Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What ethnicity are Chechens?
Chechens (/ˈtʃɛtʃən/; Chechen: Нохчий Noxçiy; Old Chechen: Нахчой Naxçoy) are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples originating in the North Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. They refer to themselves as Vainakhs (which means our people in Chechen) or Nokhchiy (pronounced [no̞xtʃʼiː]; singular Nokhchi, Nakhchuo or Nakhtche).[21] Chechen and Ingush peoples are collectively known as the Vainakh. The majority of Chechens today live in the Chechen Republic, a subdivision of the Russian Federation.
Special Battalions "Vostok" and "Zapad" (, lit. "East" and "West") were two Spetsnaz units of the GRU, the military intelligence agency of Russian Federation, based in Chechnya. The overwhelming majority of the personnel were ethnic Chechens, while the command personnel were mixed ethnic Russian and Chechens. The Special Battalions were formed during the Second Chechen War as a force of Chechen volunteers under the direct control of the Russian government to perform operations in the mountain-forests of Chechnya. The two units operated independently from each other, with "Zapad" covering the western half of Chechnya and "Vostok" covering the eastern half, and their own commanders subordinate to the GRU but under the command network of the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division.
Ethnic discrimination occurred in many forms against Chechens during the Tsarist era of Chechen history, largely due to the colonialist viewpoint of the Russian government, viewing Chechens as inferior, savage and subversive, one of many peoples who Russia had a "moral duty to civilize".
Two ethnic groups that were specifically targeted for persecution by Stalin's Soviet Union were the Chechens and the Ingush. Unlike the other nationalities that could be suspected of connection to foreign states which shared their ethnic background, the Chechens and the Ingush were completely indigenous people of the Soviet Union. Rather than being accused of collaboration with foreign enemies, these two ethnic groups were considered to have cultures which did not fit in with Soviet culture – such as accusing Chechens of being associated with “banditism” – and the authorities claimed that the Soviet Union had to intervene in order to “remake” and “reform” these cultures. In practice this meant heavily armed punitive operations carried out against Chechen “bandits” that failed to achieve forced assimilation, culminating in an ethnic cleansing operation in 1944, which involved the arrests and deportation of over 500,000 Chechens and Ingush from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The deportations of the Chechens and Ingush also involved the outright massacre of thousands of people, and severe conditions placed upon the deportees – they were put in unsealed train cars, with little to no food for a four-week journey during which many died from hunger and exhaustion.
Chechens in Syria are ethnic Chechens who form a small minority in Syria.
From 1991 to 1994, tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity left the republic amidst reports of violence and discrimination against the non-Chechen population (mostly Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians). Chechen industry began to fail as a result of many Russian engineers and workers leaving or being expelled from the republic combined with the Soviet era's crippling of the non-Russian/Armenian/Ukrainian populace (Chechens, some Ingush and Nogais, Jews) through Russian-only schooling, heavy discrimination in the public sector of the workforce, and other similar measures (even as late as 1989, Checheno-Ingushetia was ruled by a bureaucracy of ethnic Russians). During the undeclared Chechen civil war, factions both sympathetic and opposed to Dudayev fought for power, sometimes in pitched battles with the use of heavy weapons. In March 1992, the opposition attempted a coup d'état, but their attempt was crushed by force. A month later, Dudayev introduced direct presidential rule, and in June 1993, dissolved the Chechen parliament to avoid a referendum on a vote of non-confidence. In late October 1992, Russian forces dispatched to the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict were ordered to move to the Chechen border; Dudayev, who perceived this as "an act of aggression against the Chechen Republic", declared a state of emergency and threatened general mobilization if the Russian troops did not withdraw from the Chechen border. To prevent the invasion of Chechnya, he did not provoke the Russian troops.
After staging another "coup d'état" attempt in December 1993, the opposition organized themselves into the Provisional Council of the Chechen Republic as a potential alternative government for Chechnya, calling on Moscow for assistance. In August 1994, the coalition of the opposition factions based in north Chechnya launched a large-scale armed campaign to remove Dudayev's government.
The experience (in addition to previous memories of conflicts with the Russian state) of the starvation in the 1930s, of Aardakh in 1944 and of the ethnic conflict with the Russian populace after the return from exodus had, according to Derluguian, Wood and others, allowed for the unification of loyalties. Bridges were made between taip, vird, and the like, and relationships were forged with prisonmates, partners in crime, among members of Chechen mafias in Russia, among members of labour teams, while the importance of taip and vird diminished due to the pressures of modernization. The Chechen narrative increasingly took the stance of a united Chechen struggle to escape once and for all the perceived oppression by the Russian state and to escape future hardships. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the leader in the Soviet Union, and pursued a policy of openness and non-censorship of controversial issues. This allowed all of these issues to come to the forefront, as Chechen organizations became less and less reserved in their rhetoric and began saying what they had thought the whole time: that Chechens were persecuted time and time again, and continued to be, and that the Russian state was at fault. And the "Question" was asked: how can the Chechen people once and for all escape future persecution?
