Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Ramzan Kadyrov demanded to rewrite the chapter of the new school textbook on the history of Russia, in which the deportation of the peoples of the Caucasus is explained by their collaboration with the German fascists, said the speaker of the Chechen parliament Magomed Daudov.
As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, on February 23, on the 79th anniversary of the deportation of the Vainakhs, mourning events were held in Ingushetia. At the same time, there were no official events in Chechnya, and Ramzan Kadyrov limited himself to writing curses against Stalin on his Telegram channel.
The Day of Remembrance and Sorrow was celebrated in Chechnya on February 23 until 2011, until the authorities decided to move it to May 10, the date of Akhmat Kadyrov’s funeral. However, in 2020, on Defender of the Fatherland Day, a rally was held in Grozny in memory of the victims of repression, in which Ramzan Kadyrov and other officials took part.
Representatives of the leadership of Chechnya held a small rally in memory of the victims of deportation on February 23, 2021. Ramzan Kadyrov, who was on a visit to Dubai, did not participate in it. In 2022, on the 78th anniversary of the deportation, no commemorative events were held in the republic; officials dedicated only posts on social networks to this date.
The head of the Assembly of the Peoples of the Caucasus, Ruslan Kutaev, who in 2014 publicly spoke out against the ban on February mourning events, was convicted and sent to prison for almost four years, according to the Caucasian Knot report “How Kadyrov made a holiday out of a commemoration on February 23.”
The updated Russian history textbook for grades 10-11 caused “indignation among representatives of the peoples repressed in the USSR,” and Ramzan Kadyrov ordered “to sort out such an important issue,” the speaker of the Chechen parliament, Magomed Daudov, said today.
“I brought this topic to the head of the presidential administration’s internal policy department, Andrei Yarin. Andrei Veniaminovich, in turn, immediately responded and gave appropriate instructions. I also brought Ramzan Akhmatovich’s position to the author of the textbook, Vladimir Medinsky, who admitted that this chapter was taken without changes from previous editions, and assured of his readiness to put it in order,” Daudov wrote in his Telegram channel.
According to Daudov, the position of Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov was “equally decisive” on this issue. “For everyone who was worried about this topic, I want to inform you that a working group has been created from among the heads of the regions whose peoples were repressed, and proposals for inclusion in the specified chapter of the textbook will be agreed upon,” said the speaker of the Chechen parliament, also expressing “ thanks to the administration of the President of the Russian Federation for their support in resolving this issue.
We are talking about the chapter of the textbook, which states that based on the facts of cooperation with the German fascists of the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Crimean Tatars, the Soviet authorities in 1943-1944 decided to liquidate the state formations of these peoples in the USSR and subject them to collective punishment - forced relocation to the eastern regions. At the same time, the textbook notes that as a result, not only “bandits and collaborators of the enemy” were repressed, but also “many innocent people,” RIA Novosti reports today.
Many do not know or do not want to know that under Stalin, mass arrests, deportations and executions were carried out on ethnic grounds, and entire nations were declared “hostile,” said Oleg Khlevnyuk, a historian and author of the biography “Stalin. The Life of a Leader.” You can read about these and other most famous myths and reliable information related to the role of Joseph Stalin in the events of the Great Patriotic War in the “Caucasian Knot” reference “10 myths about the role of Stalin in the Great Patriotic War.”
At the beginning of August, a new history textbook for high school students was presented in Russia, co-authored by the former head of the Ministry of Culture and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. In the textbook, as Medinsky reported, chapters relating to the period from the early 1970s to the 2000s were revised and rewritten, and a new section was added concerning contemporary events, including the military operation in Ukraine. In mid-September, the Ministry of Education reported that more than 755 thousand copies of the textbook had been delivered to all regions of the country, writes RBC.
Operation Lentil, during which almost 500,000 people were deported from Chechnya and Ingushetia to Kazakhstan and Central Asia, took place from February 23 to March 9, 1944. The reasons for the repression were given as mass desertion, wartime draft evasion and the preparation of an armed uprising in the Soviet rear. The territory of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was practically not under occupation, and it was not easy to accuse its people of direct betrayal.
In addition, the deportation took place when the Wehrmacht had already been driven back hundreds of kilometers from the Caucasus, and, therefore, was not a military necessity, but a frankly punitive act, according to the “Caucasian Knot” document “Deportation of Chechens and Ingush.”
