|
English Language Page The results of the three votes of 2003 — the March 26 referendum, the presidential elections of October 5, and the Duma elections of December 7 — were drawn on the basis of the census results of October 2002. It was officially declared then that the population of the Chechen Republic makes up 1 million 88 thousand people. Three years earlier, when the “Second Chechen War” started, the federal center estimated the population of the Chechen Republic as 350 thousand, 300 thousand of which were Chechens. Thus in November 1999 Igor Shabdurasulov, the then deputy head of the Presidential Administration, said, “Today outside the republic, in Russia, 750 thousand Chechens reside. As for the republic itself, from 150 to 200 thousand people remain in it, and those which are called “forced migrants” also make up about 100–150 thousand.” How could one combine these two figures? Could the population of Chechnya triple in three years? It looks like not only all the refugees of the “second Chechen war” returned to the republic, but also all the republican diaspora of the previous period came back. Such a suggestion is obviously a long shot, to put it mildly. To unravel this puzzle one should try to give answers to several questions. Firstly, what was the population of the republic in different periods, how many people resided in the territory of the republic? Secondly, what was the migration directed outside the republic, how many refugees were staying outside Chechen borders in various periods? Thirdly, on what scale Chechen residents perished in the course of the armed conflicts of recent years? And then one has to find correspondence between these figures… The previous census was conducted in the Checheno-Ingush Republic, just as in the USSR as a whole, in 1989. The population of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic made up 1,275.5 thousand of people present, and 1,270.4 thousand of permanent residents. There is no separate data about the people residing in the territory of the contemporary Chechnya and Ingushetia as of 1989 but one could estimate it as a little more than 1.1 million and 170 thousand respectively. [1] The ethnic composition of the permanent residents of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was as follows: out of the total population of 1,274 thousand 734,5 thousand were Chechens, 163.8 thousand — Ingushs, 293.8 thousand — Russians, 14.8 thousand — Armenians, 12.6 thousand — Ukrainians. There is no exact data about the ethnic composition of the population of Chechnya proper as of 1989, but one could make the following estimates: out of 1,984 thousand permanent residents about 715 thousand were Chechens, 25 thousand were Ingushs, 269 thousand were Russians; thus the highest estimate of the Vainakh population of that period makes up 755–760 thousand people. [2] According to the census, the number of Vainakhs increased in the course of 1979–1989 by 27% in the USSR, which corresponds to the annual growth of 2.42%. One could base his estimates on this data when calculating the maximum possible Vainakh population, including the Chechen component of the Checheno-Ingush Republic. As compared to the last years of the Soviet power, in 1990s the socio-economic situation could hardly promote increased birth rate and decreased natural death rate. We should note that these are maximum possible estimates, according to more careful forecasts the population growth of 1990 could have been 15%, or 20% in the best possible case. Yet, extrapolating the data of the census to the period of the second Chechen war, we find out that the number of Chechens could exceed 1 million in 2002.
(in thousands people as of January 1 of each year) [3]
Besides that, the Annual Report features the information on the sex and age composition of the Chechnya population.
Such a sex and age structure of the Chechnya population looks plausible. The deficit of the male population (70 thousand) is explained by the fact that men depart to work in other regions of Russia, not by casualties of war. We should also note that, according to this table, the number of voters of the Chechen Republic could not exceed 526,720 people on the eve of the second war. * * * The basic factor which changed the demography of Chechnya during recent years was outbound migration. The Russian media spoke mostly of the exodus of the “Russian-speaking” (non-Vainakh, to be more exact) population, and that was true, but it wasn’t all the truth.. The number of East Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians) in the Checheno-Ingush Republic was rapidly going down as far back as in 70–80ies: according to the census, it went down from 379.6 thousand in 1970 to 306.4 thousand in 1989. This, of course, had nothing to do with the “criminal regime of Dudayev and Maskhadov.” Besides that, the same process was observed in other ethnic territories of the Caucasus. [5] This was explained by many factors. Firstly, there was relative overpopulation and deficit of land. Secondly, there were tensions between ethnic groups even during the epoch of the “friendship of nations.” Thirdly, the Caucasus nations were more consolidated in comparison to the Russians, even if you take into consideration the Cossacks. In Chechnya these processes were more profound and brutal than in the neighboring republics. This was caused by greater hidden unemployment, [6] and greater stability of the traditional public institutions in the Vainakh community where everybody was under the protection of the community which turned the representatives of non-Vainakh ethnic groups into the objects of all sorts of pressure including the criminal one. The weakening of authority structures in general and of law enforcement bodies in particular during 1991–1994 sped up the outpour of Russian-speaking residents from Chechnya, yet during the first Chechen war Grozny remained a half-Russian city. In 1996–1999 the eventual degradation