According to the writings of modern Chechen-Ingush chroniclers, their fellow tribesmen were the most loyal servants of the sovereign-emperor, to the last drop of blood they fought for a white cause and at the same time played a role in the victory of the Bolsheviks. In fact, the main achievements of the predecessors of Dudayev and Basayev, as in the present times, were robberies and reprisals against the civilian population.
Chronicle of events:
In November, the Union of the United Mountaineers of the Caucasus proclaimed the creation of the Mountain Republic, which laid claim to the territory from the Caspian to the Black Sea, including Stavropol, Kuban and Black Sea regions. On November 23 (December 6), 1917, the executive committee of the Chechen National Council sent an ultimatum to the Grozny Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, demanding the disarmament of workers' detachments and the revolutionary 111th regiment in the city.
The next day in Grozny, the murder of several horsemen and an officer of the Chechen regiment of the "wild division" was provoked. In the evening, several hundred Chechen horsemen plundered and set fire to the Novogroznensk oil fields, which had been burning for 18 months. The Grozny Council decided to withdraw the 111th regiment to Stavropol.
However, the main blow fell on the nearby Cossack villages. After the outbreak of the 1st World War, when the combat-ready male population from the Cossack villages was taken to the front, the Caucasian crime reached unprecedented proportions, the inhabitants constantly suffered from robberies, robberies and murders perpetrated by the abreks.
At the end of 1917, the Chechens and Ingush began the systematic expulsion of the Russian population. In November, the Ingush set fire to and destroyed the village of Field Marshal. On December 30, Chechens plundered and burned the village of Kokhanovskaya. The same fate befell the village of Ilyinskaya.
Meanwhile, the bloody turmoil in the North Caucasus continued to intensify. According to Denikin:
“On the night of August 5-6, 1918, Cossack and Ossetian detachments, supported by part of the city's population, broke into Vladikavkaz, controlled by the Bolsheviks. Heavy street fighting began. In this situation, the temporary extraordinary commissioner of the South of Russia G. K. Ordzhonikidze secretly went to the Ingush village of Bazorkino to negotiate with the Ingush leader Vassan-Girey Dzhabagiyev. In exchange for help in the fight against the rebels, he promised on behalf of the Soviet government, in case of victory, to transfer the lands of four Cossack villages to the Ingush. The proposal was accepted. On the same night, armed Ingush detachments began to arrive in Bazorkino. The balance of forces changed dramatically, and on August 17 the Cossacks and their supporters retreated to the village of Arkhonskaya. The next day, the hostilities were stopped, but the red abreks did not miss the opportunity to once again plunder Vladikavkaz, seized the state bank and the mint.
"In pursuance of the shameful conspiracy, the villages of Sunzhenskaya, Aki-Yurtovskaya, Tarskaya and Tarskiy khutor with a total population of 10 thousand people were evicted. After the village laid down their arms, the Ingush came to it and robberies and robberies and murders began."
In December 1918, the Volunteer Army launched an offensive in the North Caucasus. January 21 (February 3) white troops approached Vladikavkaz. After six days of stubborn fighting, during which a series of successive strikes were inflicted on the Ingush auls, on January 27 (February 9), the Ingush National Council, on behalf of its people, expressed complete obedience to the Denikin regime.
At the same time, Grozny was also busy. At first, quite in the spirit of the current soft policy, the white authorities tried to "solve the problem of Chechnya at the negotiating table." Of course, the Chechens immediately perceived this as a sign of weakness.
March 23 (April 5) a detachment of the Kuban and Terek Cossacks under the command of Lieutenant General D. P. Dratsenko defeated the Chechens near the village of Alkhan-Yurt, where they lost up to 1000 people, and the village itself was burned. Realizing that they would not stand on ceremony with them, the Chechens of the Grozny district began to send deputations from all sides with an expression of obedience.
In May 1919, after the occupation of Dagestan by white troops, the "Mountain Government" announced its self-dissolution and again fled to hospitable Georgia.
Having achieved the recognition of their power, the whites began to mobilize the Chechens and Ingush into their army.
As a result, it was possible to create only an Ingush cavalry brigade of two regiments. According to the commander of the Caucasian army, Lieutenant General P. N. Wrangel, the mobilized Ingush were distinguished by extremely low combat effectiveness.
The Chechens did not gain much fame on the battlefield. “The 1st Chechen Cavalry Regiment, which was in a deep, almost 10 verst, detour to the left, had to cut the Olenchevka - Promyslovoe road, not allowing reinforcements to approach the red,” recalled one of the officers of the division, staff captain Dmitry De Witt, “but the regiment He did not fulfill his task, lost contact with the division in the morning and attacked the Red position four times to no avail during the day, until, in turn, he himself was attacked by the Red cavalry and was thrown back into the field. Unfired horsemen, finding themselves in a difficult situation, fled, and the next day barely half of the regiment was assembled: most of them fled to the steppe and then deserted to themselves in Chechnya (D. De Witt, Chechen Cavalry Division. 1919, p. 133). And this is not surprising at all. As the same De Witt notes:
“The specific weight of a Chechen as a warrior is small, by nature he is a robber-abrek, and moreover not one of the brave: he always plans a weak sacrifice for himself, and in case of victory over it he becomes cruel to the point of sadism. A stubborn and prolonged battle, especially on foot, they do not withstand and, like any wild man, they panic at the slightest failure. In battle, his only engine is the thirst for robbery, as well as the feeling of animal fear of the officer. Having served for about a year among the Chechens and having visited them at home in the villages, I think that I will not be mistaken in asserting that all the beautiful and noble customs of the Caucasus and adats of antiquity were created not by them and not for them, but, obviously, by more cultured and gifted tribes.
