The Parliament of Ingushetia has adopted a law prohibiting the glorification of Joseph Stalin in the republic, which includes erecting his monuments or busts, naming streets and institutions after him, and other actions aimed at commemorating the late Soviet leader.
The bill was passed unanimously on its first reading on 22 February, on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of the deportation of the Ingush people. The Parliament’s press service reports that MPs read a prayer in memory of the victims of the 1944 deportation before the vote.
The bill was prepared by a group of MPs, whose explanatory memorandum lists numerous archival documents proving that repression occurred under Joseph Stalin’s direct order and under his direct supervision.
Commenting on the bill, the chairman of the People’s Assembly of Ingushetia, Zelimkhan Yevloyev, said that Stalin left a ‘trail of blood’ in the history of the Ingush people, and that they remembered the events of 1944.
‘Both intellectuals and ordinary workers were subject to repressions. Everyone suffered a strong blow, including different religious denominations’, Yevloyev said.
Yevloyev said that the Ingush people do not glorify Stalin, as he is remembered as a tyrant, who caused suffering to peoples across the Russian Federation.
The twenty-third of February 2017 marks the 73rd anniversary of the mass deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples. On that day, over 91,000 Ingush were forcibly removed to Central Asia. The entire nation was deported on false charges of ‘state treason’. Nearly half of the population died on the journey or while in exile from hunger, cold, and disease. The deportation has been recognised by many, including the European Parliament as genocide.
In recent years, a campaign to glorify Joseph Stalin has been launched by nationalist groups in Russia. Hundreds of monuments and busts have been erected throughout the country. This includes the North Caucasus, for example in Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and Daghestan. The Russian authorities have encouraged the efforts of nationalist groups to rehabilitate Stalin.
Russia’s Ministry of Education has made changes to a history textbook that referred to North Caucasian nations that were deported from their homes during World War II as ‘Nazi collaborators’.
The textbook spurred controversy in the North Caucasus, where several nations were deported en masse to Siberia and Central Asia during World War II for allegedly collaborating with the invading Nazi Germany.
These included the Karachays, the Balkars, the Ingush, and the Chechens in the North Caucasus,
Since its conquest by Russia in the 19th century, the North Caucasus has been the scene of genocides, forced deportations, wars for independence, and insurgency. The dozens of nations indigenous to the region continue to be repressed socially and culturally by the Russian Federation.
However, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has once again raised the imperial nature of the Russian state and has shone a light on how this imperialism extends to the North Caucasus, as seve
On the anniversary of the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people, a Russian ‘victory train’ is visiting the two republics — a grotesque parody of the trains that took so many to exile and death.
Today is the 78th anniversary of the deportation of the Vainakhs — the Chechen and Ingush people — to Siberia and Central Asia. Seventy-eight years since the entire population of Chechnya and Ingushetia were taken from their homes at gunpoint, in the dead of winter, and packed into cattle cars pu
Seventy-seven years after the deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush nations to Central Asia, Chechen returnees from a small corner of Daghestan still dream of returning to their homes.
Every year on 23 February, Chechens and Ingush people mark the tragic anniversary of the Soviet deportations of 1944 on the orders of Stalin — a genocidal event that cost the lives of up to one-third of their total population.
In recent years, the largest events to commemorate the day have been held not
The Parliament of Ingushetia has adopted a law prohibiting the glorification of Joseph Stalin in the republic, which includes erecting his monuments or busts, naming streets and institutions after him, and other actions aimed at commemorating the late Soviet leader.
