There are about 50 state-protected natural sites in the Chechen Republic, among them 10 reserves for the protection of separate species of animals and plants. Picturesque mountain landscapes and lakes attract travelers and tourists. And some natural resources, such as mineral springs and mud-baths, are used for medicinal purposes. Monuments of the glacial period can be met in the valleys of the Armkha, Assa and Argun Rivers. Outstanding features of glacial relief can be seen near Lake Kezenoi-Am. Traces of a small karst glacier have been preserved in good condition on the southern slope of the Andean Mountains near the Kharsmya pass. Near the crest there is a circus-shaped niche filled with large boulders. The piece of rock with a memorial inscription relating to a visit to Chechnya by the Russian 19th century author Leo Tolstoi is situated on the southern slope of the Terek Range, by the crest, two kilometers from a mountain pass, along which runs the road from Grozny to Chervlennaya. Here, in the outcrops of hard sandstone rock, one can come across rocks protruding from the surface like gigantic teeth. During his stay in the Caucasus Leo Tolstoi often visited Goryacheistochnenskaya Cossack village and Stary-Yurt village (now - Tolstoi-Yurt). In Goryacheistochnenskaya he came to see his brother, who served there as an officer, and in Stary-Yurt he visited his Chechen friend Sado Miserbiev. The two often had friendly talks in the shadow of the rock. Testifying to that is the text cut on the sandstones surface: Here, by this rock, Leo Tolstoi met with his friend Sado Miserbiev from 1851 to 1854. The Bamut caves are located on the right bank of the Fortanga River 4 or 5 kilometers from Bamut village. The caves are manmade, carved in a hard sandstone. Historians say the caves date back to the Late Middle Ages. All in all, there are four caves, three of them making up a single network. Every cave has a separate entrance and they are interconnected inside. The fourth cave is 20 meters away. The Bragun springs are located in the eastern part of the northern slope of Bragun Mountain Range. The type of water is that of sulphate-hydrocarbonate-sodium with mineralization of 1.3 grams per liter. The temperature is + 96 degrees. The ten natural mineral springs have long been used by locals to treat various diseases. The Isti-Su springs are located at the foothills of the northern slope of Gudermes Range 12 kilometers south-west of the city of Gudermes. A great number of legends tell about the springs medicinal properties. The biggest flow belongs to Melya-Khi spring, or Hot Spring. The water temperature is +45-47.5 degrees. The water itself is hot, containing small quantities of sulphides, hydrocarbonate-sulphate-sodium. Mineralization is 3.7-3.8 grams per liter. The Salt spring is located in the valley of the Martan River four kilometers south of Grushevoye village. The spring gushes from a vertical well about 7 meters deep on the right bank of the river. Its flow is significant enough, it gives source to a stream that flows into the Martan River. The taste of the water is similar to a saturated salt solution. The spring has long been used for medicinal purposes. Besides, local residents used to extract salt from it by evaporation. Three springs Chanty-Argunsky, Kharachoevsky and Kerkentsky have been declared state-protected natural sites in the Chechen republic.
(more ...)

Zaindin Mutalibov (1922-1977)
Zaindin Mutalibov was born on the 15th of January 1922 in the village of Khattuni in the Vedensky district of Checheno-Ingushetia. He published his first verse in a republican daily when he was 14 years. He joined the Soviet army after five years and went to the front as a volunteer. In the Second World War he fought in the 255th Checheno-Ingush cavalry regiment at the Southern, Stalingrad, South-Western fronts. He started to serve as an ordinary soldier and ended the war as the chief of staff of a cavalry division. He was awarded 7 government awards, including the Red Star. During the war Zaindin Mutalibov wrote many poems, essays, short stories about heroism of the Soviet soldiers and also novels. In the post-war years he worked in schools in Kirgyzstan. When he returned to Checheno-Ingushetia he worked as a journalist and studied at the Higher Party School under the central Community of the Soviet Communist Party and later was the director of the Checheno-Ingush publishing house. He created his best works in the second half of the fifties when several collections of his poems and novels were published. Many of his works were devoted to war against Nazis and wrote about brave deeds committed in the war and rear. His prosaic are interesting too. His collection of short stories, Injured Form was the first Chechen prosaic that not only praises brave deeds but also described the mentality of the people at the time.A senior school at the village of Khattuni has been named after him after his death.
(more about famous chechens...)

