Dzhokhar Dudayev

Biography

Dzhokhar Musayevich Dudayev (born Dudin Musa-Khant Dzhokhar; 15 February 1944 – 21 April 1996) was a Chechen politician, revolutionary and military leader of the 1990s Chechen independence movement from Russia. He served as the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from 1991 until his assassination in 1996. Dudayev had previously served as a senior officer in the Soviet Air Forces.

Dudayev was born in Chechnya in 1944, days before his family and the entire Chechen nation were deported to Central Asia by the Soviet regime in the Chechen genocide as part of an ethnic cleansing program which affected several million members of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1950s. His family was allowed to return to his native Chechnya in 1956, after Joseph Stalin’s death. From 1962, Dudayev served in the Soviet Air Forces, reaching the rank of major general. He commanded strategic nuclear bomber aircraft divisions based in Poltava and Tartu, and was awarded several state orders of the Soviet Union, most notably the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star.

In 1991, Dudayev refused orders from Moscow to suppress Estonia's independence movement, and subsequently resigned from the Soviet Armed Forces before returning to Chechnya. He became president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria after a referendum in October 1991, and unilaterally declared the republic's independence from the Soviet Union. In the First Chechen War (1994–1996), Dudayev organized a successful resistance against Russian forces before he was assassinated by a Russian airstrike. Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was renamed Dzhokhar-Ghala in Dudayev's honor between 1996 and 2005.