Numbers. Book of losses. The Book of the Great Judgment

The very idea and possibility of elections is based on the fact that the opinion, the vote of each person can be taken into account and correlated with the opinions of other members of the community - that is, on the assumption of their countability. If the whole is not defined, its components also lose meaning. The rulers, who were by no means elected, also sought to take their subjects into account, however, for other purposes - one can recall both the English “Book of the Last Judgment” and the biblical “Book of Numbers”.

Turning to estimates of the size, migration and loss of population in the zone of armed conflict in the Chechen Republic, one involuntarily recalls the name of another Old Testament text - “The Book of Chronicles”, the Book of the Lost, Lost...

Errors in voter lists are a serious thing. More recently, in December, the absence of a third of voters from the lists became one of the reasons for the overthrow of the ruling regime in Georgia. But it's there, just around the corner. And on our side of the Greater Caucasus Range, in Chechnya, an almost one and a half excess of the number of voters over the theoretically possible one is in the order of things.

Some would call this an anomaly, a deviation from the norm. However, gentlemen, three-dimensional images have this property: break the hologram into parts, and in each piece you will see not a fragment of the original picture, not a part, but the whole. Only in miniature. In the Chechen "presidential elections" of October 5, 2003, one can see the contours of the Russian elections of March 14.

Perhaps that is why the article “The Book of Numbers. The Book of Losses. The Book of the Last Judgment. Demography, population losses and migration flows in the zone of armed conflict in the Chechen Republic” will be of interest not only to those who are interested in our last “Caucasian war”.

The article will be included in the book “The Political Process Through the Looking Glass,” which is being prepared for publication by the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Memorial Human Rights Center.

* * *

The results of three 2003 votes in Chechnya - the referendum on March 26, the presidential elections on October 5 and the Duma elections on December 7 - were summed up based on the results of the October 2002 census. Then it was officially announced that the population of the Chechen Republic was 1 million 88 thousand people.

Three years earlier, at the beginning of the “second Chechen war,” the federal center estimated the population of the Chechen Republic at 350 thousand people, of which 300 thousand were Chechens. Thus, in November 1999, Igor Shabdurasulov (then deputy head of the Presidential Administration) said: “Today, more than 750 thousand Chechens live outside the republic, in Russia. In the republic itself, according to various estimates, from 150 to 200 thousand remain, and those whom we call “forced migrants” are also about 100-150 thousand.”

How to combine these two numbers? So, in three years the population of Chechnya has tripled? It turns out that not only all the refugees of the “second Chechen war” returned to the republic, but also the entire previously established diaspora. The assumption is, to put it mildly, bold.

To understand this solitaire game, you need to try to answer several questions.

Firstly, what was the population of the republic at different times, how many people lived on the territory of the republic?

Secondly, what was the migration beyond its borders, how many refugees were at different times outside of Chechnya?

Thirdly, what is the scale of death of residents of Chechnya during the armed conflicts of recent years?

And then the resulting figures should somehow be coordinated with each other...

* * *

The previous census in Checheno-Ingushetia [1] , as well as throughout the USSR, took place in 1989. The population of the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic amounted to 1,275.5 thousand actual people and 1,270.4 thousand permanent ones. There is no separate information about the population living in the territory of modern Chechnya and Ingushetia; in 1989 it can be estimated as slightly more than 1.1 million and 170 thousand people, respectively [2] .

The national composition of the permanent population of the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was as follows: out of 1,270.4 thousand - 734.5 thousand Chechens, 163.8 thousand Ingush, 293.8 thousand Russians, 14.8 thousand Armenians, 12.6 thousand Ukrainians. There is no exact information about the national composition of the population of the territory of Chechnya proper in 1989, a possible estimate: out of 1,084 thousand - approximately 715 thousand Chechens, 25 thousand Ingush, 269 thousand Russians; thus, the upper estimate of the Vainakh population at that time is 755-760 thousand people [3] .

According to censuses, the number of Vainakhs in the USSR increased in 1979-89. by 27%, which corresponds to an annual increase of 2.42%. We can proceed from these data when estimating the maximum possible size of the Vainakh and, in particular, the Chechen component of the population of Checheno-Ingushetia. Compared to the last years of Soviet power, in the 1990s socio-economic conditions were unlikely to contribute to an increase in the birth rate and a decrease in mortality from natural causes. Note that these estimates are maximum; according to more cautious forecasts, the increase in the 1990s could be 15%, or at best 20%. Still, extrapolating census data for the period of the second Chechen war, we find that the number of Chechens could have exceeded a million in 2002.

