Chechnya for Russians

The government of the Russian Federation is considering a plan to resettle Russians in the Caucasus. The plan was developed by Viktor Basargin, now former minister of regional development. The estimated cost of the project is one billion rubles per year. While the government is weighing the pros and cons, the first project for resettling Russians in the republic has already been developed in Chechnya. A PublicPost correspondent went to Chechnya to see how Russians were welcomed there.

The photographer and I were greeted solemnly - the author of the project, director of the department for national policy of the Ministry of National Policy, Press and Information, Vadud Gerikhanov, himself came to meet us at the airport. The local authorities, apparently, are so keen to present the republic in the right light that they send high-ranking officials, rather than petty clerks, to handle the press. He has put together a three-day program for us and is going to personally show us the best of it. He insists that we address him by his first name. He looks over 60, I feel uncomfortable, but a name in Chechnya is more than a name, and I obey.

Vadud Gerikhanov, author of the program for the resettlement of Russians in Chechnya. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

We get into a silver Toyota, matching the color of Wadud's silver suit, and go to lunch with his boss, Minister Adnan Nagaev. The minister meets us in a black jacket and a velvet fez - Ramzan Kadyrov asks officials to observe customs and wear traditional clothes on Fridays. The minister smiles terribly. He very convincingly says that “our strength is in unity” and that Russians and Chechens should be friends like “Putin and Kadyrov.” He would have completely convinced me if he had not called Chechnya a country. The minister's advisers casually ask whether I am going to write good or bad about Chechnya. I say: the more I see, the better I will write. We are immediately granted an amnesty - the minister says that there is no need to patronize us, let the guests go everywhere themselves.

After the minister's welcoming speech, Wadud sets out his program. In three years, he intends to resettle one and a half thousand “Russians”—strictly speaking, Russian-speaking citizens of Russia from other regions—to the republic. First of all, representatives of “useful professions”: doctors and teachers. Doctors are needed because there are no medical universities left in Grozny, and teachers are needed so that schoolchildren speak Russian correctly. Wadud thought through everything down to the smallest detail, even the square footage of the apartments. According to his calculations, each family needs exactly 48 square meters: “A Russian family consists on average of three people, each with 16 meters.” He won't divulge details until the money arrives. So that, as he says, “not to scare away.”

After lunch, the photographer and I go to the city center in search of Russians: we want to ask if they advise Russians to come here. It was not possible to agree on meetings from Moscow: none of the refugees with whom I spoke had any contacts left in Chechnya.

First of all, we went to the Grozny City skyscraper complex. He is guarded by about twenty policemen. Khaki camouflage, body armor, machine guns on the chest, walkie-talkie in the pockets. One of the police officers asks me to take a photo with him. Having made sure that he turned out well in the frame, he introduces himself: Ruslan. He can’t say for sure how Russians live - he hasn’t seen them for a long time. But when he meets you, he rejoices. According to him, there is no residue left from the war years. Ruslan’s colleagues arrive and ask for a group photo.

Policeman Ruslan is on duty near Grozny City. He asked to take a photo of him. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

After a couple of shots, the photographer and I say goodbye and go to the Grozny City hotel. In the foyer the floors sparkle and the columns shine. The girl at the reception flashes a smile. He announces the price list in a beautiful voice. A room with a view of the mosque from six thousand. Without a view - five. With or without a view, there’s really no one to spend the night here. Most of the 330 rooms are available. The chic burgundy chairs with gilded legs in the foyer are empty.

View of "Grozny City" from the place where "Grozny City-2" will be built. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

There are no Russians in the entire territory of Grozny City. There's no one here at all. There are no curtains on the windows of multi-story residential buildings. No one goes in there, no one comes out. A huge glass and very stylish business center is empty.

Kadyrov Avenue departs from Grozny City. Along the road with perfect asphalt there are new houses with elegant facades and huge shop windows. All this was built on the site of ruins - after the war, not a single intact house remained in the city center. No more than ten people are walking along the avenue. Nobody forbids you to take a walk, there’s just nothing to do there - the shop windows are empty.

