Case Studies

The Soviet War against `Fifth Columnists': The Case of Chechnya, 1942—4

05.05.2008

The article reflects on the Soviet War against the fifth columnists, the case of Chechnya in 1942-44. The section offers a report relating to the five Chechnyan columnists in the Second world war, which includes: Hassan Israilov, Maibrek Sheripov, Osman Saidurov, Rasul Sakhabov, and Sarali Makhmudov.

Article excerpt:
The ‘Chechevitsa’
Although any serious German threat to the Northern Caucasus had ended by
the close of 1943, the experiences of the preceding years had taught the
Stalinist leadership just how vulnerable Soviet fuel reserves could be: the
isthmus that linked northern Iran and European Russia was too strategically
vital to leave vulnerable to attack from the south through the Middle East,
from the west through Turkey, and above all from within by separatist movements,
who could serve as fifth columnists in the event of another war. Initially
prepared in late 1943, the ‘Chechevitsa’ — the plan to deport the entire indigenous
native population of the Northern Caucasus to Central Asia — was
carried out from mid-February until mid-March 1944. The People’s
Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrentii Beriia, personally travelled to Grozny
on 20 February to supervise the operation.111 According to the secret decree of
the Supreme Soviet dated 7 March 1944, ‘On the Liquidation of the Checheno-
Ingush ASSR and the Administrative Reorganization of the Territory’, the
reason for the forced deportation was the alleged mass collaboration of the
indigenous peoples of the Northern Caucasus with the Germans. This despite
the fact that only a small part of Checheno-Ingushetia was actually ever occupied
by the Germans, or that some 157,000 vainakhi — ‘our own people’ of
the Caucasus — had served honourably in the war against the Germans. In
the Stalinist mindset, the Chechen people were a ‘bandit nation’, a nation of
fifth columnists, guilty — in Lavrentii Beriia’s words — of ‘active and almost
universal participation in the terrorist movement directed against the Soviets
and the Red Army’.112
In connection with the fact that during the period of the Patriotic War many Chechens and
Ingushi betrayed the Motherland, crossed over to the side of the fascist occupiers, joined the
ranks of saboteurs and spies, were dropped by the Germans in the rear of the Red Army, that
under German orders they created armed bands for the struggle against Soviet power, and
also considering that many Chechens and Ingushi have for years taken part in armed actions
against Soviet power and over the course of an extended time, while not engaging in
honourable labour, they have perpetrated bandit raids on collective farms in neighbouring
districts, robbed and murdered Soviet citizens . . .113
The Chechevitsa operation began without warning on the night of 23–4
February 1944. Over the next two weeks, some 19,000 staff officers of the
Soviet political and military police (NKVD, NKGB and Smersh), and approximately
100,000 officers and soldiers of NKVD military units, deported
478,479 persons — 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingushi. Throughout the
six-week period from mid-February to the end of March 1944, the indigenous
peoples of the Northern Caucasus were forcibly removed from their native
lands. In all, 602,193 persons were deported from the region: 496,460
Chechens and Ingushi, 68,327 Karachaevtsy and 37,406 Balkars.114 The
Checheno-Ingush ASSR was abolished and restructured into administrative
districts of four surrounding republics, their territories re-settled with ‘reliable’
ethnic Russians and ethnic Georgians.
Almost all published accounts of the Chechevitsa emphasize the orderliness
and efficiency of the operation.115 The foremost historian of the events, N.F.
Bugai, estimated that a mere 50 Chechen lives were lost during the forcible
deportation of nearly half a million men, women, children, and elderly.116 But in
light of the hatred and passionate desire for vengeance that motivated the Soviet
police action, such benign accounts strain credulity. Eyewitness reports of
Chechens who were present during the relocations, supplemented by accounts
of remorseful perpetrators, and subsequent forensic investigations, challenge
the aura of benignity that surrounds the action. We know, for instance, that
Beriia had issued a verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush considered
‘untransportable (netransportabel’nyi) should be liquidated’ on the spot. Under
the rubric of ‘untransportability’, thousands were brutally killed. The most
glaring example of numerous reports of Soviet excesses was the Soviet annihilation
of the Chechen mountain village Khaibakh, in Shatoi raion, where more
than 700 Chechens were locked in a stable and burned alive.117 Here and elsewhere
throughout the Northern Caucasus, the probable cause of ‘untransportability’
was typhus, which had broken out in epidemic proportions in
