Actual News from Chechnya

News update

The Head of the Chechen Administration Akhmad Kadyrov has commented Lord Judds decision to leave his post of the chief reporter on prospects for the settlement of the Chechen conflict in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. According to the RIA news agency, Mr. Kadyrov who has repeatedly met with Lord Judd described his position as following in Chechnya he says one thing, but when he comes to Europe the different. In this connection the head of the Chechen Administration expressed perplexity over the fact that Lord Judd has judged the situation in the republic following three-hour meetings in refugee camps where 80 per cent are Maskgadovs men. Mr. Kadyrov pointed out one will need at least one month to live in Chechnya to understand what the situation is about there and what the Chechens themselves think about it. He opposed Lord Judds stance on the issue of holding the planned referendum on a new Chechen constitution. Mr. Kadyrov said the people of Chechnya have spoken in favor of the referendum at the Congress in Gudermez. He said the referendum would be definitely held. Mr. Kadyrov took part in a session of the Russian Security Council on Chechen problems in the Kremlin on Thursday.
(more...)

Magistrates Court at Bow Street in central London is resuming hearings after 1.00 PM (local Moscow time) into the case of the Chechen separatists emissary Akhmed Zakayev to decide whether to extradite him to Russia. According to the ITAR-TASS news agency, quoting competent sources, the British Interior Minister David Blunkett has signed an order to launch the process of extradition of Zakayev, meaning that the London Court may start a careful examination of Russias request to extradite him. Earlier Zakayevs passport was confiscated so as he cannot leave Britain. He remanded on conditional bail of 50,000 pounds. It must be taken into consideration that an essentially new factor has appeared in the case. Earlier this month the British Foreign Ministry issued a decree under which Russia was recognized a member of the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism signed on January 27th 1997. In an interview with the ITAR-TASS a spokesman for the British Foreign Ministry said so far the Convention has embraced 22 countries, but now 15 more states, including Russia, have joined the fold. Fugitives from these countries, she said, that can be charged with links with terrorism, will fail to avoid extradition under an excuse that they are tracked down by political motives.
(more...)

Chechen economics

Nurenergo Company started to publish an analytical and news bulletin in December under the name Power Engineering in the Chechen Republic. The editorial board consists of five people. The editor-in-chief Ruslan Nashkhoev is a journalist, a historian and a writer. He has published several books, including the historical and publicist collection of works known as the Mystery of Pkharmat which devoted to a myth about a Chechen hero who procured fire for people lived in dark like the Greek Titan Promethean. The cover of the bulletin has an image of Pkharmat. In his first issue Ruslan Nashkhoev says that the power engineering sector workers like Pkharmat risk their lives to give people light, heat and comfort. The bulletin is devoted to these people working in the energy sector. The bulletin gives in detail the history of electrification of Chechnya and described how restoration of the Chechen power system has been going on in the past few years. It also introduces the general director of the Nurenergo Company Nurdin Usamov and its leading experts to readers. These people devote their articles to their colleagues, achievements and the task before them. The bulletin gives an account about the work of the staff of the company and their holidays. It also marks the birth dates of the workers of the company in a special page with a bunch of flowers. Since the first issue was published in December it wished the energy sector worker a happy New Year and congratulated on the Day of workers in the power engineering sector and on the first anniversary of Nurenergo Company, tenth anniversary of Unified Energy Systems and the 82nd anniversary of the adoption of the plan for electrification of Russia. The second issue is devoted to the commissioning of the first stage of the 4th thermal power station in Argun and the ceremony of Energy Workers Day marked late December. Among the participants of the ceremony were the chairmen of the UES Anatoly Chubais, head of the administration Akhmad Kadyrov and Chechen Prime Minister Mikhail Babich. Several columns of the newspaper are devoted to charity work conducted by the company. Among them are aid to the school No. 2 in the Urus-Martan district and the victims of the terrorist attack at the theatre Centre in Moscow and the formation of a football team and New Year presents to orphanages, nurseries and schools. The newspaper has an entertainment page too. It contains a poem in Chechen and a joke in Russian by a guard of the company Tapoi Imaev. The second issue contains jokes by merited cultural worker of the Chechen Republic Hoji-Baudi Israilov an actor of the Chechen State Drama Theatre named after Kh. Nuradilov. The bulletin also prints photos of many workers of the Company. It is important to know the face of people who work to give people light and heat in the reviving Chechnya. Among them manegers of the company, engineers and technicians. These people work hard to return the life in the republic to normal.
(more ...)

