Nazran uprising

The Nazran uprising (Ingush: Наьсарен гӀовттам, romanized: Näsaren ġovttam, IPA: [ˈnɛ̯æsəɾʲeŋ ˈɣʷɔʊtːəm]; Russian: Назрановское восстание) of the Ingush people against Tsarist Russia took place during the Murid War in 1858.

In 1858, the Tsarist administration began forcibly enlarging small settlements into larger ones and banning Ingush highlanders from carrying knives. On 23 May, an attempt by the Bailiff of the Nazranian and Karabulak peoples to obtain necessary information about the number of residents in Nazranian Society, which brought unrest among the Ingush, became the final impetus for the uprising. Fearing an uprising, the bailiff requested military reinforcements at Nazran. On 24 May, Colonel Pavel Zotov [ru] arrived with Russian troops from Vladikavkaz Fortress. About 5,000 rebels unsuccessfully attempted to storm the Nazran Fortress once they had learned about the capture of deputies they had sent to Zotov. Russian troops repulsed the attackers with artillery and rifle fire. The leaders of the uprising, except Dzhogast Bekhoev, who escaped, were executed.

The Ingush sought the support of Imam Shamil, who decided to use this movement to combat the Russian offensive on Dagestan. In June 1858, he invaded Chechnya and soon arrived in Ingushetia. where the rebels welcomed him. The invasion failed due to division among the Nazranians and weak support for Shamil, who had insufficient supplies and the Nazranians did not provide him with any. Shamil retreated to Caucasian Imamate. In August, Shamil and a force of 4,000 again tried to break through to the Area of Nazran but in the Sunzha Valley, Russian forces led by Colonel Mishchenko immediately attacked Shamil's forces, which were completely destroyed, forcing Shamil retreat with a large number of casualties.

The Nazran uprising is known in Russian sources by various names, such as the "Nazran rebellion", the "Nazran outrage", the Nazran riot, the Nazran incident, and the "uprising of Ingush". The most-commonly used name is "Nazran uprising". Official documents refer to it as the "Nazran rebellion" (Назрановское возмущение).

The uprising took place toward the end of the Caucasian War, when Russia was expanding into the Caucasus. Russia had already carried out earlier military expeditions to Ingushetia, like the 1830 expedition [ru] of General Ivan Abkhazov and the 1832 expedition of Baron Georgi Rozen. Beginning in 1845, Russian authorities displaced the Ingush and built Cossack stanitsas on the site of their former villages in order to construct the Sunzha line. The Ingush had formed small villages on the plains with several families in each. In the 1850s, to make it easier to control and oversee the local population, Russian authorities planned to forcibly merge small settlements into larger ones, requiring every village to have at least 300 households.

According to reports of Russian officials, the forcible consolidation of villages, and the organized census were the reasons for the uprising. Soviet Russian historian Nikolai Pokrovsky [ru] disagreed with this version, saying the actual cause was the expropriation of Ingush lands to free up land, on which the future Cossack stanitsas could be established. The stanitsas divided Ingushetia into two parts: mountainous and plain. The uprising may also have been caused by a ban on carrying knives. According to Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Army and General Aleksandr Baryatinsky:

The main reason for the Nazran uprising was the impossibility of having proper supervision of the inhabitants during scattered settlement in separate farms, and therefore I recognized it necessary to settle them in large auls in the places we had chosen [...] At the same time, completely independently of this, the Committee established in Vladikavkaz to analyze personal and land rights of the natives demanded from the Nazran deputies information on the population. Opponents of public order took advantage of the clash of these two circumstances and angered the people.

On 23 May 1858, the final impetus for the uprising was an attempt by the bailiff of the Nazranian and Karabulak peoples to obtain information about the number of residents in Nazranian society to resolve the issue of land acquisition and merge small villages into larger ones. Few Ingush agreed to move to Russia's appointed large settlements; most were against this, the foremen told the bailiff he would not permit those who wanted to move to large villages to do so. In the evening, gangs of Ingush horsemen traveled around the surrounding villages and with gunshots called people to arms to the heights opposite Nazran Fortress. To prevent the escalation of the uprising, the bailiff asked Russian authorities to send military reinforcements to Nazran.