I often mention how important it is for young Chechens to be educated. Partly I say it because I want us to participate in public/social events, especially in Europe, and partly I say it because our ancestors often didn't really have the chance or had to go through a lot to get a fair education.

Do you remember Akhmet Tsebiev? The Chechen physicist who was always disadvantaged because of his nationality, although he really achieved a lot?

Yesterday I read some articles about Chechens. I originally searched for articles about the wars in Chechnya, but then I stumbled across one from „Opendemocracy“ where they mentioned Tsebiev!

Tsebiev went through a lot. During the deportation he couldn’t finish his exams, since his family got deported from place in Kazakhstan to another.
Did he just accept his fate and give up? No, he wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1952.
Read it: “I, Akhmed Tsebiyev, was born in 1935, and I am a special settler deported from the Caucasus in February 1944 to Jambyl region, Kazakhstan. Before we were deported, my parents, who come from a poor peasant family, had worked in a kolkhoz [a collective farm], and I was studying in a local (Chechen) school.
After deportation, my father has been working in a workshop at the Shu station in Jambyl region until the present moment (until May 1952). After two years, in 1946, I decided to study (prior to that I did not have the opportunity to study) in the fourth class of the Russian railway middle school No. 32, and have studied in the class until now. This year, I have studied in the 9th class, but I didn’t manage to finish it…
When there only five-six days left before the exams, we were deported again, from Shu to Sary-Su district [north of Shu], to one of the collective farms there. It is unclear why. There is not a full middle school apart from a Kazakh school in the whole Sary-Su district, not even in the administrative centre…
All of my efforts, my whole nine years of studying have turned out to be useless as a result of our second deportation.”
In the next part of the letter, Tsebiyev voices concern at the working conditions in Shu, and invokes the right to education and work, as proclaimed in the Soviet Constitution of 1936:
“It’s not only my study that has been disrupted as a result of this deportation. My father has lost the job he was qualified for, a job that he was suited for. He is an invalid, he has tuberculosis… However, both my father and me, a former student, and my mother, a sick old woman, all of us, apart from my nine-year old sister (who studies), will have to work in the kolkhoz fields, as members of the kolkhoz, under the burning sun from early morning to late at night. I am afraid that my weakened parents will not survive this work, and I will soon lose them…
After all of the above, the question arises: what did we do wrong, what crime have we committed? Perhaps, one of the residents of Shu has done something, and we’re having to answer for it… If I or my parents have done anything, then we are ready to accept any punishment. But if this isn’t the case, then why should we suffer for someone else, lose our jobs, schools, shelter — in a word, lose everything that is necessary in life?!
Furthermore, we often hear at the kolkhoz, and in the district (from representatives of the Sary-Su branch of the Interior Ministry) that we have been sold to the kolkhoz, and that the kolkhoz has paid money for us and so on. Was there a decree by the Supreme Soviet to deport us once again, do the local Interior Ministry have reason to talk about such things as selling people in the Soviet Union? Do we have the right to work and education?”

Akhmed M. Tsebiev, born in 1935 in Makhkety, was a Chechen physicists and inventor.

He had a PhD in technical sciences and was the author of 26 inventions in the field of radio electronics and radio communications confirmed by the Soviet State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries. Tsebiev was also the author of more than 50 scientific works in open and closed press.

1959 he graduated from the Rostov State University and in the same year, a group of employees of NPO Istok in the town Fryazino (Moscow), led by Tsebiev, made a great discovery of a new phenomenon - which was predicted one year earlier in an article by the American physicist D. Reed.

From 1966 to 1973, Akhmed was the scientific
supervisor of two research projects and the chief designer of the preliminary project. These works were accepted by the State Commissions with a high appraisal and recommended for practical implementation.

1977 a group of employees was nominated with the „Lenin price“ - among them was Tsebiev. All of them received the award, with exception of Tsebiev. Despite his contribution being the most significant one.

He didn’t receive the award, most likely because of his ethnicity.

In school No. 9 of Grozny in 1988, Tsebiev
combined computers into a wireless local area network.

And unfortunately, in 2000, 65 year old Akhmed Tsebiev was shot and killed by looters of the Russian army - only because he refused to give them his computer.

I want to add that the fate of our homeland is in our hands. We can decide if we want to do nothing and „cry“ about injustice or take things in our hands - like Tsebiev. So, go and study. Especially to the Chechens in the diaspora. We have all opportunities, we can do something out of ourselves and bring attention to our struggle.

There is a famous story among Chechens, I‘m sure some of you already heard about it.

One Chechen asked a journalist „Why do you always talk about the Holocaust, but never about the genocide of the Chechens and Ingush?“

The journalist answered: „You have to do it by yourself.“

Men demonstrate with rifles on April 6, 1992, to show support for the first president of Chechnya - Dzhokhar Dudayev.