The Chechen-Slav ethnic clashes took place from 1958 to 1965 in North Caucasus (part of the Soviet Union at the time), upon ethnic tensions between Slavic settlers and local Chechens and Ingushs. The violence began in 1958, upon a conflict between a Russian sailor and an Ingush youngster over a girl, in which the Russian was fatally injured. The incident quickly deteriorated into mass ethnic riots in Grozny and surroundings, as Slavic mobs attacked Chechens and Ingushs and looted property throughout the region for 4 days. Ethnic clashes continued through 1960s, and in 1965 some 16 clashes were reported, taking tall of 185 severe injuries, 19 of them fatal. By late 1960, the region calmed down and the Chechen-Russian conflict came to its lowest point until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the eruption of Chechen Wars in 1990.
Ramzan Kadyrov denied knowledge of the presence Chechen troops in Ukraine, but a separatist commander later confirmed that Chechens and militants of other ethnicities fought for the Donetsk People's Militia. In the aftermath of the First Battle of Donetsk Airport, local authorities said that some wounded militants were Chechens from Grozny and Gudermes. One Donetsk resident said that the presence of Chechen fighters showed "that this war is not clean. It is artificially created. If this is an uprising by the Donetsk People's Republic, what are foreigners doing here?"
German Sadulaev was born in 1973, in the town of Shali, in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, to a Chechen father and Terek Cossack mother. His father's mother was also a Russian. Because his grandmother was a Russian, she and the children were not deported as part of Aardakh but the father, a Chechen, was, thus separating his father's nuclear family, until they were reunited when the Chechens were allowed to return from their exile in Central Asia. During his childhood, the Sadulaev family had views that were at times considered pro-Russian by other Chechens. Sadulaev himself speaks both fluent Chechen and fluent Russian, and identifies as an ethnic Chechen; according to traditional Chechen culture one is considered a member of the ethnic group as well as the specific teip by patrilineal descent. He was born into the teip of Ersenoy.
Chechen Kurds or Kurdified Chechens refer to the ethnic Chechens who went through a process of kurdification after fleeing to Kurdistan during and after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1860s. Today, these Chechens are being perceived as being ethnic Kurds of the "Chechen tribe" and "Lezgî tribe".
The anti-Chechen pogrom in Eastern Kazakhstan took place in spring and summer, 1951, in Eastern Kazakhstan (part of the Soviet Union at the time), upon ethnic tensions between mainly ethnic Russians and deported Chechens. A blood libel rumor, according to which the Chechens allegedly use "Christian blood in their rituals" may also have contributed to the escalation of events. The riots occurred in 3 cities - Leninogorsk, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Zyryanovsk.
The violence began in 1958 with the 1958 Grozny riots, starting as a conflict between a Russian sailor and an Ingush youngster over a girl (a fiancé of the Ingush youngster), in which the Russian was fatally injured. The incident quickly deteriorated into mass ethnic riots, as Slavic mobs attacked Chechens and Ingushs and looted property throughout the region for 4 days. Ethnic clashes continued through 1960s, and in 1965 some 16 clashes were reported, causing 185 severe injuries, 19 of them fatal. By late 1960, the region calmed down and the Chechen-Russian conflict came to its lowest point until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the eruption of Chechen Wars in 1990.[a]. At least 20 cumulative deaths occurred during the period of the riots:
Many ethnic Chechens have also moved to Moscow and other Russian cities. According to the 2008 study by the Norwegian Refugee Council, some 139,000 Chechens remained displaced in the Russian Federation.
The demographer Dalkhat Ediev, in 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 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 resiliance and determination to survive.
There is also dispute that Chechens were antagonistic towards ethnic Russians and Cossacks because they were ethnic Russian (as opposed to because of their hostility to Chechen statehood) - there were two originally ethnic Russian Chechen teips, and the president's wife was Russian. The Chechen clan system protects individuals from theft and murder because the whole clan would become involved, and one can join a teip - thus, those who didn't join teips (like the Cossacks) would be subject to theft by the poor, etc.
During and after the war Stalin undertook massive deportations of whole ethnicities explaining this by anti-Sovietism, separatism and collaboration with Nazi Germany. In particular, this affected Balkars, Chechens, and Ingushs. As of 1944, the part of the Prigorodny District on the right bank of the Terek River had been part of Chechen-Ingush ASSR, but it was granted to North Ossetia in following Joseph Stalin's deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia. Although they were eventually allowed to return from the exile, they were generally not allowed to settle in the original territories. Instead, in 1957, three districts of Stavropol Krai were granted to Chechen-Ingush ASSR. A local law passed in 1982 actually prohibited ethnic Ingush from obtaining residency permits in North Ossetia.
