page_title: Chechens on the Crimean Peninsula
section_title: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Chechens on the Crimean Peninsula / History / Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: Chechen family from 1920
context_page_description: Chechens, historically also known as Kisti and Durdzuks, are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples originating in the North Caucasus region primarily in Eastern Europe, located between the Black and Caspian Seas. They refer to themselves as Nokhchiy. Chechen and Ingush peoples are collectively known as the Vainakh since the 1930s and were known as Nakhchi prior. The majority of Chechens today live in the Chechen Republic, a subdivision of the Russian Federation. Chechens are Muslims.
  The isolated terrain of the Caucasus mountains and the strategic value outsiders have placed on the areas settled by Chechens has contributed much to the Chechen community ethos and helped shape its fiercely independent national character. Chechen society has traditionally been egalitarian and organized around many autonomous local clans, called teips.
context_section_description: Since then, there have been various Chechen rebellions against Russian/Soviet power in 1865-66, 1877, during the Russian Civil War and World War II, as well as nonviolent resistance to Russification and the Soviet Union's collectivization and anti-religion campaigns. In 1944, all Chechens, together with several other peoples of the Caucasus, were ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to be ruthlessly deported en masse to the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs; and their republic and nation were abolished. At least one-quarter—and perhaps half—of the entire Chechen population perished in the process, and a severe blow was made to their culture and historical records. Though "rehabilitated" in 1956 and allowed to return the next year, the survivors lost economic resources and civil rights and, under both Soviet and post-Soviet governments, they have been the objects of both official and unofficial discrimination and discriminatory public discourse. Chechen attempts to regain independence in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to the first and the second war with the new Russian state, starting in 1994.
caption: Chechen family from 1920
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