[Stranger]

English echoes in Chechnya



The Chechen capital Grozny has a number of streets without names, in districts known only by a number: the 12th, the 30th, 49th, 56th and so on.

In several districts, there are a number of houses commonly referred to as "English houses".

For many years these buildings were an enigma to me.

Their history was rarely discussed in Soviet times and it took me years to discover their full story - and to understand the special place held by England in the Chechen imagination.

The English houses are unlike any others in Chechnya.

Instead of being built in the traditional local way with wood and clay, they are made entirely of brick, with steep tiled roofs.

British money

They were solidly built, and are mostly still standing - with various extensions and modifications made by residents over the years.

I now know that they date back to the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, when Grozny was the second biggest oil city in Russia, after Baku.

They were constructed for British engineers who worked here before the 1917 revolution - and who were allowed to return in the 1920s as Russia struggled to rebuild itself after the Civil War.

Soviet writers described the foreign oil magnates as robbers, who mercilessly exploited their workers and tried to subordinate Russia economically and politically.

"In those days it was considered robbery, but now it is called investment, or the development of the region," says the head of the Chechen archives, Magomed Muzaev.

Although they are the most obvious, the English houses are not the only relics of the British presence in Chechnya.

It is rumoured that people hoard old British money, which the oilmen originally paid to Chechen families in return for oil-bearing land.

Hard times

In February 1944 when Stalin deported the Chechen nation from the Caucasus to Central Asia, this money was buried, to be dug up again years later when the people were finally allowed to return.

But the English trace in Chechnya goes even deeper, as the British Caucasus expert Tom de Waal explains.

"If you talk to old people in Chechnya, they will tell you that the English king will rule Chechnya for seven years - and they say that is the solution to Chechnya's problems," he says.

Chechen historians say the legend originated 150 years ago, when Chechens and British were fighting Russian forces simultaneously on different fronts - in the Caucasus and in Crimea.

Russia lost the Crimean War and was forced to make concessions. During peace talks the victors raised the idea of Caucasian autonomy, but Russia rejected it out of hand.

According to Magomed Muzaev, the failure of repeated Chechen uprisings in the early 20th Century - and the growing realisation that the Chechens would not gain their freedom without outside help - helped the faith in salvation from England to live on.

It still does.

"People so badly need a way out of their difficulties that this prophesy has not been forgotten," says Magomed Muzaev.

"And they are still enduring hard times, terrible times."

Both the English legend and the English houses have been long-lived.

I have not been able to discover exactly when the houses were built, and the names of those who lived in them.

But one thing is sure - England has left its trace on Chechnya, on the ground and in the mind.



BBC