Russification and made agreements with Russian troops, were completely spared. Starvation was used as a tool of war against Circassian villages, many of which were subsequently burned down. Russian writer Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers would frequently attack village houses at night. British diplomat William Palgrave , who witnessed

5250-424: A special settler was supposed to be inherited by the children of the exiles. The exiles were assigned with the heaviest tasks, such as constructing sites, mines and factories in the most inhospitable places. The only compensation they received for their work was food coupons. They would be punished if they would not do any work assigned to them. Local authorities would act harshly towards them: sometimes they would beat

5425-454: A specific prefix with which the verb or an accompanying adjective agrees. The verb does not agree with person or number, having only tense forms and participles. Among these are an optative and an antipassive . Some verbs, however, do not take these prefixes. Chechen is an ergative , dependent-marking language using eight cases ( absolutive , genitive , dative , ergative , allative , instrumental , locative and comparative ) and

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5600-433: A standard action by the Russian army and Cossack units. Nevertheless, the Circassian resistance continued. Villages that had previously accepted Russian rule were found resisting again, much to the ire of Russian commanders. In September 1820, Russian forces began to forcibly resettle inhabitants of Eastern Circassia. Military forces were sent into Kabardia, killing cattle and causing large numbers of inhabitants to flee into

5775-432: A study of casualty figures for all ethnic groups that were singled out for "punishment" by Stalin, found that deaths due to the deportations included 125,500 of the Chechen deportees and 20,300 of the Ingush deportees, or 30.8% of the Chechens and 21.3% of the Ingush. Meanwhile, the short-term demographic losses are estimated at 51.1% for the Chechens and 47.9% for the Ingush. He estimates that the Chechen population dropped to

5950-559: A tribal federation encompassing all tribes of the area. In May 1818, the village of Tram was surrounded, burnt, and its inhabitants killed by Russian forces under the command of General Ivan Petrovich Delpotso, who took orders from Yermolov and who then wrote to the Circassian forces: This time, I am limiting myself on this. In the future, I will have no mercy for the guilty brigands; their villages will be destroyed, properties taken, wives and children will be slaughtered. The complete destruction of villages with everything within them became

6125-429: A village, a Russian soldier named Midvideiv killed a Circassian who tried to stop him from burning down a mosque. The Russians countered the heavy Circassian resistance by modifying the terrain. They laid down a network of roads and cleared the forests around these roads, destroyed native villages, and often settled new farming communities of Russians or other Orthodox Slavic people. In this increasingly bloody situation,

6300-490: A vowel use when needed to avoid confusions. This modification did not persist in Chechen Alphabet. otherwise, the 1910 iteration of the Arabic script continued being used until 1920. In 1920, two Chechen literaturists, A. Tugaev and T. Eldarkhanov, published a document. In this document they proposed new modifications, which were the addition of two new consonants: These modifications by A. Tugaev and T. Eldarkhanov were

6475-492: Is followed by a front vowel. The trill / r / is usually articulated with a single contact, and therefore sometimes described as a tap [ ɾ ] . Except in the literary register , and even then only for some speakers, the voiced affricates / dz / , / dʒ / have merged into the fricatives / z / , / ʒ / . A voiceless labial fricative / f / is found only in European loanwords . / w / appears both in diphthongs and as

6650-459: Is found in handwriting. Usually, palochka uppercase and lowercase forms consistent in print or upright, but only upper-case ⟨Ӏ⟩ is normally used in computers. In 1992, with the de facto secession of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from Russia, a new Latin Chechen alphabet was introduced and used in parallel with the Cyrillic alphabet. This was the second time a Latin-based orthography

6825-421: Is found. Furthermore, all variants except the ejective are subject to phonemic pharyngealization. Nearly any consonant may be fortis because of focus gemination, but only the ones above are found in roots . The consonants of the t cell and / l / are denti-alveolar ; the others of that column are alveolar . / x / is a back velar , but not quite uvular . The lateral / l / may be velarized , unless it

7000-550: Is justly considered as a model of a multinational state because we have in practice assured the equality and friendship of all nations who live in our great fatherland. All the more monstrous are the acts whose initiator was Stalin and which are crude violations of basic Leninist principles of the nationality policy of the Soviet State. We refer to the mass deportations from their native places of whole nations, together with Communists and Komsomols without exception. On 16 July 1956

7175-416: Is more useful to analyze them as single consonants. Unlike most other languages of the Caucasus, Chechen has an extensive inventory of vowel sounds, putting its range higher than most languages of Europe (most vowels being the product of environmentally conditioned allophonic variation, which varies by both dialect and method of analysis). Many of the vowels are due to umlaut , which is highly productive in

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7350-500: Is one of the longest and most protracted conflicts in modern history, spanning three centuries. Its origins date back to 1785, when the Chechens fought against Russian expansionism into the Caucasus . The Caucasus War was fought between 1817 and 1864. The Russian Empire succeeded in annexing the area and subjugating its people, but also killed or deported numerous non-Russian peoples and

7525-574: Is the Cyrillic alphabet. This script was created and adopted in 1938, replacing the Latin script prior to it. Up until 1992, only the Cyrillic script was used for Chechen. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the de facto secession of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from Russia, a new Latin script was devised and was used parallel to Cyrillic until the dissolution of the separatist state . Modern alphabet: Lower-case palochka , ⟨ӏ⟩ ,

7700-522: The Arabic script was introduced for Chechen, along with Islam . The Chechen Arabic alphabet was first reformed during the reign of Imam Shamil , and then again in 1910, 1920 and 1922. At the same time, the alphabet devised by Peter von Uslar , consisting of Cyrillic, Latin, and Georgian letters, was used for academic purposes. In 1911 it too was reformed but never gained popularity among the Chechens themselves. The current official script for Chechen language

7875-599: The Checheno-Ingush ASSR were to be deported by freight trains to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The operation was called "Chechevitsa" (Operation Lentil), its first two syllables pointing at its intended targets. The operation is referred to by Chechens often as "Aardakh" (the Exodus). This operation was being prepared and planned since at least October 1943, and included Beria's two most trusted NKVD officers, Ivan Serov and Bogdan Kobulov . Beria complained to Stalin about

8050-621: The Circassians ' land, but had absolutely no need of them." Genocides and mass expulsions of Caucasian natives and Crimean Tatars were perpetrated by the Russian empire during the latter half of 19th century as it expanded southwards and launched extermination campaigns against Circassians , Chechens , Crimean Tatars , and others. Pogroms against Jews also intensified across the Russian empire during this period. These extermination campaigns were part of Tsarist Russia's " brosok na yug " ("throw to

8225-601: The Earl of Clarendon , defended the Circassians' rights, but was thwarted. The final treaty also extended amnesty to nationals that had fought for enemy powers, but since Circassia had never previously been under Russian control, Circassians were exempt, and thus Circassians were now placed under de jure Russian sovereignty by the treaty, with Russia under no compulsion to grant Circassians the same rights as Russian citizens elsewhere, effectively making them Russian property with which Russia could do whatever it wanted. "The state needed