of the government and even the fusion of authorities with openly criminal structures of Chechnya on the one hand, and the fact that central authorities ignored the situation with human rights in the region on the other hand, resulted in the exodus of most non-Vainakh population from the republic. At last, the second Chechen war which started in 1999 eventually finished the ethnic purge of the republic: everybody fled from combat operations, but almost nobody except Chechens returned. Even the Grozny Ingushs were not eager to come back and settled in Ingushetia. In the period between the two wars Chechens also fled from the Republic. At that time up to 15 hundred local residents were kidnapped for ransom and most of them were Chechens — it is obvious that the traditional public institutes were in decay already. But what was the size of that wave of refugees? In autumn 1999 Vladimir Putin, the then Chairman of the Russian Government, spoke of the Chechen diaspora, “We are ready for political cooperation with those citizens of Chechnya who moved from the territory of the Chechen Republic in recent years and, I must remind it, there are 220 thousand Russians and 550 thousand Chechens among them,” the context makes it obvious that he spoke only of the pre-war emigration. While one could agree with this estimate of Slavic migration, the origin of the second figure is hard to explain. There were only 10,995 Chechens among 978,426 forced migrants registered by the Federal Migration Service as of January 1, 1999. During 1998 it registered 2,026 Chechens. All in all there were 147,232 forced migrants from Chechnya, while a year earlier there were 13,007 of them. [7] In the second half of 1990s one circumstance prevented Chechens from leaving the territory of Chechnya and going to other regions of Russia, it was the fact that both the authorities and sometimes local population regarded them as “foreigners,” and hostile ones into the bargain. The estimates made public by Putin armed the officials of lower levels and made the situation uncomfortable. When in autumn 1999 the number of refugees fleeing the republic reached its peak of 350 thousand, Vladimir Kalamanov, the then head of the Federal Migration Service, declared: “All Chechnya is on the move, it registers and migrates!”And that was a mild way to put it. If one takes into consideration the official estimates of the Chechnya population of 300,000 at the start of the conflict, it turned out that federal forces had hard times fighting several dozen thousand gunmen with a minus sign! Only one conclusion can save from this absurdity: official statements and figures were determined by the reasons of political expedience and their link to reality was quite a mediated one. The real information about the size of the population of the Chechen Republic, and, consequently, the scale of the potential flow of refugees from it could complicate the planning of the military operation and even make it doubtful. Evidently, nobody among the authorities was confused by the fact that as a results the zone of the armed conflict where bombs were falling contained much more — many times more — people, that the wave of refugees exceeded all expectations. Moreover, the statements of officials were not corrected to meet the reality, they still contradicted both the reality and common sense, and each other. Not only reality, but also something that was behind the figures, human lives gave up in the face of political expedience. Is there any real information on the size of the population of Chechnya at the start of the “second Chechen war” which is not based on nothing but estimates and extrapolations? Some sources mentioned the “Maskhadov census” (earlier the author regarded it as apocryphic) [8] but in 2003 he changed his mind. [9] The census of the population of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was undertaken in the course of several months from August till October 1998. A standard form used in the All-Union census of 1989 was used as the basis for census forms after some minor changes. During three months census makers conducted yard-to-yard rounds, perhaps, not that thoroughly everywhere, but several respondents said that they visited their homes three times before they were able to find the people at home. Later the information was not entered into any computer to say nothing of any analysis of it. The processing of census results was reduced to counting census forms. Yet even with the involvement of all the workers of all sections of the Department for Demographic Statistics this simple procedure lasted till February 1999. They counted about 800 thousand residents of Chechnya. We should note that close figures were given by the Russian Statistic Annual Report. * * * If on the eve and at the start of the second Chechen war “political significance” was given to the information about the number of people residing in the Chechen Republic, and their number went down from 800 to 300 thousand in the statements of officials, in the following months and years the problem of forced migrants leaving the conflict area was made public. Vladimir Kalamanov cited 350 thousand, and this figure was close to reality, although it was quite uncomfortable for the federal authorities. From the very beginning of the armed conflict officials did not only question the figures, they, first and foremost, either denied or misplaced the reasons for such a massive outpour, the main of them being the nature of the operations of “law enforcers” in Chechnya. The operation was called “counter-terrorist,” and this definition suggests highly selective actions. The main goal of such an operation is to save people, and only after that comes the capture or extermination of terrorists. As a matter of fact, main instruments for the military component of the Chechen campaign were massive indiscriminate bombardments and shellings, and the “police component” featured massive