In 1944, he was deported along with other chechen people during the Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, an ethnic cleansing of Chechen and Ingush people by the Soviet forces.
The wars in Chechnya, and the associated Caucasian terrorism in Russia, were a major factor in the growth of intolerance, xenophobia, and racist violence in Russia, directed in a great part against the people from Caucasus. The Russian authorities were unlikely to label random attacks on people of non-Russian ethnicity as racist, preferring calling it "hooliganism". The number of murders officially classified as racist more than doubled in Russia between 2003 and 2004. The violence included acts of terrorism such as the 2006 Moscow market bombing which killed 13 people. In 2007, 18-year-old Artur Ryno claimed responsibility for 37 racially motivated murders in the course of one year, saying that "since school [he] hated people from the Caucasus." On 5 June 2007, an anti-Chechen riot involving hundreds of people took place in the town of Stavropol in southern Russia. Rioters demanded the eviction of ethnic Chechens following the murder of two young Russians who locals believed were killed by Chechens. The event revived memories of a recent clash between Chechens and local Russians in Kondopoga over an unpaid bill, when two Russians were killed. The Caucasians also face ethnic-related violence in the ranks of Russian Army.
There are secessionist movements in most republics, but these are generally not very strong. However, there was considerable support for secession among Tatars, Bashkirs, Yakuts, and Chechens after the breakup of the Soviet Union, resulting in war in the case of Chechnya. The desire for secession in many republics is, however, greatly complicated by the extent to which other ethnic groups reside in their titular republics (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Sakha; due to the First and Second Chechen Wars, very few non-Chechens now reside in Chechnya.) Also, the majority of Tatars, unlike other titular ethnic groups, reside outside Tatarstan.
In Chechnya, Mountain Jews partially assimilated into Chechen society by forming a Jewish teip, the Zhugtii while three other teips, the Shuonoi, Ziloi and Chartoi have also been theorized to have Jewish relations. In Chechen society, ethnic minorities residing in areas demographically dominated by Chechens have the option of forming a teip in order to properly participate in the developments of Chechen society such as making alliances and gaining representation in the "Mekhk Khell", a supreme ethnonational council that is occasionally compared to a parliament. Teips of minority-origin have also been made by ethnic Poles, Germans, Georgians, Kumyks, Russians, Kalmyks, Circassians, Andis, Avars, Dargins, Laks, Persians, Arabs, Ukrainians and Nogais, with the German teip having been formed as recently as the 1940s when Germans in Siberian exile living among Chechens assimilated.
Historically, if non-Chechen minorities living in Chechen lands wanted to take part in the political processes of the Chechen nation, and integrate into it, they would request admittance as an ethnic teip. They would continue, for a time, to speak their other languages, but also learned Chechen. Due to the encouragement of teip exogamy, as the generations passed, they would come to be heavily intermarried into the Chechen nation and as a result, be slowly Chechenized culturally and linguistically. The level of Chechenization varies between these foreign-origin teips, with some well-preserving their cultural traits and others not. They are nonetheless known as impure teips (not in a derogatory sense), for their foreign origin. Their loyalty to the nation is not any more in question than a Chechen-origin teip.
Ethnic Russians left behind faced constant harassment and violence. The separatist government acknowledged the violence, but did nothing to address it, blaming it on Russian provocateurs. Russians became soft target for criminals, as they knew the Chechen police would not intervene in their defense. The start of the First Chechen War in 1994 created a second wave of ethnic Russian refugees. By the end of the conflict in 1996, the Russian community had nearly vanished.
In 1957, Chechens were allowed to return to their homes. The Chechen–Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was reestablished. The violence began in 1958, upon a conflict between a Russian sailor and an Ingush youngster over a girl, in which the Russian was fatally injured. The incident quickly deteriorated into mass ethnic riots, as Slavic mobs attacked Chechens and Ingushes and looted property throughout the region for 4 days. Ethnic clashes continued through 1960s, and in 1965 some 16 clashes were reported, taking tall of 185 severe injuries, 19 of them fatal. By late 1960, the region calmed down and the Chechen–Russian conflict came to its lowest point until the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the eruption of Chechen Wars in 1990.
Chechnya was first incorporated as a whole into the Russian Empire in 1859, after decades-long Caucasian War. Tsarist rule was marked by a transition into modern times including the formation (or re-formation) of a Chechen bourgeoisie, the emergence of social movements, reorientation of the Chechen economy towards oil, heavy ethnic discrimination at the expense of Chechens and others in favor of Russians and Kuban Cossacks, and a religious transition among the Chechens towards the Qadiri sect of Sufism.