The anniversaries of the deportation of fellow countrymen are celebrated annually by residents of several republics of southern Russia
In Kabardino-Balkaria, March 8 marks the anniversary of the deportation of the Balkar people. In particular, in 2023, on this day, rallies were held in Nalchik and Kenzha in memory of the victims of the deportation carried out 79 years ago.
Victims of the deportation of Balkars receive only minor benefits, and support from the authorities is not commensurate with the hardships experienced during the years of repression, as stated by participants in a similar memorial event on March 8, 2020.
The operation to evict the Balkars took place in Kabardino-Balkaria on March 8, 1944. In just two hours, war invalids, families of front-line soldiers, and leaders of party bodies were sent to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Of the 37,713 deported Balkars, 52% were children, 30% were women, 18% were men. During the 18 days of the road, 562 people died. Only in 1957 were the Balkars allowed to return to their homeland, according to the “Caucasian Knot” document “Deportation of the Balkars.”
In Karachay-Cherkessia, November 2 is considered the Day of Deportation of the Karachay People, and May 3 is annually celebrated as the Day of Revival of the Karachay People, since on May 3, 1957, the first families of Karachays returned to their homeland from places of deportation, according to the "Caucasian Knot" certificate "Day of Revival of the Karachay People" : difficulties of rehabilitation."
In Kalmykia, December 28 is celebrated as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Deportation of the Kalmyk People. In 2022, commemorative events were held in the cities of the republic on this occasion. Historical research on the deportation of Kalmyks is relevant and in demand , and the memory of the victims of deportation lives among the people, historian Utash Ochirov told the Caucasian Knot. Modern politics is shifting the emphasis from the injustice of ethnic deportations to the general hardships of wartime, noted historian Elsa-Bair Guchinova.
On December 28, 1943, in accordance with the decree on the liquidation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, NKVD troops carried out an operation code-named “Ulus” to evict Kalmyks to the regions of Siberia and the Far East. The Kalmyks were accused of treason, joining military detachments organized by the Germans, and organizing an anti-Soviet rebel movement. The total number of evicted Kalmyks was about 120 thousand people, according to the “Caucasian Knot” document “Deportation of Kalmyks”.
Reference material from Kavkaz Uzel
Deportation of Kalmyks
79 years ago, on December 27, 1943, Operation Ulus began - the liquidation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the division of its territory between the Stavropol Territory, the Stalingrad Region and the created Astrakhan Region and, from December 28, 1943, the deportation of Kalmyks. About 95 thousand people were subject to forced eviction.
BACKGROUND OF EXPULSION
According to the 1939 census, the total number of Kalmyks in the USSR was 134,402 people; in addition to the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, many Kalmyks lived in the Stalingrad region and in the Stavropol Territory. They were mainly nomads and cattle breeders.
In August 1942, German troops occupied 8 of the 13 uluses (districts) of Kalmykia, including its capital, Elista; five uluses were captured completely, three partially. About 25% of the population left along with the livestock beyond the Volga and into the unoccupied uluses. Soviet troops liberated Kalmykia in early 1943.
In Kalmykia, as in a number of other regions of the USSR, an anti-Soviet insurgent movement formed. According to the NKVD, it consisted of 12 groups with a total number of over 500 people. In addition, the Germans created a Kalmyk cavalry corps numbering 1300-1500 horsemen.
The decision to deport the Kalmyks was accelerated by accusations of the surrender of the 110th Kalmyk Cavalry Division.
On December 27, 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Decree “On the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the formation of the Astrakhan region as part of the RSFSR.” In accordance with the Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of December 28, 1943 “On the eviction of Kalmyks living in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ,” about 95,000 Kalmyks were subject to deportation.
The deportation of Kalmyks is a form of repression to which ethnic Kalmyks, mainly living on the territory of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, were subjected in 1944.
The Kalmyks were accused of treason, joining military detachments organized by the Germans, and organizing an anti-Soviet rebel movement. The deportation of Kalmyks was also considered as a means of resolving the national-political conflict (as defined by Joseph Stalin) that arose with the Kalmyks.
Kalmyks were evicted to the Altai and Krasnoyarsk territories, Omsk, Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk regions. The total number of evicted Kalmyks, including soldiers and officers withdrawn from combat units, was about 120 thousand people.