Ethnic Russians in Chechen history
A page of century old history: 7-19 century
continuation
The 18th century brought the Russians and the Veinakhs even closer together. Merchants, army officers and scholars visited the Caucasus but it was not until the foundation of the city of Kizlyar that trade relations started growing between the Russians and the Veinakhs. Numerous Chechen-Ingush missions paid both short and quite long visits to Moscow. 17th century West European and oriental sources prove that North Caucasians were eager to learn to speak Russian. The flatland Chechens became Russian subjects in the time of what is known as Peter the Great's Persian campaign. Highland Chechens and Ingushis launched political contacts with Russia in 1733. The Russian foreign ministry was advised that "rulers of noble birth, known as dzurdzuks and glegai, [were] requesting permission to come under the protection and high hand of Russia." Russia consolidated its positions in the area of Chechen-Aul and turned the local residents into its allies between the years of 1743 and 1756. The Chechen villages of Ghermenchuk, Chebutly, Shali, Aldy and some others swore allegiance to Russia. Ingush missions requested that their people "be, as well as the Chechens, granted the protection of Russia and considered subjects of Russia." The Ingush request for joining Russia was met in February, 1770. Being part of Russia: advantages and disadvantages. Security reasons and willingness to expand trade relations explain the Chechen quest for alliance with Russia. But the Caucasians were not always willing to bow down to the Russian authorities. They were, for example, simmering over the new trade and travel restrictions and the limited right to land tenure. Cossack outposts, forts, villages mushroomed on Chechen land, and the Chechens could not help being displeased with that. The local authorities gave plots of land to whoever they liked, on the fertile left bank of the Terek. The authorities resorted to punitive action in the face of public unrest. Sporadic conflicts multiplied to erupt in longer standoffs. It took the authorities about six years (1785-1791) to quench an uprising led by Sheikh Mansur. But conflicts of local importance had sunk into oblivion as soon as the threat of foreign subjugation loomed over Russia. Many Caucasians did well in what the Russians know as the Patriotic War of 1812. Alexander Chechenski is the best known of the heroes of that war. Quite a number of Chechens were anxious to fight on when the Napoleonic troops showed their back to the Russian army. Hundreds of men signed up for service in the ranks of the Caucasian unit of the Russian army. The Caucasian war of 1816 to 1864 marks a dramatic turn in Russian-Chechen relations. But even in spite of the long years of hostilities, the Russians and Chechens felt like learning more about each other and were, indeed, getting to know each other better. Veinakhs settled to live in and around Russian forts in the Caucasus. Fugitive Russians built villages in the mountains. Trade relations expanded. Trade fairs in the villages of Naurskaya, Nikolayevskaya, Kalinovskaya and Sleptsovskaya did much for the promotion of trade relations. Cossacks and Chechens kept making friends. Russian fiction writers and journalists underlined the need for historically motivated friendship between the Russians and the Caucasians. (more...)

