Grozny court finds the article about Chechnya in Big Encyclopaedia to be extremist one

Today, the Zavodskoy District Court of Grozny has treated as extremist the publications about the Chechen Republic in the Big Russian Encyclopaedia and made a decision to confiscate the 58th volume of the edition.

Nurdi Nukhazhiev, Ombudsman in Chechen Republic, was the initiator of the litigation. He demanded that Sergey Mironov, head of the Council of Federation, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the State Duma, and Yuri Chaika, General Public Prosecutor of the Russian Federation, and other high-ranking officials, bring the editor-in-chief of the edition to responsibility.

"The article about the Chechen Republic has deliberately collected together a whole set of negative stereotypes about Chechens ever published, starting from the times of tsarist colonization. The authors of this materials have continued the vicious practice of groundless dumping on our people in the style of great-power 'studies' of 'historians' and 'conquerors' of the Caucasus of the 19th century, like General-Lieutenant V. I. Potto, Chief of Staff of the Caucasian Army, Artillery General-Lieutenant N. F. Dubrovin, Kobulov, commander of Beria's executioners, and of their newly-appeared followers," Mr Nukhazhiev has stated.

"Again, all the old and stale myths and fables about 'predatory attacks on their neighbours', 'mass treachery and collaboration with fascists', 'genocide of Russian-speaking population' and 'genetic predisposition of Chechens to violence' are dragged out of the archives," said the Ombudsman.

According to Mr Nukhazhiev, the events taking place in Chechnya are covered without observing the principle of historicism. "The impression is created that Chechnya was in some isolated space or on some other planet, and everything that happened there was caused by exclusively internal reasons," he noted.

The trial held under the chairmanship of R. Gutsiev, Federal Judge of the Zavodskoy District Court of Grozny, upheld the arguments of the prosecution and made a decision to recognize the articles as extremist ones, as the "Grozny Inform" Agency reports.