DEPORTATION
The operation to deport Kalmyks was carried out on December 28-29, 1943, under the code name “Ulus”. It was attended by 2,975 NKVD officers, as well as the 3rd Motorized Rifle Regiment of the NKVD, which had previously evicted the Karachais. The operation was led by the head of the NKVD for the Ivanovo region, Major General Markeev.
Groups of military personnel from the USSR NKVD troops entered all the houses where Kalmyks lived and announced that, according to the Decree of the USSR Armed Forces, all Kalmyks were being evicted to Siberia, as traitors to their homeland. Families were given no more than an hour to get ready. Many families who did not know the Russian language left their homes without taking warm clothes and food. “Studebakers” were driven to assembly points, in which special settlers were delivered to railway stations, to trains consisting of two-axle cars - “teplushki”. 40-50 people were placed in each carriage. A total of 47 echelons were formed. 1
In the first round, 91,919 people were deported. In January 1944, another 1,014 people joined them. They were distributed among the areas of settlement as follows: Omsk Region - 24,325 people, Krasnoyarsk Territory - 21,164, Altai Territory - 20,858, Novosibirsk Region - 18,333 people. More than half of the Kalmyk contingent in the Omsk region was settled in its northern districts - Yamalo-Nenets, Khanty-Mansiysk and Tobolsk. Since the eviction took place in the dead of winter, the mortality rate during transportation was extremely high. Epidemics (typhus) often broke out in places of settlement.
As noted in the article by G. Remmel “Deportation of Kalmyks to the Omsk Region”, the former chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic D. Purveev wrote with disappointment to Stalin that the Kalmyks were given 1-2 hours to prepare for the eviction, and were not allowed to take clothes, shoes and household items with them. accessories. "The eviction began in winter. For weeks we traveled in closed carriages, the sick and the dead together." 2
In 1944, deportations of Kalmyks continued through the eviction of those who lived outside the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On March 25, 2,536 people from the Rostov region were sent to the Omsk region, on June 2–4, 1,178 people from the Stalingrad region were sent to the Sverdlovsk region .
Later they were joined by Kalmyks demobilized from the army - more than 15,000 people. All soldiers and officers of Kalmyk nationality were sent to Astrakhan and handed over to the NKVD, which took the officers to Tashkent and Novosibirsk, and sent the privates to the construction of the Shirokovsky hydroelectric power station in the Perm region. 3 ;
It should be noted that non-Kalmyk women who were married to Kalmyks were also registered and subjected to all the necessary repressions. At the same time, Kalmyk women who married non-Kalmyks were not registered.
The labor of deported Kalmyks was used in agriculture, logging, but most often in industrial fishing; their centuries-old experience in the field of animal husbandry, especially transhumance, turned out to be unclaimed.
From the moment of deportation until April 1946, ode. There were 14,343 dead Kalmyk settlers. At the same time, the birth rate among Kalmyks was extremely low.
In November 1948, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On criminal liability for escapes from places of compulsory and permanent settlement of persons evicted to remote areas of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War” was issued, the essence of which was that the repressed peoples were expelled forever, without the right to return to their ethnic homeland. The same decree tightened the special settlement regime even more. The document provided for 20 years of hard labor for unauthorized departure from places of settlement.
The main part of the Kalmyk uluses and Elista entered the newly created Astrakhan region. The Western and Yashaltinsky (renamed Stepnovsky) uluses went to the Rostov region, and Maloderbetovsky and Sarpinsky - to the Stalingrad region. The Priyutnensky ulus, and later the Troitsky ulus, were transferred to the Stavropol Territory. Another 211 hectares of pasture land were transferred to the use of Dagestan collective farms. The Kalmyk names of most village councils were replaced by Russian ones, Elista was renamed Stepnoy.
Later, areas with a Kalmyk population were liquidated in other places. On March 9, the Kalmyk district of the Rostov region was abolished and territorially divided between the Martynovsky, Romanovsky, Zimovnikovsky and Proletarsky districts.
REHABILITATION
At a closed meeting of the 20th Congress of the CPSU on February 14-25, 1956 N.S. Khrushchev called the eviction of Kalmyks "a gross violation of the national policy of the Soviet state." It was officially stated that the deportation of Kalmyks was an act of arbitrariness accompanying Stalin's personality cult.
On March 17, 1956, restrictions on special settlements were lifted for Kalmyks, but without the right to return to their homeland.
