[LINK] "Protests in Grozny in 1950s Show What a Russian ‘Bunt’ Looks Like"

[rfmcdonald]

Window on Eurasia has an interesting account of the 1958 Grozny riots, which erupted when the Grozny Oblast--established after the deportation of the Chechens and the Ingush to central Asia--was set to be transformed back into the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic with the return of these Vainakh peoples to their homeland.

On January 6, 1957, Moscow issued a decree “on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR within the RSFSR,” a measure that anticipated the gradual return from Central Asian exile of the peoples sent there but not the “more than 200,000” who flooded back over the course of 1957 alone.

The problems this created were not limited to numbers alone, Matveyev says. There was “the mass acquisition of arms,” blood feud murders, rapes, other violent crimes and “attacks on the residents of the republic who represented other nationalities.” And the Chechen leaders, he continues, sought to promote both the practice of Sufism and the establishment of Shariat law.

By the end of the year, “anti-Russian leaflets were being distributed in Grozny,” and Chechen young people attacked both teachers and even “officers of the Soviet Army.” According to one Russian there at the time, “the situation is so bad” that “the people are in a panic. Many have left,” she said; “and the rest are meeting” to decide what steps they should take.

According to official statistics, during 1957, some 113,000 ethnic Russians, Osetins, Avars, Ukrainians “and citizens of other nationalities” left the newly re-established Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. But those who did not leave participated on August 26-27 in an even which is “a classical example” of a “Russky bunt.”

Matveyev provides enormous detail on what occurred, but even the broad outline of events is suggestive of what can happen. On August 23, a Chechen got into a fight with an ethnic Russian and killed him. Russians around the city demanded that the Chechen be severely punished, and on August 25-26, they called for the public execution of the Chechen.
On the 26th, more than 3,000 people marched on the center of Grozny and staged a demonstration in front of CPSU headquarters. “But,” Matveyev notes, “neither in the oblast committee nor in the city committee of the party did anyone consider it necessary to enter into a discussion with the city residents or give it any explanations.

Instead, the party officials simply remained behind “a militia cordon” and assumed the crowd would disperse. But the crowd didn’t go away. Instead, a group of its younger members “broke into the offices of the obkom and attempted by force to bring into the square” senior government and party officials.

Go, read.