Russia - Chechnya

Public organizations to Chechnya

International humanitarian organizations are expanding their activities in Chechnya, as the situation in the republic is growing more stable. As UNISEF envoy to Russia and Belarus Rosemarie McCririe said at a meeting with Ingushetias President Murat Zyazikov, the UNs aid to Chechnya in 2003 would account for 56 percent of all funds allocated to the North Caucasus. UN donors have already subscribed 34 million dollars to the North Caucasus for 2003. Employees of the International Red Cross Committee will station in Nalchik and Nazran but will visit the Chechen republic several times a week. 110 000 Chechen residents will receive help from the IRCC. According to IRCC general delegate for Europe and America Beatrice Mezhevan-Roggo, the emphasis of the humanitarian aid will be shifted to restoration of infrastructure in 2003. More attention will be paid to ensuring sanitary and hygienic communal conditions. Surgical aid to hospitals is planned to be increased two-fold. Patients of medical institutions will receive food and 43 000 schoolchildren from socially disadvantaged families will receive clothes and footwear twice a year. Overall, IRCC is planning to earmark more than 30 million dollars for humanitarian efforts in the North Caucasus. Switzerlands Embassy in Russia has shipped 5 tons of medications for local hospitals in Gudermes, Nozhai-Yurt, Vedeno and Shali. The humanitarian fund International aid to the Chechen republic works together with district and local administrations, public and non-state organizations. The fund monitors the population to help the most socially disadvantaged citizens. It also mapped a series of efforts to help displaced persons return to places of permanent residence.
(more...)

Issue 64
31.01.03

Chechnya: news | arguments | facts

31 January 2003  The 90th birthday of Academician M.Millionshchikov
Russian public is marking the 90th birthday of Mikhail Millionshchikov, a prominent scientist, statesman and public figure and Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. A native of the Chechen capital, Grozny, and a graduate of the Grozny Oil Institute, which bears his name, Academician Millionshchikov made a notable contribution to the development of aerohydrodynamics, applied physics and nuclear power engineering. On the jubilee day the Kurchatov Institute Scientific Development Center hosted a solemn meeting attended by Millionshchikovs colleagues, students and relatives. Speakers at the meeting said a lot about the scientists contribution to the development of many areas of research theory of filtration, turbulence, applied gas dynamics, nuclear physics and power engineering. Millionshchikovs first research treatises were written at the Grozny Oil Institute in the early 1930s. The Institute will be bearing the name of the scientist also to commemorate him as a remarkable teacher. Mikhail Millionshchikov started his teaching career while still a student. For many years he taught at the Moscow Aviation Institute. In 1949 he founded an isotope division department at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Engineering and stayed in charge of it until the last of his days. Millionshchikovs relatives spoke at length about his younger days, which he spent in Grozny. The participants in the memorial meeting also watched a film called The Nuclear Transformer Reactor Romashka: to the 90th birthday of M.Millionshchikov. On behalf of the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Kurchatov Institute and the academicians colleagues and relatives floral tributes were laid to the Millionshchikov memorial on Novodevichy cemetery and memorial plaque on the building of the Kurchatov Institute. The main festivities on the occasion of the scientists 90th birthday will take place at the Russian Academy of Sciences in February. In February too there will be the presentation of the book Academician M.Millionshchikov: Keeping Pace with Time in the Academy of Sciences series Scientists of Russia. Sketches, Memoirs, Documents, prepared by the Nauka publishers. A large number of the books copies will be sent to university libraries of Chechnhya.
(more News from Chechnya)

30 January 2003  People in Chechnya going back to work
Contrary to doom and gloom reports in the Western media, Chechnya is returning to normal in all aspects of social and economic life. Indeed, over 350 thousand Chechens remained on federal and regional unemployment benefits as of late December, but over 200 thousand were back in permanent jobs, created during economic reconstruction in the period since early 2000. Employers range from small businesses to big plants. Chechnya's only resurrected asphalt works employs only 15 but copes with the demand for asphalt in an area that stretches far beyond its home district of Nozhai-Yurt. Experienced food expert and manager Skahbudi Batayev has successfully re-employed 200 at a food processing factory in Shali, winner of stacks of Soviet-era quality diplomas. Another 200 are successfully pursuing expansion at a partially re-launched sugar refinery in Argun. Builders and oilmen are in highest demand. As education and health care re-emerge from ruin under the Dudayev and Maskhadov regimes, teachers, lecturers, doctors and nurses return to their suspended jobs. Public health care is given top priority in Chechnya. The most popular employers are in the public sector, where wages are paid on time and labour laws are adhered to. The Chechens regain upbeat mood as they get back to work after a decade of strife, hardship and hopelessness.
(more News from Chechnya...)

29 January 2003  Chechen missions mark a year of work in Russian regions
Missions of the Chechen republic are working efficiently in many Russian regions. There are two basic reasons for setting up such missions. Firstly, there is need for restoring war-ruined economic and cultural ties between Chechnya and Russian regions and between separate enterprises. And secondly, many residents of the republic have in the last ten years moved to other Russian regions and they need support. The missions are working vigorously on both directions. They had a big role to play in sealing agreements on economic and cultural cooperation with 20 Russian regions. In December 2002, such an agreement was signed with Tatarstan. More of them are coming up with Bashkorstan, Sverdlov region, Dagestan and Krasnodar region. These documents help to establish direct contacts and make contracts between enterprises and agencies and set the stage for promoting mutually advantageous cooperation. As far as communities are concerned, the missions help in addressing various issues, arrange cultural and educational programs and assist those who want to return to their homeland. Another job of the missions is to destroy the stereotype of a Chechen as a bandit. They promote TV programs, newspaper articles, and hold concerts and days of Chechen culture. The relations with the locals in the regions are generally good, though; people can tell peaceful residents from terrorists very well. According to head of the external relations and investment department of the Chechen government Abu Ali Osmanov overseeing the missions, Chechen offices proved helpful in arrangements for the Assembly of the Chechen peoples that took place on December 11, 2002, in Gudermes. In a short period of time, the missions helped to bring together delegates from 25 Russian regions. Among them were representatives of the Chechen government to regions and envoys of Chechen communities. At the end of 2002, Chechen missions began the preparation for a referendum on the Chechen Constitution. Besides Chechnya, it will take place in 7 or 8 Russian regions, in areas with large Chechen communities. These are Stavropol, Krasnodar and Rostov regions, Kalmykia, and, possibly, St. Petersburg.
(more News from Chechnya...)