Kadyrov Avenue. Behind the billboard is an Orthodox church, restored in 2006. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Throughout the city there are posters with images of those who need to be thanked for a new life. There are a number of combinations. "Father and Son" (Akhmat and Ramzan Kadyrov). Or “Leader and leader” (Kadyrov Jr. and Vladimir Putin. Putin in all photographs is young, from the time of his first term and the second Chechen one). The combination "Kadyrov and Medvedev" is the rarest. Ramzan Kadyrov alone: ​​“Ramzan is a guarantor of stability and prosperity”, “The task of improvement was completed at 5++”, “Together with Ramzan in first place.”

Unobtrusive outdoor advertising. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Of course, there are no Russians at the central mosque either, but there are at least Chechens. The “Heart of Chechnya” (as it is popularly called) was built by the Turks in just two years in the likeness of all Istanbul mosques at once. On Fridays at two o'clock in the afternoon, Kadyrov comes here to pray, and with him hundreds of ordinary citizens of Chechnya. Anyone can pray with Kadyrov; it looks like the security is letting everyone in. Without Kadyrov, there are much fewer people praying - at five in the evening several dozen Muslims respond to the muezzin’s calls. Around the mosque there are alleys with pink-flowered acacias, fountains and benches are installed. It’s not clear for whom, except me, no one sits on them.

The central mosque of Grozny is popularly called the “Heart of Chechnya”. And the Grozny City skyscraper complex is Ramzan Kadyrov’s lifetime monument to himself. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Only policeman Yunadiy decided to sit down with me. He starts the conversation himself: his salary is 50 thousand rubles and he is happy with his life, he is not yet married, he is wary of Moscow young ladies. Several years ago he was in Moscow and met a girl. The conversation was going well until the girl asked where he was from. Hearing the answer, says Yunadiy, “she gave out a sad smiley face.” A slight resentment still lives in Yunadia: “The Russians think that we are still at war, that we are wild here. But this is absolutely not true. I even have an account in Odnoklassniki.”

Police guard the Heart of Chechnya mosque, where Ramzan Kadyrov came to pray. Admission is free, you just need to go through two metal detectors. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Yunadiy returns to guard the mosque, and I continue to look for the Russians. I reach V.V. Avenue. Putin. Here, unlike Kadyrov Avenue, it is lively. The Comedy Club is performing in the concert hall, and well-groomed women and men rush there. Women mostly wear headscarves, headscarves are mostly Louis Vuitton. Traditional Grozny Porsche Cayenne cars fly by. In the cafe - there is a choice of "Coffee House" and "Shokoladnitsa" - lovers of the beautiful life sit languidly. In Moscow these are chain eateries, but in Grozny local bigwigs with their families come here. The American TV series "Friends" is shown in the Central Park cafe. There are no Russians on Putin Avenue either, but there is decent coffee here - a rarity in Grozny.

Not far from Putin Avenue, an old man with a long white beard approaches me. He starts the conversation first, I'm already used to this. It was in vain that colleagues were afraid that locals shunned “outsiders.” The old man came up to talk not about Russians, he convinces me not to look at the beautiful avenues: “Money for the development of Chechnya does not go further than Grozny.” In the village of Achkhoy, 70 km from the capital, he has neither electricity nor water.

An old bus passes by, the people on it are like capers in a bottle. The bus goes to Berkat, the central market. I jump in - Russians are supposed to go grocery shopping.

Black caviar costs on the market from 20 to 38 thousand rubles per kg. There is demand. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

The range of services and goods on the Grozny market is wide. You can weigh yourself for 10 rubles, drink kvass for 5 rubles, buy black caviar for 33 thousand rubles/kg, buy a “beautiful mobile number” for 24 thousand rubles. There are manuals for healing witchcraft, powders for cirrhosis of the liver and mountains of counterfeit gold. They offer to solve nine skin problems in ten minutes. Radishes are sold in the trunks of Lada cars: there are a dozen cars on the market. Under the scorching sun, dried beef and horse meat lie on greasy cardboard. In the midst of a haggling and jostling crowd, a little girl with a toy pistol is intently aiming at a roach.