villages throughout the region.118 There are also reliable reports of dead bodies
strewn throughout the villages and roads of the Northern Caucasus during and
after the action; of the burning of priceless Chechen books and manuscripts,
and the destruction of Chechen-language libraries; of the poisoning of food and
water supplies to liquidate any guerrillas who remained behind.119
Although the action was presented to the Soviet public as punishment for
alleged Chechen treachery during the second world war, the Chechevitsa was
first and foremost a tactical operation directed against armed separatists who
still seriously undermined Soviet normalization of the region. According to the
NKVD, some 6544 Chechens and Ingushi resisted deportation, 338 of whom
were killed in battles with Soviet forces in late February and early March. At
that time, the NKVD arrested 2016 Chechens and Ingushi as members of the
local ‘anti-Soviet element’; and police confiscated 20,072 weapons — including
4868 rifles, and 479 machine guns and tommy guns.
At the time of the launch of the Chechevitsa in mid-February 1944, at least
eight organized armed bands of Chechen guerrillas were still at large. By June,
the Soviet police enlisted the support of Muslim religious leaders to ensure the
cooperation of those few ‘bandits’ who remained. Among the Chechen units
still at large was the largest band and its most influential Chechen guerrilla
leader, Hassan Israilov, who had managed to evade the Soviets for more than
three years. Stripped by the mass deportation of his partisan base of support,
Israilov was rendered extremely vulnerable to capture.
There were several near misses. In early February 1944, the Soviets received
intelligence that Israilov was being hidden by one Dzhovatkhan Murtazaliev,
his brother Ayub, and his son Khas-Magomed at a hidden location in Itum-
Kale raion. The Soviets secretly apprehended the Murtazaliev brothers on 13
February. In the course of interrogation, Ayub disclosed that Israilov was
hiding in a cave in the mountain of Bachi-Chu, near Dzumsoev village soviet in
Itum-Kale raion. On the night of 14–15 February, a special NKVD team led by
officer of state security Tseretel’ and guided by Ayub Murtazaliev entered and
searched the cave. While Israilov had again eluded capture by departing
minutes before the arrival of the Soviet team, the operation was a huge success.
Search of the cave turned up several trophies, including Israilov’s own personal
DP (Degtiareva) light machine-gun and ammunition, an English-made sniper
rifle, an Iranian-made rifle, a Russian-made .375 rifle, more than 200 rounds
of ammunition, and Israilov’s personal archive, more than 2 kg of papers that
gave the Soviets intimate knowledge of Israilov’s insurrectionary movement.
Intelligence gleaned from the archive included a comprehensive list of members
of the NSPKB still at large in more than 20 auls or mountain villages in Itum-
Kale, Galanchozh, Shatoi and Prigorodnyi raions — in all, 6540 persons. The
cache also included a detailed German map identifying the locations of NSPKB
underground cells throughout the Northern Caucasus.120
Keenly aware that he had been duped by Ayub Murtazaliev, Tseretel’
pressed him for Israilov’s whereabouts. Eventually, Murtazaliev confessed that
Israilov had fled to the cave of his nephew, Khas-Magomed Murtazaliev. But
by the time Tseretel’ and his team had managed to apprehend Khas-Magomed
on 15 February, Israilov’s trail had run cold.
Hassan Israilov spent the last 10 months of his life a fugitive from Soviet
law, crushed by the weight of the deportation of his people from their native
homeland, desperately moving from cave to cave to avoid capture. Until the
release of Israilov’s master file from the archives of the Russian Federal
Security Service, we will not know how he spent these last days of his life. On
26 November 1944 Soviet state security officers apprehended one Isbakhiev,
who was just returning from a meeting with Israilov. Among his communications
was found a personal request addressed to Israilov’s old nemesis, the
NKVD Chief of Grozny, V.A. Drozdov, to plead directly to Stalin for clemency
in his case. In the note, Israilov also requested supplies of paper and pencils,
medicine for treating tuberculosis, and a copy of one of Stalin’s reports. He
also asked about the fate of his brothers, Hussein and Osman.121
The details of Hassan Israilov’s end are still unknown. All we have is a Top
Secret communication from Kakuchaia and Drozdov to Deputy Director of the
NKVD Kruglov, dated 29 December 1944, that ‘Comrade Beriia’s assignment
has been completed. Israilov Hassan has been killed, his corpse identified and
photographed’.122
The Chechen armed resistance did not end with Israilov’s demise. Special
counter-insurgency units of the Soviet secret police would continue to hunt the
remnants of Chechen guerrilla opposition in the Northern Caucasus until
1953.

