Khasan Israilov
Encyclopedia
Khasan Israilov (1910 - December 29, 1944) was a Chechen
nationalist, guerrilla fighter, journalist, and poet who led a Chechen
and Ingush
rebellion against the Soviet Union
from 1940 until his death in 1944.
Khasan is regarded as the most influential Chechen guerrilla leader during the Second World War, and he is considered a national hero for many Chechens. He was infamous to the Soviets, and is to many Russians, for his 1940-1944 uprising, which many Russians connected to an abortive German plot
to undermine Soviet control over the North Caucasus
(in reality, however, relations between Israilov's Chechen partisans and the Germans were tense at best, hostile at worse).
, as the youngest of six brothers. He finished secondary school in Rostov
in 1929, generally excelling in most subjects. He joined Komsomol
, the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
in 1919. Graduating from a communist secondary school in Rostov-on-Don
in 1929, Khasan entered the ranks of the Communist Party, and in 1933 he was sent to Moscow's
Communist University of the Toilers of the East
.
As a student Khasan wrote plays and poetry, and he became a correspondent
for the Moscow newspaper Krestianskaia Gazeta (Farmer's Newspaper). A couple of his articles attacked the Soviet policy in the Checheno-Ingushetia, which he described as "plundering Chechnya by the Party leadership". Although he instantly became popular with his peers, the Soviet leadership arrested him swiftly at the mere age of 19, on charges of "counterrevolutionary
slander", and was sentenced to ten years in prison after he had written an editorial
accusing certain Party officials of "looting and corruption", but after two years Khasan was released, rehabilitated
, and allowed to return to his university after several of the Party members Khasan had accused were charged with corruption.
Returning to Moscow Khasan met with other Chechen and Ingush students, including Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov
and his elder brother Hussein, and they came to the conviction that a continuation of Soviet policy toward Chechen
and Ingush Autonous Oblasts
would inevitably lead to popular uprisings
. In 1935 Khasan once again fell into legal troubles when his signature was found on a student petition critical of Soviet policy in the North Caucasus
, and he was sentenced to five years' forced labor
in Siberia
. Khasan was released early in 1939 and he returned to Chechnya to work as a barrister
in Shatoy
.
, Khasan formally broke with the Soviet Union
when he wrote a letter to the Chechen
Communist Party
leadership stating:
By February 1940 Khasan and his brother Hussein had established a guerrilla base in the mountains of south-eastern Chechnya, where they worked to organize a unified guerrilla movement to prepare an armed insurrection against the Soviets. Under the name "Provisional People’s Revolutionary State of Checheno-Ingushetia", the brothers convened 41 different meetings in summer 1941 to recruit local supporters, and by the end of midsummer of that year they had over 5,000 guerrillas and at least 25,000 sympathizers organized into five military districts encompassing Grozny
, Gudermes
, and Malgobek
.
Khasan had planned the insurrection to begin on January 10, 1942, but a stalled German advance
, combined with poor communication between the hundreds of guerrilla units spread throughout the region, aborted his plans. Soviet counter-insurgency efforts were also stymied by the mountainous terrain - Soviet bombing raids twice attacked suspected mountain hideouts of Chechen guerrillas in spring of 1942, but the mountain guerrillas escaped the sustained attacks virtually unscathed.
By January 28, 1942, Khasan had decided to extend the uprising from Chechens and Ingush to eleven of the dominant ethnic groups in the Caucasus by forming the Special Party of Caucasus Brothers (OKPB), with the aim of an'armed struggle with Bolshevik
barbarism and Russian despotism'. Khasan also developed a code
among the guerrilla fighters to maintain order and discipline, which stated:
The Germans made concerted efforts to reach an accord with Khasan, but they found his refusal to cede control of his revolutionary movement to the Germans, and his continued insistence on German recognition of Chechen independence
, led many Germans to consider Khasan as unreliable, and his plans unrealistic. Although the Germans were able to undertake covert operations in Chechnya - such as the sabotage
of Grozny
oil fields - attempts at a German-Chechen alliance floundered.