The maximum size of the Chechen population of Chechnya and Ingushetia during the “second Chechen war” (* - extrapolation of the period 1979-1989)

Year	The size of the Chechen population
1989	734.5
1999	930.*
2000	955.*
2001	980.*
2002	1000.*
2003	1025.*

To understand how different these estimates, these predictions are from reality (even as reflected in official documents), it is enough to look at the current demographic statistics of the 1990s. These data also cast doubt on the correctness of the above statements by officials. The "Russian Statistical Yearbook" gives the following dynamics of the population of Chechnya and Ingushetia:

Current population of Chechnya and Ingushetia [4] (in thousands of people, as of January 1 of each year):

	Chechnya	Ingushetia
1989	1275
1990	1290
1991	1307
1992	1308
1993	1307
1994	1079	211
1995	974	280
1996	921	300
1997	813	309
1998	797	313

In addition, the Yearbook published information about the age and sex composition of the population of Chechnya.

Distribution of the permanent population of the Chechen Republic by gender and main age groups [5] as of January 1, 1998:

Total	792488
men	362297
women	430191
younger than working age	265768
working age	417962
over working age	108758

This gender and age structure of the population of Chechnya looks plausible. The shortage of the male population - 70 thousand people - is not explained by military losses (see below), but by the departure of men to other regions of Russia to earn money.

We also note that, according to the table, the number of voters in the Chechen Republic on the eve of the second war could not exceed 526,720 people.

* * *

The main factor changing the demography of Chechnya in recent years has been migration outside the republic.

The Russian media spoke most of all about the exodus of the “Russian-speaking” (more precisely, non-Vainakh) population - this is true, but by no means the whole truth.

The number of Eastern Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians) in Checheno-Ingushetia was rapidly declining back in the 70s and 80s - according to census data, from 379.6 thousand in 1970 to 306.4 thousand in 1989. Then, of course, this was not connected with the “criminal regime of Dudayev and Maskhadov.”

In addition, a similar outcome was observed in other national formations of the Caucasus [6] . This was explained by many factors. Firstly, relative overpopulation and land scarcity. Secondly, tense relations between national groups - even in the era of “friendship of peoples”. Thirdly, the greater unity of the peoples of the Caucasus compared to the Russians - even when it came to the Cossacks.

In Chechnya, these processes were much deeper and harsher than in the neighboring republics - the reason for this was both greater hidden unemployment [7] and the greater stability of traditional social institutions among the Vainakhs, where everyone was under the protection of the community - which made them an object of pressure, including criminal, representatives of non-Vainakh ethnic groups.

The weakening of power structures in general and law enforcement agencies in particular in 1991-1994 accelerated the outflow of Russian-speaking residents from Chechnya, but even during the first Chechen war, Grozny remained a half-Russian city. In 1996-1999, the practical collapse of statehood and even the merging of power in Chechnya with openly criminal structures, on the one hand, and, on the other, the central government’s ignorance of the human rights situation in the region led to the exodus of most of the non-Vainakh population from the republic.

Finally, the second Chechen war, which began in 1999, practically completed the ethnic cleansing of the republic - everyone fled from the fighting, almost exclusively Chechens returned. Even the Ingush from Grozny were not very keen to return and settled in Ingushetia.

Between the wars, Chechens also fled from Chechnya. During this period, up to one and a half thousand local residents, primarily Chechens, were kidnapped for ransom - as we see, traditional social institutions were already disintegrating. But what was the size of that wave of refugees? In the fall of 1999, Vladimir Putin, then the chairman of the Russian government, spoke about the diaspora: “We are ready for political cooperation with those citizens of Chechnya who have left the territory of the Chechen Republic in recent years, and let me remind you, there are 220 thousand Russians and 550 thousand Chechens" - from the context it is obvious that we were talking only about pre-war emigration.

If we can agree with the estimate of the number of Slavs who left, the origin of the last figure is inexplicable. Of the 978,426 forced migrants registered with the Federal Migration Service as of January 1, 1999, 10,995 were Chechens. In 1998, 2,026 Chechens were registered in this capacity. The total number of forced migrants from Chechnya was 147,232, a year earlier there were 13,007 [8] . The departure of Chechens from the territory of Chechnya to other regions of Russia was hindered in the second half of the 1990s by the fact that both the authorities and sometimes the local population viewed them as “foreigners,” and very hostile ones at that.

The assessments made public by Putin, when adopted by lower-ranking officials, put them in an awkward position. When in the fall of 1999 the number of refugees leaving the republic peaked at 350 thousand, Vladimir Kalamanov, at that time the head of the Federal Migration Service, said: “The whole of Chechnya has withdrawn, registered and is migrating!” And this was putting it mildly: if we take seriously the official estimate of the population of Chechnya at the beginning of the conflict at 300 thousand, federal troops at that moment overcame the resistance of several tens of thousands of blocked people... with a minus sign!

The only conclusion that saves us from this absurdity is that official statements and figures were determined by considerations of short-term political gain and were related to reality very indirectly. Real information about the population of the Chechen Republic, and therefore about the scale of the possible subsequent exodus of refugees from there, could complicate the planning of a military operation or even call it into question.

