Dzhokhar Dudaev
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| Order: | 1st President |
| Took Office: | November 9, 1991 |
| Left Office: | April 21, 1996 |
| Predecessor: | None, Inaugural |
| Successor: | Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev |
| Date of Birth: | April 15, 1944 |
| Place of Birth: | Yalkhori, Soviet Union |
| Date of Death: | April 21, 1996 |
| Place of Death: | Gekhi Chu, Chechnya |
| Political party: | All-National Congress of the Chechen People |
Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev (Chechen Latin: Dzoxar Dudayev; Cyrillic: Джоха́р Муса́евич Дуда́ев, 15 April 1944 – 21 April 1996) was a Soviet Air Force general and a Chechen leader, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, an unrecognized breakaway state in the North Caucasus.
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[edit] Early life
Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev was born in February 1944, during the enforced deportation of his family (together with the entire Chechen, Ingush, Balkar, Kalmyk, Crimean Tatar and other smaller nations, on the orders of Joseph Stalin) from their native village of Yalkhoroi in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Region. He spent the first 13 years of his life in Kazakhstan. Following the 1957 repatriation of the Chechens and Ingush, he studied at evening school in Checheno-Ingushetia and qualified as an electrician. He entered flying school and graduated from the Tambov Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots in 1966. It is alleged he officially misrepresented his ethnicity as Ossetian in order to sidestep discrimination against the Chechen people. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1968.
Dudayev served in a heavy bomber unit of the Soviet Air Force in Siberia and Ukraine. He studied at the Gagarin Air Force Academy (1971-74) and rose steadily in the Air Force, assuming command of the strategic air base at Tartu, Estonia, in 1987 with the rank of Major-General. Dudayev learned Estonian and showed great tolerance for Estonian nationalism when he ignored Soviet orders to shut down the Estonian television and parliament. A large room in the Barclay Hotel in Tartu, once used as Dudayev's office, is now called the "Dudayev Suite" in his honour. In 1990 his division was withdrawn from Estonia and he resigned from the Soviet military and in May 1990 returned to Grozny, the Chechen capital, to devote himself to local politics.
[edit] President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
In November 1990 he was elected head of the Executive Committee of the unofficial opposition All-National Congress of the Chechen People, which advocated sovereignity for Chechnya as a separate republic within the Soviet Union.
When the Communist leadership of Doku Zavgayev in the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic publicly expressed his support for the Moscow putsch in August 1991, his days were numbered. Following the failure of the putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, 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 September 6, 1991, militants of the All-National Congress of Chechen People (NCChP), headed by Dudayev, stormed a session of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR Supreme Soviet, killing the Soviet Communist Party chief for Grozny, Vitali Kutsenko, severely injuring several other Soviet members, and effectively dissolving the government of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR. Zavgayev, the Chairman of the Soviet, was not present and was able to flee to Russia.
After a referendum in October 1991 confirmed Dudayev in his new position as president of "Ichkeria", he unilaterally declared the republic's sovereignty and its secession from Russia. In November 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin dispatched troops to Grozny, but they were withdrawn when Dudayev's forces prevented them from leaving the airport. Russia refused to recognize the republic's independence, but hesitated to use further force against the secessionists. From this point the "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" had become a defacto independent state.
[edit] Independence
Initially Dudayev's government held diplomatic relations with Georgia where he received much moral support from the first Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. When Gamsakhurdia was overthrown in late 1991, he was given asylum in Ichkeria and attended Dudayev's inauguration as President. While he resided in Grozny he also helped organised the first "All-Caucasian Conference" which was attended by independentist groups from across the region. Other than Georgia during 1991, Ichkeria never received diplomatic recognition from any other internationally recognised state.
The entity formerly known as the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic split in two in June 1992. After Chechnya had announced its initial declaration of sovereignty in 1991 its neighbouring entity Ingushetia opted to join the Russian Federation. The remaining rump state of Ichkeria declared full independence in 1993. Same year the Russian language stopped being taught in Chechen schools and it was also announced that the Chechen language would start to be written using the Latin alphabet (with some additional special Chechen characters) rather than the Cyrillic alphabet that had been imposed on the Chechen people during the 1930s. The state also began to print its own money and stamps.
Dudayev's aggressively nationalistic, anti-Russian policies soon began to undermine Chechnya's economy and, Russian observers claimed, transformed the region into a gangsters' paradise. In 1993 the Chechen parliament attempted to organize a referendum on public confidence in Dudayev on the grounds that he had failed to consolidate Chechnya's independence. He retaliated by dissolving parliament and other organs of power. Beginning in early summer 1994, armed Chechen opposition groups with Russian military and financial backing tried repeatedly, but without success, to depose Dudayev by force.
[edit] War with Russia
On December 1, 1994 the Russians began bombing Grozny airport and destroyed the Chechen Airforce (former Soviet training aircraft requisitioned by the republic in 1991). In response Ichkeria declared war on Russia and mobilised its armed forces. On December 11, five days after Dudayev and Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev of Russia had agreed to avoid the further use of force, Russian troops invaded Chechnya from three different directions.
Before the fall of Grozny, Dudayev moved south with his forces and continued leading the war throughout 1995 from a missile silo close to the historic Chechen capital of Vedeno. He continued to insist that his forces would prevail after the "conventional" warfare had finished. Chechen guerilla fighters continued to operate across the entire country picking off Russian units and demoralising their soldiers. A Jihad was declared on Russia by the Mufti of Ichkeria, Akhmad Kadyrov, and foreign fighters began pouring into the republic from neighbouring North Caucasian Muslim republics, such as Dagestan, Abkhazia and Ingushetia, and from further afield.
[edit] Assassination
President Dudayev was killed on April 21, 1996 by two laser-guided missiles when he was using a satellite phone, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call. Despite America's ban on assassinations, it is suspected the NSA was involved in the assassination by providing one of their SIGINT satellites to assist in the triangulation.[1] At the time Dudayev was reportedly talking to a liberal deputy of the Duma in Moscow. Additional aircraft were dispatched (an Su-24MR and an Su-25) to locate Dudayev and fire a guided missile. Exact details of this operation were never released by the Russian government. However, it is known that Russian reconnaissance planes in the area had been monitoring satellite communications for quite some time, trying to match Dudayev's voice signature to existing samples of his speech. It was a grave mistake on Dudayev's part to use a satellite phone, especially with his experience as a Soviet Air Force general.
He was succeeded by Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev (as acting President) and then, after new elections, by Aslan Maskhadov.
[edit] Places named in honor of Dudayev
- After his death, various locations in Turkey were renamed after him, such as Cevher Dudayev Meydanı (Dzhokhar Dudaev Square) in Ankara. [citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
| Preceded by: Declaration of Republic |
President of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria 1991–1996 |
Succeeded by: Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev |
