Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 159 - The First Chechen War Part 1: Train Robbing Rebellion

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Part 1 of our 4 part series on the first Chechen War. Throughout history Russia continues to try to subjugate Chechnya, leading to generations of war. Sources for all 4 episodes: The Oath Russia's Chechen Wars 1994-2000: Lessons from Urban Combat: Lessons from the Urban Combat Fangs of the Lone Wolf: Chechen Tactics in the Russian-Chechen War 1994-2009 One Soldier's War Allah's Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. hello and welcome to yet another episode of lines by donks podcast i am joe and with me today is local chechnya expert nick Nick. What's up, man? Yeah, I'll take the title. Fuck it. What do you know about Chechnya or Chechens in general? Nothing. Have you ever heard anything about Chechnya? I know there was a war.

You have to be more specific. I was thinking what most people probably know of now other than horrible human rights abuses, if you happen to be gay, is MMA. Because MMA is fucking huge coming out of Chechnya and Dagestan, which is right next door. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

That's where Nurgamedov is from. That's where that whole camp is from. They also have child MMA fights. Didn't we watch a Vice fucking thing on YouTube? Yes, I think they went to Dagestan. Yeah, those kids were intense. Yeah, it's also really bad for children to have them do that.

Kids shouldn't be taking shots to the head. Brains and stuff. But you did hit the nail on the head for one of those things. A war happened there. Yeah, yeah fuck i'm here for it and that's actually where a lot of the western understandings of chechnya come from myself included um i do have to point out that i'm a very stupid person and uh as someone who was once in the military like you probably you might be a little young for it or maybe you didn't

hear about because you never deployed yet that like oh, oh, you got to look out in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's Chechen snipers. And those guys... I've heard it in movies. Yes. It's never happened. It's been shown to be virtually like a boogeyman. That was a propaganda tool for pretty much everybody. The insurgents benefited from it because it made Americans scared. Americans benefited from it because they could somehow, I don't know, dehumanize and delegitimize the fighting ability of the locals when the vast majority of people were fighting in Afghanistan, especially within like five to six miles of their own home. Now, once upon a time, that was true. There was Chechens and various other people fighting in Afghanistan, especially against the Soviets. But when I was there, no, there's no fucking Chechens and various other people fighting Afghanistan, especially against the Soviets. But when I was there,

nah, there's no fucking Chechens. Anybody listening who's an Afghan war veteran, there was no Chechens there when you were there either. Shut up. We watched American Sniper and they talked about it. Did they? Fuck.

Did they bring that up in American Sniper? I think so. They probably fucking did. They probably fucking did. I may be mistaken. The sniper was, I believe, Jordanian remember when they like zoomed yeah he was like olympic medal on the wall which is like yeah uh something like that but you know it would not surprise me that is unfortunately uh how a lot of people think of chechens as a people they're're great snipers? Not that they're great snipers.

Just throw out of the womb? Everywhere that you see them in movies and popular media, they're either punching someone in the face or doing something awful. I kind of want to talk about I mean, obviously a lot, especially in the US and actually Russia for that matter, of which they're still

a member of the Russian Federation is racism and islamophobia chechens were called by russians so like they were a victim of racism on all sides a neighbor to my own motherland in the caucus mountain range where everybody's racist against everybody so it's not it's not great yeah now the reason why I wanted to finally talk about this war is, one, I think we've kind of already brought it up once when we talked about Boris Grashev, which we'll talk about again in much more exhaustive detail, unfortunately. Old podcast fans will remember that from probably two and a half years ago.

One of our first ten episodes, I believe. Don't go back and listen to it. It's awful. We didn't pay anybody to do anything back then. No, no, we did not. The professionalism that you're used to now, certainly gone then. And that quite picked up. I personally believe my research ability has gotten much better when it comes to researching things that are not very well known in the West, using non-English sources and translators and things like that. But also, we, as a show, have gotten better at understanding and conceptualizing these conflicts for our audience. And this one is interesting.

It's weird. But we'll get to that point. Gotcha. Because in order to talk about the first Chechen war i need to be specific here we are talking about the first one because there's the first chechen war this interwar period the second chechen war and then what is effectively russia's forever war immediately after that though they said that they you know it quote unquote ended at some point before, I believe, 2010. Debatable. But we're only talking about the first one. Gotcha. All right. Yeah.

Now, in order to do that, we need to talk about how exactly this tiny sliver of land, which is full of not Russian people. Deadly snipers. Just deadly snipers everywhere. How it ended up being part of Russia for so long, right? It's a very small part of the North Caucasus region with a population under 2

million people. It floats around about a million and a half, depending on when the last time Russia came through was. And how exactly that not only did they end up facing the entire Russian military, but winning. So Chechnya is a place with an incredibly old history. You know, there's especially us in the U S we're talking about like, Oh, you know, it's,

it's really old. Like it's a hundred years ago or whatever, but like Chechnya has been an inhabitable place with civilizations of roughly the same kind of cultures for since 40,000 BC. So it's a pretty, it's a pretty old place for the longest time it fell into an ancient kingdom known as elenia which was kind of spread through the region though eventually all of that came crashing down when the mongols swept through um now this broke apart the ties that bind a lot of these groups leading to continuous warfare with neighboring

tribes as well as like an insurgency against occupying Mongols, which will become a bit of a through line for Chechen history as one insurgency or another against someone that's occupying them. Now, it wasn't until the late 15th and early 16th century where what would be known as Russia would show up. The problem is, for Chechnya, is they're kind of like a land bridge to a different region. Russia is looking to expand their trade. You have all of these insular communities that are protected by mountain ranges, which makes it very hard to invade and occupy,

as the Mongols would find out. And, spoiler alert, so do the Russians. Nice. We have to get these barbarian tribes to listen to us so we can trade with the people on the other side this is just like a pathway our stepping stone yes it's russia's panama without a canal when they finally moved in that's because a local leader temurek of carbadia asked ivan the terrible yeah that one of russia for help dealing with the rebellious folks that

wouldn't stop stabbing his soldiers i.ee. those being the Chechens, though they wouldn't be called that yet. In order to solidify this bond, Ivan married the guy's daughter, and soon the Russian desire on sweet, sweet Chechen land were on. And it wouldn't really stop from that point forward. Oh, that didn't solve it? Uh, no. Though the world would probably be a much better place, and there'd be a lot less dead people if this didn't happen.

So if you had a dispute with your neighbor, you marry his daughter? Back then, absolutely. Because then you kill your neighbor and you can just claim ownership over his property, which is effectively what kings are. That's like the reason why the Queen of england they were all originally german they married into the family and took it over that's just how that works yeah you imagine how much gym space you would have if you had his fucking land exactly that's why i have to actually marry laika who is my daughter off to their son and then assassinate them and then hawaii chewy put my claim to their land and then we can have i can have my legitimate reason to go to war even if i manufactured it and then i can win right who are

your soldiers i don't know uh it depends how much money i have i can buy them this is your introduction to i don't know european politics before democracy was the thing and also most of the other world like you know it's inbred people beefing over turf where is how we always explain that right i gotta love it yeah there's also around this time that the chechen population began to slowly convert to sunni islam uh not just the chechen population but also the surrounding areas like i'm going to continue referencing chechnya but there's also degustan, Ugasheria, and a few other places. It sounds like you're pronouncing all these pretty good.

