Dzhokhar Dudayev

Dudayev was born in Chechnya in 1944, days before Stalin's regime deported his family and the entire Chechen nation to Central Asia in an ethnic cleansing that swept millions. They returned in 1956 after Stalin's death. Dudayev rose through the Soviet Air Forces to major general, commanding strategic nuclear bomber divisions and collecting state honors including the Order of the Red Banner. In 1991 he refused Moscow's order to suppress Estonia's independence movement, resigned, and went home. That October he became president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria after a referendum and declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union. When Russia invaded in 1994, he organized resistance that held through two years of war. A Russian airstrike killed him in April 1996.