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. 

Lguagane. 

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.