Discover Grozny with the Presidential Library

The capital city of Chechnya, Grozny, will turn 200 in 2018. On the City Day, which is celebrated on October 5, concerts and other cultural events will take place at several venues. Ahead of the holiday the Presidential Library is presenting a large thematic collection “Chechnya on the Map of the North Caucasus”. It consists of studies, essays, archival papers, visual materials and audio recordings, which spotlight both - Grozny and the republic as a whole.

“Peoples of Russia. The Chechens. The Lapps” publication (1880) reads that the Chechens called themselves “Nakhtche” (or “Nokhchiy”), that is, the people, and this name “refers equally to all tribes and generations that speak the Chechen language and its dialects”.

The book “Chechnya and the Chechens” by Adolf Berge, the Head of the Caucasian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1859, features several versions of the origin of “Chechen” word. “It is more likely that the word “Chechens” came from the name of the Bolshoy Chechen-Aul (Big Chechen village), located on the bank of the Argun River”.

As part of “The Chechens. History” and “The Chechens. National Character and Traditions” radio recordings (“Our Geography” series) historian Sergei Tsvetkov and traveler Mikhail Kozhukhov present a lot of interesting facts about the Chechen people. “The ancestors of the Chechens lived on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains from time immemorial. But they were first mentioned in Armenian and Georgian sources, which date from the 7th century.

Adolf Berge pointed out that the first recorded mention of the Chechens on the pages of our national history was found in 1708.

Almost the most part of the 19th century was marked by the Caucasian War. The foundation of Grozny, or rather, Groznaya fortress in 1818, goes back to those hard times. M. Kozhukhov and S. Tsvetkov spotlight this in “Grozny” radio broadcast, which is available on the portal of the Presidential Library.

The large-scale production of oil in Chechnya began in 1893. At the turn of the 19th – 20th cc., Grozny was a provincial center with a population of 25,000 people.

More details about the presence of local oil deposits, which brought fame to the republic, can be found in N. Ya. Dinnik’s “Across Chechnya and Dagestan” (1905).

 “The climate of Chechnya can be compared with the climate of Central Russia. It is sometimes boiling hot in June, July and August, the nights are generally cool. The transition from heat to cold is noticeable, particularly in spring and autumn. It is usually foggy in October, November, February and March,” Adolf Berge’s book “Chechnya and the Chechens” reads in part.

There is a variety of archival papers from the Presidential Library’s collections, which cast light on the everyday life in Grozny, which became a town in 1869, as well as on Chechnya. One of them is “The Description of Vedensky and Groznensky Districts of Terek Region (Oblast)” (1859). More than a century ago (1907) an administrative center was moved from Kizlyar to Grozny. The railway reached the town in 1893.

“After the revolution, the town became the capital of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic,” M. Kozhukhov and S. Tsvetkov narrate in the  radio recording (2015). - In 1944, when Chechens and Ingush were subjected to deportation, the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was dissolved, and Grozny became the center of Groznensky District within Stavropol Territory. When the Chechens and Ingush were rehabilitated in 1957, the city regained its status as a capital. In the 1960s–1970s Grozny became the most beautiful city in the North Caucasus. There were several theater companies, a philharmonic society, a university, a petroleum institute, which was famous countrywide. People of various nationalities lived in unanimity. However the proclamation of sovereign Ichkeria with its capital in Grozny became the first step towards the tragedy of the Russian and Chechen peoples. The next three years, as a result of ethnic pressure and gang attacks, thousands of families were forced to leave Grozny, which was destroyed. However, a large-scale restoration work has been recently carried out there. And the officials promise that new Grozny will be as good as the old city. ”

In 2018, the year of its bicentenary, the capital of Chechnya is one of the most beautiful cities in the south of Russia.

Landscapes of Chechnya and the North Caucasus are also available in the collections of the Presidential Library.

An individual section consists of modern dissertations, which highlight the history, politics, culture and economy of Chechnya.

The basic law of Chechnya, adopted at a referendum on March 23, 2003, is available for study on the portal of the Presidential Library - “The Constitution of the Chechen Republic”.