What is the basis of the problems that Russia is having in Chechnya and Ingushetia?

In past generations these were independent peoples who were conquered by the Russian Empires. They wish to be like everyone else and have their independence and enjoy a homeland of their own....like it used to be long ago. Some don't like to see the truth so I expect to get a lot of "thumbs down" on this answer! Thats okay--integrity and honesty are more important than popularity. :-)

Imperial Russia conquered the Caucasus region in the 17th century as a buffer against the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, but the Muslim inhabitants did not appreciate the oppression. For their part, the Tsarist soldiers treated the inhabitants as backwards and barbarians, and there were huge massacres on both sides. During the Second World War Stalin accused the Chechens and Ingush of collaborating with the Nazis, and in May 1944 he ordered both ethnic groups to be deported en masse to Central Asia as collective punishment. 60% of those that were loaded on freight cars died on the trip. From 1944 to 1953 the Chechens and Ingush lived in bitter conditions in exile in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. During de-Stalinization under Khrushchev, these ethnic groups were allowed to return to their homelands. When they did return to their homelands, many of them found that their homes had been taken over by new Russian settlers. The Chechens mostly got their land back (of course, Chechnya was still a part of the Soviet Union), but for the Ingush, part of their population didn't get their homes back. There's a small sliver of land called the Prigorodny District, and another ethnic group called the Ossetians had settled there. In fact, by then the Soviet authorities had sliced away Prigodorny from the Ingush homeland (called Ingushetia) and tacked it onto the Ossetian homeland (called North Ossetia-Alania). This led to lingering hostility between the Muslim Ingush and the Orthodox Christian Ossetians. During the whole remainder of the Soviet period, there was peace and stability, but it came at a high cost. Ethnic cultures, including those of the Chechens and Ingush, were suppressed - I actually know a woman, Albina Digaeva, who lived throughout the 1970s and 80s in Soviet Chechnya, and she recalled that they weren't allowed to speak Chechen in public, and it was seen as a "dog's language". Also, the Deportations of 1944 were strictly taboo, although in many cases it was the "Caucasian Holocaust". When Communism fell in Russia in the early 1990s, many parts of the Soviet Union, from Kazakhstan to Ukraine and Georgia, declared independence and became nations themselves. Since Chechnya was a part of Soviet Russia, and not a separate Soviet nation, it technically wasn't allowed to secede, but the Chechen people had had enough. They were tired of cultural and national repression, and declared independence, which they had for two years. Russian President Boris Yeltsin said that Chechen declaration of independence was illegal and invaded Chechnya in 1994. The Ingush people also debated whether or not to declare independence. In 1992, North Ossetia and Ingushetia went to war with each other over that Prigorodny District, but the Kremlin sent heavy arms to the Ossetians and within weeks the Ossetians won the war. Ingushetia decided to stay within Russia because they hoped eventually the Kremlin would give them Prigorodny back. (They never did, even today.) Well, anyway, the Chechens and the Russians went to war in 1994 and it lasted until 1996, and this is known as the First Chechen War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War The separatist Chechens called their nation "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria", and even though no nation recognized Chechen independence, the Chechens fought against the Russians. Entire villages and cities were razed to the ground, and hundreds of thousands died. Even though the Russians had one of the world's largest and most sophisticated armies, they were poorly trained and disciplined, and they were basically defeated by the Chechens. However, the rebels couldn't govern independent Chechnya effectively, and basically warlords and foreign Islamic fighters competed against each other for power. The situation became largely lawless and Chechnya remained extremely dangerous and ruined. In 1999, Vladimir Putin became the Prime Minister of Russia, and around the same time a series of terrorist attacks broke out in Moscow, and the Chechen separatists were blamed. Putin put on a tough law-and-order image and ordered Chechnya to be invaded again, which started the Second Chechen War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War This time, however, the Russians were much more prepared for this war militarily, although the war itself was very costly - hundreds of thousands more died, too. The two wars have left Chechen society largely broken, as around 200,000 Chechens have died in the two wars (and the total Chechen population is around 1.4 million, so if you do the math, it's a huge percentage who died). And that doesn't even take into account the countless who have been injured or maimed or paralyzed. Anyway, the Russians succeeded in driving the separatist rebels out of the cities, including the capital Grozny, and the rebels conducted guerrilla warfare against the Russian troops. Vladimir Putin decided on a "Chechenization" of the conflict - in other words, he'd get Chechens to fight against the separatist Chechens by enticing rebels to defect. In exchange, these former rebels would attain high position in a Russian-controlled Chechnya in exchange for their loyalty. One Chechen family in particular benefited greatly to Putin's courting the rebels to switch sides - the Kadyrovs. The head of the Kadyrov family was a man named Akhmed Kadyrov, and he had a very esteemed position in the rebel government - he was Mufti of Chechnya, which made him the supreme religious authority of the Muslim Chechens. Putin struck a deal with Akhmed Kadyrov in that he would lead pro-Russian Chechens to kill off the separatists, and in exchange Kadyrov would acknowledge Russian rule over Chechnya and pretty much run the republic like his own fiefdom. And the Kadyrov family largely did succeed in killing off the independence-fighters, in particular their political leaders. But the separatists struck back, and assassinated Akhmed Kadyrov in a bomb blast. Putin then decided to trust power to Akhmed's son Ramzan, who was this amateur boxer in his mid-twenties, to "stabilize the situation". Ramzan is the current ruler of Chechnya, and he is EXTREMELY brutal. Watch this video to understand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwss6SkCsrw Ramzan Kadyrov basically tortures people suspected of rebels, and imprisons family members of rebel fighters in an attempt for the rebels to quit and come home. He was in the New York Times a few days ago, because he's suspected of ordering the assassination of his political enemies in Moscow and in Western Europe. So think of him as a gang leader running the republic in a very brutal fashion. Most of the nationalist leaders of Chechen independence have either died in combat, fled to America or Britain in exile (I can get you in touch with some of them if you want!), or basically gave up fighting because they were tired of war and death. However, the rebellion itself has changed - foreign Islamic mujahideen fighters have taken their place, and they want to create a Taliban-like state throughout the North Caucasus governed by Islamic Shari'a law. And as such, the rebels aren't just Chechens, but fundamentalist Muslims from other areas of Russia, such as Dagestan and Ingushetia. The new Islamist rebels aren't just Chechens anymore, but encompass many different ethnicities. They also have a well-known website called KavkazCenter, which is at http://kavkazcenter.com in case you want to see it.

The problem is that Stalin didn't destroyed them and Russia didn't educate those barbarian nation.What do european man if his wife sleep with other man? He beat face of other man.What do chechenian or ingush? They cut off wife's head.They must be convert into atheism or christianism just then this problems could find solution.Chechnya and Ingushetia are very corrupted,billions $ never comes to simple people,they become stolen by govt people of those republics.Chechenian army stole 2 billions $ which Moscow send them on modernization of weapon and on construction of officer homes.