Grozny

General Aleksey Yermolov founded the fortress of Groznaya — "fearsome" — on the Sunzha River in 1818, as a Russian outpost against the Chechens, and it was a key stronghold through the Caucasian War. Griboyedov, Lermontov and Tolstoy all passed through. In 1870 the fort became the town of Grozny, at first a quiet settlement of Terek Cossacks. Oil changed everything: the first well was completed in 1893, the railway arrived the same year, and the Nobels, the Rothschilds and British firms drilled the field. By 1914 Grozny was one of the largest industrial centres of the Caucasus.

The city changed hands in the Civil War and became the capital of Chechen and then Chechen-Ingush autonomy; its oil made it a main German objective in 1942, though it was never taken. In 1944 the entire Chechen and Ingush population was deported, with many tens of thousands of deaths; when they were allowed back in 1957, tension with the Russian population that had replaced them flared in 1958. Stalinist administrative buildings and Soviet apartment blocks shaped the city, which had almost 400,000 people by 1989.

After 1991 Grozny became the seat of Dzhokhar Dudayev's separatist government. In the First Chechen War, from December 1994, bombing and street fighting destroyed much of the city; separatists retook it in August 1996. The Second Chechen War brought a new siege in 1999–2000, and in 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth. Rebuilding began that year: the railway returned in 2005, the airport in 2007 and the great mosque opened in 2008, on the site of the ruined Presidential Palace.

Grozny is now an overwhelmingly Chechen city, and its public culture is shaped by Sunni Islam and by the authority of the republic's leadership. The Heart of Chechnya mosque, named after Akhmad Kadyrov, the first head of the pro-Moscow republic and father of Ramzan Kadyrov, sits within an Islamic complex that includes the Russian Islamic University. The main street was renamed after Vladimir Putin in 2008, and a new city district was named after him in 2024.

The city has rebuilt its cultural institutions: the Chechen State Drama Theatre, the Lermontov Russian Drama Theatre, youth theatres, a state philharmonic and a symphony orchestra, the National Museum and the National Library. Chechen State University, the Chechen State Pedagogical Institute and the Grozny State Oil Technical University are all here. The city's informal Chechen name, Sölzha-Ghala, means "the city on the Sunzha", and Chechen is spoken alongside Russian.

Sport carries political weight. FC Akhmat Grozny, owned by Ramzan Kadyrov, returned to the city in 2008 after fifteen years away and plays in the Premier League at the Akhmat-Arena, and an ice hockey club moved to Grozny in 2026. The Fort Grozny circuit hosts motor racing. Older communities have largely gone: the Jewish community, once served by several synagogues, was largely displaced during the two Chechen wars, and most of the Russian minority had fled by the time of the first war.

The 2021 census counted about 329,000 people in Grozny, up from about 211,000 in 2002 but still below the 1989 figure, and a 2025 figure put the city at about 399,000. Since 2024 it has been divided into five districts, the newest named after Vladimir Putin, and new quarters are still going up on its edges.

Much of the city is new. Of about 79,000 flats before the wars, the authorities expected to restore some 45,000; the rest were in buildings completely destroyed. Since 2003 the city has been rebuilt from scratch, and in 2009 the UN Human Settlements Programme honoured it for transforming the war-scarred city and providing new homes for thousands. Industry has recovered only partly: of several dozen industrial enterprises, three have been partially rebuilt.

Ramzan Kadyrov's rule has been characterised by high-level corruption, a poor human rights record, widespread use of torture and a growing cult of personality, and human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch accuse his security forces of killings and kidnappings. Allegations of anti-gay purges in Chechnya were first reported in 2017. Buses, on around fifty routes, are the city's only public transport since the wars.

Chechen cooking is built on meat, leeks, cheese, pumpkin and corn, seasoned with onion, wild garlic, pepper and thyme. Many dishes are boiled, and galnash — boiled or steamed pieces of dough — are its staple. Zhizhig-galnash, galnash served with boiled meat, mostly mutton, chicken or beef, is the national dish, and jijig-chorpa is a soup of mutton or beef with tomatoes and potatoes.

Pies and breads are everywhere. Khingalsh is a half-round pie filled with pumpkin or sweet potato and butter, and dalnash is a pie filled with lard and wild garlic. Siskal is a fried cornbread, often eaten with to-beram, a sauce of sour cream and cottage cheese, and kurzanesh are dumplings of minced lamb with a garlic and yoghurt sauce. Shashlik is grilled throughout the republic.

Sweet dishes include several kinds of khovla, a halva made from corn or wheat flour, honey pancakes, and vieta, a thick paste of ground flax seeds mixed with honey or sugar and oil. Churychay, hot tea with milk, salt, pepper and butter in place of sugar, is drunk with bread dipped into it. Grozny has no bars, as drinking alcohol in public is prohibited, and its many cafés serve Chechen food and non-alcoholic drinks.