Apparently, no one in the power structures was embarrassed by the fact that in the end there were many - many times more - people under bombs in the zone of armed conflict, that the wave of refugees far exceeded all forecasts. Moreover, the statements of officials were not corrected; they still contradicted not only reality and common sense, but also each other. Not only reality, but also what stood behind the numbers - human lives - receded before political expediency.

Are there any real data, based not only on estimates and extrapolations, on the population of Chechnya at the beginning of the “second Chechen war”? In the sources there were references to the “Maskhadov census” - previously the author considered them apocryphal [9] , but in 2003 he changed his mind [10] .

The population census in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was carried out over several months, from August to October 1998.

The sample for the census forms was the standard form used during the 1989 All-Union Census; this form was changed only in detail.

During these three months, census takers carried out door-to-door surveys - perhaps not equally carefully everywhere, but they came to some respondents’ homes three times, and only on the third time they found them and questioned them.

There was no subsequent input of information from the sheets into the computer, much less any analysis of the information. Processing of census results was reduced to counting census forms. But even with the involvement of all employees of all departments of the Department of Demographic Statistics, this simple operation dragged on until February 1999. In total, there are about 800 thousand inhabitants in Chechnya. Note that similar values ​​were given in the Russian Statistical Yearbook.

* * *

If on the eve and at the very beginning of the second Chechen war information about the number of residents of the Chechen Republic received “political significance” - in statements by officials their number decreased from 800 to 300 thousand - then in the subsequent months and years the question of the number of forced migrants who left from the conflict zone. The information released by Vladimir Kalamanov - up to 350 thousand refugees - corresponded to reality, but was extremely inconvenient for the federal authorities.

From the very beginning of the armed conflict, officials not only disputed the figures, but primarily denied or replaced the reasons for such a mass exodus, the main of which was and remains the very nature of the way the “security forces” acted in Chechnya. This operation was called “counter-terrorist” - such a definition implies the highest selectivity of actions. The purpose of such an operation is, first of all, to save people, and then to capture or destroy terrorists. In fact, the main tools for the military component of the Chechen campaign were massive indiscriminate bombing and shelling, and for the “police” component - mass indiscriminate detentions. The operation was not “counterterrorism” from the very beginning: there was neither a file of terrorists to be detained, nor a list of targets for attack. “Spot strikes,” “humanitarian corridors,” and “safety zones” existed only in official propaganda.

In the fall of 1999, people fled from Chechnya from “targeted strikes” - that is, from massive indiscriminate bombing and shelling. But the roads declared “humanitarian corridors” would be more appropriately called “death corridors”: the number of people who died in populated areas and when leaving them was comparable. However, in general, this survival strategy paid off (see below).

Migration statistics were and remain incompatible with the official position on the imminent normalization of the situation in Chechnya. From the very beginning, the military and propagandists claimed that everything was fine there, and that people were being driven away by militants to create the “illusion of a humanitarian catastrophe.” The ideal here is: there are no refugees (or rather, there is no television picture of forced migrant camps) - which means there is no problem. This temptation was there from the very beginning: on September 25, 1999, General Shamanov, by telephone message, prohibited the internal affairs departments from allowing migrants from the Chechen Republic through the administrative borders. All subjects of the federation complied with this - except for Ingushetia, headed by President Ruslan Aushev [11] . Thus, most of the forced migrants from Chechnya ended up in Ingushetia, at some point the current population of the republic almost doubled compared to the permanent one. Within six months, the number of forced migrants from this last wave dropped here to approximately 150 thousand people. It remained at this level until the second half of 2002, when active attempts at their “voluntary-forced” return to Chechnya began. But even a year and a half later, half of them remain in Ingushetia. At the end of 2003, Russian officials spoke of 4,200 or 4,500 forced migrants in tent camps (small towns). The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates the population of the camps at 7 thousand people, in addition to which another 24 thousand live in temporary settlements in adapted premises and 36 thousand in the private sector, for a total of 67 thousand internally displaced persons.

From the very beginning of the armed conflict, the federal authorities disputed these figures. The information of international humanitarian organizations [12] was constantly questioned by Russian official representatives, but after the internal affairs agencies took into account the forced migrants in the summer of 2002, these doubts disappeared. The joint work of government agencies and humanitarian organizations in Ingushetia, mutual transparency, mutual control and cross-checking of information have done their job.

The reduction in the number of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia was not only due to returning to Chechnya - those who could, traveled to other regions of the Russian Federation or even beyond its borders.

Officials cited various reasons why all attempts to return migrants to their places of permanent residence have failed. The main reason is the lack of security on the territory of Chechnya.

