Chechen-Ingush - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Raising livestock, especially sheepherding, was the traditional economic mainstay in the highlands; grain agriculture was the mainstay in the lowlands. High mountain villages were not self-sufficient in grain because of the short alpine growing season and the scarcity of arable land, so they traded livestock and eggs for grain in lowland bazaars. Where this trading did not suffice, some horse thievery and other robbery (especially from Georgian nobility, to judge from folklore) rounded out the economy. There was, and is, a renowned bazaar in Nazran' in the Ingush lowlands and a lesser but still sizable one in Vladikavkaz. The lowlands were more than self-sufficient in grain, which was exported to the highlands. The staple grain since approximately the seventeenth century has been maize. There apparently was no traditional production of manufactured items for trade. In the modern economy, some 40 percent of the population remains rural and primarily agricultural. Nearby oil fields have made Groznyï a center of industry and urban employment.

The traditional diet relied on grains and dairy products. Traditional ethnic foods include unleavened corn bread ( siskal ) ; meat in dough casings boiled in stock ( khingal; the dish and a term resembling this one are also found among other peoples of the Caucasus) ; pancakelike, unleavened-wheat pan bread stuffed with cheese, squash, or other dairy or vegetable products and brushed with melted butter ( ch'ä:pigish ); cheese, curds, sour cream, yogurt, butter; fruits (including apples, pears, plums; medlars were harvested from wild trees); nuts; and meat, typically mutton. The proportion of fat, especially dairy fat, was high by modern urban standards.

Division of Labor. Men were responsible for livestock, fieldwork, construction, and defense; they sometimes took salaried work in lowland villages. Women were responsible for poultry and gardens, as well as for cooking, weaving, sewing, preserving, and caring for young children. In the modern urban household the woman generally remains in full and exclusive control of the kitchen, whereas the man makes purchases and does all heavy work and most household repair.

Land Tenure. Lots, gardens, and orchards were privately owned by households. Fields were communally owned by clans or villages (except that cleared land belonged to the household or head of household that had cleared it). Pastureland, at least for cattle, was communally owned by villages. Livestock was privately owned by households. Virgin land was not owned and was open to use by anyone (subject to strict cultural controls, for example on what species of tree could be cut). Roads and paths apparently were not owned. Food, once harvested and prepared, or livestock, once slaughtered, were to some extent subject to distribution by the owner to guests, neighbors, kin, people held in deference, and to fellow clan or subclan members with whom the owner had mutual obligations of support and hospitality. In high mountain villages where land was scarce, there was a strict limit on the number of livestock a household could own. When a herd exceeded this limit, the entire herd was confiscated and redistributed. (The Kisti and Batsbi settlements in Georgia are said to have received some of their population from highland people emigrating to avoid confiscation.) Land was not in short supply in the northern lowlands, but periodic incursions of steppe tribes are thought to have made expansion dangerous.