8400-548: The Kremlin and a partial motivation for the subsequent declaration of independence in 1991 and the First and Second Chechen War in the 1990s and 2000s. For instance, insurgent Shamil Basayev referred to his 40 relatives who died during the deportation while Aslan Maskhadov , the President of Ichkeria , stated that February 23 remains "one of the most tragic dates for his people" and that

8575-554: The North Caucasus , about 650,000 people (according to Dalkhat Ediev, 724,297) were deported in 1943 and 1944 by the Soviet forces. 478,479 people were forcibly resettled in the Aardakh: 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush. They were loaded onto 180 special trains, about 40 to 45 persons into each freight car . A combined total of 14,200 freight cars and 1,000 flat cars were used for this mass forcible transfer from February 23 to March 13,

8750-522: The Ostministerium a sharp warning that "if the liberation of the Caucasus meant only the exchange of one colonizer for another, the Caucasians would consider this... only a new stage in the national liberation war". In October 1942, Chechens assisted other volunteers to help erect a defensive barrier around Grozny. Between December 1942 and March 1943, Chechens and Ingush contributed 12 million roubles to

8925-500: The Salishan languages of North America, as well as a large vowel system resembling those of Swedish and German . The Chechen language has, like most indigenous languages of the Caucasus , a large number of consonants : about 40 to 60 (depending on the dialect and the analysis), far more than most European languages . Typical of the region, a four-way distinction between voiced , voiceless , ejective and geminate fortis stops

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9100-592: The Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s. The deportation was prepared from at least October 1943 and 19,000 officers as well as 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR participated in this operation. The deportation encompassed their entire nations, as well as the liquidation of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic . The demographic consequences of this eviction were catastrophic and far-reaching: of

9275-535: The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Brian Glyn Williams , scholars Michael Fredholm and Fanny E. Bryan. Raphael Lemkin , a lawyer of Polish - Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and Karachay. German investigative journalist Lutz Kleveman compared

9450-494: The diphthongs /je/, /wo/ undergo metathesis , [ej], [ow] . Chechen permits syllable-initial clusters /st px tx/ and non-initially also allows /x r l/ plus any consonant, and any obstruent plus a uvular of the same manner of articulation . The only cluster of three consonants permitted is /rst/ . Numerous inscriptions in the Georgian script are found in mountainous Chechnya, but they are not necessarily in Chechen. Later,

9625-462: The "low level of labour discipline" among Chechens, the "prevalence of banditry and terrorism", the "failure of Chechens to join the communist party" and the "confession of a German agent that he found a lot of support among the local Ingush". Beria then ordered to implement the operation. When Supian Kagirovich Mollaev, the leader of the local government in the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, heard about

9800-779: The 'Chechen problem'. During this time, Stalin constantly changed their territory, until the Chechen and Ingush Autonomous Oblasts were merged into a single Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936. In 1940, another Chechen insurgency , led by Khasan Israilov , started in Galanchozh. It was partly inspired by the resistance of Finns against the invading Soviets in the Winter War in 1939. In February 1942, Mairbek Sheripov 's group rebelled in Shatoysky and Itum-Kalinsky Districts. They united with Israilov's army to rebel against

9975-464: The 496,000 Chechens and Ingush who were deported, at least a quarter died. In total, the archive records show that over a hundred thousand people died or were killed during the round-ups and transportation, and during their early years in exile in the Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSR as well as Russian SFSR where they were sent to the many forced settlements . Chechen sources claim that 400,000 died, while presuming

10150-528: The 5th and 6th centuries, were generally allied with Georgians. From the 16th century it entered into alliance with Georgia: Georgians and Circassians regarded themselves as constituting a single Christian island in the Black Sea and jointly appealed to Russia for protection. Although there had previously been a small Muslim presence in Circassia, significant conversions came after 1717, when Sultan Murad IV ordered

10325-399: The Arabic script was well established among the speakers of Chechen. However, the Arabic alphabet, without modifications, would not be suitable for Chechen, and modifications would be needed. The Arabic alphabet underwent various iterations, improvements and modifications for the Chechen language. Within Chechen society, these modifications were not without controversy. The Muslim clergy and

10500-492: The Caucasus already in 1954, but were sent back by the authorities. During 1956 alone, between 25,000 and 30,000 Chechens and Ingush returned to their homeland, some even carrying the bodies of their relatives. The Soviet government tried to give them autonomy inside Uzbekistan or to resettle them in other parts of the Caucasus, but the returnees were adamant to return to their native lands. Over 50,000 families returned in 1957. By 1959, Chechens and Ingush already comprised 41% of

10675-490: The Caucasus region. In 1857, Dmitry Milyutin published the idea of mass expulsions of Circassian natives. Milyutin argued that the goal was not to simply move them so that their land could be settled by productive farmers, but rather that "eliminating the Circassians was to be an end in itself – to cleanse the land of hostile elements". Tsar Alexander II endorsed the plans to exterminate Circassians , and in June 1861 ordered

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10850-543: The Caucasus, often deceived the central administration and obscured the attempts of Circassian groups to establish peace with Russia. In 1833, Colonel Grigory Zass was appointed commander of a part of the Kuban Military Line with headquarters in the Batalpashinsk fortress. Colonel Zass received wide authority to act as he saw fit. He was a racist who considered Circassians to be inferior. The only way to deal with

11025-610: The Chechen Republic. The dialects of the northern lowlands are often referred to as " Oharoy muott " (literally "lowlander's language") and the dialect of the southern mountain tribes is known as " Laamaroy muott " (lit. "mountainer's language"). Oharoy muott forms the basis for much of the standard and literary Chechen language, which can largely be traced to the regional dialects of Urus-Martan and contemporary Grozny . Laamaroy dialects include Chebarloish, Sharoish, Itum-Qalish, Kisti, and Himoish. Until recently, however, Himoy

11200-525: The Chechen and Ingush were discharged from the Red Army and sent to Central Asia as well. With these supplementary exiles, the number of the deported Chechens and Ingush grew to a total of 493,269. In July 1944, Beria reported an even higher figure to Stalin, claiming that a total of 496,460 Chechen and Ingush were deported. This ethnic cleansing operation was marked by an utter "culture of impunity". Many perpetrators of Operation Lentil were, in fact, even awarded

11375-463: The Chechen-Ingush ASSR, 28,000 to Dagestan and 8,000 to North Ossetia. However, ethnic clashes continued even in the 1960s: in 1965 alone, 16 such clashes were recorded, resulting in 185 injuries and 19 fatalities. Chechens were greatly disadvantaged after being allowed to return. There were no Chechen-language schools, leading to a lack of education of the populace (which did not universally understand Russian ). According to sociologist Georgi Derluguyan,

11550-538: The Chechen-Ingush ASSR. 58.2% of Chechens and 45.3% of Ingushetians returned to their native lands by that year. By 1970, this peaked with 83.0% of all Chechens and 72.1% of all Ingush being registered in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. However, this distribution fell to 76.8% and 69.0%, respectively, by 1989. In comparison, 91.9% of all Chechens and 91.9% of all Ingush were concentrated in their titular republic in 1926. However, some Chechens stayed in Kyrgyzstan : some were afraid of