In December 1999, the return of refugees (sometimes forced) to the territory of Chechnya, to the so-called “security zones,” began. This led to new casualties: in Shali on January 9, in the villages of Zakan-Yurt, Shaami-Yurt and Katyr-Yurt in early February 2000, hundreds of civilians who returned there were killed by bombing and shelling. Of course, these “security zones” were not agreed upon with the opposing side, and the federal forces themselves did not limit their actions to these zones: both of them acted as if in the desert, not burdening themselves with concern for the lives of local residents. After the end of active hostilities in the spring of 2000, “cleansing operations” began in populated areas. Without achieving the main goal - to identify participants in armed resistance, the "cleansing operations" took the form of mass indiscriminate violence. Robberies, torture and beatings, “disappearances” and murders of people gave rise to hatred in the residents of Chechnya towards the Russian security forces and the state as a whole, multiplied the ranks of resistance and did not at all give rise to a desire in the refugees to return home. At the end of 2002, the number of “cleansing operations” decreased, but people still disappeared during “targeted events,” night visits by “unknown armed persons in camouflage uniforms and masks who arrived in armored vehicles.”

Under these conditions, calls for the “voluntary return” of forced migrants from Ingushetia are hypocritical and criminal - but they have continued since the end of 1999 - why? The movement of forced migrants to Chechnya, even formally, means a switching of humanitarian aid flows, financial flows, and “real” money there with the prospect of their uncontrolled spending [13] . So there was a “social order” for the rapid return of migrants from Ingushetia to Chechnya not only from the federal center, not only from the military, but also from the administration of Akhmad Kadyrov.

For almost three years - from the autumn of 1999 to the autumn of 2002 - the number of forced migrants from Chechnya who were in Ingushetia was disputed by representatives of the federal and Chechen authorities loyal to Moscow. Unable to create conditions for the return of refugees or even to return them by force, the authorities tried to deny their existence.

* * *

In the first months of the second Chechen war, up to 350 thousand out of approximately 800 thousand inhabitants fled beyond the administrative borders of the Chechen Republic. What about the rest?

Most of them became involved in the process of internal migration: first - from the northern and eastern regions, then - from Grozny and from the mountains. Everyone who could tried to leave the battle zones. Numerous families left one or two people to guard their property from looters [14] . At the same time, internal migration, as a rule, was local, to adjacent villages or areas: people hoped to quickly return to their homes, but otherwise they left the republic.

After the end of hostilities, the structure of settlement in Chechnya as a whole changed little compared to the pre-war period. Two significant anomalies can be distinguished: a significant, significant reduction in the population of Grozny and the accelerated depopulation of mountainous areas. According to the Federal Migration Service, in 2001, up to a third of the republic's population - 200 thousand people - remained internal migrants.

The war made Chechnya de facto ethnically homogeneous. The Nevainakh population abandoned it almost completely. But the Ingush - those who were unable to return to the Prigorodny district in 1957 and settled in Grozny, and those who fled to Grozny in 1992 - mostly left [15] .

* * *

How many people died in the two Chechen wars?

One of the main historical sources on the period of the reign of Ivan the Terrible - the "oprichnina synodik" - was compiled when the sovereign was once again about to die. To atone for sins, to remember those killed, it was necessary to compile a list of them. The crowned murderer, however, was so zealous that the compilers of the synodik had to end the list with the words: “The rest, Lord, you yourself weigh...”

The Russian state is in the same situation today, since it has made no real attempts to account for civilian losses either during the 1994-1996 war or after 1999. There are no lists of names of the dead - even incomplete ones - and intelligible polemics with any named figures - up to hundreds of thousands - turn out to be impossible for the Russian authorities.

Thus, on September 17, 2002, Salambek Maigov told reporters that eighty thousand civilians of the republic died in the “second Chechen war” [16] - for some reason, with reference to Human Rights Watch and the Memorial Human Rights Center, although neither nothing like this has ever been reported. The next day, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the observance of human and civil rights and freedoms in the Chechen Republic, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, reacted [17] - he, in turn, noted that this estimate is overestimated, and in general, “all the figures that are stated for “At the moment, human rights organizations represent subjective, evaluative data that have nothing to do with the real situation.”

What does this have to do with reality?

During the first Chechen war, only one attempt was made to estimate the number of Grozny residents who died there during the fighting from December 1994 to March 1995. Members of the Observation Mission of Human Rights Public Organizations operating on the basis of the Human Rights Center "Memorial" (better known as the "Sergei Kovalev group") interviewed over a thousand refugees from Grozny about cases of death of relatives (direct and cousins) and acquaintances during the fighting that were reliably known to them. When processing the data, the family structure was taken into account - the average total number of relatives of varying degrees of kinship, and the breadth of the circle of acquaintances, an adjustment was made for double counting, etc. In general, the methodology used by Kurchatov Institute employee Eduard Gelman in 1995 is typical for estimating the number of deaths in local conflicts. Based on the information collected, it was concluded that 25-29 thousand civilians died in Grozny.

