May, 30, 2005

The Legal Estimation of the Chechen Independence-2

(Continuation)

The fact of acknowledgement of the USSR to be an aggressor and excluding of the USSR from the League of the Nations is known to history. The United Nations are Stalin's child, and he would have been very interested in liquidation of the League of the Nations and creation of the United Nations for the USSR could not join the League of the Nations. The charter of the United Nations Organization cancels aggressive wars, and also forbids genocide.

The Chechen and Ingush peoples did not accept the repeated occupation of their country by communistic Moscow . They resisted with all accessible means in the 20th and 30th years. This resistance was especially hardened during the so-called collectivization, as the overwhelming majority of Chechens and Ingushs had farms on their private land and did not wish to be reconciled with the confiscation of them. Two main factors, which strengthened the aversion to Bolshevism in the Chechen Republic and Ingushetia and supported the resistance to the occupation of the country by the Red Army, were the Moslem doctrine, which roughly condemned the communistic atheism, and the original democratic form of the social structure of the Chechen-Ingush society, irreconcilable to the totalitarian dictatorship of the Soviet and party functionaries.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin distributed the aggression of the RSFSR to the non-Russian nations. Stalin responded with open genocide to the struggle of Chechens and Ingushs against communistic Russian imperialism. Outstanding national, religious figures, free peasants had bee liquidated during continuous military reprisals in the 20 th and 30 th years. As well as everywhere in the USSR , the reprisals against Chechens and Ingushs reached the peak in 1937-1938. Even the Bolshevist party of Chechen-Ingushetia also turned out to be a target of genocide, as Russian nationalists and Cossack chauvinists were at the main post in the soviet-party bodies of the republic. While in 1934 the Bolshevist party of Chechen-Ingushetia included 11.966 members, 3.500 members were considered to be "undesirable elements", liable to be liquidated. 1.500 members were a subject of "moving to another place" (that is to exiles and imprisonment), and in 1938 in addition to it 822 members of the party were accused of being "enemies of the people" or "Trotsky's supporters", and then they were missing.

Another large-scale action of genocide against Chechens and Ingushs was carried out in February, 1944. The decision had been made actually one year before in the Political bureau and the Joint Headquarters of the Red Army. Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, Kalinin and Beria considered it to be expedient to postpone the deportation of Chechens and Ingushs, until the German armies would be superseded from the USSR . Molotov, Zhdanov , Voznesensky and Andreev defended the opinion that deportation should have been carried out immediately. The deportation, and actually - the total genocide, began on the 23 rd of February, 1944 , with eviction of more than 400.000 Chechens and 90.000 Ingushs to the Central Asia and Siberia . Only about 2.000 people managed to be rescued in mountains, they began an armed struggle against the Red Army.

Chechens and Ingushs living in other Caucasian republics and Russia also were deported. The genocide deporting operation took only three days and was carried out by the so-called "National commissioner of internal affairs" Lavrentiy Beria, who also was a member of the Political bureau and the State Committee of Defense. The operation was a secret one. Only two years later, on the 26 th of June, 1946, the newspaper "Novosti" published a small note, that the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR published the Decree signed by the Chairman of the Presidium I. Vlasov and the secretary P. Bahumorov, in which it was declared, that Crimean Tatars and Chechens "have been moved to another place of the USSR". The eviction of Ingushs was not mentioned at all. It was declared, that Chechen-Ingush ASSR was officially abolished on the 7 th of March, 1944 . The mentioned reasons were such: that "the majority of the Crimean Tatars and Chechens" ostensibly "committed treason and cooperated with the German army".

This reason was completely false, as Germans had not reached the territory of Chechen-Ingushetia (except for a short-term stay in flat Ingush settlement Malgobek). And even the Big Soviet Encyclopedia declares, that Chechens and Ingushs "heroically struggled against fascist armies" and helped the front with deliveries of foodstuffs and the first class mineral oil. Newspapers and leaflets were sent to all Soviet fronts with an appeal to the Red Army men "to take an example from the valorous knight of our Fatherland, the son of the heroic Chechen people, machine gunner Hanpashi Nuradilov", who for incomplete two years alone had destroyed 920 Germans and captivated 12 of them.

The deportation took only three days and was carried out suddenly, being a common unexpectedness and causing psychological shock in people. Chechens and Ingushs were arrested on the 23 rd of February, 1944 , in the Day of the Red Army. Women and children together were driven out of their houses and taken to railway stations by lorries, which had been delivered from the USA for military counteraction to Germany . Each family was allowed taking luggage of not more than 20 kg. Their property, houses, land and cattle was taken from them by Russia (RSFSR). During the deportation more than a half of Chechens and Ingushs died because of famine and fierce February cold in not heated cars for transportation of cattle.

Officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs B. Kobulov and I. Serov were responsible to support the deported at the place. The first years of the exile brought death to many of them because of an unusual climate, epidemics and excessive works. The general demographic loss was estimated in 60 % of the Chechen and Ingush people.

Except for physical genocide, cultural genocide also was accomplished: literary, theological and philosophical products of Chechens and Ingushs, including unique patrimonial annals-teptars telling about the origin of the people and their most ancient history were burnt in the central square of Groznyy . Special units of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of the State Security blew up hundreds of ancient Chechen-Ingush towers and castles (only in the Argun Gorge Russian chastisers completely destroyed more than 300 monuments of the ancient Vainah architecture). Everything, what Chechens and Ingushs had kept as family relics and transferred from one generation to the other: carpets, the most valuable ancient weapon of known masters, fighting awards of the imamat of Shamil, jeweler ornaments, manual manufacture furniture, utensils, etc, was plundered.

On the place of the new settlement the police terror, unprecedented even in the totalitarian USSR , was applied to Chechens and Ingushs. Each ten houses had a special police supervisor. There was a duty to be registered monthly, and later it was made annual. It was necessary to have a sanction from the police to undertake something. Travel was admissible only within the limits of the district at the distance up to 3 km. everyone was obliged to have a document for more remote trips. A Chechen or an Ingush, who had left his house for more, than 3 km without such a document, was imprisoned from 10 up to 15 years.

( To be continued… )

Lawyers of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria, Chechenpress

30.05.05

http://chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/05/30/01.shtml