Another element in the failure of the Chechens and Germans to collaborate was a number of factors causing ideological repulsion on both sides. Neither side trusted the other. For Chechens, the Germans were suspicious and it was widely held that they might just be another Russia wanting to colonize them, and that it only sought to use them (not without reason, considering German treatment of Baltic peoples, which was known by the Chechens). Mairbek Sheripov told the Ostministerium that "if the liberation of the Caucasus meant only the exchange of one colonizer for another, the Caucasians would consider this [a theoretical fight pitting Chechens and other Caucasians against Germans] only a new stage in the national liberation war." The Chechens were not Aryans, and the Germans were further still irritated by Hassan Israilov's last name (which implied Jewish roots). The Chechens' ideological attachment to self-determination conflicted sharply with German imperialism (not to mention the affinity
some Chechens had developed for Poland previously). The Chechens were also aware that they, like other Caucasians, were non-Aryans in Hitler's theories.
The Germans were not merely suspicious of the Chechens' goals, but they also had disdain for them as a people (and many Germans still do today). To most Germans, the Chechens were mountain bandits, but it went much deeper than that, because a sincere alliance with the Chechens would have to defy Hitler's racial theories: to add to the Germans' realization that Israilov was hostile to their aims was the presence, role and actions of the Dzugtoi (Chechen Jew) clan in Chechen society- the Dzugtoi were Chechenized Jews (who often practiced a diluted form of Judaism), completely integrated into Chechen society. Due to the tendency to marry outside of ones own clan (many clans were small, so marrying within one clan would eventually lead to incest), this meant that not only Dzugtoi, but many Chechens even outside of the Dzugtoi had Jewish ancestry. Considering the implications this had for Hitlerian racial theory, a long lasting alliance was impractical, and both sides were aware of this.
The last reason (and possibly least important) why an alliance failed was because the Germans had another alliance with the Cossacks- the perennial enemies of the Chechens for many centuries, who still had numerous land disputes with the Chechens.
By 1943, as the Germans began to retreat in the Eastern Front
, the mountain guerrillas saw their fortunes change as many former rebels defected
to the Soviets in exchange of amnesty
. On December 6, 1943 German involvement in Chechnya ended when Soviet spies
infiltrated and arrested the remaining German operatives in Chechnya.
Stalin had realized the vulnerability of the Caucasus and the strategic oil reserves in Chechnya, and by late 1943 he had made plans to deport the peoples of the North Caucasus
as he viewed them as potential fifth column
ists. By a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 7, 1944, entitled 'On the Liquidation of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR and the Administrative Reorganization of the Territory’, Stalin alleged that the peoples of the North Caucasus were responsible for mass collaboration
with the Germans, despite the fact that an estimated 157,000 Chechen and Ingush conscripts had fought in the Red Army
against Nazi Germany
, and many had fought all the way to the liberation of Berlin
. On the night of February 23, 1944 Lavrentiy Beria
personally carried out the Chechevitsa
, the forced deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia. Beria went on to issue a verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush found 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot, and under this pretext thousands were summarily executed. Victims of typhus
, which had reached epidemic proportions, were immediately executed, as were pregnant women and the elderly; another example of Soviet excesses came in the Chechen village of Khaibakh
, where more than 700 Chechens were locked in a stable and burnt alive. Chechen literature and manuscripts were also burned by the Soviets, and food and water supplies were poisoned to eliminate any that stayed behind.
to many of Hasan's weapons and equipment, he eluded arrest for the next ten months hiding from cave to cave as a fugitive
, burdened by the weight of the deportation of his people. In a Top Secret
communication among Soviet officers, it was reported that Khasan had been killed, his corpse photographed and identified on December 29, 1944. All photographs of Khasan Israilov and information related to his death are kept in the secret archives of the Russian FSB even today.
Soviet secret police
units would continue to hunt the remnants of the Chechen guerrilla opposition in the North Caucasus until 1953.
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
nationalist, guerrilla fighter, journalist, and poet who led a Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
and Ingush
Ingush people
The Ingush are a native ethnic group of the North Caucasus, mostly inhabiting the Russian republic of Ingushetia. They refer to themselves as Ghalghai . The Ingush are predominantly Sunni Muslims and speak the Ingush language...
rebellion against the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
from 1940 until his death in 1944.