11725-543: The Checheno-Ingush Republic's economy was divided into two spheres, in which the Russian sphere had all the jobs with higher salaries in the urban areas: no Chechen cadre was promoted to a top position until 1989. In the 1960s, in order to finance their families, some forty thousand men temporarily migrated from Chechen-Ingushetia each year to find part-time jobs in Kazakhstan and Siberia, thanks to their contacts from

11900-417: The Chechens during the deportations reached 200,000, however this includes indirect losses of population growth instead of the aggregate of deaths. Professor Jonathan Otto Pohl estimates the combined number of deaths among Chechen and Ingush exiles during transit and confinement in special settlements by 1949 at 123,000. Out of these deaths, Chechens comprised 100,000 and Ingush 23,000. Thomas McDonell also gives

12075-700: The Chechens' ties with the Germans, some pointing out that the Nazis stopped at the northwest outskirts of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, near Mozdok , in Northern Ossetia, and that a majority of the Vainakh never even came into contact with the German army. While there were secret negotiations with the Germans near this border, the Chechen rebels pointed out that they did not favor a rule from Berlin nor from Moscow. Sheripov reportedly gave

12250-474: The Circassian villages of Jambut, Aslan, Morza, and Tsab Dadhika and completely destroyed them, along with the inhabitants, despite the villages being at peace with the Russian Empire. In 1828, General Emanuel destroyed 6 Natukhaj Circassian villages and many more Shapsug Circassian villages. He then passed the Kuban and burned 210 more villages. The Treaty of Adrianople was signed on 14 September 1829. According to

12425-475: The Circassians as " subhuman filth " and a " lowly race " to justify and glorify their wholesale slaughter and their use as human test subjects in unethical scientific experiments . Russian soldiers were also permitted to rape Circassian women . Circassia was largely emptied of the native Circassian population during the genocide, and those who were not killed were expelled to the Ottoman Empire . Only

12600-471: The Circassians as "untrustworthy swine" to "show how insignificant they are compared to Russia". In 1805, a plague struck Kabardia. Using this as an excuse, General Glazenap ordered his forces to burn down 80 villages to terrorize the people into submission and to wreak vengeance upon the Kabardians. A village burning campaign started, in which the Circassian population were burnt without separation. First,

12775-458: The Circassians, in his opinion, was to scare them away "just like wild animals". Zass advocated ruthless military methods predicated on this notion, including burning people alive, cutting off heads with show, burning populated villages to the ground, spreading epidemics on purpose, and mass rape of children. He kept a box under his bed with his collection of severed Circassian body parts. He operated in all areas of Circassia. Zass' main strategy

12950-523: The Circassians, who are predominantly Muslims , but other Muslim Caucasian peoples were also affected, as part of the Caucasian War . Notable killing methods used by the Imperial Russian Army in Circassia included impalement and tearing open the bellies of pregnant women in order to intimidate the Circassians and devastate their morale. Many Russian generals, such as Grigory Zass , described

13125-808: The Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948. On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, under its chairman Boris Yeltsin , passed the law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation and genocide ." Experts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cited

13300-574: The Crimeans to spread Islam among the Circassians, with the Ottomans seeing success in converting members of the aristocracy who would then ultimately spread the religion to their dependents; Islam gained much more ground later as conversion came to be used to cement defensive alliances to protect their independence against Russian expansion. During the reign of Catherine II , the Russian army started entering Circassian soil and erecting forts, in an attempt at quick annexation. In 1763, Russian forces occupied

13475-681: The European Parliament on the basis of the IV Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of the U.N. General Assembly (adopted in 1948), including French historian and expert on communist studies Nicolas Werth , German historian Philipp Ther, Professor Anthony James Joes, American journalist Eric Margolis , Canadian political scientist Adam Jones , professor of Islamic History at

13650-652: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and are able to practice their own culture and language. Chechen language usage is strong among the Chechen community in Jordan. Jordanian Chechens are bilingual in both Chechen and Arabic, but do not speak Arabic among themselves, only speaking Chechen to other Chechens. Some Jordanians are literate in Chechen as well, having managed to read and write to people visiting Jordan from Chechnya. Some phonological characteristics of Chechen include its wealth of consonants and sounds similar to Arabic and

13825-852: The Kazakh SSR would drop anywhere from −50 °C (−58 °F) during winter and then hit up to 50 °C (122 °F) during summer. They travelled in wagons that were locked from the outside, without light or water, during winter. Trains would stop and open the wagons only occasionally to bury the dead in the snow. The local people at the train stations were forbidden to help the sick passengers or to give them any medicine or water. Some Russian sources claim that 1,272 people died during this transit. In 1948, there were 118,250 special settlers in Kazakh SSR "in extreme need in regard for food" and authorities reported thousands of children dying from undernourishment . Food rations were fixed at only 116 grams of flour and 56 grams of grain per day for each person, which

14000-529: The Latin alphabet. Chechen is the most-spoken Northeast Caucasian language . Together with the closely related Ingush , with which there exists a large degree of mutual intelligibility and shared vocabulary, it forms the Vainakh branch . There are a number of Chechen dialects: Aukh , Chebarloish, Malkhish, Nokhchmakhkakhoish, Orstkhoish, Sharoish, Shuotoish, Terloish, Itum-Qalish and Himoish. Dialects of Chechen can be classified by their geographic position within

14175-640: The NKVD to browse the entire USSR in search for any remaining members of that nation, "not leaving a single one". As a result, an additional 4,146 Chechens and Ingush were found in Dagestan , Azerbaijan , Georgia , Krasnodar Krai , Rostov and Astrakhan Oblast . In April 1945, Beria was informed that 2,741 Chechens were deported from the Georgian SSR, 21 from the Azerbaijan SSR and 121 from Krasnodar Krai. In Moscow , only two Chechens managed to avoid eviction. All

14350-507: The Natukhaj tribe in favor of populating their land on the northern coast of the Black Sea with Cossacks. In late 1831, in retaliation for Circassian attacks against Cossack military bases, Russian General Frolov and his task force destroyed several villages. Beginning the night of November 20, a "horror campaign" was started, in which villages were surrounded by artillery and bombarded. The targets were local homes, as well as mosques. The operation

14525-504: The Northern Caucasus took the locals by surprise: the Soviet government thus decided to temporarily halt the influx of returnees in the summer of 1957. Many Chechens and Ingush sold their homes and belongings, and quit their jobs to be able to return. A renewed ethnic conflict between Chechens and Russians was also on the rise. The Russians, angered by issues over land ownership and job competition, rioted as early as 1958 . The 1958 riot

14700-514: The Ottoman Empire by the Russian Empire. In spite of this, the Chechens intermittently demanded a restoration of their independence and rebelled again against the Russian Empire in 1878. During the early era of the Soviet rule , throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Chechens rejected the collectivization and Sovietization policies of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin . This social resistance was nicknamed