indiscriminate detentions. The operation was not “counter-terrorist” from the very beginning — there were no files of terrorists to be detained, no lists of objectives to attack. “Pointed strikes,” “humanitarian corridors,” “security zones” existed only in official propaganda. People were fleeing Chechnya from “pointed strikes,” i.e. from massive indiscriminate bombardments and shellings in autumn 1999. But the roads which were declared to be “humanitarian corridors” ought to have been called “the corridors of death” as the number of people who died inside towns and villages and outside them was comparable. Yet, on the whole this strategy of survival justified itself (see below). The statistics of migration has been and still is incompatible with the official position concerning the rapid normalization of the situation in Chechnya. From the very beginning the military and the propaganda claimed that everything is all right there, that Chechen gunmen drove away people to create the “illusion of a humanitarian disaster.” The ideal thing was to have no refugees (or to have no TV picture of the camps of forced migrants, to be more exact) — it meant that there were no problems at all. There was such a temptation from the very beginning: on September 25, 1999 General Shamanov’s telegram banned the bodies of internal affairs from letting migrants from the Chechen Republic through administrative borders. All the subjects of the federation followed this order, except Ingushetia which was headed by President Ruslan Aushev. [10] Thus, most forced migrants from Chechnya found themselves in Ingushetia, and at some moment the population of the republic almost doubled compared to the number of its permanent residents. In the course of six months, the number of forced migrants of this last wave went down here and made up 150 thousand. It remained on this level till the second half of 2002 when active attempts began of a “voluntary-forced” return of refugees to Chechnya. Even eighteen months later a half of them is still staying in Ingushetia. As of late 2003 Russian official representatives cite 4.2 thousand or 4.5 thousand forced migrants in tent camps (townships). The UN Department on coordinating humanitarian issues estimates the number of people staying in camps as 7 thousand besides which 24 thousand more are staying in temporary settlements in adequate conditions, and 36 thousand of them are staying in the private sector, making all in all 67 thousand forced migrants. From the very beginning of the armed conflict federal authorities questioned these figures. The information provided by international humanitarian organizations [11] was consistently questioned by the Russian official representatives but when the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs counted forced migrants in summer 2002 their doubts disappeared. The cooperation of the government structures and humanitarian organizations in Ingushetia characterized with mutual transparency, control and interlapping checking of data worked well. The reduction of the number of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia was not due only to their return to Chechnya since those who could afford it moved to other regions of the Russian Federation or even beyond its borders. Official figures cited various reasons explaining why all the attempts to bring the migrants back to their places of permanent residence failed. The main reason is in the lack of security in the territory of Chechnya. In December 1999 the return of refugees (sometimes forced) to the territory of Chechnya started, they were transferred to the so-called “security zones.” This resulted in new human losses: on January 9 in Shali, in the villages of Zakan-Yurt, Shaami-Yurt and Katyr-Yurt early in February 2000 hundreds of peaceful citizens who returned there died in bombings and shootings. These “security zones” were not, of course, agreed with the opponent, and the federal forces themselves did not limit their operations to areas outside the borders of these zones, so both the former and the latter seemed to operate as if they were in a desert without burdening themselves with any cares for the lives of local residents. When active combat operations were finished in spring 2000, “combings” started in towns and villages. Unable to achieve their main goal of exposing the participants of armed resistance, the combings took the form of mass indiscriminate violence. Robberies, tortures, and beatings, “disappearances” and killings of people aroused hatred to Russian law enforcement structures and the government as a whole in Chechen residents, they fed the ranks of resistance, and it did not promote any desire to come back home in refugees. Late in 2002 the number of combings went down, but people are still disappearing in the course of “addressed measures” of night-time visits of “unknown armed persons in camouflage and masks who arrived in armored vehicles.” In such a situation any appeals for “voluntary return” of forced migrants from Ingushetia are hypocritical and criminal, but they have been heard since late 1999. Why? The transfer of forced migrants to Chechnya, even a formal one, would mean the transfer of the streams of humanitarian aid, of financial flow, of the “live” money creating an opportunity of uncontrolled expenditures. [12] So there was “social demand” to return the migrants from Ingushetia to Chechnya, which came not only from the federal center, not only from the military, but also from Akhmat Kadyrov’s administration. In the course of three years — from autumn 1999 till autumn 2002 — the number of forced migrants from Chechnya staying in Ingushetia was questioned by the representatives of the federal and local Chechen authorities loyal to Moscow. Being unable to create the conditions promoting the return of refugees or even to force their return, the authorities tried to deny their very existence. * * * During the first months of the second