I practiced. The name's not so much... The people names I will fuck up. I promise. Because they're interesting. At one point, actually more than one point, all of these places fall under one government. At one point, one area will take over the other. They're also all

very closely related tribes and ethnic groups. So so since we're focusing mostly on chechnya for this series i'm going to continue referencing chechnya oshetians and englishetians if you're out there i didn't forget about you maybe at some point in the future right nice to meet you guys i didn't know who you were we're huge in south Oshetia, a little known fact. When the Russians invaded, they brought our podcast with them. Now, eventually, Peter I would invade the area again during the Russo-Persian War of 1722. And that is kind of like the thing, right? Like, you have the Persians there.

You eventually will have the Ottomans creeping up as well. So it's like Chechnya is caught in the middle. And Chechnya doesn't really want to be part of either or they want to be left alone they want to be their own thing yeah they just want to chill yeah uh the russians would take their own area over through backdoor political dealings against persia promising protection and limited amount of freedoms to the area so eventually chechnya would be like you know these russians are kind of fucking assholes but the persians are fucking assholes too.

And the Russians say, if we side with them, they'll let us run our own shit. We just got to pay them like a tax. Let's work with them. With the added bonus, if Persia invades us again, Russia will send more troops and they have way more Russians than we have Chechnya. So like maybe we should hang out with Peter over here. Okay. Like, maybe we should hang out with Peter over here. Okay.

Russia would immediately fucking backstab them, not give them any freedoms, and start moving Russians into the area to colonize it, which is something they can do until the 90s. The main stepping point is even the Chechen tribes would probably be okay with this, but the Russians attempt to convert them to Christianity because kind of a through line of Russian history through the czar age is most of the czars saw themselves like the protectorate of Christianity and spreaders of Christianity throughout the region, which is one of the reasons why the Russians got involved in the Ottoman Empire and the plight of like Armenians, Georgians and things like that. Not because of, I don't know, humanity, but because they believe Christianity made you an elevated people. And as they were Muslim, that meant that they were subhuman and they needed to be saved. Right. That fucking idiot who went to the island and in the Indian Ocean and got owned.

Oh, yeah. They believe that people need to be saved. And also, if you believe that, fuck you. Here, hold on to a few of these arrows, big fella. Catch these fucking arrows. Right. And that's exactly what happened. The Chechens started shooting at them with guns, though.

And this would happen like a lot. These rebellions are pretty continuous. At no point was like the land that would become Chechnya or Dagestan or Ingushetia or any of these places like, OK, we're done. They would put down a rebellion and another one would just immediately pop up and they would time them for like when russia and persia would go to war chechnya would be like now they can fucking smell it and it wasn't like uh you know we're gonna work with persia and join up to fuck the russians it's like no no. The Russians are distracted. We can fight the Russians now too. So they're fighting everybody.

Yes. Jesus. Which is very common. They were very insular and they wanted to fucking stay that way. Like, just leave us the fuck alone. Like, they're not this international power that's going to invade. Though, like, between them

and a few other neighboring areas, there was a lot of fluid borders for quite some time. They weren't going to, like, invade time. They weren't going to invade Russia. They weren't going to invade Persia or Turkey. They'd be like, leave us the fuck alone. Understandable. Yeah. And it's one of those problems when you're the crosswalk between all of these imperialist powers. That's just not going to fucking happen. Afghanistan, how's it going?

These continuous rebellions will be just constant. They will fucking never stop. When Peter and the other czars redeploy the Russian army heavily into Chechnya to fight Chechens, this only made it worse, right? Most of these rebellions were timed with wars with Persia, like I said. Like when these was the so-called Murid War, where a Chechen warlord by the name of Bangsingyur,

who had one eye, one arm, and one leg, led the United Tribes against the Russians. How do you get that shitty end of the stick? I assume he caught one half of a cannonball. I don't know. Is it all on one side? Like, I got all good left side. Yeah, they call him Old Righty. You know, I was good right-handed, but now I gotta learn left. And the Russians really couldn't figure out how to stop this stuff. Like, when

Bangsangir was put down, another one would immediately fucking rise up, mostly made out of his relatives, because there's this concept of, like, blood vengeance, right? Where, uh, and this is common in a lot of areas. Armenia had it. I know Albania has it. A few other really old civilizations

have it as well. And it's mostly died out in modern times, though there's some, as always, there's traditionalists that hold on to stuff. Well, I hope they hold true to tradition and they keep both arms or something. Unfortunately, limbs aren't much of a tradition as they are more of just like, if I got to lose my arm, I got to lose my arm. Bangsingir gets killed by the Russians, right? Well, Bangsinger has sons, he has uncles, whatever. Like, well, now we have to fight the Russians because you killed our family member. And admittedly, like, most

people would probably do that anyway, but it was considered, like, an honorable thing to do. Like, well, and for instance, like, in a more personal level, you kill me, right? We both, like, get in an argument over something, you shoot me. Now my brother has to kill you. Oh, I thought Laika would have to come after me.

Laika probably would have if she had thumbs, unfortunately. Of all the tricks I have taught her, I have not quite taught her how to do a double tap yet. I feel like she still could. I don't know. Try taking a ball from her. She's pretty vicious. So a family member of mine would have to kill you or failing that one of your family members. One of these Russian military units comes through these villages. Remember, this is the 17-1800s. Even through the 90s, which we'll talk about, listening to laws of land warfare, the Geneva Conventions doesn't really happen. So you can imagine how pillage and rape and looting and burning is just like how war worked back then it's disgusting but you can imagine how when one of these units passes through a village like congratulations you've just made 500 lifetime enemies and their

entire family like you're never going to put down these things with force and every time they do it it's like just throwing wood onto a fire right oh okay got, okay. Gotcha. So the Russians are like, well, you know what? We can't beat the Chechens. Let's just get rid of them. So they decided to do settler colonialism instead, and not just moving Russians in, though they would do that. They'd also move in Don Cossacks.

And the Cossacks would be something of a wall where the Russians would use them to populate an area without having to station troops because they would raise their own local levees and things like that. And if a whole bunch of Cossacks get wiped out, the Russians don't really care. They're being used. Right. They're going to move in all these Cossacks and they'll be able to pacify the area.

They'll outbreed the locals or whatever you know it's soft genocide right you're eventually going to muscle them out of the area but that didn't work because the chachans were like yo fuck those guys and they just start shooting at them the this idea only works if you look at our history with with natives in the u.s There was obviously outright mass murder, but most of the killing happened non-directly. More and more white people came in. We took up more and more of their resources,

deprived them of those resources. They starved to death, died of disease, etc. That's kind of what they were hoping would happen to the Chechens. We're going to move these Cossacks and the Russians in. Eventually, the Chechens are We're going to move these Cossacks and the Russians in. Eventually, the Chechens are going to have no choice but to assimilate into our culture, which means

become Christians or die. Right? Right. So the Chechens decided, wait, no, we have guns. We can shoot you. And that's what happened. And they won. Yeah, fuck that noise. We're not all about this going quietly thing. By the 1860s, the Russians just said, fuck it.