On January 9, 1957, the Kalmyk Autonomous Okrug was formed as part of the Stavropol Territory. The former territory of the republic was returned to it (except for the Nariman and Liman districts, which remained part of the Astrakhan region), and most of the old names of settlements were restored.
On January 25, 1957, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Tolstikov signed an order “On permitting residence and registration for Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachais, Chechens, Ingush and members of their families evicted during the Great Patriotic War.”
On July 29, 1958, the Kalmyk Autonomous Okrug of the Stavropol Territory was transformed into the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
The non-return of the two districts, whose Kalmyk population ranged from two to 11%, did not lead to any mass protests.
On November 14, 1989, the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated all repressed peoples, recognizing as illegal and criminal repressive acts against them at the state level in the form of a policy of slander, genocide, forced relocation, abolition of national-state entities, establishment of a regime of terror and violence in places of special settlements. 4
In 1991, the RSFSR Law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples” was adopted, which defines the rehabilitation of peoples subjected to mass repression in the USSR as the recognition and exercise of their right to restore the territorial integrity that existed before the forcible redrawing of borders.
In December 1996, the Ernst Neizvestny monument “Exodus and Return” was unveiled in Elista; the memorial complex includes a museum-car. 5 . The monument was cast in bronze in New York and then transported to Elista
In 2007, in the capital of Kalmykia, Elista, a regional public fund “Promoting the complete rehabilitation of repressed peoples and victims of political repression” was created.
In modern Kalmykia, December 28 is celebrated as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Deportation of the Kalmyk People.
More reference material from Kavkaz Uzel
Deportation of Balkars
Seventy-nine years ago, on March 8, 1944, 37,713 Balkars were forcibly sent to Central Asia. Ethnic Balkars were accused by the leadership of the USSR of “betrayal” and “failure to protect” the territory of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in particular Elbrus and the Elbrus region, from Nazi troops, and were resettled to Central Asia.
BACKGROUND OF EXPULSION
In August 1942, five regions of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were occupied by German troops. On October 24, 1942, they occupied Nalchik. A number of industrial enterprises along with their equipment were left to the occupiers. 314,900 sheep were left behind (248,000 were destroyed or taken away by the occupiers), 45,500 heads of cattle (more than 23,000 were destroyed or taken away), 25,500 horses (about 6,000 were destroyed or taken away).
An attempt to organize a partisan movement in the republic failed. For operations in the rear, it was planned to create several partisan groups and detachments with a total number of up to a thousand people. These units disintegrated because the families of the partisans were not evacuated. Only one united partisan detachment of 125 people was created.
At the beginning of 1943, Soviet troops liberated the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. However, as of May 1943, 44 groups of anti-Soviet rebels (941 people) were operating on the territory of the republic, which, according to official data, included former party workers.
In January 1944, the first preliminary discussion took place on the possibility of relocating the Balkars. The State Defense Committee was recommended to “express an opinion on this issue.” On February 25, 1944, at a meeting between the leaders of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria, Ivan Serov and Bogdan Kobulov with the secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional party committee Zuber Kumekhov, it was planned to visit the Elbrus region in early March. During the visit, the decision to evict Balkars from the republic was brought to the attention of Kumekhov.
Red Army and NKVD troops totaling more than 21,000 people were allocated to carry out the operation. On March 5, military units dispersed in Balkar settlements. The population was informed that the troops had arrived to rest and replenish themselves before the upcoming battles. The deportation was carried out under the leadership of the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel General Ivan Serov and Colonel General Bogdan Kobulov.
The territory of residence of the Balkars was divided into 5 sectors: Elbrus, Chegem, Khulamo-Bezengievsky, Cherek and Nalchik. Each of the four areas of residence with a predominantly Balkar population and the fifth - in the city of Nalchik, for Balkars living in other areas.
DEPORTATION
The operation to evict the Balkars began on the morning of March 8, 1944. Everyone without exception underwent transportation - active participants in the Civil and Patriotic Wars, war veterans, parents, wives and children of front-line soldiers, deputies of councils at all levels, leaders of party and Soviet bodies. The guilt of the deportee was determined solely by his Balkar origin.
The deportees were loaded into pre-prepared Studebakers and taken to the Nalchik railway station. 37,713 Balkars were sent to settlement sites in Central Asia in 14 echelons. Of the total number of deportees, 52% were children, 30% were women, 18% were men. In addition, 478 people of “anti-Soviet element” were arrested. There was a case of shelling of an NKVD ambush by a group of three people.