Radishes are sold from trunks. There are dozens of such machines on Berkat. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

"Are there any Russians here?" — I ask the saleswoman of hot Chechen dumplings. “We are all brothers, there is no difference,” she answers timidly and hastily turns the dumplings in the frying pan. The picture is similar with the radish seller. The roach trader turned out to be the bravest - she joked about Putin and giggled. I didn’t hear the joke and asked to repeat it. Her friends shushed her and squealed with smiles: “They love Putin very much here.”

The sellers say: “Putin is very popular here.” Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

We hitch a ride back to the center. The taxi driver treats Russians calmly, only saying that there is no work for Russians here. “You won’t find such educated taxi drivers as in Grozny anywhere else; they are driven by people with higher education - doctors, teachers. Because there is nowhere to work.” Our driver worked in the Red Cross in the 90s and helped distribute humanitarian aid. The war is over, the mission has left. He tried to get a job at the Ministry of Emergency Situations, but it didn’t work out. He says you can’t get into the civil service without connections or money. There are few jobs here - key factories did not survive two wars. For example, the Red Hammer machine-building plant, the former leader of Chechen industry , no longer exists . The economy of the republic today rests on the development of sand from the Terek, agriculture and small oil production. The main source of welfare in the republic is the federal budget.

In the evening, Wadud takes us to the restaurant - sparkling chandeliers and white tablecloths, live music blasting. There is no one in the hall, everyone is sitting in booths. Wadud says the booths are especially popular among unmarried couples.

He orders traditional Chechen food: dumplings and dried meat. The dumplings turn out to be ordinary pasta, only in the form of spirals. Dried meat requires intensive chewing. The whole set needs to be filled with garlic oil - the aftertaste is so-so. While we wait for hot food, Vadud briefly lists the rules of life in Chechnya.

Rule one: women wear only skirts. While still in Moscow, I asked my friends who had been to Chechnya how to dress properly. Every single one of them said that a scarf was needed, but no one said a word about a skirt. The headscarf turned out to be completely unnecessary, but I was the only girl in the whole city wearing pants. The trousers actually provoked obscene remarks from men. There was no sympathy from the women: “Are you looking for something to cover yourself with?” — the skirt saleswoman asked with contempt as I examined her product. Second. A woman should not sit at the same table with a man. Third. You need to pray five times a day. During prayer, you can be distracted if your mother calls, but you cannot be distracted by your father. And further. A son-in-law should not spend the night at his mother-in-law's house. Vadud proudly reports that a Chechen will never work as a waiter - apparently, an Azerbaijani serves us.

The last thing is that people don’t drink alcohol in Chechnya. Rare exceptions confirm the rule. For example, of all public catering establishments, alcohol is sold only on the 33rd floor of the Grozny City Hotel in the Panorama cafe. There, a bottle of Tuborg beer costs 250 rubles, and they sell it after seven in the evening. It is prohibited to sell alcohol in stores. There are two or three places where you can get it. Taxi drivers will tell you about them.

I found Russians only with the help of Vadud, he invited us to a Russian wedding in the village of Naurskaya, which is 90 km from Grozny. There is the largest concentration of Russians in the republic - 503 families per settlement.

I got up two hours before departure and wandered around the city. At the end of Putin Avenue there is a surprise - Journalists' Square, opened in 2007 in honor of "those who died for freedom of speech." At 8 am there is no one here. Next to the park is a monument to the friendship of peoples. Three heads of participants in the civil war, the one that happened after the 1917 revolution, stick out from the block: the Chechen Sheripov, the Ingush Akhriev and the Russian Gikalo. In another, the second Chechen war, they say, the Ingush’s head was torn off, but since then they have given him a new one. At the monument, a passerby speaks to me again: a middle-aged man. First he introduces himself: Supyan, a plumber. Then he asks what I'm doing here. I answer: a journalist from Moscow. He asks me to take a photograph of him and publish it in my newspaper: “Sign it like this: “at sunrise he was walking to work.”