Khasan is regarded as the most influential Chechen guerrilla leader during the Second World War, and he is considered a national hero for many Chechens. He was infamous to the Soviets, and is to many Russians, for his 1940-1944 uprising, which many Russians connected to an abortive German plot
Operation Edelweiss
Operation Edelweiss , named after the mountain flower, was a German plan to gain control over the Caucasus and capture the oil fields of Baku during the Soviet-German War. The operation was authorised by Hitler on 23 July 1942...
to undermine Soviet control over the North Caucasus
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....
(in reality, however, relations between Israilov's Chechen partisans and the Germans were tense at best, hostile at worse).
Early life
Khasan was born in 1910 in the village of Nashkoi in Galanchozh, ChechnyaChechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, as the youngest of six brothers. He finished secondary school in Rostov
Rostov
Rostov is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, one of the oldest in the country and a tourist center of the Golden Ring. It is located on the shores of Lake Nero, northeast of Moscow. Population:...
in 1929, generally excelling in most subjects. He joined Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
in 1919. Graduating from a communist secondary school in Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
in 1929, Khasan entered the ranks of the Communist Party, and in 1933 he was sent to Moscow's
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
Communist University of the Toilers of the East
Communist University of the Toilers of the East
The Communist University of the Toilers of the East or KUTV was established April 21, 1921, in Moscow by the Communist International as a training college for communist cadres in the colonial world. The school officially opened on October 21, 1921...
.
As a student Khasan wrote plays and poetry, and he became a correspondent
Correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...
for the Moscow newspaper Krestianskaia Gazeta (Farmer's Newspaper). A couple of his articles attacked the Soviet policy in the Checheno-Ingushetia, which he described as "plundering Chechnya by the Party leadership". Although he instantly became popular with his peers, the Soviet leadership arrested him swiftly at the mere age of 19, on charges of "counterrevolutionary
Counterrevolutionary
A counter-revolutionary is anyone who opposes a revolution, particularly those who act after a revolution to try to overturn or reverse it, in full or in part...
slander", and was sentenced to ten years in prison after he had written an editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
accusing certain Party officials of "looting and corruption", but after two years Khasan was released, rehabilitated
Political rehabilitation
Political rehabilitation is the process by which a member of a political organization or government who has fallen into disgrace, is restored to public life. It is usually applied to leaders or other prominent individuals who regain their prominence after a period in which they have no influence or...
, and allowed to return to his university after several of the Party members Khasan had accused were charged with corruption.
Returning to Moscow Khasan met with other Chechen and Ingush students, including Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov
Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov
Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov was an acclaimed Soviet historian and writer turned anti-communist. He worked primarily in the fields of Soviet history and History of the CPSU...
and his elder brother Hussein, and they came to the conviction that a continuation of Soviet policy toward Chechen
Chechen Autonomous Oblast
Chechen Autonomous Oblast , or Autonomous Oblast of Chechnya , was an autonomous oblast of the Russian SFSR, created on November 30, 1922 when it was separated from the Mountain Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic....
and Ingush Autonous Oblasts
Ingush Autonomous Oblast
Ingush Autonomous Oblast was created on 7 July 1924....
would inevitably lead to popular uprisings
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
. In 1935 Khasan once again fell into legal troubles when his signature was found on a student petition critical of Soviet policy in the North Caucasus
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....
, and he was sentenced to five years' forced labor
Unfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. Khasan was released early in 1939 and he returned to Chechnya to work as a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
in Shatoy
Shatoy
Shatoy or Shatoi is a village in the Chechen Republic, Russia. It is the administrative center of Shatoysky District. Population: 1,771 . It is the home village of underground rebel President Doku Umarov. Geographical location: ....
.
