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The works of Movses Khorenatsi, the “father of Armenian history,” used by Armenian and
partly world historical science as one of the main historical sources, are nothing more than a patchwork
of borrowed facts or fake information. It should be said in all justice, however, that many of the bor-
rowed facts are genuine; they found their way into his works from ancient sources and supply detailed
information about the geographic location and geographic names of places in medieval Azerbaijan,
as well as about the local peoples.

Vakhit AKAEV

D.Sc. (Philos.), Professor, Chief Researcher,

Kh. Ibragimov Integrated Scientific Research Institute (KNII),
Russian Academy of Sciences
(Grozny, Russia).

Abdula BUGAEV

Ph.D. (Hist.), Assistant Professor, Head of the Department of Humanitarian Studies,

Kh. Ibragimov KNII, Russian Academy of Sciences
(Grozny, Russia).

Magomed DADUEV

Ph.D. (Political Science), Senior Research Associate,

Kh. Ibragimov KNII, Russian Academy of Sciences
(Grozny, Russia).

DEPORTATION OF THE CHECHENS:

WHAT WAS IT AND CAN IT BE FORGOTTEN?
(ON THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF DEPORTATION OF
THE CHECHEN AND INGUSH PEOPLES)

Abstract

T
he authors look back at what happened
seventy years ago when the Chechens
were deported from their historical
homeland; they have convincingly proved
that their people were falsely accused by the
Stalinist regime and that those authors who
justify the injustices of Stalin’s time are pur-
suing their own aims. Today, Khrushchev’s
denunciations of Stalin’s personality cult, its
anti-popular nature, and the tragic conse-
quences are as topical as they were in the
1960s. The same applies to the rehabilitation
of the victims of the political repressions, in-
cluding the deported peoples.
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The authors criticize the efforts of those
who justify the deportation of several Soviet
peoples carried out on the orders of Stalin
and Beria and point out that this does noth-
ing to help the consistent attempts to remove
the memory of the trauma from these peo-
ples’ collective memory. National harmony in
the multinational Russian state should rely,
among other things, on historical truth as
one of the pillars of the multinational consent
indispensable for the state’s sustainable de-
velopment.

KEYWORDS: deportation, the Chechen people, the Stalinist-Beria regime,

lawlessness, denunciation of the personality cult,
rehabilitation of the repressed peoples, repatriation,
falsifications of the truth, ethnic memory.

Introduction
Seventy years have passed since the Stalin-Beria regime deported several peoples living in the
south of Russia in 1943-1944 on false accusations of collaborationism, desertion, resistance to the
Soviet authorities, and hostility toward the Red Army. Until the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. held
in February 1956 and for some time after it, many people in the Soviet Union believed the false ac-
cusations; even today, certain researchers and publicists have not yet abandoned the attempts to jus-
tify the deportations and punitive measures in their superficial compositions.
In some cases, the efforts to shed light on the tragic pages of the history of the multinational
Soviet people look very biased, subjective, and openly speculative. I. Pykhalov, M. Poltoranin, A.
Martirosian, and others of their ilk are still lauding the totalitarian regime and its crimes, up to and
including the deportations. They hunt through the archives for suitable documents to exonerate those
guilty of the crimes in order to mislead those who read their works today. Any objective historian and
publicist writer should analyze all the relevant documents and facts. In our case, this primarily refers
to the aims and tasks of the domestic and foreign policy of Stalin and his cronies at the final stage of
the war against Hitler and his satellites.
So far, a very much needed comprehensive study has not been written. The authors born in
Kazakhstan, where their parents were deported, who grew up and were educated under Soviet power,
have posed themselves the task of comprehending the meaning of what happened seventy years ago
to offer their own arguments and suggest practical measures in order to overcome the “ethnopolitical
stereotypes” and all sorts of phobias very much alive in people’s minds. This should be done to main-
tain multinational harmony in the polyethnic space of the Russian Federation.

