Commemoration of the deportation in 2016 (ingushetia.ru)
The 73rd anniversary of the deportation of the Vainakh (Chechen and Ingush) peoples on 23 February will be marked by more than 60 events and activities, the Ingush government has declared. The activities include round tables, exhibitions, and children’s drawing contests.
The main event will be held at the memorial building to the victims of Stalin’s repressions, not far from the Ingush city of Nazran. A rally dedicated to the deportation of the Ingush people in 1944 will be held there, which will include mourning events and distribution of ritual meat to the poor and orphans.
On the same day, Ingushetia will celebrate the Defender of the Fatherland Day, which is an official state holiday in Russia.
In the neighbouring republic of Chechnya, mourning events dedicated to the deportation will also be held, although on a much smaller scale than in Ingushetia. Similarly to previous years, local media outlets will publish memoirs of witnesses of the tragic events. Many people will hold small events themselves, regardless of the decision of the authorities. Almost in every village, people conduct joint Muslim rites, asking God for those who died during the expulsion to be granted a place in the afterlife.
In winter of 1944, by a secret decree of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union, Chechens and Ingush were expelled from their homeland, and the Chechen–Ingush Republic was abolished and renamed Grozny Oblast. The deportation was carried out on 23 February, on the Day of the Soviet Army and Fleet. In the course of a week, the entire population of Vainakh peoples (Chechens and Ingush), numbering around 700,000, was resettled in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, with no right to return. Almost a third of those deported died during the journey as a result of cold and hunger, as well as in the first years following the deportation.
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