Chechen war up to 350 thousand of approximately 800 thousand residents of the Chechen Republic fled its administrative borders. What about the rest? Most of them were involved in the process of internal migration. At first they fled from the northern and eastern districts, then from Grozny and from the mountains. All the people who could afford it tried to leave the area of combat operations. Numerous families left one or two persons to protect their property from marauders. [13] This internal migration was local, as a rule, people went to neighboring villages or districts, they hoped to return to their homes, in the opposite case they fled the republic. When combat operations were completed, the structure of the distribution of population over the territory of Chechnya saw little changes in comparison to the pre-war period on the whole. One could distinguish two substantial anomalies: a substantial, by several times, reduction of the Grozny population, and rapid depopulation of highland districts. According to the Federal Migration Service, in 2001 up to one third of the population of the republic — 200 thousand — remained internal migrants. War made Chechnya de facto ethnically homogeneous. Non-Vainakh population has almost completely left the republic. Yet even Ingushs, both those who were not able to return to the Prigorodny district in 1957 and settled in Grozny, and those who fled to Grozny in 1992, mostly went away. [14] * * * How many people perished in the two Chechen wars? One of the basic historical sources concerning the period of Ivan the Terrible rule — the Oprichny Synodic — was compiled when the king was feeling like he going to die again (it was quite a regular state for him). To repent, to pray for the killed, it was necessary to compile a list of them. The crowned murderer was so diligent that the compilers of the Synodic had to finish it with the following words, “As for the rest, You, Our Lord, know them Yourself…” The Russian government finds itself in the same situation now because it did not take any real attempts to count civilian casualties neither in the war of 1994–1996, nor after 1999. There were no lists with names, even incomplete ones, so any reasonable polemics with all the cited figures — up to hundreds thousand — is impossible for Russian authorities. Thus, on September 17, 2002 Salambek Maigov declared to journalists that “eighty thousand peaceful residents perished in the “second Chechen war,” [15] for some reason referring to the Human Rights Watch and the “Memorial” Human Rights Center although neither the former, nor the latter did report anything of the kind. Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Special Representative of the RF President for the Observance of the Rights and Freedoms of the Citizen and Human Being in the Chechen Republic reacted to this figure on the following day. [16] He remarked, in his turn that, generally speaking, “all the figures which are cited by human rights organizations at present are nothing but subjective estimates having nothing in common with the real situation.” So what has anything in common with reality? During the first Chechen war there was only one attempt to estimate the casualties among the population of Grozny which perished there during the fighting from December 1994 till March 1995. The members of the Observers’ Mission of human rights public organization acting under the auspices of the “Memorial” Human Rights Center (which was widely known as Sergei Kovalyov’s Group) polled more than a thousand refugees from Grozny concerning credible facts when their relatives (direct or indirect) or acquaintances died during combat operations. The structure of families was taken into account when the poll data was processed: an average common number of relatives of various degrees of kinship, and the expanse of the circle of acquaintances, corrections were made for possible double counting, etc. As a whole, the method which was used by Eduard Gelman, a worker of the Kurchatov Institute, in 1995 is typical in finding estimates of casualties in local conflicts. A conclusion was made on the basis of the information collected then that 25–29 thousand peaceful residents perished in Grozny at that period. Already in the course of that war, in January 1996, Vladimir Rubanov, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, declared to the Interfax Agency that there were no official figures, that there were only human rights activists’ data: 25–30 thousand civilians killed. In spring 1997, when the preparations for a treaty between Russia and Chechnya were under way and a sum of potential damages due to Chechnya for economic destruction and human loss was discussed, Boris Brui, the Head of the Department for Demographic Statistics of the State Committee for Statistics of the Russian Federation, addressed to the Memorial the question about the number of civilian casualties. Earlier he asked the International Red Cross Committee the same question but the Committee sent him to the “Memorial.” As a result, using the same data, the State Committee for Statistics made its conclusion concerning 30–40 thousand casualties. The “Memorial,” in fact, understanding the possible inaccuracy of such estimates, formulated it as “less than 50 thousand.” Using the same method, the only certain estimate of civilian casualties in the period of active combat operations of the Second Chechen War was produced by the Human Rights Watch. Having collected and analyzed detailed information about 1,300 people who were killed in the course of the first nine months of the conflict, they came to the conclusion that their sampling covers from 1/8 to 1/5 of the total number of victims. So all in all, from 6.5 to 10.4 thousand civilians were killed in those months. [17] The estimated number of residents of the Chechen Republic who perished in the following years of armed conflict can be counted on the basis of the “Chronicle of