The Conflict in Chechnya "Slave, who doesn't try to escape slavery - deserves double slavery" Imam Shamil and Naiby - The legendary Chechen freedom fighter. On August 22, 1991, thousands of people gathered in the main square of Grozny, the capital city of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, after hearing the news of the attempted coup in Moscow against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The jubilant Chechens viewed this as their Independence Day. At the end of the summer of 1991, Dzokhar Dudayev led a movement that expelled the conservative Communist establishment in Grozny. Dudayev's strongly nationalistic group formed a National Guard, decla