14875-582: The Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted a decree lifting the restrictions of the legal status of Chechens, Ingush and Karachais in the special settlements. In January 1957, the Soviet Council of Ministers passed a decree allowing repressed nations to freely travel in the Soviet Union. The Chechens and Ingush were thereby rehabilitated. Their exile lasted 13 years. Some started slowly returning to

15050-564: The Psedakh and Prigorodny District , Georgian SSR kept the Darial Gorge , amounting to 1/6 of lost land for Ingushetia, while the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was "compensated" with the Itum-Kalinsky and Prigorodny Districts from the Georgian SSR. This was done to dissipate the demographic impact of the 419,000 Vainakh returnees on Russians who moved there. By 1989, the 750,000 Chechens already comprised

15225-514: The Russian Empire's forces were commanded by officers who commanded political dissidents and criminals. In 1834, Zass sent a report to Rosen detailing his campaign into Circassia. He talks about how he killed three Circassian civilians on their way to fetch grass: I captured three Circassians from carriages that were on their way to fetch grass, other than the thirteen we already had, who did not wish to surrender to us voluntarily, so I ordered to kill them. He then talks about how he destroyed

15400-417: The Russian army would enter and loot a Circassian village, then they would kill those who resist or complain, and finally, they would set fire to the village and make sure all inhabitants were killed. In 1810 about 200 villages were burned. Between 1805 and 1807, General Bulgakov's army alone burned more than 280 villages. The population of Kabarda, which was 350,000 in 1763, was only 37,000 in 1817. In 1808,

15575-514: The Soviet Union were moved to the empty homes, including Russians, Ukrainians, Avars and Ossetians . As a consequence of this, the Russians comprised 49% of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR by 1959. By one report dated April 8, 1957, there were 415,000 Chechen and Ingush living in the Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSR, or 90,000 families. 38,500 were employed in the industry, 91,500 in agriculture, 25,000 in offices. In 1953,

15750-583: The Soviet defensive war. 17,413 Chechens joined the Red Army and were awarded 44 decorations while a further 13,363 joined the Chechen-Ingush ASSR People's Militia , ready to defend the area from an invasion. By contrast, Babak Rezvani points out that only about a 100 Chechens collaborated with the Axis powers . On orders from Lavrentiy Beria , the head of the NKVD , the entire Chechen and Ingush population of

15925-631: The Soviet system. The Soviet Air Force bombarded the Chechen-Ingush republic in the spring of 1942 to suppress the rebellion. During World War II , the Soviet government accused Chechens and Ingush of cooperating with the Nazi German invaders. The Nazis wanted to reach the Azerbaijan SSR , whose oil reserves around Baku were the goal of Case Blue (Fall Blau). On 25 August 1942, a group of German paratroopers, led by saboteur Osman Gube, landed near

16100-469: The Soviets for the construction of pedestrian footpasses and foundations of pig pens), many of which had lost their original inscriptions, and to construct out of them a memorial in the center of Grozny. The memorial was made to symbolize both Chechen remorse for the past as well as the desire to, in the name of the dead ancestors, fashion the best possible Chechen Republic out of their land and work hard towards

16275-465: The Suvorov First Class prize for arresting and capturing Chechens and Ingush. As with eight other "punished peoples" of the Soviet Union, the Chechens were put into the regime of special settlements . There was no barb wire around their compound, but any Chechen aged 16 or over had to report to the local NKVD officials each month. Those who tried to escape were sent to the gulag . This status of

16450-512: The Yaryksu-Auch village built a monument to the victims of Stalinism. The deportation of the Ingush, as well as the struggle of contemporary Ingush rebels, features in the 1995 novel Our Game by John le Carré . There is a description by one of the protagonists about the deportation, specifically to the Kazakh steppes. On 23 February 1997, the 9 towers memorial was unveiled in Nazran , devoted to

16625-489: The alphabet, along with their correspondences, are as follows. Those in parentheses are optional or only found in Russian words: In addition, several sequences of letters for long vowels and consonants, while not counted as separate letters in their own right, are presented here to clarify their correspondences: Chechen is an agglutinative language with an ergative–absolutive morphosyntactic alignment . Chechen nouns belong to one of several genders or classes (6), each with

16800-458: The approval of the plan by the Russian government, Russian officials began talks with the Ottomans about the migration of a limited number of emigrants, and in 1860 the two sides negotiated a treaty for the migration of 40,000–50,000 Circassians, with the Ottoman side being eager for an increase in population. However, Russia did not aim to limit the number of exiles to 50,000, as the plan was to exile

16975-481: The beards. Russian soldiers and Cossacks were paid for sending Circassian heads to General Zass. Besides cutting Circassian heads off and collecting them, Zass employed a deliberate strategy of annihilating Circassians en masse , burning entire Circassian villages with the people in them and encouraging violation of Circassian women and children. Zass is depicted as the Devil or Satan in Circassian folklore. In 1842, Zass

17150-451: The bench where a child was hiding. The mother screamed and hurled herself at the soldier. He shot her too. There was not enough rolling stock. Those left behind were shot. The bodies were covered with earth and sand, carelessly. The shooting had also been careless, and people started wriggling out of the sand like worms. The NKVD men spent the whole night shooting them all over again. Those who resisted, protested or walked too slow were shot on

17325-470: The champion of Eastern Orthodoxy against non-Christian inhabitants in its territories. Russian Tsars viewed the Circassian tribes in the Caucasus as "primitive" humans to either be forcibly converted to Christianity or exterminated and expelled. Imperial army generals further regarded Circassia as a strategic territory to advance Russian expansionism in the Caucasus and surrounding lands. Circassians, Christianised through Byzantine influence between

17500-631: The children of the Chechens to death. At Krasnoyarsk about 4,000 Chechens were assigned to forced labor camps . This, combined with malnutrition due to the negligence of the authorities to provide enough food for the newly arrived exiles, led to high death rates. The settlers were not provided with adequate accommodation: on September 1, 1944, only 5,000 out of the 31,000 families in Kirgiz SSR were provided with housing. One district prepared only 18 apartments for 900 families. Some exiles had to live in unheated tents. The Chechen children had to attend school in

17675-409: The conquered region. As of 2023 , Georgia is the only country that has formally recognized the Circassian genocide. The Russian Federation classifies the events in Circassia as a mass migration ( Russian : Черкесское мухаджирство , lit.   ' Circassian migrationism ' ) and denies that a genocide took place . Some Russian nationalists in the Caucasus mark 21 May 1864 ( O.S. ) as

17850-542: The decision, he burst into tears, but soon pulled himself together and decided to follow orders. The Chechen-Ingush Republic was never fully occupied by the Nazi army, but the repressions were officially justified by "an armed resistance to Soviet power". The charges of the Vainakh collaboration with the Nazis were never subsequently proven in any Soviet court. During World War II, 3,332,589 individuals were encompassed by Stalin's policies of deportations and forced settlements. Some of

18025-520: The deportation to a "slow genocide". In this case this was acknowledged by the European Parliament as an act of genocide in 2004: ...Believes that the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on the orders of Stalin constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of