Deportation:
How and Why
On 23 February, 1944, the Chechens and Ingush were exiled (deported) to Kazakhstan and
Kirghizia on a decision of the Soviet leaders. In so doing, the Stalin-Beria regime deprived these
peoples of their homeland for thirteen years and placed them under the strict surveillance and control
of the special services.
This was planned and legally substantiated well in advance. Ruslan Khazbulatov has written:
“A classified Decision of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars of the U.S.S.R. on deportation of the
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Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachays was passed on 17 October, 1943.”1 As far as we know,
this document has not yet been recovered and, therefore, remains outside academic circulation. When
found, it should be carefully analyzed and published to complete the picture of deportation of the
Vaynakh peoples (as the Chechens and Ingush call themselves) and specify the aim and tasks of what
was done.
We all know that the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on Liquida-
tion of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. and Administrative Organization of Its Territory was signed on
7 March, 1944 when Operation Chechevitsa (deportation of the Chechens and Ingush) was com-
pleted. Two years later, this decision became a law. On 25 June, 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the
R.S.F.S.R. passed a Law on Liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. and on Transformation of
the Crimean A.S.S.R. into the Crimean Region, a post factum justification of violence.
These acts are legally impaired and anti-constitutional. According to Art 127 of the Constitution
of the U.S.S.R. of 1936, “Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed personal immunity,” while Art 128
said: “The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.”
The state, which violated its own Constitution and the seemingly unshakable constitutional norms
recognized by international legal practice, showed that it was not alien to lawlessness and arbitrariness
and revealed its tyrannical nature.
The peoples who were deported during the years of severe tests for the multinational country
and the new generations want to know why Stalin exiled them from their native lands.
The state acts register the official motive of what was done, but this formally punitive measure
was prompted by absolutely different considerations. The logic of Stalin’s postwar geopolitical strat-
egy, and its aims and tasks become much clearer when analyzed within his foreign policy priorities,
the main vector of which the Soviet leaders outlined at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers
of the U.K., the U.S.S.R., and the United States in October 1943 and at the Tehran Conference of the
leaders of these states in November-December 1943. It suggests that the North Caucasian peoples
(Chechens included) were part of the far-reaching postwar world order plans. Stalin was obviously
very skeptical about Turkey as an international actor and never concealed his intention to “try to force
it to yield control of the Dardanelles Straits.”2 It seems that the Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars,
Meskheti Turks, and Crimean Tatars were deported from their native lands to reduce the risks in case
relations with Turkey became exacerbated.
The official accusations were nothing but a smokescreen. What did the Stalinist regime accuse
the Chechens of? The preamble to the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
on Liquidation of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. looked like a verdict of guilty. The Chechens and
Ingush were accused of high treason, collaborating with fascist occupants, performing acts of diver-
sion and reconnaissance, setting up armed groups on German orders to fight Soviet power, avoiding
labor duties, carrying out bandit attacks on collective farms in neighboring regions, and robbing and
murdering Soviet people. The Law passed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on
25 June, 1946 registered that many Chechens and Crimean Tatars were fighting the Red Army.
Lumped together, the monstrous lies concocted under Beria’s supervision were passed as accusations
of the worst crimes.
 The first state accusation said that “many Chechens betrayed their Motherland and sided
with the fascist occupants.” This suggests a question: “How many is many? Ten, one hun-
dred, one thousand, thousands, tens of thousands, etc.? How many Chechen traitors were