We're done doing this shit the soft way. And that's when the Sarkeesian genocide happened. That's right. You thought you could go a whole episode of this show without hearing about a genocide. You're wrong. I don't understand. Yeah. Now, the Tsar of Russia or the deportation, murder and destruction of most of the Muslim population of Russia. Now, as the name describes, this mostly targeted the Circassian people. But like most genocides, there's more than one target.

Much like the Holocaust, where it targeted, obviously, the Jewish population of Europe, but also travelers, gay people, trans people, black people, just everybody that was not a quote-unquote Aryan German. And the Armenian Genocide targeted Greeks, Assyrians, Yazidis, things like that. The Circassian Genocide targeted just Muslims across the board. Muslims across the board. This included about the entire population of Sarcasia, but as well as 75% of the Chechen English populations were removed or murdered. Now the target for the first deportation was to force them into the Ottoman empire, which was considered a Caliph at the time.

So like a Muslim government and they're like, well, we don't want them. You take them. And the Ottomans didn't want them either because the Ottomans are too busy hating their own people, namely the Armenians, the Greeks, the Assyrians, and the Yazidis, who all lived in the area where the Circassians would end up. A lot of hate going around. It's bad. Yeah. This was the first true attempt by a state to just destroy part of their own population. By the end of it,

almost about 2 million people were dead. Several more times that were removed. The Ottoman Empire, which was right next door, took a whole lot of notes for the future. Oh, wow. And I mean, side note here, this was used as propaganda against Armenians and the Greeks, Assyrians, and Yazidis in the Ottoman Empire. When the Sarcassians would come in, the Ottoman government kind of told them, yeah, you're part of the Ummah. You can move in. You're fine.

But the Ottomans actually hated them because they were Russian subjects. They didn't trust them. They didn't care that they were Muslim. So instead of having the Sarcassians turn against the government, i.e. that being the Ottomans, they're like, you would have a whole bunch of nice stuff if it wasn't for

all these fucking Armenians taking it. Huh? Yeah. And that kind of set a lot of the gene seeds for future violence. What it really turned into was these poor people were used as an imperial tool and genocided and then taken advantage of. It sucks. For the Russians, this worked.

They so severely depopulated the areas in rebellion that the rebellions died out at least organized rebellions like the days of like a rebel army were gone now this would force them with the lack of numbers to more of an insurgency uh like a low intensity conflict i think is the is the wonk way to put it. Okay. It's mostly just because we don't have any fucking Chechens left. One insurgent leader known as Zemlikon decided that he would start robbing Russian trains and became a folk hero for it,

which is off-topic but fucking rad. Hell yeah. Just to set the mood for how Chechens see this struggle, and you can after hearing about the Circassian genocide, you could hardly blame them. Zemlikon had a whole bunch of folk songs written about him. Do they slap?

They're as incredibly depressing as you can imagine from the region that they came from. Never mind. This is one of them. Quote, he howls because there's no death for him. He would like to die of longing for the family, which the Russian authorities sent, not sparing little children longing for the family which the russian authorities sent not

sparing little children to the ends of the earth oh where people gather only after death but death does not take zemlik on since god protects him until the moment where he avenges every last one of his dead relatives to all the guilty since god does not leave any evil at a single tear inflicted on the innocent without avenge. I assume it rhymes better in the local language. Someone like, I don't know, play this with the background. Yes.

I honestly believe there were tracksuits dating back then. Just tracksuits like knitted out of sheep's wool. What is Adidas? we do not know child for it is written but yeah that's like one of the folk songs they wrote about zemlikon so do you think it had to be hard based too it was like a super popular name uh throughout and it still is uh when like when you're reading firsthand accounts of like from chechen fighters during

the war there's like eight zemlikons hanging around. It's like a lot of Armenians named Monty after the 90s, right? There's a lot of folk songs about him. They're all very grim. Now, thankfully for the Chechens and the various minorities of the area, the Russian Empire eventually imploded with revolution. This had the benefit of making the government too busy trying to cobble the whole thing together than to fuck with them. So they created their own country. Chechens, English, and a few other surrounding groups tossed their lot in together to form the absolutely awesome named United Mountain Dwellers of the Caucasus. I thought it was going to be absolutely awesome something something like that was in the name. united mountain dwellers of the caucus

i'm a huge lord of the rings fan that sounds like the local confederation of dwarves i still should have watched the lord of the rings i haven't watched it you've never watched it at all we've talked about this i have never seen it fuck maybe i just deleted that from my brain because how badly it offended And Harry Potter Yeah, you can skip those ones Seen Star Wars, big Star Wars guy Yeah, nobody's perfect What?

Officially, the United Mountain Dwellers of the Caucasus Would be known as the Mountainous Republic of the North Caucasus I'm not big into mountains, like I'd get tired I guess you get used to them I like the United Mountain Dwellers better Because I just, that name sounds so great to me this nation was formed in 1917 and rather than like a lot of the other stuff that we're going to talk about uh this was a recognized sovereign independent nation state really the mountainous republic had seven

different states each of them with their own ethnic group, like the English, the Asherians, the Chechens would all have their own under a united confederation. And this was recognized by every major power in the world not named Russia. Maybe they thought the same thing. Oh, mountain dwellers? Badass. Even like the US, the UK, France, Germany, they all recognize this

place. Now, a lot of that could be to own the Russians who, remember at this point are falling apart at the seams but like still this is the most recognized independent nation that chechnya would ever be a part of uh which is significantly more recognized i should point out than the confederate states of america which is none now this republic was unfortunately short-lived and had a very very rough life with the russians falling in a civil war, the parties of that war kept invading it. Because the Bolsheviks, which obviously would have eventually formed the USSR, and the White Army, which were the czarist loyalists, kind of something other fascists sometimes chaos and don't bother with it.

They both considered the mountain republic as part of Russia. don't bother with it. They both considered the Mountain Republic as part of Russia. They both invaded it. The White Volunteer Army kept harassing them quite a bit, but they were eventually defeated by the Red Army in 1921. And then the Red Army invaded them too, ending the Republic on January

1921, making them a part of the Soviet Union. I love the Soviet Union. God. I love this sound. Poor God. God, I'm glad I don't have it on my side. I know.

That's why I have control of it. Now officially part of the Soviet Union, the Chechens and the English were forced into the Chechino-English Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. That doesn't roll off the tongue like mountain dwellers. You know, there's one thing that you can say about communists. One of them is they are not great at naming things. No.

That's why you end up with stuff like that or units of the Red Army named the 309th Independent Guards Airborne Separate Regiment. It's weird. For real? Yeah, straight up. It's fucking weird. Off topic again, but in the Soviet military, and actually still today, I believe, in the Russian military

and a few of the other post-Soviet republics, units could earn titles. So you could be like a guards unit and stuff like that. And they'd just be like tacked on to whatever your actual signifier is. So you could be like Independent Motor Rifle Regiment. Guards. Yeah, it doesn't flow off the tongue. Maybe it doesn't Russian.