At the Monument of Friendship of Peoples, plumber Supyan. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Vadud arrives minute by minute. On the way, he gives a brief historical excursion: the Russians left Chechnya in three stages. The first stage was in the 1970s, when oil production fell sharply. According to the All-Union population censuses of 1970 and 1979 , over nine years the number of Russians in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic decreased by 34 thousand - to 336 thousand people. The second stage is the beginning of the 90s. As a result of what Wadud calls “Dudaev’s reforms,” there are another 200 thousand fewer Russians in Chechnya. This figure was disseminated by the Federal Ministry of Nationalities Affairs on the eve of the first Chechen campaign. After the war (third stage), according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 29 thousand Russians remained in the republic. Now 1.27 million people live in Chechnya - of which, according to the 2002 census, 40 thousand are Russian.

On leaving Grozny, foreign cars are replaced by Lada cars. Billboards along the roads warn: "Mines are still a threat." The driver rushes at a speed of 140, maneuvering between cows and pits on the track. At the gas stations, Wadud and the driver go out to smoke.

“I’m not a real Russian,” Vladimir Kashlyunov, the head of the administration of the village of Naurskaya, immediately admits. The badge on his jacket with the image of Akhmat Kadyrov would have given him away anyway. There is still an hour before the wedding, and Kashlyunov leads us into his office. There is a combination “Father and Son” hanging in the office. Where is Putin? “For me, the leader is not Putin, but Kadyrov, because he worries more,” explains Russian official Kashlyunov. Life among the Chechens is familiar to him - his ancestors lived with the Chechens side by side for many centuries. Russians have lived in Naurskaya since the creation of the village in 1642. There is no national issue here, he says: several thousand people get along without any questions. The war did not disrupt this idyll, it simply did not reach here.

“In Russia” Kashlyunov feels like a stranger. “Here we will offer tea to anyone, but there they won’t even say hello to you at the entrance.” His children grew up without Russian fairy tales: “I don’t understand how you can raise children on stories about Ivan the Fool, who does nothing but lie on the stove.” He is very worried about the fate of Russia: “No one is shy there and everyone drinks a lot.”

Kashlyunov’s phone rings: the director of the Cossack center, whose son is getting married today, says that it’s time - the ransom will begin in 10 minutes. We pass through the city center: several shops, two cafes and an amusement park with four carousels. Residential buildings do not differ by nationality, but rather by wealth: some have three windows on the facade, some have two, some have a brick house, some have a wooden one. There are no rich houses or ruins here.

Russian wedding in the village of Naurskaya - awaiting the bride price. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

The ransom takes place in the courtyard of the house. The groom brought the smiling bride from Volgograd. Nobody brought brides further than from Volgograd. She got a job as an accountant, and in the village they love her for her smile. Chechen Kakha, who lives across the road, tells me about this. She has been friends with her neighbors for a long time and has no ill will towards the Russians: “Even when there was a war, I was not angry with my Russian neighbors. Well, here he is, right in front of my nose, I see that he is not to blame.”

The groom's witness salutes the newlyweds. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Kakha’s speech is interrupted by machine gun fire - the groom and his witness have arrived to ransom the bride. The groom's witness shoots into the air without stopping, according to Caucasian custom. Then he takes out a thick wad of five-thousand-dollar bills and scatters them around the yard. The guests, however, suggested that the money was not real. To register, guests go to the assembly hall of the cultural center of the village. A Cossack choir of nine women in bright dresses sings for the newlyweds. At the edges of the stage hang two portraits: father and son. After registration, everyone dances lezginka.

The condition of the roads dispels all doubts: Chechnya is Russia . Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

Two boys are playing on the street: the Russian one is wearing a cap with the inscription “Chechnya”, the Chechen is wearing a T-shirt with the inscription “Russia”. However, the migrants are not in danger of ending up in this friendly village, where the Russian is a brother to the Chechen. Wadud intends to settle them in Grozny.