Chechen traditions

Modern customs and traditions

Famous Chechen writer and a historian Dr. Edi Isaev has completed the work on his monograph The Ethics of Sworn Brotherhood Relations. The book shows that this tradition existed among Vainakhs in ancient times. Edi Isaev has collected materials for the book for ten years. He referred to more than one thousand sources, including the documents in the state archives of Russian Federation and Chechnya. He used the documents on Russian-Chechen relations between the 17th and 19th centuries and works by Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Lev Tolstoi. He also quotes statements by prominent Chechens, experts in traditions and culture of their people, political scientist, A. Avtorkhanov, dancer M. Esambaev, writer and A, Aidamirov. Edi Isaev believes that the book is interesting for Russian readers, mainly for residents in the North Caucasus and young Chechens. It gives useful information and covers centuries-long relations between Russians and on what the current relations are now based. The book contains no assessments by the author. It focuses on documents and sources in literature. It contains several parts that cover different historical periods. Concerning the last ten years the author says that various nationalities in Russia have helped residents in Chechnya and documents show that Russians and Chechen people desire to live in peace and harmony, and the latest events are only in the hands of terrorists and extremist groups. The book will be printed in two or three months.
(more ...)

Chechen culture

Architecture

The natural surroundings determined what kind of villages and housing units were to be built in the mountainous and flatland parts of Chechnya. Mountain rock was the main. and wood, clay and straw, the auxiliary building materials. Security was the chief concern of those who settled to live in mountain canyons: their villages were to be well protected. Besides, the highlanders were concerned about the availability of grass and grazing pastures, water, and, last but not least, arable land. Land ought not to be wasted, so houses were built even on top of mountain cliffs. One-storey houses with a flat roof constituted the widest-spread type of buildings in mountainous Chechnya. Two-storeyed houses and three-to-five-storeyed towers were occasionally built, too. Several buildings - the living quarters, a tower and the outhouses - made up what might be called a family holding. Their relative positions depended on the terrain. A mountain village looked a helter-skelter agglomeration of buildings. No straight streets cut through it. Land was scarce. It was divided between kins and no construction blueprints were ever drawn up. The more kinsmen, the bigger chunk of land a kin was entitled to get. As a result, there appeared blocks of family holdings: kinsmen settled to live side by side with one another. Every village had a main square which was dominated by a mosque. The main square was meant for public gatherings. Flatland villages eventually came to imitate the highlanders' planning methods. They stretched on the bank of a river or along a road and were far more populous. A mountain village had 20 to 25 family units whereas a village of flatland Chechnya, over 400. The Chechens usually built their long, flat-roofed, one-storey houses of mountain rock and, less frequently, of straw brick. It took a week to build this unpretentious shelter, and a week was all the time a Chechen could afford to spend on housing construction after his old house was destroyed by an enemy. Other construction materials were used in flatland Chechnya. The walls of the houses were made of a mixture of clay, chaff and fresh manure. The roofs were made of wooden poles covered with tree bark and a layer of clay. The clay was to be tamped with a special rammer, otherwise grass would grow on the roofs. The housing unit was divided into two fully detached rooms. There were, consequently, two entrances. The master of the house lived and received guests in one of the two rooms, the other room belonged to the mistress of the house and the children. A combination of a chimney and an oven was used for heating purposes. A clay-covered wicker smoke stack failed, by one meter, to reach the floor. Fire was constantly burning in an earthen fireplace, right beneath the chimney. A pot with cooking food was hooked up to a chain that hang from the ceiling. There was next to no furniture: an armchair for the master of the house, a low table, and a few low benches...By and large, people slept on the floor. Matresses, lengths of felt, rugs, carpets and blankets were kept, together with tableware, on wide shelves that lined the inside walls of both rooms. Wooden chests stood by the wall. The Chechen house had no regular windows. A square opening that went down to the floor was closed for the night with a shutter. It was not until the 19th century that Chechens started building houses after the Russian fashion: with regular windows and one entrance door, with an iron stove and a tiled roof. The new kind of houses were built of straw brick or of logs of wood. There were 30-odd brick and tile factories in the late 19th century, in Chechnya.
(in detail ...)

Copyright © CHECHNYA FREE.RU