18200-509: The deportation. The Chechen-Russian film Ordered to Forget by Hussein Erkenov was released in 2014 and depicts the 1944 Khaibakh massacre of the Chechens. Chechen language Before the Russian conquest , most writings in Chechnya consisted of Islamic texts and clan histories, written usually in Arabic but sometimes also in Chechen using Arabic script. The Chechen literary language

18375-418: The deportations of nations. A local report indicated that some 432,000 Vainakhs had resettled to the Chechen-Ingush ASSR by 1961, though they faced many obstacles while trying to settle back to the Caucasus, including unemployment, lack of accommodation and ethnic clashes with the local Russian population. Eventually, the Chechens and Ingush recovered and regained the majority of the population. This eviction left

18550-407: The dialect. /æ/, /æː/ and /e/, /eː/ are in complementary distribution ( /æ/ occurs after pharyngealized consonants, whereas /e/ does not and /æː/ —identical with /æ/ for most speakers—occurs in closed syllables, while /eː/ does not) but speakers strongly feel that they are distinct sounds. Pharyngealization appears to be a feature of the consonants, though some analyses treat it as

18725-410: The document, Circassia was given by the Ottoman Empire to Russia. The Circassians considered it invalid, arguing that because their territory had been independent of the Ottomans, Istanbul had no right to cede it. Circassian ambassadors were sent to England, France and Ottoman lands announcing that they denied the treaty under all conditions. In 1831, the Russian government considered the destruction of

18900-556: The early 1790s and declared that the Adyghe Xabze , the Circassian law, had been removed, greatly angering Circassians. In 1799, Russian general Fyodor Bursak organized several raids against the Western Circassians, and ordered his men to burn Circassian villages, including those loyal to the Russian Empire. From 1802 to 1806, General Pavel Tsitsianov led campaigns in Circassia and targeted Circassian villages. He referred to

19075-500: The entire Circassian population. With a gathering sense of emergency, on 25 June 1861, leaders of all the Circassian tribes gathered in Sochi to jointly petition the Western powers for help. Ottoman and British delegations both promised recognition of an independent Circassia, as well as recognition from Paris, if they unified into a coherent state, and in response the Circassian tribes formed

19250-403: The epidemics included typhus . One witness, who was seven years old at the time of her family's deportation, recalls that the wagons were so full of people that there was no space to move inside them. The exiles were given food only sporadically during the transit and did not know where they were being taken to. The wagons did not even stop for bathroom breaks: the passengers had to make holes in

19425-574: The events of 1944 for a reason of placing Chechnya on their genocide watch list for its potential for genocide. The separatist government of Chechnya also recognized it as genocide. Members of the Chechen diaspora and their supporters promote 23 February as World Chechnya Day to commemorate the victims. The Chechens and Ingush, along with the Karachai and Balkars, are represented in the Confederation of Repressed Peoples (CRP), an organization that covers

19600-410: The first day of the operation. Each family was allowed to carry up to 500 kg of personal belongings on the trip. The people were transported in cattle trains that were not appropriate for human transfer, lacking electricity, heating or running water . The exiles inside endured epidemics , which lead to deaths from infections or hunger. The transit to Central Asia lasted for almost a month. Some of

19775-501: The first four years of winter cold in Central Asia. Estimates for the maximum deaths and demographic losses of the Chechen and Ingush range from about 170,000 to 200,000, thus ranging from a quarter of the total Chechen population to nearly a third being killed in those years. Chechen historians claim 400,000 perished in deportation and exile; using a presumably higher estimate for the number of deportees. The demographer Dalkhat Ediev, in

19950-419: The flesh off the heads after storing them under his bed in his tent. He also had Circassian heads outside of his tent impaled on lances on a hill. Circassian men's corpses were decapitated by Russian-Cossack women on the battlefield after the battles were over for the heads to be sent to Zass for collection. Zass erected Circassian heads on poles outside of his tent, and witnesses reported seeing wind blowing

20125-619: The floor to relieve themselves. The special trains traveled almost 2,000 miles and discharged the peoples into desolate areas of Central Asia , devoid of shelters or food. 239,768 Chechens and 78,479 Ingush were sent to the Kazakh SSR , whereas 70,089 Chechens and 2,278 Ingush arrived in Kirgiz SSR . Smaller number of the remaining deportees were sent to Uzbek SSR , Russian SFSR and Tajik SSR . We had no water and no food. The weak were suffering from hunger, and those who were stronger would get off

20300-454: The former Soviet Union and aims to support and rehabilitate the rights of the deported peoples. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 's documentary history The Gulag Archipelago , published in 1973, mentioned the Chechens: "They are a nation that refused to accept the psychology of submission... I never saw a Chechen seek to serve the authorities, or even to please them". In 1977 Vladimir Vysotsky wrote

20475-504: The future. It bears an engravement, reading: "We will not break, we will not weep; we will never forget." Tablets bore pictures of the sites of massacres, such as Khaibakh. The memorial was damaged during the subsequent Russo-Chechen wars. It has been later moved and dismantled by Ramzan Kadyrov 's pro-Russian government, sparking much controversy. The forced relocation, slaughter, and conditions during and after transfer have been described as an act of genocide by various scholars as well as

20650-495: The genocide and that as many as 1.5 million people were forced to flee in total, though only around half of them survived the journey. Ottoman archives show the intake of more than a million immigrants from the Caucasus by 1879, with nearly half of them having been found dying on the shores of the Black Sea as a result of disease. Presuming that these statistics are accurate, Russia's military campaign in Circassia constitutes

20825-582: The genocide, recalled that "their [the Circassians] only crime was not being Russian ." Seeking a credible military intervention against Russia, Circassian officials signed and sent " A Petition from Circassian Leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria " in 1864, but were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempt to solicit aid from the British Empire . That same year, the Imperial Russian Army launched

21000-596: The goal being destroying as many villages and towns as possible. He attacked the Besleney region between November and December, destroying most villages, including the village of the double agent Aytech Qanoqo . He continued to exterminate the Circassian population between 1834 and 1835, particularly in the Abdzakh , Besleney , Shapsug , and Kabardian regions. Zass' forces referred to all Circassian elderly, children women and men as "savages", "bandits", "plunderers" or "thieves" and

21175-434: The goal of the Russian government has always stayed the same: "Chechnya without Chechens". Historian Nikolay Bugay described the deportation as a "perversion of Lenin's national policy and a direct disregard for the constitutional rights of the peoples". In 1991, Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev made political capital by, in a symbolic move, sending out officials to gather these lost gravestones (that had been used by

21350-783: The harsh long trip, some lacked the money to travel. By 2010, there were still 100,000 Chechens living in Kazakhstan. When the Chechens and Ingush returned to their homeland, they found their farms and infrastructure had deteriorated. Some of the mountain regions were still a restricted zone for the returnees, which meant they had to settle in the lowlands. Worse still, they found other peoples living in their homes, and viewed these other ethnicities ( Ossetians , Russians, Laks , and Avars ) with hostility. Some Laks, Darghins and Avars had to be moved back to Dagestan , where they came from. Conflicts between Ossetians and Ingush in Prigorodny were sparked. The massive numbers of Vainakhs who were coming back to

