Chechens, Who Had Lived As Members Of The Soviet Union,

From 1785 to present day Chechnya and Russia have had conflicts. Starting in 1785, Russia only cared for the Caucasus region for its use as a communication track to Georgia. Russian allies Cossacks started settling in the Caucasus Mountains and that region began expanding. After they signed the Treaty of Georgievsk, they collected Georgia as a territory. They manufactured a road and military forts for security of the passageway. The Russians began to feel endangered because Sheikh Mansur started preaching an uncommon style of Islam. They tried to capture Mansur but failed. Since they failed they ended up burning the village where he lived.

On October 1, 1999, Russian troops crossed the border into the de facto Republic of Chechnya, this was merely a new episode in a series of conflicts that plagued the region since the 18th century, and still present until today. In 1783 the North Caucasus region which includes Chechnya was ceded to Russia, and in 1859 Chechnya was formally annexed. Still it the reoccurrence of conflicts suggest that Chechens have never really accepted being a part of Russia, nor were they assimilated, violence eruption took a form of cycles from 1785 to 1791 the Sheikh Mansur revolt, the Great Gazavat (Murid War) from 1829 to 1859, the Russian Civil War from 1921 to the mid 1930’s, insurgency during Second World War from 1940-1944, Chechen Slav ethnic clashes

Firstly, it is important to examine the attitude of the Soviet people before the Nazi invasion, and how they reacted to the invasion. In the years before the war, Stalin had purged a large portion of the military and the communist party, which created a lot of fear and anti-Stalin sentiment amongst Soviet citizens. This sentiment was particularly high

Under Stalin, the desire for independence became a death sentence. According to the part of a documentary in which the segment was titled “Ukrainian famine 1933”, much of Ukraine’s economy was based on the individual farming land that was owned by kulaks or wealthy farmers, a name given by Soviet Union. When Russian government demanded that the farming land be given to it, it caused a resistance from the farmers and peasants of the nation. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union declared the kulaks as the enemy of the government and forced them to not only give up their land and livestock but also to be relocated in remote areas Siberia. This fate was not only written to the wealthy famers but to any person that defied the Russian government. They began to kill those that showed open defiance. In order to control any further resistance, Soviet Union increased its demand for grain from the Ukraine. During this period, the nation was facing a drought so they were already limited to the amount of grain that could be given to the government. As Soviet Union continued to demand more and more grain from the nation, the nation did not have food to support itself. According to the article titled “Famine in Ukraine after Second World War”, it states the grain was given to “various European countries in order to forestall their reliance on imports from the United States. In 1946 the Soviet Union shipped 1.7 million tons of grain to Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland,

Thirdly, Kuznetsov attacks the Soviet regime through its ability to present themselves as victims of Nazism during the war. This is done firstly through the destruction of the Kreschchatik and subsequent refusal of Soviet wrongdoing and secondly through the omission of Soviet liability. The Kreshchatik was the main street of Kiev that housed shops, offices, and apartments. Following the German invasion, near the end of September the Kreshchatik was set ablaze ultimately destroying large sections of it. This act was carried out by Bolsheviks who wanted to deliberately provoke Nazi barbarism against Kiev citizen. The Soviets were successful, as Timothy Snyder argues the immediate after effects of the burning of Kreschchatik stimulated the Nazis to change their policy from relaxed occupiers to violent tyrants. The bombing directly led to Germans ordering all Kiev Jews to report to a specific location in Kiev where they were later led to Babi Yar to be shot. Kuznetsov condemns the attack because firstly, this is a calculated attack against the civilians of Kiev, demonstrating the barbaric tendencies the Soviets descended to. Secondly, Kuznetsov points out the fallacy in the remembrance of the burning down of Kreshchatik. As described, it was the Soviets who committed the acts but the Soviet state following the war presented the acts as German doing. Due to this, the Soviet state has distorted history to make Ukraine look as if it suffered under the sole hands of Nazis and

I diverted the food from there to my political allies because they supported Communism the most, hence they deserved it. I needed to protect my communist regime, so in January 1922, I selected Felix Dzerzhinsky (one of the most feared men in Russia) to lead my CHEKA agents, after firing Eiduk. I appointed him as the railroad commissar, so the ARA can understand that I am not giving up on my Communist regime. There were numerous transportation problems due to the war, as tracks were left stranded with trains, which meant the 46 trains of American supplies were stalled when arriving. Ever since, he was in charge, the railways have been working fine as the workers and peasants feared him and understood they had to do something about the railway. This was a bonus to me as well because now I can control the railways. As you can see, I helped the ARA to progress, not hinder them. They have hindered my work by using food to try and make my people rebel, while I have been here the whole time helping them. It was the Russians that helped the ARA with their work. Without the Russians, the ARA would’ve