Rebel leader
In 1940, after hearing of Finland's resistance against Soviet aggressionWinter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
, Khasan formally broke with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
when he wrote a letter to the Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
leadership stating:
"I have decided to become the leader of a war of liberation of my own people. I understand all too well that not only in Checheno-Ingushetia, but in all nations of the CaucasusCaucasusThe Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
it will be difficult to win freedom from the heavy yoke of RedCommunismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
imperialism. But our fervent belief in justice and our faith in the support of the freedom-loving peoples of the Caucasus and of the entire world inspire me toward this deed, in your eyes impertinent and pointless, but in my conviction, the sole correct historical step. The valiant Finns are now proving that the Great Enslaver Empire is powerless against a small but freedom-loving people. In the Caucasus you will find your second Finland, and after us will follow other oppressed peoples."
"For twenty years now, the Soviet authorities have been fighting my people, aiming to destroy them group by group: first the kulaks, then the mullahs and the 'bandits', then the bourgeois-nationalists. I am sure now that the real object of this war is the annihilation of our nation as a whole. That is why I have decided to assume the leadership of my people in their struggle for liberation."
By February 1940 Khasan and his brother Hussein had established a guerrilla base in the mountains of south-eastern Chechnya, where they worked to organize a unified guerrilla movement to prepare an armed insurrection against the Soviets. Under the name "Provisional People’s Revolutionary State of Checheno-Ingushetia", the brothers convened 41 different meetings in summer 1941 to recruit local supporters, and by the end of midsummer of that year they had over 5,000 guerrillas and at least 25,000 sympathizers organized into five military districts encompassing Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
, Gudermes
Gudermes
Gudermes is a town in the Chechen Republic, Russia, located on the Sunzha River east of Grozny. Population: 32,000 .Gudermes had a rural locality status until 1941. Later, it became a railroad junction between Rostov-on-Don, Baku, Astrakhan, and Mozdok. Gudermes is home for oil extraction...
, and Malgobek
Malgobek
Malgobek is a town in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia, located northwest of the republic's capital Magas. Population: Malgobek was founded in 1935 as a settlement for workers at then recently discovered oilfields, on the territory of former Ingush villages of Malgobek-Balka and Chechen-Balka...
.
Khasan had planned the insurrection to begin on January 10, 1942, but a stalled German advance
Battle of the Caucasus
The Battle of Caucasus is a name given to a series of German and Soviet operations in the Caucasus area during the Soviet-German War.-1941 operations:...
, combined with poor communication between the hundreds of guerrilla units spread throughout the region, aborted his plans. Soviet counter-insurgency efforts were also stymied by the mountainous terrain - Soviet bombing raids twice attacked suspected mountain hideouts of Chechen guerrillas in spring of 1942, but the mountain guerrillas escaped the sustained attacks virtually unscathed.
By January 28, 1942, Khasan had decided to extend the uprising from Chechens and Ingush to eleven of the dominant ethnic groups in the Caucasus by forming the Special Party of Caucasus Brothers (OKPB), with the aim of an'armed struggle with Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
barbarism and Russian despotism'. Khasan also developed a code
Code
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....
among the guerrilla fighters to maintain order and discipline, which stated:
• Brutally avenge the enemies for the blood of our native brothers, the best sons of the Caucasus;
• Mercilessly annihilate seksoty [secret agents], agents and other informants of the NKVD;
• Categorically forbid [guerrillas] to spend the night in homes or villages without the security of reliable guards.
The Germans made concerted efforts to reach an accord with Khasan, but they found his refusal to cede control of his revolutionary movement to the Germans, and his continued insistence on German recognition of Chechen independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
, led many Germans to consider Khasan as unreliable, and his plans unrealistic. Although the Germans were able to undertake covert operations in Chechnya - such as the sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
of Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
oil fields - attempts at a German-Chechen alliance floundered.
Another element in the failure of the Chechens and Germans to collaborate was a number of factors causing ideological repulsion on both sides. Neither side trusted the other. For Chechens, the Germans were suspicious and it was widely held that they might just be another Russia wanting to colonize them, and that it only sought to use them (not without reason, considering German treatment of Baltic peoples, which was known by the Chechens). Mairbek Sheripov told the Ostministerium that "if the liberation of the Caucasus meant only the exchange of one colonizer for another, the Caucasians would consider this [a theoretical fight pitting Chechens and other Caucasians against Germans] only a new stage in the national liberation war." The Chechens were not Aryans, and the Germans were further still irritated by Hassan Israilov's last name (which implied Jewish roots). The Chechens' ideological attachment to self-determination conflicted sharply with German imperialism (not to mention the affinity
Prometheism
Prometheism or Prometheanism was a political project initiated by Poland's Józef Piłsudski. Its aim was to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor states, including the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the...
some Chechens had developed for Poland previously). The Chechens were also aware that they, like other Caucasians, were non-Aryans in Hitler's theories.
