March 4, 1944 - Dzhokhar Dudayev
His inclusion here reflects the contested nature of this catalog: Dudayev is remembered by many Chechens as a national hero, and by the Russian state as a separatist whose armed struggle precipitated the First Chechen War and its enormous civilian toll. The conflict he led — and the brutal federal response it drew — resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the near-destruction of Grozny. A Soviet-trained general who turned the military knowledge of one state against another, he operated in a space where liberation movement and armed insurgency are difficult to separate from the outside.
From Wikipedia
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.
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