After Beslan i prefer not to talk about Chechens at all and i'll explain you why. Imagine an ethnic minority in your Europe, say, Basques which was fighting for its independency for a while and one day to improve their chances to get this freedom from those bloody Spanish decides to siege an English school . Why English? Just because both UK and Spain are in the EU. Imagine those innocent English kids some aged 2 or 3 or 5 or in their teens who spent 3 days without any food or water and drank their urine (how old is yours, Migush? I guess he could be considered as adult enough and let experience this). Oh, and in the same time all Russian channels would call those hipothetic Basques rebels or freedom-fighters (as it did the BBC) because ain't they not? Ain't they indeed fighting for their freedom from Spain in such an exotic form?

So when we, Russian people, saw how the Chechens and Ingushs (they are actually the one nation) had tortured the people, mostly children and almost none of them were Russian or Slavonic but the other way around belonged to the very close ethnic group  because they wanna independency from us, Russians... well, for many of us, they overdid Hitler. Literally. Once and forever.

I suppose, however, that their cruelty has been learned(and not genetic) and polished for almost 300 years under Russian protectorate. And the first who suffered  from it was their own elites because they were ...er... how to say, not immune to corruption and could sell their tribal freedom for russian rubles so they got rid of them - as i realise this is the mostly lefties site i think you may find it interesting as an example of the truly egalitarian rather secular society with a zero level of corruption  (before Yeltsin times that is) and complicated tribal rules and rituals.

Is that what most of you are dreaming about? The UK with their  now reviving and flourishing druidry and witchcraft and medieval courtship and paganism and obsession with natural healing has already made that "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" (funnily enough it may probably be the same response of the tiny ones towards the same stimuli of the giantic ones, i.e. the Chechens' response towards Russia is similar to the British towards the USA)

So, back (the first and the last time) to Chechens. They fought every outer governing betraying it - that was with Tsarist Russia (many Chechens welcomed revolution), than it was with Soviets (many Chechens greeted fascistic army in WW2), than it was pro-western Yeltsin and isolationist Putin. They will betray everybody. I personally, would a) get rid of them as soon as possible (give them their independency) and b) not allow any Chechen to enter Russia for at least a hundred years.

Stalin, being a Georgian dictator chose to deal with Chechens by sending all of them to Siberia (if Stalin could, i think, he would have been sending there almost everybody of us apart a few millions, i.e. the biggest number a person born in a very small country could manage comfortably without getting paranoic in the endless Russia). Being the people who grew in the smaller countries you no doubt guess who's to blame for Stalin's actions. Well, Chechens have always  blamed Russians and why not?

PS My responses are well off-topic but so do Migeru's (to answering the Q How many nations etc he starts listing the numerous evils did by Stalin (read: evil Russians, read: those who're bigger, read: those who'll do the same to me because i am so tiny and lovely and they are so huge and nasty)

PPS Those who're interested in Chechens history may try to find a link to the Sakharov centre - the best suitable for a western mind articles are there (only in Russian though)