Why the program for restoring the number of the Russian-speaking population of Chechnya does not work.

The program for the return of the Russian-speaking population is slowing down, activists are lamenting. One of them, Saiputdin Guchigov, brings Russian residents who once fled from it to the capital of the republic. Shows new luxurious houses, palaces, fountains. Takes to the graves of loved ones. “Very few people have returned. But many will come very soon,” the volunteer says.

Last year, the deputy head of the administration of the head and government of the Chechen Republic, Oleg Petukhov, also spoke about the need to return the Russian population: “... This is one of the priorities of the national policy of the republic, aimed at creating conditions for the return of those who were forced to leave region due to various circumstances ... Ramzan Akhmatovich welcomes the arrival of the Russian-speaking population, regardless of whether they lived in Chechnya or not.

March 1995. Terrible. RUSSIAN CEMETERY. REburial of civilians gathered in the city AFTER WINTER.

It is safe, beautiful and comfortable here. There is no drunkenness, rudeness, hooliganism here, and you can freely walk at night without fear for your life.”

However, former residents of the region doubt the need to return.

Yes, I really miss Chechnya. We lived in Grozny on Proletarskaya Street. A wonderful place - near the park, - says Olga Rostovtseva, a migrant, who now lives in the city of Engels, Saratov Region. - Relations with neighbors were good.

The problems started in 1990. In mailboxes, Russian residents found anonymous letters demanding to get out. About a year later, Russian girls began to disappear on the streets, and young men were beaten and killed. My 14-year-old son once came in completely bloodied, in torn clothes. I almost lost consciousness.

Then they began to expel Russian residents of Grozny from their apartments. Inscriptions appeared on the walls of the houses: “Do not buy apartments from Masha and Dasha, they will still be ours!” Nobody bought even for symbolic sums.

Later slogans became popular: "Russians, don't leave: we need slaves." It was so scary - not to convey!
The family of the head teacher of school No. 10 was killed right in the apartment. Four people: her husband and two daughters.
My neighbor was killed on the street - they hit her head, broke her ribs and raped her.
We ran away in the fall of 1993. Left homeless, jobless. Thanks, hosted by relatives.

But still, would you like to go back?

It seems like I want to, but when I remember how frenziedly they beat, robbed and killed Russians, the desire disappears completely. Although, I must say, there were those in Grozny who sympathized with us, but were openly afraid to help.

Chechnya is also missed by cardiologist Vera Sotnikova, who lives in Volokolamsk near Moscow: “We lived in the small town of Neftemaisk. My son has been robbed many times. There was violence all around! Some were killed, others were turned into slaves...

The bandits who burst in with machine guns took away my documents for housing and ordered me to move out from me and my neighbors.

I know that the situation in this region is quite calm now. The Russians are called back.

Indeed, there are many good people in the republic. And our acquaintances from the locals in difficult times tried to provide support, of course, hidden.

By the way, I visited my hometown a year and a half ago. Aishat's neighbor recognized me and was delighted. I began to ask how are you, how are the children? Good woman. And the city is good. But we won't go back to it."

Chechnya desperately needs scientific and technical personnel, doctors and teachers. Therefore, the Russian-speaking population is being called to return, hoping that it will wake up nostalgia for the times of its youth,” says Rais Suleimanov, head of the Volga Center for Regional and Ethno-Religious Studies of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. - Chechnya is waiting for those who were young in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That is not very old.

The second reason for the attempt to return the Russians is political. The events that took place in the 1990s in Chechnya can rightly be called genocide. The presence of Russians and their comfortable living will be evidence of stability in the republic. For Ramzan Kadyrov, who positions himself not only as the head of the region, but also as the leader of the people, this is very important.

It is possible, although unlikely, that Kadyrov has a desire to justify himself for the terrible events of the 90s. He, being very young, probably watched the process of ousting the Russian-speaking residents of Chechnya. Now he is trying to show that Chechens are hospitable and get along with people of other nationalities. Ideas about us as getting fatter, getting richer at the expense of the rest of the country are fundamentally wrong.

Three Cossack villages have survived in the republic, they managed to survive in the hard times.

How many Russians are left in the region?

What is the current Russian population of Chechnya? The majority are law enforcement officers who annually go there on business trips. Old people who managed to survive in Grozny after two wars. The stations I mentioned earlier. Permanent residents - approximately 10,000 people.