Issue 20
27.08.02

Chechen diary

27 August 2002  Russian Physician Bekirov is a respected in mountain regions of Chechnya
One wonders what Chechen patients appreciated most in the Russian physician Victor Bekirov his professionalism, humanness or genuine mans courage. Over the past three months 895 local residents have made appointment with him. Victor Bekirov served in a medical unit of the temporary interior department of the Itum-Kalin region of Chechnya. But once the entire region learned about him. In the village of Tasbichi 3-year old Islam Ilaldaev left alone fell down to a shell-hole full of water. He was trying to get out crying loudly, but only hours after his absence was noticed. The child was absolutely exhausted and lost consciousness on his way to hospital. A medical assistant of the regional hospital run out into the street, stopped the first car and sent a woman to Russian policemen to ask them to call for a doctor. As he heard a crying woman trying to explain him what had happened, pediatrician Victor Bekirov seized his bag and left the place even without an arm or guards. He reanimated little Islam: at first he felt weak pulse and some 50 minutes after the boy opened his eyes and his lips moved. But the diagnosis was far from encouraging brain hypoxia, coronary deficiency and cooling of the organism. The doctor had no time to consider security and decided to bring immediately the boy to a children reanimation in Grozny in an ordinary Niva jeep instead of emergency vehicle. The road was regularity fired on by rebels. But the car was rushing at full speed along the highway of 150-200 car long columns, which had to let them pass through. Twice the car stopped to provide emergency aid to the boy. Finally, they arrived in the Grozny hospital late at night but in time. Local doctors silently shook hands of Viktor Bekirov. The boy was rescued. In two weeks Islam together with his parents visited doctor Bekirov to thank him.
(more from Chechen diary)

26 August 2002  Chechen schools ahead a new academic year
A total of 457 Chechen schools are all set for a new academic year. A spokesman for the republican education ministry is quoted as saying that schools restoration will draw in by late August. For the first time over the last 9 years the schools are fully furnished and equipped with building materials this year. If a year ago there was urgent lack of desks, now the problem has been solved. The Russian Foreign Ministry is trying its best to supply the schools with all necessary textbooks. Three northern Chechen regions are entirely prepared for the new school year, since schools and institutions there did not suffer in the latest hostilities and were fully supplied with electricity and heating as well as computer classes. The more thorny situation is in the schools of Grozny and mountain areas where not all these are provided with electricity and heating. According to the deputy chief of the public education department of the Urus-Martan region Ludmila Adsalamova, all the schools of the regions cities and towns have been rebuilt, furnished and received a large batch of textbooks. By the academic year manuals of the Chechen language and literature are expected to arrive as they are printed in publishing houses of neighboring areas. In the Shatoi region 13 schools of 15 are fully equipped to receive pupils. Restoration of Urus-Kert schools is drawing in. In the Zoni region children will temporary launch studying in tents while two fabricated buildings for schools will be built up. The local chief of the public education department Rizaudin Maghamadov has informed reporters that over the past two years 14 teachers of higher education and 12 paraprofessionals have been engaged. The head of the Gudermes administration Akhmed Abastov says all 38 schools of the region have been repaired, and dining-halls well-equipped where the pupils of the junior school will get free breakfasts.
(more from Chechen diary)

25 August 2002  Military architects and locals work shoulder to shoulder

Primary objective of military architects in Chechnya is to create conditions for the troops not worse than elsewhere in Russia. Headquarters of the ad-hoc construction department of the Russian Defense Ministry will fully accomplish accommodation of the 42nd infantry division stationed in Khankala, Kalinovskaya, Borzoi, and Shali. Already built are administrative buildings, barracks, hostels, canteens, boiler houses, and schools. Kindergartens are now in the works. Along with officers children, local kids will also attend them. Kalinovskaya village will shortly have a new kindergarten and Khankala a school. The locals are working together with military architects. We are trying to engage local men as mush as possible. This is good for us and this is good for the people, - said lieutenant general Anatoly Grebenyuk, head of the ad-hoc construction department of the Russian Defense Ministry in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. Besides, he said, people at work have their hands busy enough to reach for a rifle. And the money that suicide killers are paid by their chiefs is a far cry from the money our carpenters and bricklayers earn.
(more from Chechen diary)

