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| Participants in a memorial rally in Ingushetia called for commemoration of the victims of deportation | |
| 2026-02-24 | |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited [KavkazUzel] A delegation of Balkars
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," approximately 500 people participated in mass events in Ingushetia on February 23 to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the forced deportation of the Vainakh people to Central Asia. Residents of Chechnya also marked the anniversary: an official rally attended by officials and security forces in the republic took place without the participation of ordinary people, who are marking the tragic anniversary in a small family circle. On February 23, 1944, Operation Lentil began, during which nearly 500,000 Chechens and Ingush were deported en masse from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. More information about these events and their consequences can be found in the Caucasian Knot report " Deportation of Chechens and Ingush." A large group of representatives of the Balkar people attended the memorial service at the Memorial of Memory and Glory in Nazran, which was attended by Ingush officials led by Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, representatives of public organizations, clergy, and elders. A Balkar delegation arrived in Ingushetia by bus on February 23 and participated in all the mourning events taking place in the republic that day, a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reported. Most of the heads of the North Caucasus regions, with the exception of the leaders of Ingushetia and Chechnya, did not publicly mention the anniversary of the deportation of the Ingush and Chechen peoples on February 23. Only the head of Karachay-Cherkessia, Rashid Temrezov, expressed condolences to the Vainakhs, noting that "for Karachay-Cherkessia, the pain of our fraternal peoples is close and understandable." The "Caucasian Knot" also prepared reports on the deportation of Balkars in 1944 and the deportation of Kalmyks. In 1943, the Karachays were also subjected to mass deportation. The heads of Dagestan, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Stavropol Krai published posts on February 23 about Defender of the Fatherland Day and Putin's address, but failed to mention the events of 1944, Fortanga noted. Speaking at the rally, Murat Daskiev, Chairman of the Council of Elders of Ingushetia, emphasized that the Ingush, far from their homeland, have preserved "their language, their customs, their spirituality." "We honor the memory of all those who did not return from exile, those who died en route," he declared. Daskiev also emphasized that the deportation to Central Asia became one of the most horrific chapters in the history of the people. "How many trials our people, sometimes even our youngest citizens, have endured," he noted. I SHOULD HAVE DIED THE DAY WE WERE EVICTED. Lydia was one of those who survived the deportation at an early age; she was not yet three years old when it was deported. She remembers the long journey, after which her family was brought to a small village; the house consisted of a stove, a bed, and a pile of straw in the corner. Little Lida's mother fell ill and lay in bed upon her arrival in exile. "I remember we had a red blanket, and there were tons of lice crawling all over it. I lay down next to her. I tried to snuggle up to her, to get warm, but she didn't move," Lidia told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. The girl, not understanding what had happened to her mother, clung to the woman's dead body for two days, trying to stay warm, but hunger later forced her outside. A local resident, a Kazakh, passing by, noticed the naked, tearful child. Together with another woman, a German, they fed and warmed the girl and organized her mother's funeral. After her mother's death, Lida was passed from one relative to another: all the relatives had children of their own, and no one in the family needed an extra mouth to feed. In one such family, a boy named Akhmed lived off what he could steal from unsuspecting market women; a Russian friend helped him steal. The boys recruited Lida to their trade. They stole everything. One day they stole a piece of lard. "I was a ragamuffin. I'd be standing at the counter with my purse in my hand, and they'd run up and, as if by accident, swipe carrots or buns into my purse, and then run off. That's how we ate, stealing everything. One time, they stole a piece of lard—they didn't eat it themselves, so they traded it for some boards, which they then sold to a Kazakh and bought a loaf of bread," the woman recalls. Later, Lida ended up with a distant relative: her granddaughters, Aza and Marem, stole coal from freight cars and then sold it to buy something to eat. The older girls encouraged little Lida to climb onto freight cars to dump the coal—though it was terrifying, as Aza and Marem reminded her that otherwise, "she'll starve and die." One day, while Lida was on a coal car, the train started moving. Although the girls shouted, "Jump!" she was frightened—all she could do was sit down on the coal and cry. At the first station the train stopped, she was removed from the train. The railway worker who brought Lida to the control room ordered the attendant to "give the boy a bath." The duty officer gave her a shower and changed her into clean clothes. "This isn't a boy, but a girl, and what a pretty one," she told her colleagues. When asked about her parents, Lida explained that her father had been at war, her mother had died, and her relatives had been passed from one family to another. The railway workers sent her to an orphanage. Now Lida is once again without family – her husband, then her two sons, died one after the other. Sick and alone, she has no home of her own. “I should have died the day we were evicted,” Lidia says, recalling her ordeal. Related: Balkar 12/31/2025 FSB neutralized a saboteur who was preparing to blow up a gas pipeline in Kabardino-Balkaria Balkar 12/10/2025 Latest information on the situation on the front line as of December 9 (updated) Balkar 11/11/2025 Two men were killed in a grenade explosion in Kabardino-Balkaria | |
| Posted by:badanov |