Even during that war, in January 1996, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Vladimir Rubanov said in an interview with Interfax that there are no official figures, there are only data from human rights activists: 25-30 thousand civilians died. In the spring of 1997, during the preparation of the Russian-Chechen treaty, when the question of the possible amount of compensation to Chechnya for the damage caused and for human losses was discussed, the head of the Department of Demographic Statistics of the State Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation, Boris Brui, contacted Memorial with a question about the number of dead citizens. Previously, he was addressed, as a last resort, to the International Committee of the Red Cross, from where he was sent to us. As a result, based on the same data, Goskomstat concluded that 30-40 thousand died; Memorial, realizing the possible inaccuracy of such estimates, used the wording “less than 50 thousand.”

Likewise, the only definite estimate of the number of civilian deaths during the period of active hostilities of the second Chechen war was made by human rights activists from Human Rights Watch using a similar methodology. After collecting and analyzing detailed information on 1,300 deaths in the first nine months of the conflict, they concluded that their sample covered between 1/8 and 1/5 of the total casualties. Thus, in total, from 6.5 to 10.4 thousand civilians died in those months [18] .

An estimate of the number of residents of the Chechen Republic who died in the subsequent years of the armed conflict is possible on the basis of the “Chronicle of Violence”, which Memorial has been keeping since July 2000. The number of people whose deaths are reported in the Chronicle varies in different periods - from 489 for the second half of 2000 to 559 for the whole of 2002, not counting militants and Chechen police officers. The results of this monitoring are obviously incomplete. We record perhaps a quarter of such cases, in any case, no more than half - as a comparison with the official statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic for 2002 shows. Extrapolation of the Chronicle data allows us to conclude that after the end of active hostilities, from 5.3 to 10.7 thousand civilians died.

In addition, during the “second Chechen war”, about three thousand people disappeared after being detained by federal security forces. The bodies of some of the disappeared were later found and identified, but the vast majority of the rest are also unlikely to be alive.

Thus, the total number of civilians killed during the entire second Chechen war, including those who “disappeared,” ranges from 14.8 to 24.1 thousand, taking into account the accuracy of estimates – “from 15 to 24 thousand.” A conservative estimate, excluding those listed as missing, is “from 10 to 20 thousand.”

Where did other - significantly higher - estimates of the death toll come from?

Even in the first Chechen war they talked about 80, 100, 120 thousand killed. These figures are the product of political games, and they are connected with reality very indirectly.

In the winter of 1996, shortly after the above-mentioned confession of Rubanov, several politicians - from Lebed to Novodvorskaya - said: since the state talks about 25-30 thousand dead, it means that in fact there are three times more of them - 80-100 thousand.

Another assessment involves misinterpretation. Lechi Saligov, who worked in the pro-Russian Chechen administration during the first war, claimed that more than 120 thousand people died in the Grozny region alone in 1995 - a door-to-door survey carried out at that time revealed such a difference with the pre-war figures. Saligov interpreted this difference as the number of deaths, although a more natural explanation is migration.

While politicians' statements tended to exaggerate the deaths of civilians, the military and official propaganda underestimated them or completely denied them. Thus, in August 2001, General Valery Manilov stated that no more than a thousand civilians were killed in the second war. A year later, in August 2002, the prosecutor of the Chechen Republic Kostyuchenko spoke about the same thousand dead. Even then, this assessment was easily refuted not even by estimates and extrapolations, but by taking into account directly recorded cases of death.

At the same time, the military and propagandists regularly announced success in destroying militants, whose growing number now amounts to many tens of thousands. These figures, apparently, were not taken out of thin air, but were obtained as a result of the work of the bureaucratic machine, but have no relation to reality.

Estimates of the number of civilian deaths released by representatives of security forces are also political and have very little connection with reality. However, the numbers of “killed militants” called by the military, which are inflated by at least an order of magnitude, correlate with the losses of the civilian population.

Thus, the total number of civilians killed in the two wars in the Chechen Republic could reach 70 thousand people. Although the accuracy of our estimates is low, there is no alternative to them - the state did not and still does not count the citizens who died during the “counterterrorist operation” or “establishing constitutional order.”

* * *

How many people lived in the Chechen Republic during the second war?

At different times, completely different estimates could be obtained on this question - and in the same place.

In August 2002, in Grozny, at the Government House, the OSCE Assistance Group was informed that about 600 thousand people live in the Chechen Republic. This figure was very similar to the truth - of the approximately 800 thousand people of the pre-war population, about 150 thousand [19] were forced migrants in the neighboring republics, and a smaller but significant part was scattered throughout the rest of Russia and beyond its borders.

However, a month later, in September 2002, during Lord Judd’s trip to Chechnya, in the same Government House he was informed about the supposedly successful return of refugees there, as a result of which the population of the republic had allegedly reached 900 thousand people. This figure obviously exceeded not only the real, but also the theoretically possible values ​​- but, apparently, it was supposed to indicate the return to their homes of all forced migrants who fled from the “second Chechen war” that began three years ago. And since people have returned, it means that the situation in the republic is stable and safe - otherwise people will not go!

This is precisely what the federal authorities soon tried to demonstrate again by conducting a census in Chechnya.