25 August 2002  Water supply in Grozny improves
Two hydro-technical installations have been commissioned in Grozny at the same time in August. With the opening of the Starosunzhensky and Goitin water resorvoirs the city will supply water to 70% of its residents by centralized pipelines. The Starosunzhensky water reservoir can supply 56 000 cubic meters of water a day. It consists of two 2 000-cubic meter-capacity reservoirs and gets water from 12 artisan wells. A pipeline supplies water to the central and eastern districts of the city from this reservoir. At present a territory from the Drama Theatre to the 8th City Hospital gets centralized water. One third of the citys population lives there. The pressure in pipelines is sufficient to supply water to the second and even third floors of some buildings. The capacity of the Goitin water reservoir is 62 000 cubic meters of water a day and it supplies water to the October district. Groznys communal services plan to commission four high-pressure pumping stations, reservoirs with drinking water and water-supply pipelines in the Sraropromyslovsky district. In the past two years Grozny has been supplied with water from the Chernorecheny reservoir situated in the highest area in the city. Water flows from there to the lower part of the city and is distributed in the city using truck-tanks. All these measures will help the authorities to eliminate this system shortly.
(more from Chechen diary)

Chechen traditions

The pre-islamic customs, manifest in farming festivals
The rain rites

The farmer cannot help worrying about his crops. Drought is his enemy. But the Chechens used to believe that snakes offered reliable protection against drought. Snakes are known to show up in great numbers in rainy weather, which was interpreted as proof of a mystical relationship between the reptiles and the much desired drops of rain. Chechens used to kill snakes and hang them out, to attract rain. The crow was considered to be another harbinger of bad weather. Another thing one could do to attract rain was to destroy a crow's nest. Plowing the dried up bed of a river was yet another method of attracting rain. Men and women formed two separate teams to do the plowing. Men would gather by the home of a respected and fortunate villager, harness themselves up to a plow and drag the plow back and forth across the river bed. Everyone would, while doing this, plash themselves with water. Women would drag the plow two or three times across the river. Each of them would make sure to fall down and splash her team mates with the remaining water. If a male villager happened to be passing by, the women would attempt to push him into the river. The women plowers would then canvass the village for gifts of money or foodstuffs. A fourth rain rite has all the outward characteristics of a human sacrifice. A teenager would be camouflaged with freshly cut meadow grass. His contemporaries would turn their sheepskin coats the wrong side up and would, dressed up like this, parade him around the village. It was a lot of fun because it was impossible to see who was hidden under the sheaf of meadow grass. The lead character in this play saw next to nothing because twigs of the elder tree or hemp hang down from his head. Or, a sack and lots of grass, in addition to it, would be tied around his head. One could also throw pebbles in the river while saying prayers, to attract rain. Water, which washed the pebbles, would flow down to the sea, only to return as rain. It was usually male villagers who observed that rite in mountainous Chechnya. The village elders joined the mullah in prayer while the younger generation gathered pebbles. The pebbles were left in the custody of those who could read the Koran. Once appropriate prayers were read out over them, the pebbles could be thrown back into the water. Sometimes, the pebbles were put in a small bag, and it was that bag, with the pebbles inside of it, that went into the water. The pebble-throwing part of the rite over, sacrificial animals were slain and everyone sat down to enjoy a meal. (more about traditions...) 

Religion

Paganism and Christianity in Chechnya
(continuation)

