Dzhokhar Dudayev

Biography

Dzhokhar Dudayev was born in February 1944 in Yalkhoroy, in the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, days before Soviet authorities deported the entire Chechen people to Central Asia. He spent his childhood in exile in Kazakhstan and returned to Chechnya with his family in 1957. After training as an electrician he entered the Tambov military aviation school in 1962, graduating in 1966, joined the Communist Party in 1968 and studied at the Gagarin Air Force Academy from 1971 to 1974.

He made his career in the Soviet long-range bomber force, serving in Siberia and Ukraine, and in 1987 took command of the 326th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division at Tartu in Estonia, becoming the first Chechen to reach the rank of major general. As garrison commander in 1990 he ignored orders to shut down Estonia's television and parliament, and he left the military after his division was withdrawn.

Back in Grozny he became head of the executive committee of the All-National Congress of the Chechen People, a nationalist opposition movement. After the failed Moscow coup of August 1991 he led the protests and armed seizures that toppled the Soviet-era republican leadership, won the presidential election of 27 October 1991 and declared Chechnya independent. Russia refused to recognise the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, but its first attempt to send troops in November 1991 failed, and the republic remained de facto independent; in 1993 he dissolved the parliament that had challenged him.

Russian forces invaded in December 1994. After Grozny fell, Dudayev moved south and kept leading the resistance through 1995. On 21 April 1996 he was killed by guided missiles fired from Russian aircraft that had located him while he was speaking on a satellite phone. Grozny was renamed Dzhokhar-Ghala in his honour from 1996 to 2005, and streets and squares in several countries bear his name.