chechen who are the chechen ? johanna nichols university of california , berkeley author 's note : i have been doing linguistic field work on chechen and its close relative ingush for many years . though i am not an ethnographer or historian , i have tried to bring together here some general information about the chechen people and their language in order to increase public awareness of the people and their situation , and to put a human face on a people of great dignity , refinement , and courage who have paid heavily for their resistance to conquest and assimilation . this paper may be copied freely . if you disseminate it electronically or print it out yourself ( which you are welcome to do ) , reformatting ( font , spacing , etc . ) is ok but please do not edit it . johanna @ uclink . berkeley . edu fax : 510 642-6220 phone ( 510 ) 642-2979 introduction . the chechens and their western neighbors the ingush are distinct ethnic groups with distinct languages , but so closely related and so similar that it is convenient to describe them together . the term " chechen " is a russian ethnonym taken from the name of a lowlands chechen village ; " chechnya " is derived from that . ( both words are accented on the last syllable in russian . ) this term evidently entered russian from a turkic language , probably kumyk ( spoken in the northern and eastern caucasian plain ) . the chechens call themselves nokhchi ( singular nokhchuo ) . similarly , " ingush " is not the self-designation but a russian ethnonym based on a village name ; the ingush call themselves ghalghay . demography . 1989 census figures : 956 , 879 chechen ; 237 , 438 ingush . the chechens are the largest north caucasian group and the second largest caucasian group ( after the georgians ) . location , settlement . the chechen and ingush lands lie just to the east of the principal road crossing the central caucasus ( via the darial pass ) , extending from the foothills and plains into alpine highlands . the lowlands enjoy fertile soil , ample rainfall , a long growing season , and a small oilfield . neighbors to the east are the various peoples of daghestan ( many of them speaking languages related to chechen ) ; in the plains to the north , the turkic - speaking kumyk and ( as of the last three centuries ) russians ; to the west the ingush and to their west the ossetians , who speak a language of the iranian branch of indo - european ; to the south ( across the central caucasus range ) the southern ossetians and the georgians . there are two true cities in chechen and ingush territory : grozny ( pop . about 400 , 000 until 1995 ) , the modern chechen capital founded as a russian fort during the russian conquest of the caucasus ; and vladikavkaz ( pop . about 300 , 000 ; known as ordzhonikidze in soviet times ) in the ingush highlands at the ingush - ossetic territorial boundary , also originally a russian military fort and founded to control the darial pass . nazran in the ingush lowlands was traditionally and is now a large and important market town . the cities had substantial russian and other non - chechen - ingush population ; vladikavkaz was mixed ingush and ossetic with significant numbers of russians and georgians . ( groznyj has now been destroyed and mostly depopulated by russian bombing . vladikavkaz and the adjacent ingush lands were ethnically cleansed of ingush in late 1992 . ) all russian governments - - czars , soviets , post - soviet russia - - have used various means to remove chechen and ingush population from economically important areas and to encourage settlement there by russians and russian cossacks ; hence the mixed population of the cities and lowlands . language . the caucasus has been famed since antiquity for the sheer number and diversity of its languages and for the exotic grammatical structures of the language families indigenous there . this diversity testifies to millennia of generally peaceable relations among autonomous ethnic groups . chechen and ingush , together with batsbi or tsova - tush ( a moribund minority language of georgia ) make up the nakh branch of the nakh - daghestanian , or northeast caucasian , language family . there are over 30 languages in the northeast caucasian family , most of them spoken in daghestan just to the east of chechnya . the split of the nakh branch from the rest of the family took place about 5000-6000 years ago ( thus the nakh - daghestanian family is comparable in age to indo - european , the language family ancestral to english , french , russian , greek , hindi , etc . ) , though the split of chechen from ingush probably dates back only to the middle ages . the entire family is indigenous to the caucasus mountains and has no demonstrable relations to any language group either in or out of the caucasus . like most indigenous caucasian languages chechen has a wealth of consonants , including uvular and pharyngeal sounds like those of arabic and glottalized or ejective consonants like those of many native american languages ; and a large vowel system somewhat resembling that of swedish or german . like its sister languages chechen has extensive inflectional morphology including a dozen nominal cases and several gender classes , and forms long and complex sentences by chaining participial clauses together . the case system is ergative , i . e . the subject of a transitive verb appears in an oblique case and the direct object is in the nominative , as is the subject of an intransitive verb ( as in basque ) ; verbs take no person agreement , but some of them agree in gender with the direct object or intransitive subject . 97 % or more of the chechens claim chechen as their first language , though most also speak russian , generally quite fluently . chechen and ingush are so close to each other that with some practice a speaker of one has fair comprehension of the other , and where the two languages are in contact they are used together : a chechen addresses an ingush in chechen , the ingush replies in ingush , and communication proceeds more or less smoothly . chechen was not traditionally a written language . an orthography using the russian alphabet was created in the 1930 's and is used for various kinds of publication , although for most chechens the chief vehicle of literacy is russian . traditionally , as in most north caucasian societies , many individuals were bilingual or multilingual , using an important lowlands language ( e . g . kumyk , spoken in market towns and prestigious as its speakers were early converts to islam ) for inter-ethnic communication ; any literacy was in arabic . russian has now displaced both kumyk and arabic in these functions . particularly if the chechen and ingush economies continue to be destroyed and unemployment and mass homelessness continue to undermine the social structure , there is danger that chechen and ingush will be functionally reduced to household languages and will then yield completely to russian , with concomitant loss of much of the cultural heritage . history . the