I don't know. I don't speak Russian. With the pause and then the guards. Dot, dot, dot. Guards in all caps. Now, for once, there was not that many rebellions. in all caps. Now, for once, there was not that many rebellions, though that slow burning insurgency that they would be known for was never far away. It was simply made much harder for all of the flaws of the Tsarist government. They weren't very good at monitoring these far-flung,

hard to access places. So like, oh, Chechnya is rebelling again. Fuck, we have to send people down there, right? But the USSR is much better at monitoring and controlling its population. So that made the Chechnya-English Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic much easier to control rather than like Vlad's going to go take a rifle and shoot at the Russians from the woods, which they still did. There were still six uprisings before World War II. Jesus.

You don't hear about them. They weren't very big, but they were there. But then the Nazis invaded, unfortunately, for everyone. While the Soviets would eventually turn their war machine around, the opening stages of that war were famously shit and not going great for the Soviet Union. In the first month of the war, the Nazis had stormed through the Caucasus region

and taking nearly half in just like a month, union in the first month of the war the nazis had stormed through the caucus region uh and uh taking nearly half so in just like a month just making incredible gains as the soviet military collapsed trying to defend it the fiercest resistance they found in the early days of operation barbarossa was by chechen soldiers really they seem to be the only ones in the area able to hold off the nazis at all. Well, they're mountain dwellers. We're the United Mountain Dwellers. Get out of our yard.

Local Mountain Dwellers Union for 2069 shooting at Nazis. This included one hero of the Soviet Union named Kong Pasha Nerdilov, who killed nearly 1,000 German soldiers while manning a machine gun. Jesus. It's like mid-900s. But unfortunately, this did not stop this racial minority from being scapegoated. Soviet officials

looking for an excuse as to why they were failing so badly in the war decided to blame the Chechens, claiming that they were all spies working for the Nazis. Clearly. This is mostly put forward by NKVD dickhead Bogdan Kubelov, who

ironically was half Armenian, and this exact excuse would be used against his family in the Ottoman Empire to justify the Armenian genocide a few decades earlier. You dick. What the fuck? Now, he was directly under the NKVD chief and part-time serial rapist and murderer

lavrenti beria who is just a historical fucking piece of shit i cannot say enough mean things about lavrenti beria he was so widely known for being an absolute monster like he was like the one of the top three people in the soviet union and everybody in the Kremlin knew not to let their children around him. Oh. Yeah. He's a fucking monster. Beria and Kubelov decided that, you know what? The Chechens should be forcibly removed again.

What? Why? Here's the thing. You have to put yourself in diseased brainworm territory. Gotcha. The Nazis are storming across the Caucasus and mostly the Soviet Union as a whole at this point, right?

Clearly, it cannot be the failures of the Red Army because that would mean squaring those failures with the failure of government leadership. So it must be the fault of the people that live

in these areas that are falling despite the fact that many of them are fighting tooth and nail to defend their home from Nazis. So boom, Chechens. Not to mention, they were still stubbornly holding on to their religion, which authorities

did not like. Yeah, those dicks. Yep. So they ordered Operation Lentil in 1943. I like lentils. You won't after this. Now, I do have to say that all credible historians recognize Operation Lentil as the order of a genocide against the Chechens in English, which I fully agree with. I understand I'm not quite a genocide academic yet, but the evidence is pretty clear. Around 700,000 people were forcefully deported from what is today Ingushetia and Chechnya

to forced settlements into what is now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Now, these forced settlements would effectively slave labor. You'd go work in mines and factories and things like that. You were not exactly given a choice in the matter. Around a third of those deported died from

starvation, freezing, or outright murder. Oh, fuck. They were sent to some of the harshest climate on Earth with only what they could carry on their back. Some of them were just shot. It was awful. You know, I guess I won't make lentils this week. Just pour your lentils out in protest of a long dead government. Now, once the populations were kicked out, guess who was brought in?

Russians. They were brought in to repopulate the area. By the time that the Chechens were allowed to return all the way in 1956. Jesus. They found that their homes, land, and the entire demographic of the area had been taken from them and changed. Everything was changed. Mosques had been destroyed. Streets were renamed in Russian. Russian was now the dominant and required language Everything was changed. Mosques had been destroyed. Streets were renamed in Russian. Russian was now the dominant

and required language of the area. They even found out their graveyards had been bulldozed. Their return caused the Russians who had moved in in their place to break out into riots in the capital of Grozny. Now imagine, if you will, moving

into an area and taking over. some of the in some of these cases like when the chechens were forcefully deported russians were just moving with their briefcases like directly into their homes that's fucked a little over a decade later i as khrushchev was like yeah they can come back right uh and they like a lot of chechens were like yes i would like to go home right kazakhstan sucks i would like to go home. Kazakhstan sucks. I would like to go home. Kazakhs, if you're like, I've never been there. I don't know. It seems like they didn't want to stay. Maybe because they weren't Kazakh. They'd go back home. The problem was now all these settlers had moved in, now faced competition for jobs and stuff like

that. Because now there's this massive influx of people when the russians were promised preferential treatment like well we speak russian we're russian we work in the factories we work more importantly the oil fields like now we're gonna actually have to face challenging challenges for these jobs from the people who i stole their homes for or stole this is bullshit these guys this this is oppression sir just the amount of privilege necessary to riot for that is i don't know we saw that in january 6th never mind okay privilege has never stopped anybody from writing i suppose but like still it's like even in the soviet union people were like no we want racism and the government's like fine fine we'll

give you racism calm down only a decade it's only yeah it's been like 15 years what the fuck some people have been living in uh certain houses that like you'll get eminent domain and their families have been sharing them for generations like this is actually pretty common in parts of china when they're trying to like build uh like road networks and stuff through and people like refuse to move out of their homes because like they've raised their family in them i think they call them like nails or something like that because like you get like the nail has to be hammered down or whatever and they just like outright refuse to move out of this home which normally looks like shit because it's like 80 years old or whatever so they like build an entire

road going around it just to fucking spite them but But like that, I kind of get like, it's my house. Fuck you. I've been here forever. But it's like, dude, my old poster is still on the wall. I'm 32. 15 years ago feels like a long time, but not that long ago, you know? But the Soviet government assured the Russians that moved in. They would legally

discriminate against the chechens oh okay obviously they didn't hang up a big banner saying racism go forward but like uh russians were given preferential treatment in regards to jobs universities living arrangement because remember this is the soviet union you can't just go buy a house you have to put in paperwork and requisition it from the government. And they decide who needs that. I'm not saying that state rationed housing is bad. In fact, we should have, I don't know, 1000 times more than what we currently have in the US in regards to that. But they were like... Chechen was like, I would like a house. I have this family. You guys took my house. Can I please have a new one or an apartment or whatever? And the Russians are like, sorry, we gave it all to Igoror and his family you're fucked most importantly they were kept

out of like even running their own was effectively their own supposedly autonomous area within the soviet union uh they didn't have government jobs they didn't have oil jobs they weren't like very few of them are allowed to go to university. You're forcing a brain drain on a population. You're purposefully making them disadvantaged. Right. Right. 1956 is when they're allowed to move back home in an area where everybody is communist because they have to be. If you want to get ahead, you're going to join the communist party. You're going to put in work. You're going to move your way up the political bodies. It's human nature to want to be involved in these power apparatuses, right? But it wasn't until 1989 that a Chechen would actually be elected to lead the regional communist party.