21525-573: The language relies on fixation of whole phrases rather than adding to the end of existing words or combining existing words. It can be difficult to decide which phrases belong in the dictionary, because the language's grammar does not permit the borrowing of new verbal morphemes to express new concepts. Instead, the verb dan (to do) is combined with nominal phrases to correspond with new concepts imported from other languages. Chechen nouns are divided into six lexically arbitrary noun classes . Morphologically, noun classes may be indexed by changes in

21700-532: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, although it was already making attempts in the early 18th century, the Russian Empire began actively seeking to expand its territory to the south at the expense of the neighboring Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran , and thus aimed to incorporate the Caucasus into its domain. Some areas proved easier to incorporate than others, largely depending on the nature of local political structures. Eastern Georgia for example, comprising

21875-475: The launch of a settler-colonial Russification and Christianization programme. Milyutin later had been appointed as the minister of war the same year, and from the early 1860s massacres and ethnic cleansing began occurring in the Caucasus. Others among the Russian military class such as Rostislav Fadeyev characterized the Circassians as a "barbaric people", additionally expressing his view that they were incapable of being Russified . Fadeyev argued that

22050-581: The letters ص ‎ ( ṣād/sād ) and ض ‎ ( zād/ḍād ) had their usage limited to Arabic loanwords but were not eliminated due to opposition from Clergy and conservative segments of Chechen society. In another short-lasting modification, Sugaip Gaisunov proposed adding a overline (◌ٙ) ( U+0659 ) over letters that can be read as either a consonant or a vowel, namely the letters و ‎ ( waw ) (equivalent to Cyrillic letter "В" or to letters "О, Оь, У, Уь") and ی ‎ ( yāʼ ) (equivalent to Cyrillic letter "Й" or to letter "И"). The overbar signified

22225-502: The literature. Classed adjectives are listed with the d-class prefix in the romanizations below: Whereas Indo-European languages code noun class and case conflated in the same morphemes , Chechen nouns show no gender marking but decline in eight grammatical cases , four of which are core cases (i.e. absolutive , ergative , genitive , and dative ) in singular and plural. Below the paradigm for "говр" (horse). Circassian genocide The Circassian genocide , or Tsitsekun ,

22400-524: The local language, not their own. Several cases of rebellion were reported: in Krasnoyarsk in October 1954, some 4,000 Chechens managed to escape from a gulag concentration camp. The Soviet police found and killed half of them, but the other half managed to hide in the vast outdoors. Many deportees died en route , and the extremely harsh environment of exile, especially considering the amount of exposure to thermal stress , killed many more. The temperatures in

22575-619: The local populace. However, the Nazis never reached Grozny and the only town in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR they briefly occupied was Malgobek , which was inhabited by Russians. The key period of the Chechen guerilla war started in August–September 1942, when German troops approached Ingushetia, and ended in the summer-autumn of 1943. The Soviet counter-offensive drove the Wehrmacht from the North Caucasus early in 1943. Various historians, including Moshe Gammer, Ben Fowkes and Tony Wood, refute

22750-637: The modifications in Chechen were done independently from these two nearby and influential literary traditions and were focused on needs of Chechen language. Initially, the Chechen Arabic alphabet looked like this. ي ﻻ ه و ن م ل ڮ ك ڨ ق ف غ ع ظ ط ض ص ش س ز ر ذ د خ ح ج ث ت ب ا In this alphabet, two additional letters were added to the base Arabic script: In 1910, Sugaip Gaisunov proposed additional reforms that brought Arabic alphabet closer to Chechen's phonetic requirements. Sugaip Gaisunov introduced four additional consonants: In Sugaip Gaisunov's reforms,

22925-493: The more conservative segments of Chechen society initially resisted any changes to the Arabic script, with the belief that this script was sacred due to its association with Islam, and was not to be changed. The clergy and Islamic educational institutions opposed each and every iteration of proposed reforms in the Arabic script. While modifications to the Arabic script to match local languages had been common practice for centuries, for languages such as Persian and Ottoman Turkish ,

23100-560: The most powerful and dominant Georgian regions of Kartli and Kakheti had been under intermittent Iranian suzerainty since 1555 . Russia eventually found itself able, through instability in the geopolitical situation of Georgia within Qajar Iran, to annex eastern Georgia in the early 19th century, ratified in the 1803 Treaty of Gulistan . Russia endeavored to bring the entire Caucasus region under its control, conquering Armenia, Caucasian Azerbaijan, and southern Dagestan, while co-opting

23275-534: The mountains, with the land these inhabitants had once lived on being acquired for the Kuban Cossacks . The entirety of Kabardia (Eastern Circassia) was then declared property of the Russian government. General Yermolov accelerated his efforts in Kabardia, with the month of March 1822 alone seeing 14 villages being destroyed as Yermolov led expeditions. In February 1824, the Russian army led by General Vlasov attacked

23450-459: The nobility of other areas such as Lower Kabardia and parts of Dagestan. Although the Russians faced considerable resistance to incorporation in Dagestan and Georgia, as well as military resistance by the local government of Imereti , the regions they felt most difficult of all to incorporate were those that had not been conquered by foreign empires and did not have any local monopolies of power—which

23625-449: The population into surrender. Under Yermolov, Russian troops retaliated by destroying villages where resistance fighters were thought to hide, as well as employing assassinations, kidnappings and the execution of whole families. Because the resistance was relying on sympathetic villages for food, the Russian military also systematically destroyed crops and livestock and killed Circassian civilian farmers. Circassians responded by creating

23800-469: The prefix of the accompanying verb and, in many cases, the adjective too. The first two of these classes apply to human beings, although some grammarians count these as two and some as a single class; the other classes however are much more lexically arbitrary. Chechen noun classes are named according to the prefix that indexes them: When a noun denotes a human being, it usually falls into v- or y-Classes (1 or 2). Most nouns referring to male entities fall into

23975-471: The prefixes before the nouns indicates grammatical gender; thus: [vоsha] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 2) ( help ) ' brother ' → yisha ' sister ' . Some nouns denoting human beings, however, are not in Classes 1 or 2: bēr ' child ' , for example, is in class 3. Only a few of Chechen's adjectives index noun class agreement, termed classed adjectives in

24150-406: The region that "these Circassians are just like your American Indians – as untamable and uncivilized ... and, owning to their natural energy of character, extermination only would keep them quiet." As Russian armies advanced in Circassia in the late 1850s and early 1860s, Circassians were evicted from their lands so they could be settled by loyal Cossacks as the Russian military elite developed

24325-481: The remaining 150,000 people living in the mountain regions would be next in line. Many times, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the aul of Khaibakh, about 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death by NKVD General Mikheil Gveshiani, who was praised for this and promised a medal by Beria. Many people from remote villages were executed per Beria's verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush deemed 'untransportable should be liquidated' on