Violence” which has been conducted by the “Memorial” Human Rights Center since July 2000. The number of people whose death was reported in the Chronicle varies in different periods from 489 during the second half of 2000 to 559 during all 2002 with the exception of gunmen and Chechen policemen. The results of this monitoring are clearly incomplete. We may be registering about a quarter of such cases, not more than a half of them in any case, what can be seen if you compare it with the official statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic for 2002. The extrapolation of the Chronicle data makes it possible to conclude that from 5.3 to 10.7 thousand civilians were killed after the active phase of combat operations was completed. Besides that, in the course of the “second Chechen war” about three thousand people disappeared after being detained by the federal law enforcement structures. Some bodies of those who disappeared were later found and recognized but the overwhelming majority of the rest could hardly be alive. Thus the total number of civilians killed during the second Chechen war including those who disappeared makes up from 14.8 to 24.1 thousand; and this is a conservative estimate which does not take into account the number of those missing: “from 10 to 20 thousands.” So, where did the other, substantially higher, figures of casualties come from? Already during the first Chechen war people spoke of 80, 100, 120 thousand killed. These figures were generated by political games and their links with reality was mediated enough. In winter 1996, soon after the statement of Rubanov that was mentioned above, several politicians ranging from General Lebed to a public activist Valerya Novodvorskaya claimed that if the government was speaking of 25–30 thousand killed, there would have been three times more in reality, or 80–100 thousand. One more estimate is associated with misinterpretation. Lechi Saligov, who worked for the pro-Russian Chechen administration during the first war, claimed that it was only in the Grozny area where 120 thousand perished in 1995 — they made a yard-to-yard poll at the time which revealed that difference in comparison with pre-war figures. Saligov interpreted that difference as the number of casualties but there was a more natural explanation: migration. While the declarations of politicians exaggerated, as a rule, the figures of civilian casualties, the military and the official propaganda underrated or totally denied them. Thus, in August 2001 General Valery Manilov claimed that less than one thousand civilians were killed during the second war. A year later, in August 2002, Kostyuchenko, Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic, mentioned the same one thousand. That estimate was easily refuted at that time not only by estimates and extrapolations, but by the count of registered cases when people died. At the same time, the military and the propaganda regularly made declarations of their success in annihilating Chechen fighters, and their results were growing making up many dozen thousand. Evidently these figures did not come out of thin air, they were produced by the work of the bureaucratic machine, but they had nothing to do with reality. Estimates of civilian casualties made public by the representatives of law enforcement structures are also political ones, and their links to reality are mediated enough. Yet, the figures which the military cite as the number of “killed gunmen” which are at least ten times higher than the real ones correlate with civilian casualties. Thus the total number of peaceful residents of the Chechen Republic who perished during the two wars may reach 70 thousand. Though the accuracy of our estimates is not high, they have no alternative for the government has not been and still isn’t counting civilians who perished in the course of “counter-terrorist operations” or “establishing constitutional order.” * * * What was the population of the Chechen Republic in the years of the second war? At different periods the answer to this question could produce absolutely different estimates — even at the same place. In August 2002, in Grozny, at the House of the Government, the Group for Cooperation with OSCE was told that about 600 thousand people reside in the Chechen Republic. This figure looked very much like the truth because out of the 800 thousand of the pre-war Chechen population about 150 thousand [18] were staying as forced migrants in the neighboring republic and a smaller but substantial part of it dispersed over the territory of Russia and outside its borders. Yet, one month later, in September 2002 when Lord Judd visited Chechnya, he was told at the same House of the Government about the so-called successful return of refugees which made the population of the republic reach 900 thousand. This figure did not only clearly exceed any real but also theoretically possible figures, but it was to testify that all the forced migrants who fled the republic running from the second Chechen war which started three years ago returned to their homes. And if the people came home, the situation in the republic must stable and secure — the people would not go there if it were the other way around! The federal authorities tried to demonstrate the same thing when they conducted a census in Chechnya. On October 14, 2002 Statislav Iliyasov, head of the Government of the Chechen Republic, reported that the census was successfully conducted in Chechnya, and that the population of the republic makes up one million eighty eight thousand. According to Iliyasov, the census results exceeded any expectations. Census makers quickly ran out of census forms 825 thousand of which were brought to the republic, and they had to ask for more. That is, taking into account the inevitable spoiling of forms, the authorities expected to have the total population of the republic less than 800 thousand. They only had to bring all the migrants