chechens have evidently been in or near their present territory for some 6000 years and perhaps much longer ; there is fairly seamless archeological continuity for the last 8000 years or more in central daghestan , suggesting that the nakh - daghestanian language family is long indigenous . the caucasian highlands were apparently relatively populous and prosperous in ancient times . from the late middle ages until the 19th century , a worldwide cooling phase known as the little ice age caused glacial advances and shortened growing seasons in the alpine highlands , weakening the highland economies and triggering migrations to the lowlands and abandonment of some alpine villages . this period of economic hardship coincided with the russian conquest of the caucasus which lasted from the late 1500 's to the mid - 1800 's . in all of recorded history and inferable prehistory the chechens ( and for that matter the ingush ) have never undertaken battle except in defense . the russian conquest of the caucasus was difficult and bloody , and the chechens and ingush with their extensive lowlands territory and access to the central pass were prime targets and were among the most tenacious defenders . russia destroyed lowlands villages and deported , exiled , or slaughtered civilian population , forcing capitulation of the highlands . numerous refugees migrated or were deported to various muslim countries of the middle east , and to this day there are chechen populations in jordan and turkey . since then there have been various chechen rebellions against russian and soviet power , as well as resistance to collectivization , anti-religious campaigns , and russification . in 1944 the chechens and ingush , together with the karachay - balkar , crimean tatars , and other nationalities were deported en masse to kazakhstan and siberia , losing at least one-quarter and perhaps half of their population in transit . though " rehabilitated " in 1956 and allowed to return in 1957 , they lost land , economic resources , and civil rights ; since then , under both soviet and post - soviet governments , they have been the objects of ( official and unofficial ) discrimination and discriminatory public discourse . in recent years , russian media have depicted the chechen nation and / or nationality as thugs and bandits responsible for organized crime and street violence in russia . in late 1992 russian tanks and troops , sent to the north caucasus ostensibly as peacekeepers in an ethnic dispute between ingush and ossetians over traditional ingush lands politically incorporated into north ossetia after the 1944 deportation , forcibly removed the ingush population from north ossetia and destroyed the ingush villages there ; there were many deaths and there are now said to be up to 60 , 000 refugees in ingushetia ( about one-quarter of the total ingush population ) . in developments reminiscent of today 's invasion of chechnya , in the weeks leading up to the action the ingush were depicted ( inaccurately ) in regional media as heavily armed and poised for a large-scale and organized attack on ossetians , and the russian military once deployed appears to have undertaken ethnic cleansing at least partly on its own initiative . ( my only sources of information for this paragraph are russian and western news reports . helsinki watch is preparing a report for publication in early 1995 . ) the invasion of chechnya presently underway has meant great human suffering for all residents of the chechen lowlands , including russians , but only the chechens are at risk of ethnic cleansing , wholesale economic ruin , and loss of linguistic and cultural heritage . religion . the chechens and ingush are sunni muslims of the hanafi school , having converted in the late 17th to early 19th centuries . islam is now , as it has been since the conversion , moderate but strongly held and a central component of the culture and the ethnic identity . economy , customs . traditionally , the lowlands chechen were grain farmers and the highlanders raised sheep . at the time of russian contact the lowlands were wealthy and produced a grain surplus , while the highlands were not self-sufficient in food and traded wool and eggs for lowlands grain . chechen social structure and ethnic identity rest on principles of family and clan honor , respect for and deference to one 's elders , hospitality , formal and dignified relations between families and clans , and courteous and formal public and private behavior . kinship and clan structure are patriarchal , but women have full social and professional equality and prospects for financial independence equivalent to those of men . academics , writers , artists , and intellectuals in general are well versed in the cultures of both the european and the islamic worlds , and the society as a whole can be said to regard both of these heritages as their own together with the indigenous north caucasian artistic and intellectual tradition . social organization . until the russian conquest the chechens were an independent nation with their own language and territory but no formal political organization . villages were autonomous , as were clans . villages had mutual defense obligations in times of war , and clans had mutual support relations that linked them into larger clan confederations ( which generally coincided with dialects ) . each clan was headed by a respected elder . there were no social classes and no differences of rank apart from those of age , kinship , and earned social honor . select bibliography anonymous . 1992 . ethnic cleansing comes to russia . the economist , november 28 , 1992 , p . 60 . blanch , lesley . 1960 . the sabres of paradise . new york : viking . comrie , bernard . 1981 . the languages of the soviet union . cambridge : cambridge university press . conquest , robert . 1970 . the nation killers : the soviet deportation of nationalities . london : macmillan . critchlow , james . 1991 . " punished peoples " of the soviet union : the continuing legacy of stalin 's deportations . helsinki watch report . new york - washington : human rights watch . friedrich , paul , and norma diamond , eds . 1994 . encyclopedia of world cultures , vol . vi : russia and eurasia / china . boston : g . k . hall & co . gamkrelidze , t . v . , and t . e . gudava . [ various dates . ] caucasian languages . encyclopedia britannica ( e . g . in 1979 edition , macropedia , vol . 3 , pp . 1011-15 ; in 1992 edition , vol . 22 , pp . 736-40 , under ' languages of the world ' ) . nekrich , aleksandr m . 1978 . the punished peoples . new york : norton . nichols , johanna . 1994 . chechen . ingush . in rieks smeets , ed . , the indigenous languages of the caucasus , vol . 4 : northeast caucasian languages , pp . 1-77 ( chechen ) , 79-145 ( ingush ) . delmar , ny : caravan books . wixman , ronald . 1980 . language aspects of ethnic pattern and processes in the north caucasus . ( university of chicago department of geography research paper no . 191 . ) chicago : university of chicago press .