24500-635: The rest were either killed or burned after attempting to escape by hiding on the roofs of their homes or by the manure. So like this, we destroyed and destructed the neighborhood. Reportedly, Zass would pick random Circassian males from the towns he attacked and burn them alive as a form of entertainment. He did not stop at burning women; he also cut the pregnant women's bellies with a bayonet. He sent severed Circassian heads to friends in Berlin who were professors and used them to study anatomy. The Decembrist Nikolai Ivanovich Lorer said that Zass cleaned and boiled

24675-422: The rioters. Although the riot was dispersed and denounced as "chauvinistic", afterward the republican government made special efforts to please the Russian populace, including mass discrimination against the Chechens aimed at preserving the privileged position of the Russians. In 1958, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was officially restored by a decree direct from Moscow, but in previous 1936 borders. North Ossetia kept

24850-791: The same methods were applied in the Shapsug region, and several villages were burnt. After some civilians deserted to the forests, forests in the region were burnt down. In 1811, petitions were sent to St. Petersburg in Russia, appealing for the basic rights of Circassians in the occupied areas. In 1817, Russian veteran general Aleksey Yermolov arrived in the Caucasus. Deciding that Circassians would not surrender willingly, General Yermolov concluded that "terror" as an official strategy would be effective. Although terror methods were already in use, they were only officialized after Yermolov's orders. Russian generals began to destroy Circassian villages and towns and slaughter people as part of an official duty to shock

25025-400: The single largest genocide of the 19th century. Russian records, in confirmation of the Ottoman archives, documented the presence of only 106,798 Circassians in the Caucasus on the approach to the 20th century. Other estimates by Russian historiographers are even lower, ranging from 40,400 to 65,900. The Russian Empire census , conducted in 1897, reported the presence of 150,000 Circassians in

25200-412: The song Летела жизнь ( Letela zhizn ) devoted to the deportation. Anatoly Pristavkin wrote the 1987 novel The Inseparable Twins which deals with this deportation. Semyon Lipkin published the novel Dekada in 1983. Iunus Desheriev, a philologist of Chechen origin, published an autobiography about how he escaped the fate of his people thanks to assistance from Russian friends. On 19 February 1989,

25375-498: The south") settler-colonial policy of Russification in the Caucasus and surrounding regions. Following the Crimean war , the Russian empire forcibly expelled millions of Crimean Tatars and sent Russian settlers to the Crimean peninsula . During the 1860s, the Russian imperial army conquered Circassia and launched a scorched-earth campaign of state terror aimed at the extermination or complete expulsion of all Circassian natives from

25550-416: The spot. In one incident, NKVD soldiers climbed up Moysty, a high mountain, and found 60 villagers there. Even though their commander ordered the soldiers to shoot the villagers, they fired in the air. The commander then ordered half of the soldiers to join the villagers and another platoon shot them all. 2,016 'anti-Soviet' people were arrested, and 20,072 weapons were confiscated in the operation. Throughout

25725-444: The spot. This meant that the old, the ill and the infirm were to either be shot or left to starve in their beds alone. The soldiers would sometimes plunder the empty homes. An eyewitness recalled the actions of the NKVD forces: They combed the huts to make sure there was no one left behind... The soldier who came into the house did not want to bend down. He raked the hut with a burst from his submachine gun. Blood trickled out from under

25900-764: The standard dialect. None of the spelling systems used so far have distinguished the vowels with complete accuracy. All vowels may be nasalized . Nasalization is imposed by the genitive , infinitive , and for some speakers the nominative case of adjectives . Nasalization is not strong, but it is audible even in final vowels, which are devoiced. Some of the diphthongs have significant allophony : /ɥø/ = [ɥø], [ɥe], [we] ; /yø/ = [yø], [ye] ; /uo/ = [woː], [uə] . In closed syllables , long vowels become short in most dialects (not Kisti ), but are often still distinct from short vowels (shortened [i] , [u] , [ɔ] and [ɑ̈] vs. short [ɪ] , [ʊ] , [o] , and [ə] , for example), although which ones remain distinct depends on

26075-483: The stated reasons were allegedly to "defuse ethnic tensions", to "stabilize the political situation" or to punish people for their "act against the Soviet authority". According to the 1939 census, 407,690 Chechens and 92,074 Ingush were registered in the Soviet Union. On October 13, 1943, Operation Lentil commenced when about a hundred thousand troops and operative workers were moved into Checheno-Ingushetia, supposedly for mending roads and bridges. The soldiers even lived for

26250-483: The statistic of 144,704 people who died in 1944–48 alone: a death rate of 23.7% per all these groups. 101,036 Chechens, Ingush and Balkars died in Kazakhstan and 16,052 in Uzbekistan. Another archive record shows that 104,903 of the deported Chechens died by 1949. This means that their group suffered the highest death toll of all the deported peoples within the Soviet Union. John B. Dunlop argues that population losses of

26425-401: The surprise transfer. According to a correspondence dated March 3, 1944, at least 19,000 officers and 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR were sent to implement this operation. Some 500 people were deported by mistake even though they were not Chechens or Ingush. The plan envisaged that 300,000 people were to be evicted from the lowland in the first three days, while in the following days

26600-613: The target of various provocations in the Kazakh SSR: in December 1954, students in Elizavetinka taunted the Chechens as "traitors and betrayers of motherland". In May 1955, a worker in a coal mine engaged in a fight with a Chechen colleague in Ekibastuz . This escalated into a pogrom in which Russian hooligans even attacked a police station which sheltered the runaway Chechens. Many refugees from

26775-572: The three architects of the deportation perished: shortly after Stalin died on 5 March, Beria and Kobulov were arrested on 27 June 1953. They were convicted on multiple charges, sentenced to death and executed on 23 December 1953. However, these charges were unrelated to the crimes of deportations and were merely a ploy to remove them from power. Nikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet leader and revoked numerous deportations, even denouncing Stalin. In his secret speech on 24 February 1956, Khrushchev condemned these Stalinist deportations: The Soviet Union

26950-676: The time of their exile. On paper, the Chechen-Ingush Republic enjoyed the same privileges as other Soviet ASSRs, but in reality it had very little actual Chechens or Ingush representing its government, which was run directly by the Russians. Despite being rich with oil, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR remained the second poorest region of the entire USSR. Yusup Soslambekov, a chairman of the Chechen parliament after 1991, lamented that his people returned from exile to their homes "not as masters of that land but as mere inhabitants, tenants. Other people took our jobs in our factories". The deportation left

27125-464: The town of Mezdeug (modern-day Mozdok ) in Eastern Circassia, turning it into a Russian fortress. Thus began the first hostilities between Circassians and the Russian Empire. In 1764, Circassian prince Misost Bematiqwa started the Circassian resistance in Eastern Circassia. Bematiqwa's resistance was strengthened when on October 18, 1768, the Ottoman sultan, who had declared war on Russia, sent

27300-411: The train and buy some food. Some people died on the way—no-one in our carriage, but in the next carriage I saw them taking out two corpses... Our baby sister died that night. My dad was looking for a place to bury her—he found a suitable place, dug the grave and buried her... she must have frozen to death. The persecution of the Chechens did not stop there. In May 1944, Beria issued a directive ordering