of the previous three years back to Chechnya for it. But to get 1 million 88 thousand they had to bring to the Chechen Republic ALL the refugees who fled it in 1990s, including not only Chechens and Ingushs, but also Russians, Armenians and other representatives of non-Vainakh nations. Or they had to admit a substantial population growth despite the two wars and the collapse of the socio-economic sphere. [19] A normal person could hardly believe in such a “demographic miracle.” * * * But there is a plausible explanation of such a miracle. At least three significant factors were active during the census at the Chechen Republic which could substantially distort census results. Firstly, up to one third of the population of the republic comprised internal migrants. Although it was stated beforehand many times that the documents of the census are anonymous, and they would not be used for any other purposes, few people in Chechnya believed it. It was difficult to convince the people that local administrations would not use census results to ban “uncounted” people from receiving humanitarian aid or from the promised future compensations for destroyed housing. One also could not guarantee that law enforcement structures and special forces will not check people detained during “combings” using census lists to separate “peaceful residents” from “visiting gunmen.” Thus, if a person lived in a village but often went to some town to rebuild his/her destroyed house, he/she had all the grounds to be “counted” both in the town, and in the village — not just from a ghostly expectation of profit, but out of real fear for his/her security. Secondly, there were numerous declarations from the officials of various levels that the census would help to determine “how many schools and hospitals were to be built,” and, as far as the Chechen Republic was concerned, the size of financing which is necessary to revive the socio-economic sphere, the size of transfers necessary to pay various allowances etc. With the eventual lack of any control and impossibility to recheck information the temptation was too high for all the administrations of all levels to use the experience they got in the course of the 1995, 1996, 2000 elections of resorting to the “administrative resource.” Thirdly, and that was the main point, representatives of various federal structures made numerous statements declaring that the situation in Chechnya was stable and secure, and that forced migrants had already returned or were going to return there, and the future census could not but confirm it. Thus, in the course of the census local authorities could hope for a favorable attitude of the federal authorities, and the population of Chechnya could hope for the “negligence” of local administrations in the cases when surplus relatives were counted on the basis of the words of other people. In any case, this version is more plausible than the published census results. The united will of federal authorities, local authorities, and of the ordinary people of the Chechen Republic produced this “demographic miracle.” And they confirmed again the practice adopted in the world that a moratorium should be declared on any censuses or elections in the area of armed conflicts or in emergency situation. So how many people lived in Chechnya in reality? In winter 2002, the Danish Refugee Council conducted a yard-to-yard poll in Chechnya to determine the demand for humanitarian aid, and they counted about 600 thousand people. The same figure was cited by the officials when they spoke to the OSCE representatives whose opinion did not mean much, unlike that of Lord Judd, whose report was to provide the basis for the coming PACE Resolution. This black magic was exposed as soon as in November 2002 when a month after the census the Danish Refugee Council conducted its regular yard-to-yard poll the results of which estimated the population of Chechnya at about 700 thousands. We should note that the heads of village administrations who are interested in humanitarian aid could only help to exaggerate this figure. The difference between the real figure and the census results — 400 thousand “dead souls” — was an “electoral reserve” for the referendum and elections of 2003. * * * So, how many people were able to or could vote in reality in the Chechen Republic during the last decade? In the course of the “elections” which were conducted by the federal authorities in Chechnya on December 14–17, 1995 when people voted for the deputies of the State Duma and the “Head of the Chechen Republic” Doka Zavgayev, on June 14–16 and July 2–3, 1996 when they voted for the President of Russia and the “Deputies of the People’s Assembly,” an extremely high turnout was declared ranging from 60% to 74% of the total number of 503 thousand voters. These were official figures, but the OSCE mission declared them that those elections did not meet the demands of free and just elections, or the representatives of the mission left Chechnya on voting days. According to independent observers, people did not go to polling stations in most villages and towns. But the Central Election Commission recognized these elections although we must repeat that in the situation of an armed conflict and de facto emergency situation there ought to be a categorical ban on any elections. On January 27, 1997 there were elections of the President and the Parliament of Ichkeria. The number of voters — 447 thousand — was corrected during a yard-to-yard examination. Aslan Maskhadov won the elections with 65% of votes. The elections were observed by 72 OSCE representatives. Yet, when the second round of elections took place on February 15, 1997, the turnout was a little higher than 25%. We should note that in this case people did not falsify the results in Chechnya although the absence of quorum could have been a serious problem in the future. In September 1999 the “second Chechen war” started and the December Duma