When carrying out the operation, it was proposed to follow the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR on the procedure for eviction. According to the instructions, each settler was allowed to take food and property weighing up to 500 kg per family. However, the organizers of the eviction gave 20 minutes to get ready.
The sixth point of the instructions provided that livestock, agricultural products, houses and buildings were subject to transfer on the spot and compensation in kind at new places of settlement. However, this did not happen - the resettlement of the Balkars was carried out in small groups, and no land or funds were allocated to them locally.
During the 18 days of travel, 562 people died in unequipped carriages. They were buried near the railroad tracks during short stops. When the trains passed without stopping, the bodies of those who died along the way were thrown into derailment by the guards.
On March 14, 1944, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, L. Beria reported on the successful operation. On August 22, 1944, 109 people from among the organizers of the deportation of Balkars were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.
The search for Balkars also took place outside the republics. Thus, in May 1944, 20 families were deported from the liquidated Karachay Autonomous Okrug, 67 people were identified in other regions of the USSR. The deportation of Balkars continued until 1948 inclusive.
The evicted Balkars were distributed in new areas of residence as follows:
- Kazakh SSR - 16,684 people (4,660 families)
- Kirghiz SSR - 15,743 people (9,320 adults)
- Uzbek SSR - 419 people (250 adults)
- Tajik SSR - 4 people
- Irkutsk region - 20 people
- regions of the Far North - 14 people
All special settlers were registered with a mandatory monthly check at the place of residence in the special commandant's offices. It was forbidden to leave the settlement area without the commandant's approval. Unauthorized absence was equated to escape and entailed criminal liability. For any violation, including disobedience to the commandant, the settlers were subject to administrative or criminal punishment.
CONSEQUENCES OF DEPORTATION
On April 8, 1944, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The southwestern regions of the republic - Elbrus and Elbrus - were transferred to the Georgian SSR. Orders followed to rename settlements. The village of Yanika began to be called Novo-Kamenka, Kashkatau - Sovetsky, Khasanya - Prigorodny, Lashkuta - Zarechny, Bylym - Coal.
The evicted Balkars were distributed in new areas of residence as follows: in the Kazakh SSR - 4,660 families (16,684 people), in the Kirghiz SSR - 15,743 (9,320 adults), in the Uzbek SSR - 419 (250 adults). In the Tajik SSR - four people, in the Irkutsk region - 20, in the Far North - 14 people. The deportees were mainly employed in agriculture. Thus, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Farms of the Kazakh SSR there were 11,373 Balkars.
In places of exile, all special settlers were registered. Every month they were required to report to their place of residence in special commandant's offices and had no right to leave the area of resettlement without the knowledge and approval of the commandant. Unauthorized absence was considered an escape and entailed criminal liability. For any violation or disobedience to the commandant, the settlers were subject to administrative penalties or criminal charges.
During the years of exile, the Balkars lost many elements of material culture. Traditional buildings and utensils were almost never reproduced in the new settlement areas. The reduction of traditional sectors of the economy led to the loss of national types of clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry, national cuisine, and modes of transport.
For most Balkar children, it was difficult to obtain a school education: only one in six of them attended school. Obtaining higher and secondary specialized education was almost impossible. In order to assimilate and erase the historical and cultural basis of the repressed peoples, language and cultural traditions were excluded from those officially supported by the state.
The first years of the Balkars’ stay in Central Asia were complicated by the negative attitude towards them from the local population, who were subjected to ideological indoctrination and saw them as enemies of Soviet power.
Since the summer of 1945, demobilized Balkar front-line soldiers began to return from the army. They were ordered to go to the places of exile of their relatives. Having arrived there, the front-line soldiers were registered as special settlers.
In November 1948, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued “On criminal liability for escapes from places of compulsory and permanent settlement of persons evicted to remote areas of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War,” the essence of which was that repressed peoples were expelled forever, without the right to return to their ethnic homeland. The same decree tightened the special settlement regime even more. The document provided for 20 years of hard labor for unauthorized departure from places of settlement. In fact, special settlers could move freely only within a radius of 3 km from their place of residence.
REHABILITATION
Restrictions on special settlements for Balkars were lifted on April 18, 1956, but the right to return to their homeland was not granted.
On January 9, 1957, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree “On the transformation of the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.” At the same time, the territories ceded to Georgia were returned, their former names were restored; The ban on returning to one’s previous place of residence was also lifted.