Fuck. In Chechnya. 1989. They've been allowed back since 1956. And you know they're pissed off. Yeah, they're not fucking happy. They're fucking houses. You know the floor pans. They're fucking it up, the off. Yeah, they're not fucking happy. They're fucking houses. You know the floor pans.

They're fucking it up, the Russians. Yeah, they're moving in. They're fucking, I don't know, boiling kvass. Kvass? Look at them just on my porch spitting sunflower seeds at their feet. Let me back in my house! You remember that one time

we were supposed to make kvass and then we didn't want to be miserable? We didn't want to be miserable we didn't want to be miserable and also we saw a warning that if you fucked it up you could go blind we're in 1989 now which is you know the twilight of the soviet union by the time the 1990s rolled around chechnya is one of the poorest areas in the entire soviet union unemployment was very very high and the best paying jobs most importantly in the oil industry which is not only better paying, it's prestigious, almost all held by Russians. I imagine. Now, if you remember back during our Iran-Iraq war series, almost the same

thing happened where the British held all of the petroleum jobs. So when they left, the entire industry collapsed because they like purposely did not let Iranians go to university to study these things. They didn't hire Iranians to do all these things. It makes you dependent on them.

No left seat, right seat is going on. Definitely not. No. Like many parts of the Soviet Union at this time, Chechens were starting

to think that independence would be pretty fucking rad right about now after everything that's happened. Now, the leader of the local communist party that guy that just got elected in 1989 his name was doku zagayev now he was in favor of kind of sort of independence within a future russia which honestly is kind of what ended up happening you know in current day technically they are slightly autonomous and are within the Russian Federation. That's kind of what he was looking for,

but he seemed to be the only person in favor of that. There were some people who were okay working with the Russians, but the loudest voices in the room were for independence. This led Soviet Air Force General Dzhokhar Dudayev to form the Chechen National Congress. He became the main opposition to Zebgayev to form the Chechen National Congress. And he became the main opposition to Zevgayev in a place where political opposition generally never existed before. Now, Dudayev's argument was pretty cut and dry. Look at what working with the Russians got us. Let's just be our own state. Fuck these guys.

The Dudayev demanded that Communist Party's power be transferred to the Chechen National Congress, which was rapidly gaining popularity within Chechnya. The thing is, that's not really how the government worked. You couldn't just be like, ah, yes, he's in charge now. Dudayev wasn't a communist. That's one knock against him. And since the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed yet, when they did collapse, I believe it was 15 states that the Russian SSFR at the time was just like, you know what? You're independent now. This is done. I'll be your own states.

Chechnya would not be one of them. Russia considered Chechnya part of Russia. And Chechnya considered themselves part of Chechnya. Right. At least parts of them did. Most importantly, Dudayev and the Congress. Right. At least parts of them did. Most importantly, Dudayev and the Congress. The USSR was not so instable at the time that the Congress could just be like,

fuck you, I'm in charge now. That would happen eventually, but not yet. Now, Zagayev saw himself as a leader of whatever future version of a Chechen state came out of this whole USSR thing. And he just need to keep this shit under control for a bit but that would change uh not because there's a guy of or duty to die of but because of boris yeltsin if you're not familiar with him he's a treat like a good treat no boris yeltsin's a fucking monster but he's a funny one that Never anything good. He's a notorious drunk. We'll talk a little bit more about his drinking and his illnesses later on. But like, for instance, one time as head of the Russian Federation, actually, it may have been the Soviet Union.

I can't remember. He came to the US for like, you know, a political meeting. And then he, the Secret Service found him drunk and wandering around on the sidewalk in his underwear attempting to hail a taxi so he'd go get pizza. Just absolutely fucking like the second most powerful man on earth. Now, Boris Yeltsin, for better or for worse, I believe most people probably argue for worse. Sure, I get it. He had been stripping away the decades old power structures that held everything in place. This mostly included being old guard communists, which included Zevgayev. And by old guard communists, I mean just like decades-old loyalists.

They're going to go whatever direction the Communist Party tells them. They weren't nationalists. They weren't separatists. Nothing. They didn't want anything to change. Yeah, nobody likes change. So all of this wasn't really working and knew that there needed to be some change, some kind of change in place. So in 1991, Yeltsin ordered Zavgaev to resign. And he did, because that's what you do when you're

in that position. Now, Yeltsin was attempting to get ahead of this coming to blows of the separatists versus the old guard in Chechnya. Like, well, if we just get rid of Zavgayev, right? And we allow the Chechens to elect somebody, then we can be like, see? Look, you have representation now. You don't have this guy you don't like, right? But Zavgayev ended up being much better at politics than Yeltsin did.

And more importantly, he knew local politics much better than Yeltsin did because he's a fucking Chechen, right? This ended up being an incredibly bad idea because Yeltsin did because he's a fucking Chechen, right? This ended up being an incredibly bad idea because Yeltsin is thousands of miles away in Moscow. I don't know if you've ever looked at a map. Russia's fucking huge and Chechnya's at the very fucking bottom corner of it. So it's going to take Yeltsin a while to get his ducks in a row to attempt to do this

election. So Yeltsin ordered that the Chechen authorities establish a temporary council that would rule the Chechen English Republic until parliamentary elections, which were scheduled for November of 1991. Now, if you're thinking that there might be something of a power vacuum in this situation, like Zvayev's gone, there's going to be a representation, there's going to be an election, first of all, which is new. Nobody's really sure what happens next. So Dudayev decided to make it easy for everyone by simply walking in and declaring the Congress the temporary council.

Nice. Yeah. Yeltsin's like, damn it. We're in charge now. We got this. I like the confidence. Yeah. Big dick energy.

Big Dudayev energy. Yeah. this i like the confidence yeah big dick energy big do die of energy yeah more importantly than just declaring the national congress in charge of the english chechen republic is that he decided he'd hold his own election this guy gives himself his own reviews too how do you think you're doing you're crushing it he's the whole thing he's filling out his own survey? Weird, this guy gave me all tens, sir. That was you. That's all I need. Now, it should be pointed out that there's chaos everywhere right now throughout the Soviet Union, throughout Russia, throughout the future former Soviet Union.

Yeltsin's got a lot of shit going on. And Dudayev's only got this really small plot of land to maneuver and play with. And he does it very, very well. Because while Yeltsin has to put out and fails to put out thousands of fires all over the place dudayev just gotta inch his way in and nobody's gonna fucking stop him right yeltsin doesn't give a shit he's more worried about like all of the other parts of russia attempting to become their own republics or other republics stealing from the former Red Army or where certain borders are going to be. It's fucking chaos.