Throughout the period from June 1941 to November 1943, Soviet special
units in the Northern Caucasus liquidated two large organized guerrilla movements
— the followers of Khasan Israilov and Maibrek Sheripov — and 46
smaller mountain separatist guerrilla groups with an estimated total of 980
armed members.123 The record for the entire wartime period is even more
telling. According to GUBB data, in the period between 1940 and 1944
the struggle of Soviet state security against Chechen and Ingush nationalist
guerrillas in the Northern Caucasus brought the annihilation of 197 organized
bands, consisting of 4532 guerrillas: 657 were killed; 2762 captured; and 1113
persuaded to surrender.124

Notes:
112 Beriia to Stalin, quoted in N.F. Bugai (ed.), L. Beriia–I. Stalinu: ‘Soglasno Vashemu
ukazaniiu’ (Moscow 1995), 92. The same charges were repeated by D. Rogozin, the President of
the Committee on International Affairs in the Russian State Duma, in his Introduction to the book
Chechenskii kapkan, published in Moscow in 1997: ‘Considering the mass collaboration of the
population of Chechnya with the Germans, the State Committee of Defense was compelled to
make the decision regarding the cessation of mobilization in the republic and then in the deportation
of the participants who aided and abetted the enemy’ (17–18).
113 The full text of the decree is printed in Repressirovannye narody Rossii: chechentsy i ingushi
(Moscow 1994), 75.
114 See Beriia’s report from Grozny to Stalin, dated 7 March 1944. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d.
64, l. 58; and the post-operation summary report from Beriia to Stalin, Molotov and Malenkov, 9
July 1944. GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 65, ll. 211–14. A follow-up summary report from NKVD
chief S. Kruglov to Stalin, Molotov, Beriia and Malenkov, dated 31 January 1946, estimated a
total of 498,870 people — 131,480 families — deported from the Northern Caucasus in
February–March 1944. GARF, R-9401, op. 2, d. 134, ll. 176–80. Approximately 240 men,
women, children and the elderly were packed into each sealed railway car to make the long trip to
Kazakhstan and Kyrghyzia. Thousands more died en route to their destinations — mainly industrial
centres and collective farms in Central Asia. Norman Naimark estimates that more than
100,000 more died in the first three years after deportation. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, op. cit., 97.
115 See, for example, Martin, ‘Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, 823. For an alternative view,
see Edi Isaev et. al., Iz osoboi papki Stalina. O deportatsii chechentsev i ingushei 23 fevralia 1944
(Moscow 2004).
116 N.F. Bugai and A.M. Gonov, Kavkaz: Narody v eshelonakh (20–60-e gg.) (Moscow 1998),
148.
117 The Soviet commander of the annihilation of Khaibakh, Colonel Gvishiani, reported the
incident of 23 February 1944 directly to Beriia: ‘Only for your eyes. In view of [their] “untransportability”
and with the goal of the strict and timely fulfillment of operation “Gory” [Mountains]
we were forced to liquidate more than 700 inhabitants in Khaibakh settlement’. Beriia’s response
was to praise Gvishiani ‘for resolute action’, and to nominate him for a medal and a promotion.
See the account in Zaindi Shakhbiev, Sud’ba checheno-ingushskogo naroda (Moscow 1996),
249–55. Limited documentation from Soviet archives confirms that more than 700 Chechens were
killed in Khaibakh, but the details of the massacre have not yet been released. Cf. the mainstream
Russian account from journalist Ol’ga Timofeeva, ‘Naselennogo punkta “Khaibakh” v Checheno-
Ingushskoi ASSR net. V 1944 godu v koniushne vysokogornogo aula Khaibakh byli zazhivo
sozhzheny 705 chelovek’, Izvestiia 48 (18 March 2004), 5. A detailed account of the massacre
from an eyewitness, Deputy Commissar of Justice in Chechnya Dziyaudin Mal’sagov, appeared in
M. Arsenov, ‘It Was Like That . . .’, Chechen Times 2 February 2003. Mal’sagov puts Gvishiani in
command at the scene of the massacre, acting under orders received directly from Lavrentii Beriia.
118 This version is confirmed by the extraordinary eyewitness account of Akhmad Mudarov, an
inhabitant of the nearby village Roshni-chu. Mudarov and seven of his family members who were
sick with typhus were shot down by Soviet police, but Mudarov managed to recover from his
wounds. See Said Bitsoev, ‘V menia vonzili shtyk i podtashchili k obryvu’, Novye Izvestiia 31 (24
February 2004), 7. In his final report on the deportations to Stalin in July 1944, Beriia indicated
that the struggle to contain typhus had been ‘unsatisfactory’, and that upon arrival at their destinations
in Kazakhstan, there were numerous outbreaks of typhus among Chechen deportees.
GARF, f. R-9401, op. 2, d. 65, l. 212.
119 See the tendentious summary of Lyoma Usmanov, a professor in the Defense Language
Institute of the US Defense Department, ‘The 1944 Deportation’, Chechen Times 28 (13 February
2004). Usmanov estimates that more than 7000 Chechens were massacred during the Chechevitsa
in Galanchozh raion alone. There is solid evidence that Chechen resistance continued well after the
mass deportation to Kazakhstan. See, for instance, the reports from NKVD General Egnarov to
Beriia in 1945 from Alma-Ata, GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 92, ll. 98, 119–120.
120 Copy of a Top Secret report to L. P. Beriia, February 1944, published in ‘Dokumenty izarkhiva Iosifa Stalina’, op. cit.
121 Top Secret ciphered telegram to Leont’ev, Chief of GUBB in Moscow, dated 26 November 1944, published in ‘Dokumenty iz arkhiva Iosifa Stalina’, op. cit.
122 Quoted in Loginov, Kavkazskie orly, 61.
123 Galitskii, ‘Velikaia otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945 gg.’, 19.
124 GARF, f. R-9478, op. 1, d. 274, l. 1.
Read more...

Back to List