: - How many of them left the republic?

The figure is 300,000. However, it is not known how many fled the region, how many were killed and taken into slavery.

: - A version is expressed: a large number of the Russian-speaking population died from shells and bombs of the Russian army.

Of course, they died for this reason as well. Not only Russians. However, most of the dead Russian-speakers were exterminated during the “cleansing” period.

Will the Russians go to Chechnya?

There is nowhere to work. Perhaps, for purely propaganda reasons, they will create several enterprises for the Russians, but there will be no work for the rest.

If visitors get more jobs, the indigenous population will become embittered and indignant.

Jobs will be found for qualified specialists who are not available in Chechnya. But who will go there?

In addition, nothing concrete is said about the provision of housing.

Candidate of Political Sciences, Senior Researcher, Department of Russian Politics, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov Artur Ataev agrees with Rais Suleimanov: “The program to attract the Russian-speaking population operates in three subjects: Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia. The last amount to be transferred for the implementation of the planned was an impressive amount. However, according to the recognition of the head of the republic, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, not a single Russian family returned.

It happened that residents of the Stavropol Territory married men from Ingushetia, received subsidies and left. Not a single case has been brought to court.

About Chechnya. Currently, there are no exact data on the number of Russian migrants living in other regions. There is no data on the number of those wishing to return.

Now let's analyze the political elite of the Chechen Republic. In the late 1990s, the first half of the 2000s, it consisted of 60% Russians, now it is one or two people.

In what situation will Russians who wished to move to Chechnya find themselves?

At present, for example, in Grozny, there is a sense of stability. But how long will it last?

Radical bandit groups managed to be forced out into the territory of Ingushetia. But who will guarantee that they will not return in the near future?

Vera Sotnikova says that while in her homeland she felt that Chechen teenagers and young people consider Russians to be their worst enemies.

They shouldn't be blamed for this. They were born either before the war, or during its period. Many are unhealthy because they grew up in a difficult situation.

And a large number of Chechen old people are already regretting the outcome of the Russians. They say: "It's bad without you."

However, not only Chechens are guilty of the tragedy of the Russian-speaking population of Chechnya. We were betrayed by the Russian government, which brought Dzhokhar Dudayev to power, the military, who said: “If you are still here, it means that you are also Chechens,” and human rights activists, who did not notice that we were being killed. We turned out to be second-class Russians.”

Many wars are written in the history of Russia. Most of them were liberation, some began on our territory, and ended far beyond its borders. But there is nothing worse than such wars, which were started as a result of the illiterate actions of the country's leadership and led to horrific results because the authorities solved their own problems, not paying attention to people.

One of such sad pages of Russian history is the Chechen war. It was not a confrontation between two different peoples. There were no absolute rightists in this war. And the most surprising thing is that this war still cannot be considered completed.

Prerequisites for the start of the war in Chechnya

It is hardly possible to talk about these military campaigns briefly. The era of perestroika, so pathetically announced by Mikhail Gorbachev, marked the collapse of a vast country consisting of 15 republics. However, the main difficulty for Russia also lay in the fact that, left without satellites, it faced internal unrest that had a nationalist character. The Caucasus turned out to be especially problematic in this respect.

Back in 1990, the National Congress was created. This organization was headed by Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Major General of Aviation in the Soviet Army. The Congress set as its main goal - secession from the USSR, in the future it was supposed to create the Chechen Republic, independent of any state.

In the summer of 1991, a situation of dual power developed in Chechnya, since both the leadership of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic itself and the leadership of the so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, proclaimed by Dudayev, acted.

Such a state of affairs could not exist for a long time, and the same Dzhokhar and his supporters in September seized the republican television center, the Supreme Council and the Radio House. This was the beginning of the revolution. The situation was extremely shaky, and its development was facilitated by the official collapse of the country, carried out by Yeltsin. After the news that the Soviet Union no longer existed, Dudayev's supporters announced that Chechnya was seceding from Russia.

The separatists seized power - under their influence, parliamentary and presidential elections were held in the republic on October 27, as a result of which power was completely in the hands of the ex-general Dudayev. A few days later, on November 7, Boris Yeltsin signed a decree stating that a state of emergency was being introduced in the Chechen-Ingush Republic. In fact, this document became one of the reasons for the start of the bloody Chechen wars.