In the village of Naurskaya, Russians and Chechens have been living together for many centuries. The war did not disrupt this idyll - it simply did not reach here. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

By Sunday morning, the Russians were found in the Orthodox church that stands behind Grozny City. Kadyrov ordered its construction even before the construction of the “Heart of Chechnya”. Wadud said that there are at least four thousand Russians in Grozny, a city of 270,000 people. The parishioners assure that the Russians in the city are only 1700, so the mayor said last year. In the early 90s, Russian-speaking residents of different nationalities amounted to half of the city’s population, in fact, Russian of them were about half.

On Sunday, 30 people and a three -legged cat come to the service. Grandmother in a scarf is in a hurry to tell how grateful to Ramzan: "I live in Grozny all my life. Only under Ramzan did it become good and quiet and calm." “Thanks to Ramzan, thanks for those thanks for this. Some kind of personality cult,” the woman mutters displeasedly on a bench in a church courtyer, overheard a grandmother in a scarf. This woman often hears on TV how Kadyrov is calling the Russians back to Grozny. Only, she says, it would be better to first improve the lives of those Russians who exist, and then invite new ones. "I have already written to Putin how many SMS to pay attention to our terrible living conditions. Grozny has become not at all for the Russians. And he is silent!" She sends SMSKi by telephone "Direct line with the Prime Minister."

Most of all she is tormented by the atmosphere at work. She is a teacher of the Russian language, and does not understand what her students are talking about: "Children at my school lessons refuse to speak Russian, on the pedagogical councils everyone also speaks only in Cherish. I do not understand what they are talking about, you are talking about, you Can you imagine this? " She raises the initiative of Vadud to laugh: "You need to be very far from the people to think that Russian teachers will come here."

Sergey Matveev, the head of the analytical department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Chechnya, does not complain about life - he came here from Stavropol to work in 2002. Due to the regime who (counter-terrorism operation), he receives significant allowances. Who, however, was canceled in 2009, but the allowances remained. There is a T -shirt with the Russian coat of arms on Sergey, and he says openly: "A Chechen will never become a Russian friend. Tea, hospitality, please, but there is no friend." Sergei says that when he only arrived, he asked the Chechen friend to tell him the driver who can be trusted. A friend replied that he would not take sin to the soul, could not even vouch for relatives. "For me, Grozny is only earnings. My ancestors are not buried here. Here I only solve material issues."

The conversation also includes 60-year-old love, a radical resident of Grozny. She asks not to name her last name, but she is Chechen. I got it from my husband. After the war, he says, she began to feel like a white crow, there were almost no Russians left, "even it is impossible to wear pants." She would have left here, only she has nowhere and nothing. During the war, the husband escaped with another Russian woman to Stavropol. “Only those who tortured nostalgia will be able to return here. There are no other reasons here,” love is sure.

The parishioners complain: before that there was not much Russians that even a bell rings to the church cannot be found. And they offer to name this article "When does the bell in Grozny ring?"

The parishioners of the Grozny Church complain that they cannot find a bell -up. So far, the son of one of the parishioners has to call, but he knows few melodies. Photo: Maxim Nikolaev

On the first day in Grozny, I met a man. I still did not know that he would seem to be the most sincere interlocutor for the whole trip. He came up himself. He himself said that all this remake in the center was not to his liking, that they would be built as they built, that beauty is not in the "Grozny-City", but in the mountains. Then he began to assure how everyone else did it, that he was not holding evil on the Russians. The main thing is that the mother does not cry anymore, and the fact that the Russians killed his other relatives, he forgave them for a long time.

At the end of the conversation, he calls me sister and hugs me cordially. I am pleased to meet such a sincere person. We say goodbye, and then he nurses me with a wide smile: "Sister, will I only tell you a secret?" I nod in anticipation. “You know - I’m standing now and smiles so widely to you, right? And I tell you all these words, right? Are you sister, huh?” - Here he is interrupted to smile evenly again. “But you can’t even imagine, you can’t imagine, What I really think about you. "