In the heart of Chechnya

The war, inhuman in its cruelty, knew stories of love and friendship that were amazing in their humanity.

Many things in life are like road signs. Here the “sign” will stop you, there it will turn to the side, force you to slow down or speed up... Something will remain in your memory, something will go away as if it never happened in life. Stories that are not forgotten happen less often, but they remain guidelines that help us not to go astray. The two stories I want to tell about, at first glance, are in no way connected with each other, but for me, a journalist, they are like two signs on the same road. Chechen road.

Song of the Motherland

In the summer of 1995, fate brought me to the village of Belaya Glina in the Krasnodar Territory, where my relative lived and worked at that time. Passions had not yet subsided after Basayev's raid on Budennovsk, some negotiations were going on with Maskhadov's side... And my soul was uneasy.

I haven’t been to Kuban for about 15 years. All my memories of this region were associated with the calm time of Brezhnev’s stagnation, when we knew no war, no worries, no human upheavals. Finding myself in a quiet, cozy village, I could not get used to the local realities: no shooting, no military equipment, no rallies...

One evening, my relative and I stopped by the local market. The people dispersed, but we stood aside, talking in our native Chechen language. Opposite, across the counter, a girl of about 18-19 years old stopped and looked at us searchingly. Our eyes met. And suddenly she shouted:

-Mom, ours have arrived!

She ran up to her mother, who was standing at a distance, and the next moment we were close. Then the girl’s father, a respectable man with an intelligent appearance, approached.

- Mom, these are ours! They came from there,” the girl said.

There was a sea of ​​emotions, and the girl did not hide it.

We started talking. And what I heard touched me to the depths of my soul. I still remember the last name of the girl’s mother: Kholod. During the Soviet years, she worked as a teacher at one of the Grozny institutes. Her husband held some leadership positions in Grozny. The daughter, as it turned out, graduated from school after moving from Chechnya and was a student at a Krasnodar university.

The woman spoke with amazing warmth about her family friends - Chechens, with whom they shared both joy and sorrow for many years. Memories of Grozny were difficult for her...

“I’m riding public transport, I close my eyes, and my thoughts are carried away to the beautiful green neighborhoods of pre-war Grozny, where the golden time of my youth passed,” she recalled, now and then wiping away the tears that had come, “The streets along which I walked to work every day are etched in my memory.” . How carefree and peacefully we lived! We had absolutely no friction or disunity along ethnic lines. Our families were more friends with the Chechens. They preferred food from Chechen cuisine. And our neighbors - an amazing, friendly Chechen family - always invited us to visit when they prepared chepalgash or zhizhig-galnash. I remember almost all of my students from different times... Where are they now, and how are they doing?... Probably, many were affected by this war...

We listened to her and could not find words of consolation. The daughter sobbed every now and then, nervously squeezing her mother’s trembling hands.

- And when Gorbachev came to power in Moscow, and especially under Yeltsin’s “shit democracy,” everything started spinning and spinning. Rallies began in the square. Grozny began to fill with strangers, mainly from the mountains. These were completely different people, cynical, without an elementary culture of behavior in society. One of these new residents of the capital turned out to be our next door neighbor. He began to threaten me, my husband, and my daughter. He offered to get away from harm, promised to buy an apartment for a symbolic price. Day by day it got worse and worse. Dudayev and Yandarbiev did nothing but stir up fears on TV...

-The day came when we decided to leave our native land. Our old friends, who themselves had plans to move to Moscow, quietly bought an apartment from us for a decent amount, rented a car and escorted us to the border. I still can’t forget our last evening. We sat at the table for a long time, there was an abundance of food... But we didn’t want to eat, we cried more and consoled each other. And the next day, on the border with Stavropol, we parted...

- How were you welcomed here, how is life with your new neighbors? – I asked.

– It’s calm here. But what kind of life is this if physically you are here, and spiritually there, in Grozny. Imagine the situation: in our house, day and night, Hussein Rasayev’s song “My City is Grozny” is playing from the tape recorder. Our daughter “played” this single cassette...

At these words, the eyes of the girl who was not participating in the conversation lit up. She interrupted her mother and said:

- Mom, I won’t live here... I’ll go there... Let whatever happen to me... Let me die there, just to cross the border of my native land...

She did not pay attention to the passers-by who stopped and looked at us in bewilderment. These people did not know what a great tragedy our fellow countrymen experienced, cut off from their historical homeland, but not losing it...

The market is empty. We broke up. My soul felt clean and light. And there was hope that the war would soon end, and we would meet our new friends in Grozny and live in this beautiful city to the hysterical voice of singer Khusein Rasayev:

“My city is Grozny,

I miss you..."

But the meeting in Grozny did not take place, because new great upheavals awaited us, which in four years would destroy Grozny to the ground...

Escape from Hell

And this story happened in the fall-winter of 1996.

It all started when one day Galina Pozhidaeva, a resident of Tikhvin, Leningrad Region, received a letter from her son Sasha, who served in the army in Dagestan. He wrote from captivity: he asked his mother to urgently find a large sum of money and send it to the militants. Otherwise, he will not get out of the “wolf hole.” The woman did not have that kind of money. She was given a salary from time to time...