elections of the same year did not take place in Chechnya. This might have been the cleanest elections of the decade… On March 26, 2000 the elections of the President of Russia took place. On February 22, a month before voting, Sergei Danilenko, a member of the Central Election Commission supervising the Chechen area, gave an interview to the “Echo of Moscow” radio station saying that the number of people residing in the territory of the Chechen Republic made up about 400 thousand, and 200–250 thousand of them were voters. Yet a month later Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov, Chariman of the Election Commission of Chechnya, cited a different figure — 460 thousand, saying that the elections would be conducted only in 12 districts of Chechnya at 336 polling stations. On March 26 the Election Commission reported that more than 70% voters came to polling stations in Chechnya, and in Grozny this figure was 97% (!). On August 20, 2000, when the elections for the State Duma were conducted in Chechnya, the Central Election Commission cited the total number of voters: 495 thousands. If the previous proportions of the figures of the population and of the voters remained, the population was to be 885 thousands, i.e. it was to grow during the war. The reserve of “dead souls” which was created during the census was already used at the next voting campaign. On March 23, 2003 a referendum took place where, according to the Central Election Commission, 89% of 540 thousand voters took place. Their numbers were determined according to the census results. 95.37% said “yes.” Then the presidential elections came on the eve of which the author had the opportunity to check his conclusions on “a district scale.” On September 5, 2003 the administration of the Shali district cited three figures: the population of the district which was 104 thousands, the number of voters in the lists which was 43 thousand, the number of underage persons receiving children subsidies which was 33 thousand. Subtract the second and the third figures from the first one, and you get 28 thousand which are neither of age, nor underage. When the confused author asked a question about it, he was told that these are the people who had been registered here and then were counted during the census according to his or her documents or the word of the relatives. That is, the district authorities admitted the existence of about 27 % “dead souls” in their district. * * * Although the candidate of the federal center was guaranteed to win the elections without any manipulations with these figures, those who played with these figures during all these years became hostages of their own game. It was in 1997 when the authorities could honestly admit a 25% voters turnout, now they cannot give up their “540 thousand voters” and incredible turnout figures. If they did so, they would have shouldered the burden of truth and responsibility. P. S.: But the reality overwhelmes even the most daring expectations. According to the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Veshnyakov, there were 11% more people who came to vote at the polling stations in Chechnya during the December Duma elections than there were voters in the republic. As for the results of the census, even the State Committee for Statistics is not using them because, according to their data, 813 thousand persons (as opposed to over a million!) resided in Chechnya in 2003. 1 The border between the two republics has not been demarcated yet. The extrapolation of the data made public by the State Committee for Statistics in the following years gives the population permanently residing in the Chechen districts as approximately 1,084 thousand, and in the districts of Ingushetia — 186 thousand. But the State Committee for Statistics, besides the Nazran, Malgobek and Dzheirakh districts, referred all the Sunzha district to Ingushetia. As a matter of fact, a substantial part of the latter, including two large townships of Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya, 8 and 6.9 thousand respectively as of 1989, belonged to Chechnya. 2 In 1989, besides Vainakhs, several dozen thousand representatives of other Muslim nations resided in Chechnya: 23 thousand Kumyks, Nogaitsi and Avartsi, countryside residents mostly, and 5.1 thousand Tartars, mainly urban residents. 3 Estimating the size of the population of Ingushetia is a separate problem. Perhaps, no other region of Russia has seen such migration. In the course of the Osetin-Ingush conflict of 1992 dozens thousand Ingushs were driven from the Prigorodny District of North Osetia: Ingush authorities tell of 70 thousand, Osetin authorities speak of 17 thousand. In 1994–1996 during the “first Chechen war” the number of forced migrants from Chechnya arriving in Ingushetia made up 150 thousand; there is no accurate data concerning it since refugees were not registered from April 1995 till August 1996. (See details concerning this process below). Many Ingush families which had not been able to return to the Prigorodny District in 1957 which settled in Grozny then became permanent residents of Ingushetia after that. As for the forced migrants, according to the information provided by the Federal Migration Service as of January 1, 1999 34,983 people were registered in Ingushetia. Furthermore, in 1989 41 thousand Ingushs lived in the USSR outside the Checheno-Ingush Republic and North Osetia, later a part of them returned to their motherland. On the other hand, there was substantial outbound migration in the republic during 1990s because it was one of the poorest regions of the federation. Nevertheless it is the second column of this table which is the least doubtful. 4 Such an accuracy is not realistic — it would have been fine if they corresponded to reality within tens of thousands. 