At that time, there were quite a lot of ammunition and weapons in the republic. Some of these stocks have already been seized by the separatists. Instead of blocking the situation, the leadership of the Russian Federation allowed it to get out of control even more - in 1992, the head of the Ministry of Defense, Grachev, handed over half of all these stocks to the militants. The authorities explained this decision by the fact that it was no longer possible to withdraw weapons from the republic at that time.

However, during this period there was still an opportunity to stop the conflict. An opposition was created that opposed the power of Dudayev. However, after it became clear that these small detachments could not resist the militant formations, the war was practically on.

Yeltsin and his political supporters could no longer do anything, and from 1991 to 1994 it was actually a republic independent of Russia. Here were formed their own authorities, had its own state symbols. In 1994, when Russian troops were brought into the territory of the republic, a full-scale war began. Even after the resistance of Dudayev's militants was suppressed, the problem was not finally resolved.

Speaking about the war in Chechnya, it should be borne in mind that the illiterate leadership, first of the USSR, and then Russia, was to blame for its unleashing, first of all. It was the weakening of the internal political situation in the country that led to the loosening of the border regions and the strengthening of nationalist elements.

As for the essence of the Chechen war, here there is a conflict of interests and the inability to govern a vast territory on the part of first Gorbachev and then Yeltsin. In the future, this tangled knot had to be untied by people who came to power at the very end of the 20th century.

First Chechen War 1994-1996

Historians, writers and filmmakers are still trying to assess the scale of the horrors of the Chechen war. No one denies that it caused enormous damage not only to the republic itself, but to the whole of Russia. However, it should be borne in mind that the two campaigns were quite different in nature.

During the Yeltsin era, when the first Chechen campaign of 1994-1996 was unleashed, Russian troops could not act in a sufficiently coordinated and free manner. The country's leadership solved its problems, moreover, according to some reports, many profited from this war - there were deliveries of weapons to the territory of the republic from the Russian Federation, and the militants often earned money by demanding large ransoms for hostages.

At the same time, the main task of the Second Chechen War of 1999-2009 was the suppression of gangs and the establishment of constitutional order. It is clear that if the goals of both campaigns were different, then the course of action differed significantly.

On December 1, 1994, air strikes were carried out on airfields located in Khankala and Kalinovskaya. And already on December 11, Russian units were introduced into the territory of the republic. This fact marked the beginning of the First Campaign. The entrance was carried out immediately from three directions - through Mozdok, through Ingushetia and through Dagestan.

By the way, at that time Eduard Vorobyov led the Ground Forces, but he immediately resigned, considering it unreasonable to lead the operation, since the troops were completely unprepared for full-scale military operations.

At first, Russian troops advanced quite successfully. The entire northern territory was occupied by them quickly and without much loss. From December 1994 to March 1995, the Russian Armed Forces stormed Grozny. The city was built up quite densely, and Russian units were simply stuck in skirmishes and attempts to take the capital.

The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Grachev expected to take the city very quickly and therefore spared no human and technical resources. According to researchers, over 1,500 Russian soldiers and many civilians of the republic died or went missing near Grozny. Armored vehicles also suffered serious damage - almost 150 units were out of order.

Nevertheless, after two months of fierce fighting, federal troops still took Grozny. Participants in the hostilities subsequently recalled that the city was destroyed almost to the ground, this is also confirmed by numerous photographs and video documents.

During the assault, not only armored vehicles were used, but also aviation and artillery. There were bloody battles on almost every street. The militants during the operation in Grozny lost more than 7,000 people and, under the leadership of Shamil Basayev, on March 6 were forced to finally leave the city, which came under the control of the Russian Armed Forces.

However, the war, which brought death to thousands of not only armed, but also civilians, did not end there. The fighting continued first on the plains (from March to April), and then in the mountainous regions of the republic (from May to June 1995). Argun, Shali, Gudermes were taken successively.

The militants responded with terrorist acts carried out in Budyonnovsk and Kizlyar. After varying successes on both sides, a decision was made to negotiate. And as a result, on August 31, 1996, they were concluded. According to them, the federal troops were leaving Chechnya, the infrastructure of the republic was to be restored, and the question of an independent status was postponed.

