Chechnya's struggling migrants

Giri Gudiev has a bleak existence on his new farm

By Amie Leonard BBC, Volgograd

Two hours' drive out of the southern Russian town of Volgograd, across the snow- and ice-covered expanse, Chechen farmer Giri Gudiev is building a farm.

It's difficult to get jobs or social benefits and it's easy to go off the rails

Chersi Gudiev
Chechen businessman

Apart from the electricity lines stretching across the horizon, the small collection of farm buildings and a few pieces of rusting machinery left over from Soviet times are the only objects on the landscape.

A farm worker trudges through the cold wind carrying two metal pails. A bear-like Caucasian sheepdog rolls in the snow.

Giri is one of about 70,000 Chechens who have settled in the Volgograd region - one of the largest communities outside Chechyna itself.

"I was doing the same job in Chechnya," he says. "From 1989 I was running a farm there. We bought new machinery, lots of cows, sheep, horses. But during the first war we lost everything to bombs and looters. I left in 1999 for Ingushetia and then came here."

It is not easy for him - his wife and children stay in a nearby village, where there is a school, while he stays on the farm with his five local workers. But he says he does not miss Chechnya and intends to stay and develop the farm.

Business problems

Giri's brother Chersi lives in town and runs a pharmaceutical business. Chersi is in regular contact with the local authorities and tries to create better conditions for Chechen families settling in the Volgograd region.

If Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation, all Chechens should have a say in its future

Vahid Shamayev
Chechen society chairman

"Most of them are not considered refugees by the authorities. It's difficult to get jobs or social benefits and it's easy to go off the rails," says Chersi.

His own business suffered when his salesmen were unable to complete deliveries on time. They were constantly stopped and searched by the police on suspicion of terrorism.

In Volgograd town, local Chechen businessman and chairman of the local Chechen society, Vahid Shamayev, also says that business is hard for Chechens.

"There are no successful Chechen businessmen in Volgograd," he said. "We had a couple of profitable enterprises here - a local market, for example - but we were squeezed out. We are just surviving."

'What kind of referendum?'

But like Giri and his brother, he does not intend to go back to Chechnya.

these Chechens living in Volgograd are content to be counted among Russian citizens.

But they are in two minds about the Russian Government's plans to hold a referendum in Chechnya. The proposed referendum is on a new constitution that will make Chechnya an integral part of the Russian Federation.

The vote is scheduled for late March, despite criticism from the Council of Europe - Europe's top human rights watchdog - whose envoy says Chechens are unfamiliar with the draft constitution.

But the most contentious issue is whether to hold the referendum in the whole of the Russian Federation, or just in Chechnya.

"If Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation," says Vahid, "all Chechens should have a say in its future, wherever they live. But if Chechnya is not part of Russia then Chechens who are Russian citizens must not vote."

Back on the farm Giri says he does not believe in the referendum.

"No-one does," he says. "Most people don't know what it's about, there's no information there in Chechnya. I've never seen any evidence of a referendum project. What kind of a referendum can it be?"