The wounds of the 1944 deportation still fester in Chechnya and beyond

The Chechen and Ingush peoples are commemorating the 81st anniversary of the communist regime’s forced expulsion in Moscow one day before Ukraine celebrates three years since the full-scale Russian invasion. This genocidal operation, which began on February 23, 1944, was carried out by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and is still a reverberating force today throughout the North Caucasus and beyond.

The Chechen and Ingush people continue to suffer from an open wound as a result of decades-long efforts to suppress the memory of this violent expulsion and Moscow’s refusal to acknowledge and apologize for it.

When I first heard the term “deportation,” I can recall being six or seven years old. One of my parents said it to me, but it quickly vanished into silence. Soviet authorities in the early 1980s still had a strong hold over the nation, and they vehemently prohibited discussions on this subject, particularly within the autonomous Chechen and Ingush regions.

Adults were extremely cautious about discussing the subject even in front of their children because they lacked confidence and fear in their lives. The KGB, the Soviet secret service, and a child repeating the phrase in front of strangers or at school might catch their attention and impose punishment.

The Soviet Union’s era, which saw increased transparency and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union, lifted the veil of silence over taboo subjects, including the various crimes committed by the Soviets. The younger generations of the Chechen and Ingush peoples discovered what had happened to their grandparents.

They finally heard the stories of how, during World War II, elite divisions of&nbsp, the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, and the military&nbsp, were deployed to deport the entire Chechen and Ingush populations from their ancestral lands. The revelation that Soviet soldiers never resisted killing the elderly and the sick in accordance with the deportation procedure was even chilling. Their bodies were improperly disposed of in mountain lakes.

Complete towns were destroyed by fire. In the case of the village of Khaibakh, the NKVD burned alive 700 of its residents, including pregnant women, children and the elderly, who could not be transported to train stations in time for deportation due to heavy snowfall.

The gruelling three-week journey in rail&nbsp, cars meant for livestock, where people faced starvation and unsanitary conditions, further contributed to the staggeringly high death toll. &nbsp, Dropped off in the Central Asian steppe with no food or shelter, the deportees had little chance of survival. Due to the deportation, the Chechens and Ingush lost almost&nbsp, 25 percent of their populations, according to the official estimate, before they were allowed to go back to their homes in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death.

The Russian Federation’s first democratic elections and the fall of the Soviet Union led to the state starting providing financial compensation to those who were born or were living in exile in 1991. But the amount paid out was meagre and insulting. The Chechen people hoped Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected president of Russia, would express his sincere applause.

He paid homage to the more than 20 000 Polish officers who were executed by the Soviets in Katyn in 1993 at a monument dedicated to the massacre. However, neither he nor any of his successors issued a formal apology for the more than 100, 000 Chechen and Ingush deaths during the deportation.

In 2004, during the raging war in Chechnya, the European Parliament raised a question about&nbsp, recognising this tragedy as genocide. The genocide was not officially recognized, and the initiative failed.

The declaration of Chechnya’s independence in 1991 was a result of the violent and traumatic deportation experience. The Chechens sought international law to protect their statehood in order to prevent another instance of this experience.

However, Russia’s aggression in 1994 against Chechnya shattered these hopes. The Chechens found themselves abandoned by the world in 1996, leaving Moscow to decide what would happen next.

Three years later, the second Russian aggression against Chechnya followed. During the war, which lasted until 2009, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, installed an authoritarian regime led by the Kadyrov family.

Ramzan Kadyrov, who inherited Chechnya’s presidency from his father Akhmat after his assassination in 2004, forbade the commemoration of the deportation on February 23 in an effort to show his loyalty to the Kremlin. Instead, he forced people to celebrate the Russian holiday, the Day of the Motherland Defender.

It was only&nbsp, five years ago, in 2020, that some commemoration events were permitted in the republic on February 23. However, these ceremonies primarily promoted the cult of his father Akhmat and legitimized Kadyrov’s authority in Chechnya.

In a newly published Russian history textbook, Kadyrov compelled the authors to rewrite the section that had justified Stalinist deportations in 2023. Of course, this move does not signal a shift in Kadyrov’s relationship with the Kremlin. As long as Putin holds onto his position of power, he will remain devoted to him.

However, he is aware that the Chechen leader who has absolute power in Chechnya understands that the deportation will continue to be a rallying cry for the country for many years to come.

Despite the brutality and destruction of the two Chechen wars, the deportation continues to inspire support for Chechen independence. In 2022, hundreds of Chechens will fight in Ukraine as a result of this.

Ukrainians also face the threat of repression and erasure, so it is important to keep an eye on what has happened to the Chechen people today. The world may abandon Ukraine in the same way Chechnya did in the 1990s. The consequences can be devastating, just as they have been for the Chechen people who continue to suffer under brutal authoritarianism.

Source: Aljazeera