User:Calthinus/History of Jews in Chechnya

The history of Jews in Chechnya remains mostly understudied and unknown, in part due to the loss of historical writings. Throughout much of history, there has been a presence of Mountain Jews (also called Juhuri) in Chechnya, part of a larger Judeo-Tat speaking population that also lives in Dagestan and Northern Azerbaijan. During the Russian Empire, Ashkenazi Jews also began to appear in the towns of Northern Chechnya, although Chechnya lies outside the Pale of Settlement, attracted by the oil trade as well as other mercantile professions. During the Russian Revolution, the Slavic population tended to side with Denikin's White Army, which had as a motto "Strike at the Jews and save Russia!" , while both the Chechens and Jews sided with the Bolsheviks in response. Relations between Jews and other groups in the area varied with the times. There is at least one Chechen teip that is held to be of Jewish origin, and in historical times Mountain Jews were integrated economically and sociologically into Chechen society. During the mass deportation of hte Chechen people under Stalin in 1944, local Jews refused orders to move into former Chechen homes, and instead those homes were occupied by various Slavic nationalities as well as Dagestani nationalities such as Laks and Caucasian Avars. In some cases, the Chechen population entrusted their properties to local Jews, and they were returned after the Chechens returned from Central Asia. This fact was remembered by the Chechen population, and in the ethnic tensions that followed the return of hte Chechen populace, the Chechens did not view the Jewish population as an occupying group (unlike the Slavic population), allowing the Jews to maintain a policy of neutrality in the ethnic feuds that marked the latter half of the Soviet era for Chechnya. In 1962, the last remaining synagogue was confiscated by the Soviet authorities. In 1970, the Jewish population of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, which resided mostly in the areas that became Chechnya, was estimated at around 10,000. However, in more recent times, much more misfortune fell upon the Chechnyan Jewish population, as two brutal wars that hit Jewish inhabited areas particularly hard caused the decimation of the Jewish community and its emigration to Israel, leading some to proclaim the end of Jewish history in Chechnya.