The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later, sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.
During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Chechnya came under the control of a secessionist regime led by Dzhokhar Dudayev. Russian president Boris Yeltsin supported anti-Dudayev militias until 1994, when he launched a military operation to "establish constitutional order in Chechnya". Thousands of Chechen civilians were killed in aerial bombings and urban warfare before Grozny was captured in March 1995, but a Russian victory was denied as efforts to establish control over the remaining lowlands and mountainous regions of Chechnya were met with fierce resistance and frequent surprise raids by Chechen guerrillas. Despite the killing of Dudayev in a Russian airstrike in April 1996, the recapture of Grozny by separatists in August brought about the Khasavyurt Accord which ceased hostilities, and then the Russia–Chechnya Peace Treaty in 1997.
The official Russian estimate of Russian military deaths was 5,500, though independent estimates range from 5,000 to as high as 14,000. According to Aslan Maskhadov, approximately 2,800 Chechen fighters were killed, while independent sources estimate the number to be between 3,000 and 10,000. On the other hand, according to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, by the end of 1995 alone, the losses of the Chechen militants amounted to some 10,000 to 15,000 killed. The number of Chechen civilian deaths was between 30,000 and 100,000. Over 200,000 Chechen civilians may have been injured, more than 500,000 people were displaced, and cities and towns were reduced to rubble across Chechnya.
Chechen independence struggles from the 18th to early 20th century
Chechen resistance against Russian imperialism has occurred as early as 1785, during the rule of Sheikh Mansur, the first imam of the Caucasian peoples. Uniting various North-Caucausian nations under his command, Sheikh Mansur sought to repel the Russian invasion and expansion into the region.
Despite intense resistance during the 1817–1864 Caucasian War, Imperial Russian forces defeated the Chechens, annexed their lands, and deported thousands to the Middle East throughout the latter half of the 19th century.
Following the Russian Revolution and collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Chechen efforts to assert independence failed, and by 1922 Chechnya had been incorporated into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) – the largest member state of the newly-formed Soviet Union (USSR). In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin established the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, within the RSFSR.
Chechen insurrection of 1940–1944 and post-WWII ethnic cleansing
In 1944, on the orders of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, more than 500,000 Chechens, Ingush and several other North Caucasian peoples were ethnically cleansed and deported to Siberia and Central Asia. The official pretext was punishment for collaboration with invading German forces during the 1940–1944 insurgency in Chechnya, despite the fact that many Chechens and Ingush were loyal to the Soviet government and fought against the Nazis, some even receiving the highest military awards in the Soviet Union (such as Khanpasha Nuradilov and Movlid Visaitov). In March 1944, the Soviet authorities abolished the Checheno-Ingush Republic. Eventually, Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev granted the Chechen and Ingush peoples permission to return to their homeland and he restored their republic in 1957.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation treaty
Russia became an independent state after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The Russian Federation was widely accepted as the successor state to the Soviet Union, but it lost a significant amount of its military and economic power. Ethnic Russians made up more than 80% of the population of the RSFSR, but significant ethnic and religious differences posed a threat of political disintegration in some regions. During the Soviet period, some of Russia's approximately 100 ethnic groups were granted ethnic enclaves that had various formal federal rights attached. Relations of these entities with the federal government and demands for autonomy erupted into a major political issue in the early 1990s. Boris Yeltsin incorporated these demands into his 1990 election campaign by claiming that their resolution was a high priority of his.
There was an urgent need for a law to clearly define the powers of each federal subject. Such a law was passed on 31 March 1992, when Yeltsin and Ruslan Khasbulatov, then chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet and an ethnic Chechen himself, signed the Federation Treaty bilaterally with 86 out of 88 federal subjects. In almost all cases, demands for greater autonomy or independence were satisfied by concessions of regional autonomy and tax privileges. The treaty outlined three basic types of federal subjects and the powers that were reserved for the local and federal governments. The only federal subjects that did not sign the treaty were Chechnya and Tatarstan. Eventually, in early 1994, Yeltsin signed a special political accord with Mintimer Shaimiev, the president of Tatarstan, granting many of Tatarstan's demands for greater autonomy within Russia. Thus, Chechnya remained the only federal subject that did not sign the treaty. Neither Yeltsin nor the Chechen government attempted any serious negotiations, and the situation deteriorated into a full-scale war.
Chechen declaration of independence
Meanwhile, on 6 September 1991, militants of the All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP) political party, created by the former Soviet Air Force general Dzhokhar Dudayev, stormed a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, with the aim of asserting Chechen independence. The storming caused the death of the head of the Grozny branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vitaliy Kutsenko, who was defenestrated or fell while trying to escape. This effectively dissolved the government of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR.
Elections for the president and parliament of Chechnya were held on 27 October 1991. The day before, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union published a notice in the local Chechen press that the elections were illegal. With a turnout of 72%, 90.1% voted for Dudayev. Dudayev won overwhelming popular support to oust the interim administration supported by the central government. He became president and declared independence from the Soviet Union.
In November 1991, Yeltsin dispatched interior ministry troops to Grozny, but they were forced to withdraw when Dudayev's forces surrounded them at the airport. After Chechnya made its initial declaration of sovereignty, the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Republic split in two in June 1992 amidst the armed conflict between the Ingush and Ossetians. The newly created Republic of Ingushetia then joined the Russian Federation, while Chechnya declared full independence from Moscow in 1993 as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI).
Internal conflict in Chechnya and Grozny–Moscow tensions
The economy of Chechnya collapsed as Dudayev severed economic links with Russia while black market trading, arms trafficking and counterfeiting grew. Violence and social disruption increased and the marginal social groups, such as unemployed young men from the countryside, became armed. Ethnic Russians and other non-Chechens faced constant harassment as they fell outside the vendetta system which protected the Chechens to a certain extent. From 1991 to 1994, tens of thousands of people of non-Chechen ethnicity left the republic.