And Dudayev's like, I like it. This is mine. This is mine now. So he declared his own elections, totally independent from the one that Yeltsin ordered in October. So the National Congress won, shocker, and Dudayev became its president, shocker. Now, this is probably about the time that Yeltsin's like, oh, I fucked up. I should have never made Zivgayev became its president. Shocker. Now, this is probably about the time that Yeltsin's like,

oh, I fucked up. I should have never made Zivgayev resign. And he was right. After taking office, Dudayev unilaterally announced Chechnya's independence, which propelled Yeltsin to declare a state of emergency in the republic. Do you think people are out there like, can this guy do this? Are we for this? I mean, to be fair, Dudaev is very popular at this point. He has his opponents for sure. There's the Russian population that settled in Chechnya. That's like, oh, we do not like where this is going. Right. I think a lot of people were like, you know, he keeps doing things and Russia doesn't seem to be trying to stop him. So he must be able to do these things. But then Russia did try to stop him. He declared a state of emergency. And

now this is only a few months before the USSR would completely dissolve. It's technically a thing. This is all happening in October, November. USSR dies in December of the same year. So he has a lot on his fucking plate. Unrest was going out everywhere. There was already war breaking out between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Tajik civil war is already starting.

Things are not going great. And this is a very small, he assumes, flash in the pan-independence movement. Now, most of these countries are allowed to split away. Now, they were considered Soviet socialist republics within the USSR system, like Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, all these places. The Chechen Republic wasn't. Instead, it was part of the Russian Socialist Republic within the USSR system. At no point did Russia consider them an independent nation, even within the confines of the Soviet system. I mean, even though... I mean, remember, they were an independent state before the invasion

of the Red Army in the 1920s. People recognized them. I mean, their independence was not entertained for a second from Yeltsin or anybody else. He had ye olde imperial borders to protect. Russia was worried that if, say, Chechnya broke free, Dagestan would want to break free, or Ingushetia or Oshetia or all these other places, right? Domino theory, but in Russia, right? But more importantly remember

chechnya's got fucking oil we can't lose that fucking oil we need that shit okay because i was about to ask like what's the real hard-on for like chechnya oil definitely the oil yeah now judaea declared independence and he did not waste any time to get to work he began to repossess and confiscate symbols of old soviet power He created a Chechen National Guard, which, you know, an army, which was made very easy by the sheer amount of weaponry and vehicles the Russians had just left laying around all over the place or under a limited guard or under the guard of Chechens.

Might as well. Like, oh, mine? Yeah. And remember, there was already all of these networks to draft and train soldiers in the region because Red Army stuff, right? So the Republic just took them all over. Not to mention, because of the decades of loyal service to the Soviet Union, pretty much every single person in a senior position of authority within the new, that would be called the Chechen Republic of Ichkaria, were all former general officers of the Red Army.

public of itch carrier were all like former general officers of the Red Army not to mention all of the people under them were colonels NCOs veterans of various wars like they start off with a solid base to start an army they got a good lineup not to mention they have light heavy weapons vehicles tanks fucking fighter jets like they just got

given an entire military they just had to go take it. Golden Knights first season. What if the NHL draft, but for nation states and armies in the first round, Chechnya takes T 72. Now Yeltsin decided that he needed to nip this in the bud. Right.

And he sent 1000 Soviet troops there from the internal ministry. I feel like that's not enough. It definitely was not. They landed at the airport and were immediately surrounded by armed Chechens, soldiers, and civilians. They were disarmed, robbed blind, put back on the planes, and sent back over the border. Hey, come on.

You got lunch money too? Let's go. Look, man, I get it. You can have my rifle, but do you need to take my fucking watch too? Shut up. Run your shit, motherfucker. Take off your boots. That was when Yeltsin realized like, okay, things have gone pretty goddamn far.

We need to invade Chechnya. Yeah, they took our boots. They're not even their size. We know it. It's just the principle of the matter. He's spitting my mouth. It's just the guy in the back. I liked it. It's just the principle of the matter. He's spitting in my mouth. It's just the guy in the back. I liked it.

Shut up, Alexei. We've been through this. Thanks for that image. I'm just imagining stuff. I need to use the bathroom. Close your mouth, Alexei, please. Not you. I mean, with the Russian system that we talked about during our Soviet-Afghan series, everything we just talked about has happened at one point.

Now, the thing is, at the same time, there was damn near a civil war starting in Moscow. There was old guard and new guard forces of the Communist Party fighting one another. There was tanks in the fucking street. People were getting blown up and shot. So he's like, hmm, I don't feel like I can invade Chechnya right now. They put a pin in it. Yeah, we'll go ahead and put this one at the back burner. Now, eventually, the USSR collapsed entirely in December of 1991, leaving more vehicles and weapons left over to be taken over by the Republic themselves and the National Guard.

It's interesting to look at how the ginormous Red Army came apart. One person was explaining that he was a Russian station in Belarus in the Red Army. And when everything came tumbling down, most of these areas that became independent seemingly overnight, were given the option of taking over the local Red Army units. is the new bello russian army now right or this is the new tajik army this new kazakh army or whatever and like the russian officers and ncos like you guys want to be uh citizens of belarus or you want to go back home and like that's they're just like that cut and dry i was about to say that i'm surprised they got the option in some places like uzbekistan i believe or maybe it was tajikistan that they're like no we're we're taking the entire Red Army. It's back to Russia. You guys have nothing. Fuck off. Could you imagine getting stationed there and being like, I don't live here. Yeah, I don't know what's

happening. And a lot of people took it. To be fair, Russia was a hot ball of shit at the time and would be for several years. So maybe not going home was kind of an okay thing. And then again, a lot of these places collapsed in the Civil War pretty immediately too. I'm just imagining the Rick and Morty episode

where they're like, who's paying us? Oh, nobody is. At this point, nobody's being paid anymore. That's why in Lord of War, it shows he's Ukrainian, just selling everything that isn't bolted down. Now they show Nicolas Cage's uncle, I think it was, to just be an alcoholic who wants money. But in reality, to be fair,

a lot of the general officers certainly were. But in a lot of places, they were doing that because the government has no fucking money. We can't even feed our soldiers. If we sell all these fucking tanks, I don't know, Libya or whoever, at least we'll be able to give them food you guys to deploy your tanks over here

yeah we'll do it for money that also happened there's I mean a lot of mercenaries and guns for hire came out of this just thousands upon thousands of tons of weaponry just vanished mysteriously overnight and you know a lot of it was they call these people the oligarchs who are attempting to snatch away so much of the former states and then Russia's wealth.

And, you know, a lot of it was very, very selfish reasons and people trying to become filthy rich very quickly. But also some of it was like done like company level commanders selling rifles and shit. I mean, because like, fuck it. Yeah it yeah i mean like nobody's paying us i need to feed these guys and you know you have to get down to a pretty low level to find that level of humanity in most of these military formations for reasons we've already talked about before there was ballistic missile units uh that were in charge of ending the world effectively. That were forced to go forage for food because they had no money.

It's hard to sell those on the streets too. Anybody want a nuke? 20 bucks. You got the guy next to him with the fucking coat just pulling it out and he's selling fucking bullets and then you got the guy next to him. I can't fit that under my coat. If you happen to be on the missile units, like like in the in the the separate missile units or whatever

they're called you have like the shittiest straw to draw when everything comes collapsing down because you own the one thing that everybody tracks if you sell it like you can sell tanks and ak's and jets and helicopters but the minute you fucking pawn off a nuke on somebody, suddenly you're just like a most wanted criminal or some shit. States can do that. Individuals cannot, sir. Good luck finding a fucking buyer, too. Who's going to believe you?

