Alla Dudayeva

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Fyodorovna and the family name is Dudayeva.

Alla Fyodorovna Dudayeva (Russian: А́лла Фёдоровна Дуда́ева, née Alevtina Kulikova, Алевтина Кулико́ва; born 24 March 1947) is the widow of Dzhokhar Dudayev, leader of the Chechen liberation movement from Russia in the 1990s.

Biography

Born into the family of a Soviet military officer in the Kolomensky District and trained as a painter in Smolensk, Alla married Dudayev, then a Soviet Air Force officer, in 1967. After the death of her husband during the First Chechen War in 1996, Dudayeva was arrested in Nalchik while trying to flee to Turkey and interrogated by a young officer whom she subsequently identified as Alexander Litvinenko.^[1] Released later that year, she worked for the Ministry of Culture of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria until 1999 when the outbreak of the Second Chechen War forced her into exile first to Azerbaijan, then to Turkey and Lithuania, where she currently resides.^[2] She had been working for the Georgia's Caucasus TV Channel, for which she hosted a cultural program since January 2010 until October 2012.^[3]

Dudayeva is the author of several books, including the memoirs about her husband.

References

1. Alla Dudaeva Describes being Interrogated by Litvinenko. North Caucasus Weekly Volume: 7 Issue: 48. 14 December 2006.
2. Georgian-Vainakh Days in Tbilisi. Archived 21 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Georgia Today. 24 April 2009.
3. Georgia’s Caucasus TV Channel Launched Online. Civil Georgia. 3 January 2010.