And this time, the “brave horsemen” faced a serious opponent: “The Red cavalry had an excellent command of the saber - they were almost entirely Red Cossacks, and the wounds of the Chechens were mostly fatal. I myself have seen severed skulls, I have seen a cleanly severed arm, a shoulder, severed to the 3rd-4th rib, and so on. "Only well-trained cavalry soldiers or Cossacks could cut like this."
It is not surprising that mass desertions began in the Chechen regiments: “The regiments of the Chechen Cavalry Division suffered heavy losses during the Steppe campaign, but they melted even more during the retreat from the incessant desertion. The fight against this evil became impossible: no punishment, up to the death penalty, could deter a Chechen from the temptation to run to his home under cover of night."
By order of General Revishin, 6 Chechens from the 2nd regiment were shot for armed robbery and desertion, another 54 were publicly whipped with ramrods.
I recently read Denikin's memoirs. The general writes: “The cup of the people's patience is overflowing … While the Cossack and volunteer Russian blood is shed for the liberation of the Motherland, the mobilized Chechens and Ingush, equipped with Russian weapons, are deserting en masse and, taking advantage of the absence of the male population on the ground, they are engaged in robberies, robberies, murders and open uprisings (Denikin AI Essays on Russian Troubles. p. 617).
Meanwhile, from September 28 to December 20, 1919, the Chechen division takes part in the battles with the rebels of Nestor Makhno as part of a group of special forces, having distinguished itself in looting:
“In less than a few days, a new incident occurred in my squadron, so typical for Chechens. Passing through the market square, I heard a loud shout aside, and at the same time a man approached me, saying: "Something is wrong with your Chechen." I entered the crowd and saw my rider of the 2nd platoon, fighting off some brave woman who clung to his Circassian coat. "I will take you, oblique devil, to the boss, if you don’t return the boots!" the woman screamed. I sorted out their dispute here on the spot. It was quite obvious to me that the Chechen had stolen the boots that were lying on the cart; the Chechen insisted that he had bought them. I ordered to return them to the woman, and myself to go to the squadron and report the incident to the sergeant. In the evening, having come to the squadron after the roll call, I called the guilty rider out of order.
I barely recognized him: his whole face, swollen and blue from bruises, said that, having passed through the sergeant's hands, he had hardly passed his platoon commander, and that in this case the expression “Mr. not a figurative meaning. My sergeant, a Dagestani himself, treated the Chechens with undisguised contempt and held high his authority, not hesitating to use his weighty fist, which made the riders afraid of him and stretched out in his presence. In the old days, serving in a regular regiment, I was against assault, believing that an officer has other measures to influence a subordinate, but when I found myself among the natives, I became convinced that physical punishment is the only radical measure. Chechens, like semi-savage people, recognize exclusively force and only obey it; any humanity and half-measures are accepted by them as a manifestation of weakness”(D. De Witt, Chechen Cavalry Division, p. 156 157).
“I was already beginning to convince myself and as if to believe that by holding the Chechens strictly in my hands and not allowing robberies, one could make good soldiers out of them; unfortunately, life was not slow to refute all my dreams. The fight against robbery became almost unbearable. The robbery was, as it were, legalized by the whole way of life in the field, as well as by the thieving nature of the highlander himself. We stood among the rich, well-to-do peasants, in most cases German colonists, without experiencing any shortage of food: milk, butter, honey, bread - there was plenty of everything, and nevertheless, complaints about the theft of poultry did not stop. In an instant, a Chechen would catch a chicken or a goose, twist their head and hide their prey under a cloak. There were even more serious complaints: about changing horses or robberies accompanied by violence or threats. The regiment commander severely punished the guilty, but what could he have done when some of his closest assistants were ready to look at all these iniquities as seizing military booty, so necessary to encourage the Chechens”(Ibid.: 160).
Major General Ya. A. Slashov recalled:
“I myself was in the Caucasus and I know that they are capable of robbing dashingly, and almost fleeing. Having no faith in the highlanders, when I arrived in Crimea, I ordered them to be disbanded and sent to the Caucasus to replenish their units, for which I was scolding Denikin (Slashchov Ya. A. White Crimea. 1920: Memoirs and documents. M., 1990, p. 56 57).
On June 9, 1920, the command of the 3rd cavalry brigade of the 2nd cavalry division decided to destroy the enemy with a night raid. Thanks to the traditionally careless attitude of Chechen horsemen to military discipline, this was brilliantly achieved. At dawn on June 10, in a fleeting battle, the headquarters of the Chechen division was defeated. Several hundred corpses of hacked and shot Chechens remained in the streets of the village. The losses of the Reds were only a few wounded.
The defeat of the headquarters of the Chechen division became a kind of crown of its inglorious combat path.
As the staff-captain De Witt, who visited Chechnya, recalled, whose memoirs I have already quoted:
“All housework, household work, work in the gardens, and so on. lies with the wives, the number of which depends solely on the husband's means … Men, as a rule, do nothing at all and are terribly lazy. Their purpose is to protect their hearth from all kinds of blood avengers. Robbery as a means of subsistence in their lives is completely legalized, especially when it concerns their hated neighbors - the Terek Cossacks, with whom the Chechens have waged wars from time immemorial. All men, and even children, are always with weapons, without which they dare not leave their home. They rob and kill on the sly, mainly on the road, setting up ambushes; at the same time, often, without honestly dividing the spoils, they become enemies for life, taking revenge on the offender and his entire family”(D. De Witt, Chechen Cavalry Division … p. 147).
