The punished People

The Situation in the Northern Caucasus, and German Occupation Policies

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The Chechen-Ingush ASSR

Checheno-lngushetia passed through several stages before December 1936, when it was finally transformed from an autonomous region into an autonomous republic. In 1939 its territory was inhabited by the following nationalities:

Chechens – 368 10. or 50 percent of the total population of the ASSR
Ingush – 56 500 or 7,8 percent
Russians – 258 200, or 34,8 percent
Ukrainians – 10 100 or 1,14 percent
Armenians – 8 600 or 1,2 percent

The great bulk of the native (Chechen-lngush) population lived in the rural areas. The working-class layer remained quite thin until the early I930s and even by the beginning ofthe war had not greatly increased. According to official information, in 1937 there was a total of 5,535 Chechen and Ingush employees in the factories of Grozny, the capital of Checheno-lngushetia.
Collectivization undermined but did not destroy the age-old way of life in Chechnia.
Under the particular conditions in Chechnia-which had a clan system of kinship (the teipa) and a system of land tenure based on common clan ownership, and where, among a certain part of the rural population, the distribution of land continued to be based
on the principle of descent from either free peasants (uzdenei) or slaves (lai) – the policy of wholesale forced collectivization provoked resistance from the population. In turn, the authorities applied greater and greater pressure, with the result that conflicts became so greatly intensified that it probably would have taken many years to iron things out.