On October 14, 2002, the head of the government of the Chechen Republic Stanislav Ilyasov announced that a population census had been successfully conducted in Chechnya and the population of the republic was one million eighty-eight thousand people. According to Ilyasov, the result exceeded all expectations - the census forms, of which 825 thousand were brought to the republic, quickly ran out, more had to be brought. That is, taking into account the inevitable damage to ballots, the authorities expected to receive a final population of no more than 800 thousand. For this, indeed, it would be enough to return all the migrants of the last three years to Chechnya. But in order to get a census result of 1088 thousand people, it would be necessary to return to the Chechen Republic ALL who fled from there in the 90s - not only Chechens and Ingush, but also Russians, Armenians and representatives of other non-Vainakh peoples. Or it would be necessary to recognize significant population growth, despite two wars and a collapse in the socio-economic sphere [20] .

A normal person is unlikely to believe in such a “demographic miracle”.

* * *

However, there is a plausible explanation for this miracle. During the census in the Chechen Republic, there were at least three significant factors that could significantly distort its results.

Firstly, up to a third of the republic’s population were internal migrants. Although it had previously been repeatedly announced that census documents were anonymous and would not be used for any other purposes, few people in Chechnya believed this. It was difficult to dissuade people that, based on the census results, local administrations would not exclude “unregistered” people from humanitarian aid and from promised future compensation for destroyed housing. In the same way, it was impossible to guarantee that security forces and intelligence services would not check those detained during “cleansing operations” with the lists they received, separating “civilians” from “alien militants.” Thus, if a person lived in a village, but often visited the city, restoring his destroyed house, he had every reason to “correspond” both in the city and in the village - not so much out of an illusory expectation of benefit, but out of a very real fear for his own life. safety.

Secondly, it was repeatedly stated at different levels that the census will help determine “how many schools and hospitals to build”, and in relation to the Chechen Republic - both the amount of funding necessary to restore the socio-economic sphere and the amount of transfers for the payment of various benefits, etc. Given the virtual absence of control and the impossibility of double-checking, the temptation for administrations at all levels here was too great, and it was a sin not to apply the experience gained during the “elections” of 1995, 1996, 2000 in using “administrative resources”.

Thirdly, the main thing is that representatives of various federal structures have repeatedly stated that the situation in Chechnya is stable and safe, forced migrants have returned there or are about to return, and the upcoming census cannot but confirm this.

Thus, during the census, local authorities could hope for the favor of the federal authorities, and the residents of Chechnya could hope for the “inattention” of local administrations to the excess of relatives copied from their words - in any case, this version is more plausible than the announced census results.

The united will of the federal authorities, local authorities and ordinary residents of the Chechen Republic created a “demographic miracle”. And they once again confirmed the internationally accepted practice of a moratorium on holding censuses and elections in zones of armed conflicts and in states of emergency.

How many people actually lived in Chechnya at that time? In the winter of 2002, the Danish Refugee Council conducted a door-to-door survey in Chechnya to determine the need for humanitarian assistance; they counted about 600 thousand residents. This is precisely the number that officials gave in August to OSCE representatives, on whose opinion nothing depended - unlike Lord Judd, based on the results of whose report PACE was supposed to adopt another resolution. The exposure of black magic came already in November 2002, a month after the census, when the Danish Refugee Council conducted another door-to-door survey in Chechnya, as a result of which the population of Chechnya was estimated at about 700,000 people. Let us note that the heads of rural administrations interested in the supply of humanitarian aid could only contribute to an overestimation of this result.

The difference between this real value and the census results - under 400 thousand “dead souls” - became the “electoral reserve” for the referendum and elections of 2003 [21] .

* * *

How many people actually voted - or could vote - in elections in the Chechen Republic in the last decade?

During the “elections” held by the federal authorities in Chechnya on December 14-17, 1995, when they voted for State Duma deputies and the “Head of the Chechen Republic” Doku Zavgaev, on June 14-16 and July 2-3, 1996, when they voted for the President of Russia and "Deputies of the People's Assembly", a high turnout was noted - from 60% to 74% of the total number of voters - 503 thousand. This is official data, the OSCE mission then stated that the elections did not meet the principles of free and fair expression of the will of citizens, or mission employees left Chechnya on voting days. According to independent observers, in most settlements people simply did not go to polling stations. But the Central Election Commission recognized the elections as valid, although, we repeat, in the conditions of an armed conflict and a de facto current state of emergency, it is categorically impossible to hold elections.

On January 27, 1997, elections of the President and Parliament of Ichkeria were held. The number of voters - 447 thousand - was clarified during a door-to-door survey. A. Maskhadov won with 65% of the votes. The observation was carried out by 72 OSCE representatives. But when the second round of parliamentary elections took place on February 15, 1997, voter turnout was slightly more than 25%. Let us note that in this case in Chechnya they did not go for registration, although, obviously, the lack of a quorum in the future was a serious problem.