27475-469: The v-class, whereas Class 2 contains words related to female entities. Thus lūlaxuo ' a neighbour ' is normally considered class 1, but it takes v- if referring to a male neighbour and y- if a female. This is similar to the Spanish word estudiante ' student ' , where el estudiante refers to a male student, and la estudiante refers to a female student. In a few words, changing

27650-615: The village of Berezhki in the Galashkinsky district in order to organize anti-Soviet actions yet managed to only recruit 13 people in the area. There were some 20 million Muslims in the USSR, and the Soviet government feared that a Muslim revolt could spread from Caucasus to the whole of Central Asia. In August 1942, the Wehrmacht entered North Caucasus, seizing the Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics . It also encouraged anti-Sovietism among

27825-416: The wholesale destruction of villages became a standard tactic. General Yermolov remarked that "We need the Circassian lands, but we don't have any need of the Circassians themselves". Russian military commanders, such as Yermolov and Bulgakov, acting in their own interests to attain glory on the battlefield and riches through conquest, which would be much more difficult to attain on the Western front than in

28000-515: Was created after the October Revolution , and the Latin script began to be used instead of Arabic for Chechen writing in the mid-1920s. The Cyrillic script was adopted in 1938. Almost the entire library of Chechen medieval writing in Arabic and Georgian script about the land of Chechnya and its people was destroyed by Soviet authorities in 1944, leaving the modern Chechens and modern historians with

28175-538: Was created for Chechen. But after the defeat of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria government by the Russian Armed Forces , the Cyrillic alphabet was restored. The first time that the Latin alphabet was introduced , was in 1925, replacing Arabic alphabet. Further minor modifications in 1934, unified Chechen orthography with Ingush. But the Latin alphabet was abolished in 1938, being replaced with Cyrillic. The first, most widespread modern orthography for Chechen

28350-548: Was described in a report: In this affair the Russians lost 10 soldiers and had one officer and 16 soldiers wounded. At the scene of the battle there were more than 150 bodies of Circassians killed by bayonets and up to 50 women and children killed from the action of the Russian artillery. In another report, General Rosen described how, in December 1831, 381 Circassians were captured by his forces and boasted about taking them prisoner and firing at villages, leaving 100 men and 50 women dead. He goes on to detail how when setting fire to

28525-523: Was even below the standards of the captives in the Auschwitz concentration camp . (that standard being 300 grams of bread) ) The local authorities in Kyrgyzstan set up enough supplies for only four months. One mother tried to make soup out of grass for her children. According to official Soviet reports, 608,749 Chechen, Ingush, Karachay and Balkars were registered in exile in Central Asia by 1948. The NKVD gives

28700-450: Was near complete. Their villages were razed to the ground and their graveyards bulldozed. With the native population gone, the Chechen region experienced a huge lack of skilled workers: the local oil production industry dropped more than ten times in 1944 compared to 1943. On November 26, 1948, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued a decree which sentenced the deported nations to

28875-453: Was only 47,000. Thus, the Chechen and ingush population fell from 478,479 in 1944 to 452,737 in 1948. From 1939 to 1959, the Chechen population grew by 2.5%. In comparison, between 1926 and 1939, it grew 28%. Historian Alexander Nekrich stated that the net losses of Chechens between 1939 and 1959 (after allowing for wartime losses) were 131,000, and of Ingush 12,000. German journalist Lutz Kleveman determined that 150,000 people did not survive

29050-456: Was removed from service due to his methods being deemed too cruel by St. Petersburg. In 1837, some Circassian leaders offered the Russians a white peace , arguing that no more blood should be shed. In response to this offer, the Russian army under the command of General Yermolov burnt 36 Circassian villages. In the negotiations to formulate the 1856 Treaty of Paris , the British representative,

29225-536: Was responsible for the Circassian genocide . The Circassians , the Ubykh and the Abaza were subsequently resettled to the Ottoman Empire . However, other Caucasus people were affected as well. There were up to 1.5 million Chechens in the Caucasus in 1847, but as a result of this war and ensuing expulsions, their number dropped to 140,000 in 1861, and then further to 116,000 in 1867. In 1865, at least 39,000 Chechens were exiled to

29400-541: Was sent to kolkhozes in Ukrainian SSR , Stavropol Krai , Voronezh and Orel Oblasts . Many of these animals perished from exhaustion. Some 6,000 Chechens were stuck in the mountains of the Galanzhoy district due to the snow, but this slowed the deportation only minimally: 333,739 people were evicted, of which 176,950 were sent to trains already on the first day of the operation. Beriya reported that there were only six cases of resistance, 842 were "subject to isolation" while 94,741 were removed from their homes by 11 p.m. on

29575-501: Was sparked by a fight between a Russian sailor and an Ingush youngster over a girl in which the Russian was fatally injured. In the next four days, the Russians formed mob riots and looted the Vainakh property, seizing government buildings and demanding either a restoration of Grozny Oblast, or a creation of a non-titular autonomy, re-deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, establishment of "Russian power", mass search and disarming of Chechens and Ingush, before Soviet law enforcement dispersed

29750-516: Was the Arabic script, adopted in the 19th century. Chechen was not a traditionally written language, but due to the public's familiarity with the Arabic script - as the script of instruction in the region's Islamic and Quranic schools - the Arabic alphabet was first standardized and adopted for Chechen during the reign of Imam Shamil . Islam has been the dominant religion in Chechnya since the 16th century, and there were 200 religious schools as well as more than 3000 pupils in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Thus

29925-456: Was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Vainakh ( Chechen and Ingush ) populations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on 23 February 1944, during World War II . The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Anastas Mikoyan , as a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of ethnic minorities in

30100-419: Was the state of most Circassian territories, where resistance to absorption into the Russian Empire was most tenacious. Prior to the perpetration of genocide by Tsarist Russia , more than 4 million Circassians lived in their homeland in the Caucasus. The Russian empire 's decision to launch genocide against Circassians was driven by anti-Muslim sentiments and by Tsarist Russia's "messianic self-image" as

30275-400: Was the systematic mass killing , ethnic cleansing , and expulsion of between 95% and 97% of the Circassian people during the final stages of the Russian invasion of Circassia in the 19th century. It resulted in the deaths of between 625,000 and 1.5 million and the destruction of Circassia , which was then annexed by the Russian Empire . Those planned for extermination were mainly

30450-432: Was to intercept and retain the initiative, terrorize the Circassians, and destroy Circassian settlements. After a victory, he would usually burn several villages and seize cattle and horses to show off, acts which he proudly admitted. In his reports, he frequently boasted about the destruction of villages and glorified the mass murder of civilians. In August 1833, Zass led his first expedition into Circassian territory, with

30625-407: Was undocumented and was considered a branch of Sharoish, as many dialects are also used as the basis of intertribal (teip) communication within a larger Chechen " tukkhum ". Laamaroy dialects such as Sharoish, Himoish and Chebarloish are more conservative and retain many features from Proto-Chechen. For instance, many of these dialects lack a number of vowels found in the standard language which were

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