Paganism came to life again in the mountains of Chechen-Ingush Republic. Temples were rebuilt and Christian symbols acquired a difference meaning.Another reason for the departure from Christianity was perseverance of pagan beliefs and ancient deities in the peoples minds. Testifying to that are sanctuaries in honour of patron gods, erected, which is very important, during the intensive spread of Christianity in the 12th-13th centuries. Pagan deities remained all-powerful. The pantheon of medieval deities fell into tribal deities, honoured by all (Dela, Tusholi, Myatzil, Sieli, Yerdy, Molyz-Yerdy etc.), district deities (a group of villages Tkhaba-Yerdy, Dzorakh-Deala, Gurmet-Tsuu, Itaz-Yerdy, Dolge etc.), village deities (Erdzeli, Tumgoi-Yerdy, Morch-Sieli, Beini-Sieli, Mago-Yerdy etc.) and family deities(Dik-Sieli, Ausha-Sieli, Amgali-Yerdy, Tamyzh-Yerdy etc.) The supreme deity of the Veinakh pantheon was Dela. This is indicated by the secondary role of the other tribal deities, which is reflected in prayers, and preservation of the supremacy of the deity following the adoption of Islam (the name of Dela in prayers in Chechen is identified with Allah). People of the Dzheirakhsky gorge, whose main occupation was cattle-breeding, worshipped the deity called Gal-Yerda. Significantly, the latest known prayers to Gal-Yerda that have survived to this day, have a clear social aspect. They words as following: He who hates hard labour for our daily bread, let him never prevail over us. God Almighty! Save us from bowing to the one made of flesh and bones, like us, and dont let us further than Your right hand with our prayers In the Late Middle Ages, as the feudal system was introduced, the role of priests increased.Chechens and Ingushes deemed their priests as intermediaries between the deities and people. A priest was wrapped up in an halo of sacredness and sanctity and was clad in white clothing. During a prayer the priest was the first to address the deity blessing the offerings. The priest alone could enter the sanctuary freely, the others could only do that on his permission. The priest was the one to go to in lean years or in case of illness, for he could advise on what to do to keep trouble at bay. Quite often a universal way to achieve that was to make an offering. Chechen and Ingush priests were knowledgeable enough, for, unlike working people, they had a lot of time to accumulate extensive knowledge by observation and generalization. It was not for nothing that priests were revered as clairvoyants. They foretold the harvest, weather, the start of various farming activities and they practiced medicine. Chechen and Ingush priests were responsible for maintaining social stability and settling the issues concerning civil law. They also protected sanctuaries property, such as church plate, cattle, meadows and arable lands. According to ethnographic materials, priests themselves never cultivated meadows and arable lands. For this purpose they used the labour of community members, who teamed up to take turns to work the fields that fed the priests. What remained of the crops was reserved for church holidays and consumed collectively. Priests also existed at the expense of considerable offerings from the believers and had a permanent influx of gems, which they kept in special caches, discovered in many sanctuaries later on. The ultimate decline of Christian religion among Veinakhs and their return to the cult of ancient deities, which had never been forgotten even in the days of the spread of the new religion, are reflected in the change of architectural design of local sanctuaries. In the 13th and 14th centuries the sanctuaries were nearly as big as temples but in the subsequent years they became smaller and their interiour grew simpler. Hence, the Christian religion, which came to the territory of Chechen-Ingush Republic from Georgia in the 12th and 13th centuries, failed to win widespread popularity among the people. Chechen and Ingush burial rites were different too in the Middle Ages. Archaeological findings indicate that the deceased was put into a vault provided with everyday items necessary for the next world. The items in question included weapons, for a sorceress items of worship etc. If the deceased was a man, they brought his horse and put the end of the bridle into his hand, apparently, for the two of them to stay together. The funeral was followed by a spendthrift wake. The second wake, known as bed wake, was held so that the deceased could get up from bed in the other world. The wake ended with race, shooting and fancy riding contests. Wakes were held on the second and third year too. It was believed that during the wake the food went to the deceased or his soul, which, as a result of such caring treatment, would be unable to do harm to the living. Dread of the dead in vaults and ancestor worship were of such significance that a vow or oath were deemed the most effective. After harvest-time they organized a harvest dinner, a treat for dead relatives. The holiday was a family affair. As the food was sent to the other world, the host was saying prayers, judging by which Chechens and Ingushes saw afterlife as continuation of earthly life with all its hardships and joys. A special place among Veinakh religious monuments belongs to stone symbols carved on the walls of towers, vaults, sanctuaries and even latest mosques and to all sorts of marks on clothes and household utensils. The characters open up a fascinating and practically unknown world of Chechen and Ingush sacred symbols spanning the period from the Bronze Age to the Late Middle Ages. They depict human hands an ancient symbol of strength, power and skills, crosses inside circles and intricate rosettes and spirals symbolizing the sun and heavenly bodies in their perpetual movement across the sky. And among other frequently met characters is swastika, one of the most ancient and widespread symbols of eternal fire and purification, and sketchy figures of people and wile and domestic animals carved on stone.
(in detail...) 

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