In September 1999, the “second Chechen war” began, and in December of the same year, elections for a State Duma deputy were not held in Chechnya. It was probably the cleanest election in a decade...

On March 26, 2000, elections for the President of Russia took place. On February 22, a month before the vote, Sergei Danilenko, a member of the Central Election Commission in charge of the Chechen sector, in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, said that the number of residents on the territory of the Chechen Republic is about 400 thousand people, of which 200-250 thousand are voters. However, a month later, the chairman of the Chechen election commission, Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov, named a different number - 460 thousand voters, despite the fact that elections will be held only in 12 districts of Chechnya at 336 polling stations. On March 26, the election commission reported that more than 70% of voters voted in Chechnya, and 97% (!) in Grozny.

On August 20, 2000, when elections for a State Duma deputy in the 31st electoral district were held in Chechnya, the Central Election Commission announced the total number of voters - 495 thousand. If the previous proportions between the size of the electorate and the population were maintained, the latter could amount to 885 thousand - that is, it should have grown during the war.

At the next vote, the reserve of “dead souls” created during the census was already used. On March 23, 2003, a referendum took place, in which, according to the Central Election Commission, 89% of the 540 thousand voters, the number of which was determined according to the census, took part. 95.37% voted in favor.

Next came the presidential elections, on the eve of which the author had the opportunity to check his calculations “on a regional scale.” On September 5, 2003, the administration of the Shalinsky district named three values: 104 thousand - the population of the region; 43 thousand - the number of voters according to the lists; 33 thousand are under the age of majority and receive child benefits. Subtracting the second and third from the first, we get 28 thousand people who are neither adults nor minors. To a perplexed question, the author received an answer: these are those who were once registered, and the census was carried out according to documents or from the words of relatives. That is, in this one particular area, the authorities have recognized the existence of 27 percent of “dead souls.”

* * *

Although in the upcoming elections the candidate of the federal center was guaranteed victory without manipulating these numbers, those who played with the numbers all these years became hostages of the game. In 1997, they could honestly admit to a 25 percent turnout, but now to refuse “540 thousand voters” and the exorbitant attendance at polling stations meant accepting the burden of truth and responsibility.

PS But reality exceeded our wildest expectations. According to the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Veshnyakov, in the December voting for the State Duma elections in Chechnya, 11 percent more people voted than there were voters in the republic.

As for the census results, even the State Statistics Committee does not use them - according to its data, 813 thousand people lived in Chechnya in 2003.

Notes

[1] For a more detailed analysis, see: Vladimir Grivenko. About the population of Chechnya in July 1999 (at the beginning of the new Caucasian conflict) on the Memorial website .

[2] The border between the republics has not yet been demarcated or delimited. Extrapolation of data published by Goskomstat in subsequent years gives the permanent population of the regions of Chechnya in 1989 at approximately 1,084 thousand, and in the regions of Ingushetia - 186 thousand people. But Goskomstat included not only the Nazran, Malgobek and Dzheirakh districts in Ingushetia, but also the entire Sunzhensky district. In fact, a significant part of the latter - in particular, two large settlements, Sernovodsk and Assinovskaya, 8 and 6.9 thousand inhabitants in 1989, respectively - belonged to Chechnya.

[3] In addition to the Vainakhs, in 1989, several tens of thousands of representatives of other Muslim peoples lived in Chechnya: 23 thousand Kumyks, Nogais and Avars, the vast majority of them were rural residents, and 5.1 thousand Tatars, mostly city dwellers.

[4] Estimates of the population of Ingushetia are a separate problem. Perhaps no other region of Russia has experienced such migration in recent years. During the Ossetian-Ingush conflict of 1992, tens of thousands of Ingush were expelled from the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia - Ingush authorities say about 70 thousand, Ossetian authorities say about 17 thousand. In 1994-1996, during the “first Chechen war,” the number of forced migrants from Chechnya in Ingushetia amounted to up to 150 thousand - there is no exact data, since from April 1995 to August 1996, no registration of refugees was kept (for more details, see below ). Many Ingush families who were unable to return to the Prigorodny district in 1957 and settled in Grozny then remained in Ingushetia for permanent residence. As for forced migrants, as of January 1, 1999, according to the Federal Migration Service in Ingushetia, 34,983 people were registered.

Further, in 1989, 41 thousand Ingush lived in the USSR outside Checheno-Ingushetia and North Ossetia, some of them returned to their homeland. On the other hand, in the 1990s, migration from the republic, which remained one of the poorest regions of the federation, to other regions was very significant. However, in this entire table, it is the second column that raises the least doubt.

[5] Such accuracy in itself is unrealistic - it would be nice if these figures corresponded to reality with an accuracy of 10 thousand.

[6] In the 1990s, this process accelerated both in the autonomous republics, which became simply republics, and in the autonomous okrugs, which increased their status and became republics; “Russian-speaking” personnel were replaced by “national” ones in leadership and simply paid positions. At the same time, nowhere except Chechnya did national movements even think about secession from Russia - it was about the struggle of elites for control over resources, but with an indispensable appeal to the federal center as an arbiter.

