Chechen-Ingush - History and Cultural Relations

According to both archaeological and linguistic evidence, Northeast Caucasian speakers have inhabited the northeastern Caucasus since about 6000 B.C. The Nakh languages exhibit a few words of early Indo-European provenance, testifying to relations with the Bronze Age steppe populations. There is surprisingly little lexical evidence of interaction with the Iron Age Iranian-speaking steppe tribes. The Nakh languages have numerous loanwords from adjacent Ossetic (Iranian) and Kumyk (Turkic). Native vocabulary suggests ancient connections with the high mountain languages of southern Daghestan, later (but still early) interaction with the Lak of the northeastern lowlands, and relatively recent interaction with the adjacent Avar. Present Chechen-Ingush territory largely coincides with the entry route along which steppe peoples and cultures penetrated the mountains and from which mountain culture periodically spread to the steppe. Inferable prehistory, with its fluctuation between mountain and steppe influences, is consistent with this picture. After the weakening of the Golden Horde in the sixteenth century, a substantial descent to the lowlands began, including the abandonment of some high mountain villages, a process that must have been periodically repeated throughout prehistory and continues to the present day. History can be traced to the seventeenth century and the first recorded interaction with Cossacks, and it begins in earnest with the Russian invasion of the Caucasus, of which there are extensive Russian records—literary, historical, military, and ethnographic. With the introduction of literacy after the Revolution, an intelligentsia, a written literature, and a remarkably strong scholarly tradition of descriptive philology were quick to form, but these developments were gutted in the purges of the 1930s. Ingushetia and Chechnia were separate autonomous regions (autonomous oblasts) until 1934, when they were joined and eventually made an autonomous republic (ASSR). During World War II the front extended to Chechen-Ingush territory. From 1944 to 1956 the Chechens and Ingush were exiled to Central Asia (with considerable loss of life), ostensibly for having collaborated with the Nazis but in all likelihood to clear Muslims and possible sympathizers with Turkey from major routes of military movement in the event of an invasion of Turkey. During this period their republic did not exist and the languages were removed from the status of literary languages. Upon "rehabilitation" most survivors returned to the Caucasus; many settled in cities instead of their ancestral villages, and most high mountain villages were not resettled. In 1991 the Chechens declared their independence and their secession from the then-USSR; the Ingush supported their right to self-rule, and demanded for themselves the status of a republic in Russia with the return of territory (on the right bank of the upper Terek, including suburban Vladikavkaz) that had been removed to North Ossetia during the exile.

The Chechens and Ingush had close and generally peaceable relations with their neighbors to the west (Ossetes and, in the lowlands, Kabardians), south (Georgians), and east (Avars, speakers of Andi-Didoic languages; in the lowlands, Kumyks). Available sources depict warfare as occasioned only by attacks by steppe tribes; in high mountain areas, land shortages and population pressure led to tension between clans and between Chechen-Ingush and other ethnicities. In recent decades there has been some local tension between Ingush and Ossetes, the result of dual claims to territory that was Ingush until the deportation and has been Ossetic since. Major literary influence has come from Ossetic (epic verse), Kumyk or other Turkic languages (lyric songs), and, presumably via Georgian, Persian (lyric songs). The culture is solidly North Caucasian overall. Most Chechen-Ingush speakers today live in the Chechen and Ingush Republic; outside of it are Vladikavkaz (Soviet Orjonikidze) in North Ossetia, the Kisti villages in eastern Georgia, and outlying villages in northwestern Daghestan.