The Germans were not merely suspicious of the Chechens' goals, but they also had disdain for them as a people (and many Germans still do today). To most Germans, the Chechens were mountain bandits, but it went much deeper than that, because a sincere alliance with the Chechens would have to defy Hitler's racial theories: to add to the Germans' realization that Israilov was hostile to their aims was the presence, role and actions of the Dzugtoi (Chechen Jew) clan in Chechen society- the Dzugtoi were Chechenized Jews (who often practiced a diluted form of Judaism), completely integrated into Chechen society. Due to the tendency to marry outside of ones own clan (many clans were small, so marrying within one clan would eventually lead to incest), this meant that not only Dzugtoi, but many Chechens even outside of the Dzugtoi had Jewish ancestry. Considering the implications this had for Hitlerian racial theory, a long lasting alliance was impractical, and both sides were aware of this.
The last reason (and possibly least important) why an alliance failed was because the Germans had another alliance with the Cossacks- the perennial enemies of the Chechens for many centuries, who still had numerous land disputes with the Chechens.
By 1943, as the Germans began to retreat in the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
, the mountain guerrillas saw their fortunes change as many former rebels defected
Defection
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state or political entity in exchange for allegiance to another. More broadly, it involves abandoning a person, cause or doctrine to whom or to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.This term is also applied,...
to the Soviets in exchange of amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
. On December 6, 1943 German involvement in Chechnya ended when Soviet spies
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
infiltrated and arrested the remaining German operatives in Chechnya.
Stalin had realized the vulnerability of the Caucasus and the strategic oil reserves in Chechnya, and by late 1943 he had made plans to deport the peoples of the North Caucasus
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
as he viewed them as potential fifth column
Fifth column
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
ists. By a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 7, 1944, entitled 'On the Liquidation of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR and the Administrative Reorganization of the Territory’, Stalin alleged that the peoples of the North Caucasus were responsible for mass collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
with the Germans, despite the fact that an estimated 157,000 Chechen and Ingush conscripts had fought in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
against Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, and many had fought all the way to the liberation of Berlin
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European Theatre of World War II....
. On the night of February 23, 1944 Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
personally carried out the Chechevitsa
Operation Lentil (Caucasus)
Operation Lentil was the Soviet expulsion of the whole of the native Chechen and Ingush populations of the North Caucasus to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan during World War II....
, the forced deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia. Beria went on to issue a verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush found 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot, and under this pretext thousands were summarily executed. Victims of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
, which had reached epidemic proportions, were immediately executed, as were pregnant women and the elderly; another example of Soviet excesses came in the Chechen village of Khaibakh
Khaibakh massacre
The Khaibakh massacre refers to a report of mass execution of the ethnically Chechen population of the aul of Khaibakh, in the mountaineous part of Chechnya, by Soviet forces under a NKVD colonel Mikhail Gveshiani....
, where more than 700 Chechens were locked in a stable and burnt alive. Chechen literature and manuscripts were also burned by the Soviets, and food and water supplies were poisoned to eliminate any that stayed behind.
Death
Khasan had managed to elude the deportations, although his entire family had been either deported or executed outright, and he was rendered extremely vulnerable to capture. Although forced confessions from colleagues led the NKVDNKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
to many of Hasan's weapons and equipment, he eluded arrest for the next ten months hiding from cave to cave as a fugitive
Fugitive
A fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...
, burdened by the weight of the deportation of his people. In a Top Secret
Top Secret
Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...
communication among Soviet officers, it was reported that Khasan had been killed, his corpse photographed and identified on December 29, 1944. All photographs of Khasan Israilov and information related to his death are kept in the secret archives of the Russian FSB even today.
Soviet secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
units would continue to hunt the remnants of the Chechen guerrilla opposition in the North Caucasus until 1953.