[7] After the Chechens returned from exile in 1957, it turned out that industrial jobs were filled. Returning to half the territory was impossible - restoring mountain villages that had been uninhabited for thirteen years was difficult, and the authorities did not want resistance to resume in the mountains. Two regions north of the Terek were annexed to Chechnya - Naursky and Shelkovskaya - the mountaineers were settled there first, but this only partly solved the problem. High hidden unemployment was partly compensated by subsistence farming and latrine farming, sabbatical work, work in the “north” and labor emigration. In the 70-80s, not only Slavs, but also Vainakhs left Checheno-Ingushetia - the net emigration of the latter in 1979-89, according to census data, reached 50 thousand. Over these years, the number of Chechens permanently living in the Stavropol Territory increased by 3.4 times, in the Astrakhan Region - by 5.5 times, in the Rostov Region - by 6.8 times, in the Volgograd Region - by 13.7 times, Tyumen region - 33.7 times. In total, in these five regions the number of permanently residing Chechens increased sixfold - from 9.3 to 55.8 thousand. But the opportunity to “get wild” decreased sharply in the mid-1980s as a result of the economic collapse in the USSR and, as a consequence, a reduction in allocations for rural construction.

[8] At the same time, there was no mass exodus, only the fixation of this reality changed: human rights activists simply managed to get the department to register these migrants who had previously left.

[9] Russian propagandists claimed that Maskhadov specifically classified the census data because it showed a catastrophic decline in the population of Chechnya - a copy of the story of the Soviet census of 1937, which was considered “sabotage.” However, even the very possibility of holding such a complex event in the context of the collapse of statehood raised doubts. The author even allowed the “Maskhadov Census” in Ichkeria to be called the “Library of Ivan the Terrible” - there was no such thing, as it turned out, he was wrong.

[10] Interviewing both people involved in the census and many residents of the Chechen Republic to determine whether census takers contacted them.

[11] He got problems with refugees for the whole of Russia, and if Aushev had acted as prescribed, he would not have had problems with either refugees or generals. But then the number of civilians killed in Chechnya would be many times, if not an order of magnitude, greater. Not participating in war crimes is a worthy choice for a general and for a president.

[12] The Danish Refugee Council, one of the leading humanitarian organizations working in Ingushetia and Chechnya, regularly conducts door-to-door visits to compile lists for humanitarian assistance. However, their data for Ingushetia, where reconciliation is carried out for each family, is much more accurate than for Chechnya - there they have to use information provided by the graves of rural administrations.

[13] In Ingushetia, dozens of heads of local administrations were removed from their positions over the course of two years for abuses with “refugee” money - nothing like this was heard of in Chechnya, since there was effective control in Ingushetia. For comparison: at the beginning of the war in Ingushetia, according to the estimate, 700 rubles were spent on equipping one refugee in a camp (tent, flooring, bed, stove, communications), in Chechnya - 3,700 rubles.

[14] Thus, during the storming of the city by federal troops in December 1999 - January 2000, no more than 40 thousand people remained in Grozny.

[15] About 60 thousand were in Ingushetia and intended to stay there; it was planned to allocate land to them in the Sunzha region.

[16] NTVRU message dated September 17, 2002 11:42:20.

[17] NTVRU message dated September 18, 2002 08:15:00.

[18] Although the second Chechen war was much more brutal than the first, the number of deaths in the first months was 3-4 times less. There is no contradiction here: fear is sometimes saving. Back in 1996, residents of Chechnya took off when faced with the threat of death. In the fall of 1999, people fled Chechnya from massive indiscriminate bombing and shelling, and this was also dangerous. The roads declared “humanitarian corridors” would be more appropriately called “death corridors”: the number of deaths in populated areas and when leaving them was comparable. However, on the whole, this survival strategy paid off.

[19] In Intushetia - 137 thousand, and 10 thousand in Dagestan.

[20] According to preliminary census results, there were 468 thousand people in Ingushetia, thousands of whom were temporarily displaced persons from Chechnya living in temporary accommodation centers. Other migrants - those who did not live in camps, or who fled from the Prigorodny district in 1992 - were not included in a separate category. Let us note that in this way the permanent population of the republic - and, apparently, the future budgetary funding of this subsidized region - was “increased” by one and a half times. Let us also note that the migrants allegedly resettled in Chechnya were actually registered in Ingushetia. There were 256 thousand women and 212 thousand men living in the republic; the asymmetry was caused by high unemployment and the departure of men to work.

[21] There was some ambiguity in the methodology of the 2002 census: only the permanent population was subject to registration, the actual population was not recorded. Thus, completely “legal” additions became possible. True, a criterion (qualification) for “permanency” was defined - living in a given place for a year. But, as we see, they were able to use this ambiguity to their advantage both in Chechnya and Ingushetia.