5 In 1990s this process sped up both in the autonomous republics which became simple republics and in the autonomous districts, which increased their statute and became simple republics where “Russian-speaking” people holding influential posts or just well-paid jobs were replaced with “ethnic” representatives. And everywhere except Chechnya the national movement did not even think of independence from Russia: there was a struggle of different elites for the control of resources in which they inevitably appealed to the federal center as an arbiter. 6 After the return of Chechens from exile in 1957 it turned out that there were no vacant jobs in the industry. It was impossible to return to a half of the territory, for it was extremely difficult to restore mountain villages where there had been no life for 13 years, and the authorities did not want to have resumed resistance in the mountains. Two districts to the north of the Terek — Naursky and Shelkovskoi — were joined to Chechnya where highlanders were mainly settled but that provided only a partial solution of the problem. High hidden unemployment was partially compensated by the agricultural subsistance economy and seasonal work in other regions of the USSR, by the work in the “North” and labor emigration. Not only Slavs left the Checheno-Ingush Republic in 1970–80s, Vainakhs also went away, the total emigration of the latter reached 50 thousand in 1979–1989 according to census later. During the same period the number of Chechens permanently residing in the Stavropol territory went up 3.4 times, in the Astrakhan region — 5.5 times, in the Rostov region — 6.8 times, in Volgograd region — 13.7 times, in the Tyumen region — 33.7 times. The sum total of Chechen permanent residents of these five regions increased six times from 9.3 to 55.8 thousand. And in mid 1980s the opportunity to earn money went down due to the economic collapse of the USSR resulting in cuts of subsidies for construction in the agricultural sector. 7 There was no mass exodus, only registration of this reality changed: human rights activists managed to make the government agency register the migrants who left their homes earlier. 8 The Russian propaganda claimed that Maskhadov made the census results secret on purpose because they testified to a disastrous reduction in the size of the Chechen population, which was a copy of the story about the Soviet census of 1937 which was called “a sabotage.” The very possibility to undertake such a complicated measure in the situation when the government collapsed aroused doubts. The author even allowed himself to call the “Maskhadov census” in Ichkeria the “Library of Ivan the Terrible” which never existed, but it turned out that he was wrong. 9 Having polled people who were involved in the census and many residents of the Chechen Republic, asking them if census workers came to them. 10 And he was held responsible for the problem of refugees for all of the Russian Federation, and if Aushev had acted according to the order, he would have had no problems either with refugees, or with generals. But in this case the figures of civilian casualties in Chechnya would have been several times, if not dozens times, higher. Not to participate in war crimes is a worthy choice for a general and a president. 11 The Danish Refugee Council is a leading humanitarian organization working in Ingushetia and Chechnya. It regularly conducts yard to yard rounds to compile lists of people eligible to humanitarian aid. But their information on Ingushetia where every family is checked is substantially more accurate than that on Chechnya where it has to satisfy itself with the data provided by the heads of village administrations. 12 In the course of two years, dozens heads of local administrations were dismissed from their posts for abusing “refugee” money in Ingushetia. Nothing of this kind was heard in Chechnya because there was effective control in Ingushetia. Compare: at the start of the war the cost of settling one refugee in a camp (providing a tent, flooring, bedding, a stove, communication) was 700 rubles in Ingushetia, while in Chechnya it made up 3,700 rubles. 13 Thus, in Grozny when it was stormed by the federal forces in December 1999 - January 2000 less than 40 thousand remained. 14 About 60 thousand stayed in Ingushetia and intended to remain there, it was proposed to allocate land for them in the Sunzha District. 15 Reported by NTV.RU on September 17, 2002, 11:42:20. 16 Report of NTV.RU on September 18, 2002, 08:15:00. 17 Although the second Chechen war was much more brutal than the first one, the number of casualties during the first months of it was 3–4 times lower. There is no contradiction in it: fear can save people sometimes. As far back as in 1996 Chechen residents ran away when they felt danger. In autumn 1999 people fled Chechnya from massive indiscriminate bombardments and shellings, and that was also dangerous. The roads which were declared to be “humanitarian corridors” ought to have been called “corridors of death”, as the number of people who died inside villages and towns was comparable to the number of those who died outside them. But, as a whole, this strategy of survival justified itself. 18 137 thousand are in Ingushetia, and 10 thousand are in Dagestan. 19 According to the preliminary census results, Ingushetia had 468 thousand, thousands of which were temporarily displaced persons from Chechnya residing in refugee camps. Other migrants, those who did not reside in camps or fled the Prigorodny District in 1992 were not placed in a separate category. We should note that in this way the permanent population of the republic, and, evidently, the future budget financing of this subsidized region was “increased” by one half. We should also note that the migrants who seemed to have been resettled in Chechnya were, as a matter of fact, counted in Ingushetia. The republic had the population of 256 thousand women and 212 thousand men, the asymmetry resulting from high unemployment and departure of men to work in other regions of Russia. Back |
Íàøà êíîïêà  |
|