LAM - The International Center for Complex Research and Popularization of the Chechen culture

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LAM can be contacted at 15, Roza Luxemburg street, app. 13 Grozny, the Chechen Republic.In connection with serious complications with telephone and postal connection with the city of Grozny, the director of LAM Zuleikhan Bagalova authorized Yuri Vadimovich , the Executive Director of , to make contacts on behalf of LAM.

LAM is the only non-governmental organization which unites creative Chechen intelligentsia remaining in the Chechen Republic. The main mission of LAM is preservation and revival of traditional values of Chechen culture on the basis of its interaction with other cultures as well as promotion of open, pluralistic society in Chechnya, fostering of freedom and democracy. The "LAM" center was created and registered in Grozny in 1995 by a group of prominent activists of Chechen culture:

Apty Bisultanov

• Chechen popular poet, honorary member of the

Russian PEN-center Arbi Vagapov

• linguist, head of department of Chechen

language of the Grozny UniversityTaus Serganova

• Doctor of History

Said-Magomed Khasiev

• Doctor of History, the only Chechen

ethnographer, director of ethnographic centerRuslan Khakishev

• producer, Honored Artist of Russia

Dikaly Muzykayev

• ballet-master, Honored Artist of Russia

Roza Tashayeva

• theater critic

Kosum Uspanov

• poet

Zulai Shavlayeva

• Doctor of Art, the only artist-specialist in

the old Chechen craftsSaid Abdurzakov

• lawyer

Lema Usmanov

• scholar, a specialist in the old Chechen

architectural monumentsZuleikhan Bagalova

• popular Chechen actress and the Honored

Actress of Russia .

For the brief period of its existence and despite the war conditions the Center has managed to place five secondary schools graduates from Grozny to Universities in Poland. Since 1991 several founders of the LAM Center are using local media and TV trying to speak for peaceful resolution of inter-Chechen, inter-tribal contradictions as well as calling for mutual respect and mutual tolerance in relation between people belonging to different ethnic groups and religions which populate the Chechen Republic.

In August 1995 the Center's President Apty Bisultanov has delivered a speech before international forum of PEN-centers of Baltic Countries in St.Petersburg and then spoke in Krakow at the conference against the war in Chechnya as well as conducted meetings with creative intelligentsia in Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclav. Upon his return from the trip Mr. Bisultanov had been arrested and severely beaten up in Grozny by Russian secret services. He was released only after rallies in his defense in Grozny and Moscow.

The Center's director Zuleikhan Bagalova and Lema Usmanov had spoken in March 1997, in Moscow in the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center "Peace, Progress, Human Rights" before the audience of journalists, NGO leaders and other representatives of public with report "Impact of the War of 1994-1996 on Chechen Culture". They also gave interviews to "Moscow Times", "Los Angeles Times" and "Russian Thought". The trip of Z. Bagalova and L. Usmanova to Moscow was funded by the Andrei Sakharov Foundation.