“Sado, taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined saklya cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary.
The two stacks of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all the beehives and bees had been burnt.
The wailing of the women and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders with frightened eyes.
The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not
be used. The mosque was polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were cleaning it out.
Noone spoke of hatred of the Russians. The feeling experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings, but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them—like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves—was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.
Hadji Murat (novella) “Tolstoy created this story set in the Caucasus Mountains during the mid-nineteenth century when Russian imperial expansion sought to subdue Chechen-Dagestani tribes. Hadji Murat is also linked with Tolstoy’s own experiences in the military. He wrote to his brother in 1851: “If you wish to show off with news… you may recount that a certain Hadji Murad […] surrendered a few days ago to the Russian government. He was the leading dare-devil and ‘brave’ of all Chechnya, but has been led into committing a mean action.”