And she went to the “Afghans” club. The guys, who had smelled the gunpowder of battles with dushmans, decided to help the soldier’s mother in finding the necessary funds. It soon became clear: there was no need to expect help from the authorities and the military registration and enlistment office... There was only one option left - to sell the apartment.

And she sold it. She sewed the money into her belt and set off on the road, to a region where she had never been even in peacetime. On the train to Gudermes, I met a young man who offered help to the suffering woman. He told Galina that he had lost two brothers in the war. But the guy did not harden his soul. He helped her get to Khasavyurt. In this Dagestan city, she hired a private taxi driver named Khanpasha to get to the military unit where her son served before his capture.

In the regiment, the soldier's mother was greeted as if she was to blame for the disappearance of her son. A short conversation with one of the officers ended with her being thrown out of the gate on a cold autumn evening. The woman cried a lot against the blank walls. She decided that she would never return here again, and would do everything so that her son would not return if he found him alive...

Sasha, meanwhile, was scouring the vineyards a few kilometers away from her... He was already on the territory of Chechnya, in the vicinity of the village of Gerzel. Before that, he was in the Dagestan border village of Nuradilovo, where he was taken immediately after his capture. Subjected to severe torture, he refused for a long time to write a letter to his mother. He knew that she was unable to collect the huge ransom amount. Then, when Sasha finally complied with the demands, his letter was supplemented with threats: they say, if the agreed amount is not received by the deadline, then there will be a bidding for “less” - for his son’s head...

A couple of weeks later, Sasha took a risk and managed to escape from captivity. He did not know the area, but just in case he crossed the Aksai River. Finding himself in the adjacent Chechen territory in damp autumn weather, he moved to the nearby village of Gerzel-aul. And then he was caught and taken to the headquarters of some local military structure...

Galina did not know about these ordeals of her son. She found Khanpasha. He took her, already desperate, to his home in Khasavyurt and joined the search himself. Soon, encouraging news appeared: in Gerzel-aul, a Russian guy who looked like Sasha was being held captive by militants. We got in touch through intermediaries and made sure: he is! Then they handed over the money, and Sasha was taken on a motorcycle to a mill near the village of Koshkeldy. The mother did not believe her happiness, and the son could not hold back his tears.

But neither that day nor the next day they were able to leave Ichkeria. Sasha was again caught by the militants, and this time he ended up in a hole in the residence of Salman Raduev in the village of Gordali-Yurt, who ordered: not to release the prisoner, but to exchange him for one of the militants...

Sasha was forced to work every day. But they were not forbidden to see their mother, who found shelter with a local resident, Zulpa. At that time, many families were begging, living from hand to mouth, and it was very expensive to support an unplanned “dependent”. But the hospitable hostess did not even show that she had financial problems.

Zulpa was not alone in her compassion for the Russian woman. Zulpa's sister Zura and friend Yakhita often came to the rescue. In addition, they knew Pasha well, Raduev’s chief of staff. This was a man far from young, emerging from the “Soviet overcoat.” He let the guy go to his mother for the night. He clearly took a risk, nevertheless, he took advantage of the fact that Raduev rarely visited the village.

Galina suffered from high blood pressure. In addition, threats began to be received against 3ulpa. There were many families in the village that lost several people during the fighting. The women, at their “council”, decided that it was better for Galina to change house. And she began to live with Zura Yesentukaeva. A mother of four children, with a disabled husband, Zura could barely make ends meet, however, she accepted Galina without doubts or reservations...

1996 was drawing to a close. There was only one way out of the situation - escape. And the women began to make plans. Extremely risky, but forced. Galya reassured herself that there were new friends nearby, ready to take reckless actions in the name of saving people who were now close to them...

There was a week left until the New Year. Bad news came from headquarters: at midnight Sasha will be handed over to someone. There was no longer any time to delay. Galina and Sasha dressed as Chechens, and together with Zulpa headed to the neighboring village of Noybera, to Zura’s sister. Suddenly, in the twilight, the figure of Pasha, the chief of the Radievsky headquarters, appeared. The fugitives ran into a nearby open courtyard in fear. Pasha recognized them, but took no action. He stood in the dark and... walked away.

A couple of hours later, overnight guests were received in one of the houses on the outskirts of the village of Noibera. In the morning Zura and Yakhita arrived. The whole group took the first bus to Gudermes. The railway station platform was well guarded. In addition, Sasha was clearly given away by his Slavic appearance... But it blew by...

The Chechen women escorted Galina and Sasha to the town of Prokhladny in Kabardino-Balkaria. There were tears, words of gratitude...

Then letters began to arrive in Chechnya. And there was an unexpected meeting in Moscow, in the NTV studio with Arina Sharapova, who invited all the participants in the escape...

But that's a completely different story.

I don’t know where the Kholod family lives today, or what the future fate of Galina Pozhidaeva and her son Alexander was. I hope they are doing well. And my fellow countrymen - the heroines of the second story - live on the same land as me, and I feel good just thinking about them...

Khozhbaudi Borkhadzhiev, journalist, " Caucasian Politics "