The US can sell weapons, nuclear weapons and bioweapons of mass destruction to Israel and Saddam Hussein. But God forbid fucking arcadi from yeah the pawns that shit off to pay his mortgage look i just want to eat yeah like look man i'm like i've already eaten all my boots like yeah i'm wearing fucking my fucking coat is a shoe. Oh, man. So Yeltsin has his back to the wall.

He can't deploy forces because he's busy almost fighting a civil war. Now, meanwhile, in Chechnya, things are not going great. If you happen to be a former functionary of the Soviet Union and also Russian. Now, I said things are being redistributed, confiscated. Those are mostly being taken from ethnic Russians. There is also widespread violence against Russians to include soldiers of the new Russian

Federation. Mostly, they were internal ministry troops, but there's also some soldiers. The difference really doesn't matter at this point. I'm not going to go into it. But the Chechen National Guard, like Dudayev, said, yeah, you can shoot at them if they don't leave so they started to shoot like effectively the first war did start in 1991 but the russians decided they stopped they were sick of being shot at and they just

left chechnya in june of 1992 and by that point a lot of ethnic russians got the fuck out very correctly they saw the writing on the wall of like we cannot stay here maybe we don't belong maybe we shouldn't have stolen all these guys's shit you ever think that we might be the bad now obviously uh southern colonialism bad uh machine gunning families who happen to live in your neck of the woods also bad uh but you know fuck off get out now dudayev saw this as russia giving up that they had actually gotten rid of them and now chechnya the chechen republic of itchcaria was truly independent like they fucked off they left this is ours and they're like we win right not really unfortunately i wish it was that easy and this podcast would just be over. But Chechnya was still very fucking poor.

Oh, there's more parts. Three more. Chechnya is desperately poor. And remember, they just chased out all the guys who made money. Not like this is Chechnya's fault, mind you, but like they're victims of their circumstance. If they want to control the oil wealth, which they should in the future, if they want to create a functioning state, this is going to be where you make your money. They got rid of all the professionals, right? Like they chased them all out or shot a lot of them too.

So they're like, okay, we have all this oil. We can't fucking work it. Shit. Where's the guy that usually worked on this? He's laying down right next to you. Ah. I moved into his house. Yes.

I will tell you how I got it. Don't worry. That also used to be your house. So we're good. Now, there's also a lot of other problems. There was just decades of mismanagement and colonialism that made a lot of the fucking population disadvantaged. So, like, you die. I've had a hell of a mountain to climb to make a functional state right from the get go.

Yeah, they're already on a mountain. So that's kind of tough. Fuck you. I wish I had. I wish I had the booze. i was honestly hoping you had it that's low hanging if you're going to create a state you do not want to be already in this position which to be fair most already are otherwise you wouldn't be in a position where you're making your own republic out of nothing but judaiv had a visionary plan that included the nationalization of all the soviet industries so it could try to lift people out of poverty and give them better opportunities, housing, healthcare, jobs, things like that.

And there was a fair amount of things that the former Soviet Union left behind they could take over and do. He also wanted to create golden currency reserves, which they had none. If you remember all the way back to our Pepsi Navy episode, they don't technically have any currency. The old Soviet currency couldn't be traded internationally, so they have to create their new one that can be traded internationally. And they also had this very good idea, like, I don't know, a humanitarian idea,

if you will, to create a water pipeline from the North Caucasus to the Middle East. Right? Like, we're back, baby. We want to be part of the Muslim community. Let's help you. We got fucking water fucking water bro all this failed spectacularly unfortunately all these things cost a vast amount of money and professionalism to do which they don't have right obviously you know unemployment got even higher and then crap output completely tanked right uh because the people who are in charge and manage these things are all gone.

It's like we talked about this in several other episodes. When you do something this drastic so quickly, you're going to have problems. Right. And not to mention the Russians got the fuck out. So you're going to have problems. I'm not saying redistribution is bad, but sometimes it can be.

Now the farming professionals are gone. The oil professionals are gone. The manufacturing and energy professionals are all gone. And there was no one to pick up the slack. Of course, this led to people immediately getting pissed at the guy in charge, Dudayev, for failing in his role as president. Opposition groups began to pop up. And now Dudayev called

all of these Moscow plants, right? Like, these are all fucking KGB ops, right? Some of them were. Some of them absolutely were. But a lot of them were not. A lot of people just really did not like the way Dudayev was handling shit. A little eight-year-old. There was a lot of Chechens that were brought in from Russia, or from the rest of Russia, I should say, to populate these opposition groups. Some of them were led by former KGB guys who were very clearly still

attached to the Moscow government. Other groups were just pissed at Dudayev because he was doing a really bad job. Unfortunately, like I pointed out, there was guns everywhere in Chechnyaya which meant that political opposition quickly just turned to armed opposition armed uprisings began to occur

and dude die have put them down quickly and horribly brutally with this new army at one point he rolled tanks against protesters in grozny oh yeah and it was not long after that that the Republic lost the ability to control anything within its own borders. High unemployment of young men who are incredibly heavily armed led to the entire area being turned into something of a smuggling heaven. It became a crossing point for the global drug trade, the weapon trade and human trafficking. crossing point for the global drug trade, the weapon trade, and human trafficking. At one point, it even became the number one producer of counterfeit money in all of the Soviet Union, which is impressive. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to be good at something. You know what? You found what you were good at, and you excelled. Well done. There's a lot of rumors that a lot of the higher echelons of the Republican government

were also involved in these smuggling routes. A lot of this is because when Russia pulled out, they effectively quarantined Chechnya. You couldn't travel over land. You had to smuggle everything in and out. There was no economic exchange. So it had to go to the black market. So you have people like Dudayev, who is the fucking president, running his own mafias and shit. His own generals and warlords are doing that as well. Everybody had their own hustle. And political opposition within Chechnya was also doing the same thing because it was the only part of the economy still functioning. Because Russia was strangling them back into compliance. Like, oh, you want to shoot at us and say you're independent? Let's see how good you do if you have no fucking oil food or water bitch oh you know yeah it's fucked up it's actually effectively what israel's doing

the palestine uh you know with blockades and overland checkpoints like they were going to strangle you into listening to us it's a carrot and the stick except the stick is horrible war crimes and crimes against humanity and apartheid now this spread of criminal influence within that kind of sort of independent but not really republic led people within the new russian government to finally want to bring the hammer down on them they're like look if we don't crush this in the womb in chechnya we're gonna have crimes all over russia despite the fact they totally did and a lot of it had nothing to do with Chechnya. You see these fires? You want them bigger?

