Dzhokhar Dudayev

Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev (15 February 1944 – 21 April 1996) was a Chechen politician, statesman and military leader of the 1990s Chechen Independence movement from Russia.

Dzhokhar and his family, along with the entire Chechen nation, had been deported to Siberia in 1944 by the Soviet regime in a case of genocide as part of a Soviet ethnic cleansing program that affected several million members of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s.

His family was allowed to return to his native Chechnya in 1956, after Stalin’s death.

His family was only able to return to Chechnya in 1957.

Following the 1957 repatriation of the Chechens, he studied at evening school in Checheno-Ingushetia and qualified as an electrician.

From 1962 he served in the Soviet Air Force, reaching the rank of Major General.

He commanded strategic nuclear bomber aircraft divisions located in Poltava and Tartu.

For his merits, he was awarded several state orders of the USSR, most notably the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star.

In 1962, after two years studying electronics in Vladikavkaz, he entered the Tambov Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots from which he graduated in 1966.

In 1962, Dudayev began serving in the Soviet Air Force where he rose to the rank of Major-General, becoming its first Chechen general.

Dudayev served in a strategic bombing unit of the Soviet Air Force in Siberia and Ukraine.

He allegedly participated in the Soviet–Afghan War against the Mujahideen, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Red Banner.

Dudayev joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1968 and from 1971 to 1974 studied at the prestigious Gagarin Air Force Academy.

He married Alla, a Russian poet and the daughter of a Soviet officer, with whom he had three children (a daughter and two sons).

Reportedly from 1986 to 1987, Dudayev had participated in bombing raids in western Afghanistan.

Dudayev had stated he was personally a "dedicated Muslim."

Though he politically stressed chechen nationalism and secularism instead of Sharia-law (which opposition factions supported) as president.

Many of his military and political opponents who questioned his Muslim faith often made reference to his actions against the Mujahideen forces.

For example, Sergei Stepashin asserted Dudayev participated in carpet bombing (a statement probably motivated by spite).

These allegations were denied by Dudayev himself.

Dudayev rose steadily in the Air Force, assuming command of the 326th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division of the Soviet Long Range Aviation at Tartu, Estonia, in 1987 gaining the rank of Major-General.

From 1987 through March 1990, he commanded nuclear-armed long-range strategic bombers during his post there.

He was also commander of the garrison of Tartu.

He learned Estonian and showed great tolerance for restoration of Estonian independence when in autumn 1990 he ignored the orders (as commander of the garrison of Tartu) to shut down the Estonian television and parliament.

In 1990, his air division was withdrawn from Estonia and Dudayev resigned from the Soviet military.

In May 1990, Dudayev returned to Grozny, the Chechen capital, to devote himself to local politics.

He was elected head of the Executive Committee of the unofficial opposition All-National Congress of the Chechen People (NCChP), which advocated sovereignty for Chechnya as a separate republic of the Soviet Union (the Chechen-Ingush ASSR had the status of an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic).

He served as the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from 1991 until his assassination in 1996.

Previously he had been a Major General of Aviation in the Soviet Armed Forces.

In 1991, Dudayev refused orders from Moscow to suppress Estonia's drive for independence and subsequently resigned from the Soviet Armed Forces before returning to Chechnya.

A number of streets, squares and alleys in various countries are named after him, such as in Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Dudayev was born in Yalkhoroy from the Tsechoy teip in the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), just a few days before the forced deportation of his family together with the entire Chechen population on the orders of Joseph Stalin.

He was the thirteenth youngest child of veterinarian Musa and Rabiat Dudayev.

He spent the first 13 years of his life in internal exile in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

In August 1991, Doku Zavgayev, the Communist leader of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, did not publicly condemn the August 1991 attempted coup d'état against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Following the failure of the putsch, the Soviet Union began to disintegrate rapidly as the constituent republics took moves to leave the beleaguered Soviet Union.

Taking advantage of the Soviet Union's implosion, Dudayev and his supporters acted against the Zavgayev administration.

On 6 September 1991, the militants of the NCChP violently (the Grozny Communist party leader was killed and several other members were wounded) invaded a session of the local Supreme Soviet, effectively dissolving the government of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

Grozny television station and other key government buildings were also taken over.

Dudayev and his supporters stated that the revolution had occurred and that the revolutionary committee would assume all power before the snap presidential elections.