Second Chechen campaign 1999-2009

If the country's authorities hoped that by reaching an agreement with the militants, they would solve the problem and the battles of the Chechen war were a thing of the past, then everything turned out to be wrong. For several years of a dubious truce, gangs have only accumulated strength. In addition, more and more Islamists from Arab countries penetrated the territory of the republic.

As a result, on August 7, 1999, the militants of Khattab and Basayev invaded Dagestan. Their calculation was based on the fact that the Russian government at that time looked very weak. Yeltsin practically did not lead the country, the Russian economy was in deep decline. The militants hoped that they would take their side, but they put up serious resistance to gangster groups.

The unwillingness to let the Islamists into their territory and the help of the federal troops forced the Islamists to retreat. True, it took a month for this - the militants were knocked out only in September 1999. At that time, Aslan Maskhadov was in charge of Chechnya, and, unfortunately, he was not capable of exercising full control over the republic.

It was at this time, angry that they failed to break Dagestan, Islamist groups began to carry out terrorist acts on the territory of Russia. Terrible terrorist acts were committed in Volgodonsk, Moscow and Buynaksk, which claimed dozens of lives. Therefore, among those killed in the Chechen war, it is necessary to include those civilians who did not think that it would come to their families.

In September 1999, Yeltsin signed a decree "On Measures to Increase the Efficiency of Counter-Terrorist Operations in the North Caucasus Region of the Russian Federation". And on December 31, he announced his resignation from the presidency.

As a result of the presidential elections, power in the country passed to a new leader - Vladimir Putin, whose tactical abilities the militants did not take into account. But at that time, Russian troops were already on the territory of Chechnya, they again bombed Grozny and acted much more competently. The experience of the previous campaign was taken into account.

December 1999 is another of the painful and terrible pages of the war. The Argun Gorge, otherwise called the “Wolf Gates”, is one of the largest Caucasian gorges in terms of length. Here, the landing and border troops carried out the Argun special operation, the purpose of which was to recapture a section of the Russian-Georgian border from Khattab's troops, and also to deprive the militants of the way to supply weapons from the Pankisi Gorge. The operation was completed in February 2000.

Many also remember the feat of the 6th company of the 104th parachute regiment of the Pskov Airborne Division. These fighters became real heroes of the Chechen war. They withstood a terrible battle at the 776th height, when they, in the amount of only 90 people, managed to hold back over 2,000 militants during the day. Most of the paratroopers died, and the militants themselves lost almost a quarter of their composition.

Despite such cases, the second war, unlike the first, can be called sluggish. Perhaps that is why it lasted longer - during the years of these battles, a lot of things happened. The new Russian authorities decided to act differently. They refused to conduct active hostilities conducted by the federal troops. It was decided to use the internal split in Chechnya itself. So, Mufti Akhmat Kadyrov went over to the side of the federals, and situations were increasingly observed when ordinary militants laid down their arms.

Putin, realizing that such a war could go on indefinitely, decided to use internal political hesitation and persuade the authorities to cooperate. Now we can already say that he succeeded. The fact that on May 9, 2004, the Islamists carried out a terrorist attack in Grozny, aimed at intimidating the population, also played a role. The explosion thundered at the Dynamo stadium during a concert dedicated to the Victory Day. More than 50 people were wounded, and Akhmat Kadyrov died from his wounds.

This odious act of terrorism brought quite different results. The population of the republic was finally disappointed in the militants and rallied around the legitimate government. A young man was appointed in place of his father, who understood the futility of Islamist resistance. Thus, the situation began to change for the better. If the militants relied on attracting foreign mercenaries from abroad, then the Kremlin decided to use national interests. The inhabitants of Chechnya were very tired of the war, so they voluntarily went over to the side of the pro-Russian forces.

The counter-terrorist operation regime introduced by Yeltsin on September 23, 1999 was canceled by President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009. Thus, the campaign was officially ended, since it was called not a war, but a CTO. However, is it possible to consider that the veterans of the Chechen war can sleep peacefully, if local battles still take place and terrorist acts are carried out from time to time?