There was a whole lot of very open mafia shit going on at the time. And not have a head to Chechnya. But they're like, look, this is Chechnya's fault. And it made them look bad, right? A few of the other areas around Chechnya decided to rustle and ask for independence, like Tatarstan. I think they kidnapped some foreigners at one point and ransomed them off for money. It's making Russia look bad, which is

easy to do at this point. By 1994, so it's been years at this point. Remember, the Russians fully pulled out of Chechnya in June of 1992. Moscow had stopped thinking there was any diplomatic way out of the situation. They would have to

resort to force, but they didn't want to invade. Instead, they began flooding Chechnya with even more weapons targeted towards Dudayev's political opponents in hope that this whole problem would just work itself out. Jesus. Honestly, a lot of this was bad planning because

Yeltsin's Russia, but look, someone will just shoot Dudayev. There'll be a power vacuum. We can come back in. We just can't negotiate Dudayev. But there's not many situations that are already awash in guns and civil warfare that you can make better with more guns, it turns out. And even this is kind of dumb from a Russian standpoint. A lot of these opposition groups were still independence oriented.

They just didn't like Dudayev. If you get winged by one of the other groups, cool, we're in the same boat. I just think it's funny that they're like, you know what? We'll fuss all of this. More guns. Yeah. I mean, we do the same thing virtually. Though, not

within our own borders that much anymore. Same. Low-hanging fruit, glass houses and all that. We both suck. Now, Udayev managed to stay in power, so the Russians said fuck it and decided to get involved directly in November of 1994.

They formed a fake opposition group led by a Chechen who used to be an officer in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. They paid hundreds of people to join them and train them over the border in Oshetia. When a few hundred people weren't enough, they decided to add in a couple dozen Russian mercenaries, but also regular Russian soldiers who were conscripts from the Moscow military district. Okay.

They were given forged paperwork and told to change their uniforms slightly. What the fuck? How? None of these guys can even locate Chechnya on a mat. Just to be safe, they also included several dozen helicopters and jets that they simply painted over their insignia. Because who else would they possibly fucking belong to?

Well, it's like if you look back during the Bay of Pigs invasion, where we just force-fed a whole bunch of Cubans into the arms of Castro and lied to them. We said that we would support them with bombers. They'd be CIA bombers, right? So they'd be like, they'd have no insignia on them. Like, oh, really?

Who else would be flying B-52 bombers in this area of the woods, you fucking idiots? It's just a B-52 with the fucking fake glasses, fake nose. A B-52 wearing a fake mustache? Yeah. We're from the jamaican air force so by october this group is confident they can storm the capital of grozny topple dudayev who at this point was now ruling chechnya as a dictator through direct presidential rule through edict so like he just like he dissolved the parliament at one point his parliament said that maybe he shouldn't be in power so he got rid of them all which is totally how democracies work russia thought that the chechens would be unorganized and unable to put up a cohesive defense in the capital

and they may have been right but they happened to uh time it very very badly to say the least chechen and russian forces crossed the border and immediately began getting hammered in a rolling ambush that took them all the way to the gates of the city and then into the center. And that is where they found it being defended by the battle-hardened Chechen warlord and notorious dickhead terrorist, Shamil Basayev.

Basayev had just brought his militia home to Chechnya after fighting the first Abkhazia War in the Republic of Georgia. He had also fought Armenia for Azerbaijan and fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets under the pay of the Pakistani ISI. This guy just doesn't die? Well, he eventually does,

but not during this war, but in the early 2000s. I believe he gets killed by an IED. He is doing the world tour of war in the early 90s and late 80s. It's quite impressive. If there is a war involving a former Soviet Republic, at any point between

1989 to 2002, he is fucking there. He's all about it. He's a fucking monster. A lot of these are rumors, mind you. He was rumored to drink the blood of dead Georgians during the Abkhazia War, and he invented a method of these are rumors, mind you. Like he was rumored to drink the blood of dead Georgians during the Abkhazia war.

And he invented a method of execution called the Chechen necktie, where he'd slice somebody's throat and pull the tongue through it, which is also known as a Colombian necktie. So he's derivative, but you know, whatever the thoughts there. Not original, I guess.

No, no. He's more of a remix guy. Another one. I mean, when you just change up the name i mean it's still the same i can't guarantee that basayev knew anything about colombia who fucking knows the attackers were slaughtered in the fucking streets the chechens learned that the center of grozny it turns out was very defendable from armored vehicles and they learned how to do it

keep this in the back of your mind for later episodes. Most of the vehicles, which were just slightly painted over Russian tanks, were captured or burned as the attackers began to surrender. Now, unfortunately for everyone not a Russian soldier, this meant a very quick execution out back. If they found someone to be Chechen

and fighting against Udayev, Udayev's dudes just took you out back and shot you. But the soldiers were a PR coup. This is because the Russian government decided that they were going to do the, we have no idea what you're talking about. We had nothing to do with this game. So the Chechens

just marched the soldiers down the fucking center street of Grozny. Like, look at all these Russians! Where did they come from? They don't speak Chechen. They don't even know where they are they don't know what city they're in and not to mention a lot of them like yay we're from Moscow they just caged it up

right there at this point Russia was out of any other ideas other than outright military invasion of the Chechen Republic of Ichkera Yeltsin ordered Dudayev to disband his army lay down his weapons, and release all POWs in 48

hours, probably to make him look a little better for that whole last fuck up. Oh, so they are your guys. Or face an invasion. Dudayev refused. And that is what we will pick up next week. How are you feeling about Chechnya, Nick? I'm feeling it's going to get worse

as we go. We'll see how it goes. I can promise you that. The first half was pretty gnarly, but we'll see how it goes. I think it's a personal record for the most genocides referenced in a single episode. Oh, yeah. I've noticed. I've definitely noticed.

People have asked if I'm ever going to do episodes about stuff like that. Maybe at a later date, I'll focus more on the Circassian genocide and things like that. But I had no idea personally about a lot of this stuff. So I was like, okay, a lot of this makes sense. I'd also fight the Russians. It's not often that a single person is genocided, not once,

but twice by the same government. So it's like, yeah, I'd shoot you. Yeah, I get it. I mean, it's understandable. I feel like it's a natural response to get you yeah i get it i mean it's understandable yeah it's i feel like it's a natural response to like get you the fuck out of my yard you know personally in the west uh we're not taught much anything about this conflict and if we are absolutely framed in the global war on terrorism mind of chechens or islamic terrorists learning that this was in

fact a nationalist independent struggle rather than like a jihad which would come up later we will talk about there's a shift that occurs and it occurs because of the Russians right you know it's always interesting learning to see where all this begins and we did the same thing during our anti-Iraq war series where you know the Iranian revolution

started out as communists and reformists and they all got the wall and their revolution was co-opted and you knowists, and they all got the wall, and their revolution was co-opted. And these guys don't exactly get the wall, but the nationalist screed will die off and be replaced by something way worse, as is our trend.

Always worse. So, Nick, thank you for joining us. Everybody, thank you for listening in. As always always during the end of an episode or episode of a series we do not do a question from legion but email call email call us uh use a radio signal we do not no don't call me if you have my number please get rid of it uh contact me if you want joe's number i'll sell it. DMs, emails, load it into a cartoonishly

large rail gun and fire it across the Pacific Ocean. Your questions to the show. And we will answer them at the end of normal episodes or at the end of the series. So again, stay tuned till next week and until next time, don't do two genocides against

someone. Would you be able to end this in hard base? That's all.