On March 28, 1957, the KBASSR law “On the transformation of the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic” was adopted.
The return of Balkars to their homeland was very intensive: by April 1958, about 22,000 people returned. By 1959, about 81% had already returned, by 1970 - more than 86%, and by 1979 - about 90% of all Balkars.
For various reasons, some of the deportees decided to stay. Someone decided that now, being equal citizens of the USSR, it didn’t matter where they lived, others did not want to give up their acquired household and career, and still others, having already become related to representatives of the local population, did not want to leave their loved ones. According to the results of the 1989 All-Union Census, more than 2,967 Balkars lived in Kazakhstan, and 2,131 Balkars lived in Kyrgyzstan.
On November 14, 1989, the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR rehabilitated all repressed peoples, recognizing as illegal and criminal repressive acts against them at the state level in the form of a policy of slander, genocide, forced relocation, abolition of national-state entities, establishment of a regime of terror and violence in places of special settlements.
In 1991, the RSFSR law was adopted "On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples," which defines the rehabilitation of peoples subjected to mass repression in the USSR as the recognition and exercise of their right to restore the territorial integrity that existed before the forcible redrawing of borders. In 1993, the government of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution "
ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC SUPPORT FOR THE BALKAR PEOPLE.
In 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree “ On measures for the rehabilitation of the Balkar people and state support for their revival and development.”
In modern Kabardino-Balkaria, March 8 is the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the deportation of the Balkar people, and March 28 is celebrated as the Day of the Revival of the Balkar people.
However, the application of these documents in practice turned out to be complicated by many factors. Thus, none of the four regions of Balkaria that existed at the time of the forced eviction of the Balkars from their territories in 1943 was restored to their previous borders. After returning from exile, some Balkars were resettled in the Kabardian regions.
As a result of the unification of Balkar villages with villages separated from the regions of Kabarda, a mixed Chegemsky district was formed with a predominance of the Kabardian population and, accordingly, administrative power belonged to the Kabardians, and the most populous Balkar villages of Khasanya and Belaya Rechka were transferred to the administrative subordination of Nalchik, along with those adjacent to with vast tracts of land.
MEMORY OF DEPORTATION
March 8 is the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the deportation of the Balkar people. March 28 – the Day of the Revival of the Balkar People – is celebrated annually and declared a holiday in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic. Dedicated to the return of the Balkar people from Central Asia to their homeland.
In March 2014, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkar people, the publishing house of Maria and Viktor Kotlyarov published their book “Balkaria: Deportation. Eyewitnesses Testify.” The book includes more than 100 private stories conveying the tragedy of a little man who fell into the millstone of Stalin's repressions. The appendix contains sections “Perform on the spot” and “The tragedy of repressed intelligence”, telling how the truth was restored about the events that took place in the Cherek Gorge in 1942, and what a tragedy of unrealized creative potential the deportation turned out to be for many young people from number of special settlers.
Also in 2014, a delegation from Kabardino-Balkaria, during a trip to Central Asia dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the deportation, installed two tombstones brought from their homeland at the entrance to cemeteries in Almaty and Bishkek.
On July 3, 2015, a monument to the repressed residents of Kabardino-Balkaria was erected in the Nalchik city park . At its opening, the chairman of the council of the public organization of the Balkar people "Alan" Sufyan Beppaev said that 63 thousand 180 people were repressed in Kabardino-Balkaria and 60 thousand of them were rehabilitated.
On March 8, 2017, in Nalchik, at the memorial to the victims of deportation, a memorial meeting organized by the Council of Elders of the Balkar People took place . Chairman of the Council of Elders of the Balkar People, Ismail Sabanchiev, who spoke at the rally, blamed the deportation on the “Stalin-Beria regime,” saying that now the Balkars “must unite and achieve complete rehabilitation, otherwise they will cease to exist as an ethnic group.”
In 2021, on the 77th anniversary of the deportation, at an official event dedicated to this date, victims of the deportation of Balkars said that they received only minor benefits, and support from the authorities was not commensurate with the hardships experienced during the years of repression, participants in the memorial event on March 8 stated . 2020.
In 2022, on the 78th anniversary of the deportation, the chairman of the muftiate of the republic, Khazretali Dzasezhev, called on all those present at the commemorative event to offer a prayer so that “no misfortunes would ever again befall any people,” and all those present performed a memorial prayer.
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