Ethnic groups, and following World War II, the various states within the Soviet sphere of influence refused to assimilate and give up their own identities. The Soviets failed in large part to three factors. One, they did not understand nationalism. Russia had not experienced it and lacked knowledge and thus also understanding of how to undermine the development of nationalism. Two, the Soviets did not stop developing a clearly Russian centered identity based on language and Russian tradition. Finally, when the walls start caving in, such as they began to in the mid-1970s in the Soviet Union, it becomes harder and harder to fully control culture and identity. It was a tasking job to try and force millions of people to assimilate and become endeared

Once the Bolsheviks created the Soviet Union, they modernized, terrorized and Russified the Caucasus region. They also gave these states a new form of nationalism. The Soviet Union began to sponsor programs towards non-Russian Soviet nationalities to modernize and assist them (De Waal, 80). The Bolsheviks thought that the use of “nationality” would be a useful transitional phase among backwards cultures and the advance state of socialism. Therefore, Armenians and Georgians were viewed as “advanced” Western nationalities, while the Azerbaijanis were viewed as a nation that required developmental aid.

Topic 1: Evaluate the extent to which the Soviet Union was successful in transforming the traditional tribal and clan identities in the Central Asian Republics?

Until the 1900’s the Russians were always expanding making land grabs. The revolution of 1905 which was caused by the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war led to the formation of a parliament. When rioting over repeated losses in World War 1 led to the overthrow of the imperial household in 1917, the USSR formed under communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Another very significant leader in the nation’s history, Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991), attempted to institute “glasnost” or political openness which started the democratization of the USSR and “perestroika” which was the movement he started which advocated for the reformation of the communist party. Through these many changes, his initiatives caused the splintering of the USSR to form Russia and 14 independent republics. Among these is the Chechen Republic which went on to fight a war against Russia during the nineties.Then in order to maintain power during the turmoil of Boris Yeltsin’s reign as president from 1991-1999 they transitioned into a semi authoritarian government. This government attempted to legitimize their leadership through a managed democracy in which the press and other influencing factors are controlled by the government but the people do vote. In

Former officers or 'military specialists' of the Czar regime were invited by Trotsky to act as instructors. Political commissars were appointed to these 'military specialists' to ensure loyalty. As a result of this strict regime, Trotsky was able to create a united force, capable of defeating the disorganised 'white forces', and thus subduing a possible threat to the new communist government. Due to the leadership of Trotsky, the Red Armies were victorious over the Whites. The White Army could never gain the support of the peasantry, but they could have done this by reallocating the land, something which the Bolsheviks had always talked about, "Peace, Bread,

These were able to supply the reactionaries with money and weapons. The Soviets document that the reactionaries goal is the overthrow of the revolutionary democratic order and the creation of a “free Islamic republic” in Afghanistan.

The circumstances reach a climax during World War II, when the Chechens collaborated with the Nazi-Germany invaders, who exchanged the Chechens a chance at freedom for information to defeat and occupy Russian territories. After Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, received word of this betrayal, he ordered a massive deportation of Chechens to the regions of Kazakhstan and Siberia. Stalin punished the Chechens severely out of fear; these Soviet Union regions, such as Chechnya, provided a wall of protection for the internal “Russian” region, where their political system and strength lied. When the negotiation between the Nazi’s and the Chechens ensued, Stalin feared that Germany’s hope to destroy the Soviet Union Empire could be realized. To prevent the fall of the Soviet Union, it is estimated that Stalin deported between 400,000 and 800,000 Chechens to collective farms in Kazakhstan and other regions. The harsh conditions of their forced migration took the lives of an estimated 100,000 Chechens. While the Chechens were allowed to return home in 1956 after the death of Joseph Stalin, Chechnya is still a region of political turmoil due to the anti-Russian and pro-nationalism mentalities of the Chechens, as well as conflict over oil

Cheka: It was a Russian emergency committee formed in 1917 and was the first to take over the Soviet State Security Organization. By around 1918, many Chekas had been formed and were responsible for punishing, executing and torturing state opposition.

In 1876 a large portion of Kyrgyzstan was formally annexed to Russia. A major revolt in 1916 led by the Kyrgyz against the Tsarist Empire in which almost one-sixth of the population was killed. Kyrgyzstan