| There are more Chechens than before the war The Chechen government is proud of the census result: the population of the republic has exceeded one million. This means that, compared to pre-war times, the number of inhabitants there not only did not decrease, but even seemed to have grown. According to the 1989 census, about 1 million 300 thousand people lived in the Soviet Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After the division into Chechnya and Ingushetia, the mass exodus of Russians and the first military campaign, approximately 750 thousand people should have remained in the republic. At least this figure was the basis for migration authorities in the fall of 1999, when they were faced with a flow of 350 thousand refugees pouring across the Chechen borders in the first months of the second war. Despite all the discrepancies in the assessment of the number of internally displaced persons, it was obvious that the devastated Grozny and many villages were truly deserted. Last winter, the Danish Refugee Council, together with the Chechen administration, decided to find out who and how much humanitarian aid should be transported. The Europeans left 674 thousand people. The Russian authorities officially announced approximately the same figure to the OSCE delegation in August. True, a couple of weeks later, the emissary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Lord Frank Judd, was already informed about 900 thousand inhabitants of the rebellious republic.
The unprecedented growth of Chechnya's population to one million can only be explained by the rapid return of refugees to their homeland. However, representatives of public organizations helping Chechen migrants in Ingushetia and Dagestan do not observe any return. According to Memorial, there are still about 150 thousand refugees in the two neighboring republics alone. “According to international standards, a census can only be carried out in stable regions,” says Memorial board member Alexander Cherkasov. “But the federal center and local authorities are interested in showing that everyone has returned.” But obviously not everyone has returned yet. “We don’t have exact data on those who left, but in total it’s about 150-200 thousand,” says Edi Isaev, head of the Information Center of the Chechen Representation in Moscow. But if the Chechens, albeit slowly, are still going to their homeland, then the Russians are unlikely to return there soon. And in pre-war Chechnya, Russians made up a fairly large group. Employees of the republican representative office of Chechnya in Moscow quite officially talk about “200 thousand Russian-speaking people who acted wisely when they left the republic and avoided the bombing.” At the same time, the employees of the current Chechen administration themselves prefer to explain the census results by a demographic “explosion”. “Chechen families have 5-6 children,” says Mr. Isaev. “We didn’t allow anyone else to write down and, unlike the rest of Russia, we even asked for passports and birth certificates in order to know exactly how much social assistance to allocate.”
Meanwhile, both the republican administration itself, which will now receive more money, and those families among whom part of this money is distributed are interested in the additions. Double registration has long been in use here - people are registered on all possible lists at their place of residence, with relatives in Ingushetia, and in tent camps. Firstly, it doesn’t hurt to stand in line for all the rations at once, and secondly, there are fewer complaints from the local police. Only militants could completely evade the census; Mr. Isaev estimates their number at 1,500-1,900 people.
But the representative office refused to estimate the military losses. “If you add up all the reports from the Russian military, it turns out that they killed 5 million Chechens,” Mr. Isaev says. “I don’t want to offend anyone, but they are probably putting victims of wars that will happen in the future here.” No one will tell you the exact number of deaths.” The statistics of losses suffered by Chechnya during the two wars are indeed quite arbitrary. Russian politicians operate with figures ranging from 80 to 150 thousand people. Memorial is more reserved in its assessments. “During the first war, no more than 50 thousand people died, during the second - no less than 10, but no more than 20 thousand,” says Mr. Cherkasov. — For the second war, we most likely have to start from 10 thousand. About 2 thousand more people were missing. This figure roughly matches the 12 thousand killed militants that our military is talking about.” Ivan SUKHOV |
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