Results and consequences for the history of Russia

It is unlikely that anyone today can specifically answer the question of how many people died in the Chechen war. The problem is that any calculations will only be approximate. During the escalation of the conflict before the First Campaign, many people of Slavic origin were repressed or forced to leave the republic. During the years of the First Campaign, many fighters from both sides died, and these losses also cannot be accurately calculated.

If military losses can still be more or less calculated, then no one has been involved in clarifying the losses on the part of the civilian population, except perhaps human rights activists. Thus, according to the current official data, the 1st war claimed the following number of lives:

• Russian soldiers - 14,000 people;
• militants - 3,800 people;
• civilian population - from 30,000 to 40,000 people.

If we talk about the Second Campaign, then the results of the death toll are as follows:

• federal troops - about 3,000 people;
• militants - from 13,000 to 15,000 people;
• civilian population - 1000 people.

It should be borne in mind that these figures vary greatly depending on which organizations provide them. For example, when discussing the results of the second Chechen war, official Russian sources speak of a thousand dead among the civilian population. At the same time, Amnesty International (a non-governmental organization of international level) gives completely different figures - about 25,000 people. The difference in these data, as you can see, is huge.

The result of the war can be called not only impressive numbers of losses among the dead, wounded, missing people. It is also a ruined republic - after all, many cities, primarily Grozny, were subjected to artillery shelling and bombing. The entire infrastructure was practically destroyed in them, so Russia had to rebuild the capital of the republic from scratch.

As a result, today Grozny is one of the most beautiful and modern. Other settlements of the republic were also rebuilt.

Anyone who is interested in this information can find out what happened on the territory between 1994 and 2009. There are many films about the Chechen war, books and various materials on the Internet.

However, those who were forced to leave the republic, lost their relatives, their health - these people are unlikely to want to immerse themselves in what they have already experienced. The country was able to withstand this most difficult period of its history, and once again proved what is more important for them - dubious calls for independence or unity with Russia.

The history of the Chechen war has not yet been fully studied. Researchers will look for documents on losses among the military and civilians for a long time, double-check the statistical data. But today we can say: the weakening of the leaders and the desire for disunity always lead to terrible consequences. Only the strengthening of state power and the unity of people can end any confrontation so that the country can again live in peace.

Chechnya is one of the most media and at the same time mysterious regions. The republic is regularly mentioned in the media, but at the same time it is covered with a halo of myths. Disenfranchised women and aggressive men, dry law and untold wealth. The correspondent spent the weekend in Grozny to look into some of them.

In the public eye, the Chechen Republic is still associated with zinc coffins, terrorism, human rights violations and medieval customs. Russians are ready to happily go to Egypt and Turkey, despite the terrorist attacks on tourists in these countries, but they are frankly afraid to go to Chechnya. Meanwhile, the leadership of the republic does not hide the fact that it dreams of turning Grozny into a kind of Caucasian Dubai - a center of tourism and trade.

The emirate has long found a good balance between Islamic traditions and oriental flavor, on the one hand, and European freedoms and a high level of service, on the other. Chechnya is only at the beginning of its journey. By and large, Grozny is not yet an independent tourist center - you can see all the sights in two days, and the most interesting is the everyday exotic of local life.

Father, son and holy spirit

Since Grozny, destroyed by the war, was actually rebuilt in the 21st century, the Soviet legacy is almost not felt here. There are practically no ugly concrete boxes of the era of stagnation, bas-reliefs and monuments to Lenin glorifying the shock workers of socialist labor. The place of the leader of the world proletariat was taken by new idols. Throughout the city, Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov is thoughtfully looking at you from posters, sometimes keeping company both together and separately. Interestingly, if the photographs of the father and son of Kadyrov are different everywhere, then Putin is almost always unchanged. The young and no longer quite like the current president in a suit looks at the traveler with a kind look.

Photos of Kadyrov's father are almost always accompanied by quotes. From the facades of schools, Akhmat-Khadzhi recommends studying well, on the territory of hospitals and clinics - to take care of health, and from the billboards of streets and squares - to protect their hometown, the history and honor of the people. For those who did not find the USSR, all this smacks of Asianism, but those who are nostalgic for the Soviet system will feel at home. Only instead of Lenin, Kadyrov became the nationwide good grandfather. If in the Land of Soviets the name of Ilyich was called everything that moves and does not move, from an icebreaker to a state farm, then in modern Chechnya the universal name for the most important objects is Akhmat.