1
R. Khazbulatov, Chuzhie (Istoriko-politicheskiy ocherk o chechentsakh i ikh gosudartvennosti). Kreml i rossiisko-
chechenskaia voyna, Graal Publishing House, Moscow, 2003, p. 422.
2
H. Feis, Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin. The War They Waged. The Peace They Sought, Princeton University Press, 1957,
p. 228; A.M. Bugaev, “Pochemu Stalin vyselial narody? (postanovka problem),” Izvestia vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy.
Severo-Kavkazskiy region. Obshchestvennye nauki, No. 3A (151A), 2009, ll. 88-91; Kh.-M.A. Sabanchiev, “Deportatsiia
narodov Severnogo Kavkaza v 40-kh gg. XX v.,” Voprosy istorii, No. 11, 2013, pp. 104-112.
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needed to deport the Chechen people? We all know that the territory of the Chechen-Ingush
A.S.S.R was never occupied, with the exception of Malgobek, a small town of oil workers
where the Germans remained for three short months. This is a small area in the republic’s
northwestern corner, about one hundred kilometers from Grozny on the border (at that time)
with the Stavropol Territory. The question is: How could Chechens and Ingush actively
cooperate with fascist aggressors if the aggressors never reached the territory of the compact
Vaynakh settlement?”
 The second accusation: the Chechens were engaged in diversion and reconnaissance and set
up armed bands to fight Soviet power. Today, this part of the guilty verdict remains unproved.
There are enough reasons to doubt the scope of banditry, desertion, and avoidance of military
service or labor duties. It should be admitted that the unprovoked fascist attack on the Soviet Union
stirred up anti-Soviet elements in many republics. The Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R. was no exception.
These were people with negative experience of “de-kulakization,” as well as criminals, thieves, and
robbers. The situation in the Shatoy, Itum Kale, Galanchozh, and Cheberloy districts was far from
peaceful, while banditry was registered in the Vedeno and Sharoy districts.
According to the information that the Department for the Struggle against Banditry of the Com-
missariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the U.S.S.R. cited in its report on the struggle against ban-
ditry and desertion between 1 July, 1941 and 1 July, 1944, during the first three years of the Great
Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the NKVD structures liquidated in Soviet territory:
 Groups of bandits ............................................................................................7,161
 Members ........................................................................................................54,130
In the process:
 Killed bandits ..................................................................................................4,076
 Arrested .........................................................................................................42,529
 Legalized .........................................................................................................7,525
In the territory of Western Ukraine, 34,878 UPA and OUN members were liquidated, including:
 Killed .............................................................................................................16,338
 Imprisoned .....................................................................................................15,991
 Gave themselves up .........................................................................................2,549
 Liquidated bandits, total .............................................................................. 89,0083
In the Soviet Union arrested (in the same period):
 Deserters from the Red Army ..................................................................1,210,224
 Draft avoiders ..............................................................................................456,667
Including in the Northern Caucasus:
 Deserters from the Red Army .......................................................................49,362
 Draft avoiders ................................................................................................13,389
Including in the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R.:
 Deserters from the Red Army .........................................................................4,441
 Draft avoiders ................................................................................................... 8564

3
State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), rec. gr. Р-9478 (classified), inv. 1, f. 63, sheet 5.
4
Ibid., sheet 177.
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In the reported period, there were 11,851 bandit attacks in the Soviet Union, 9,774 of them were
exposed.5
These bandit attacks killed:
 Soviet and Party functionaries ............................................................................342
 Officials of NKVD and NKGB ..........................................................................187
 Officers and rank-and-files of the Red Army and NKVD .................................392
 Other citizens ..................................................................................................2,013
 Total ................................................................................................................2,934
When the Great Patriotic War began, seven old and 14 recently formed bands (96 members in
all) had been operating in Checheno-Ingushetia.6
The following figures describe the criminal situation in the Soviet Union by the beginning of
the Great Patriotic War:
In April, May, and June 1941, the NKVD liquidated
 Groups of bandits .................................................................................................56
 Members .............................................................................................................665
By 1 July, 1941, the criminal situation in the country was described by the following figures of
registered bandit groups and their members:
Bands Members
 In the U.S.S.R. ........................................................................ 196 ..................971
From them:
 In Ukraine ................................................................................. 94 ..................476
 In Byelorussia .......................................................................... 17 ....................90
 In the Northern Caucasus and
Transcaucasus ........................................................................... 65 ..................285
 The rest of the country ............................................................. 20 ................ 1207
The report specified: “Bandits and insurgents became much more active when the war began.
In expectation of the Germans, the former anti-Soviet insurgents, members of liquidated rioting and
counterrevolutionary organizations, former White Cossacks, kulaks (rich peasants.—Ed.), bandits,
members of religious sects, etc. closed ranks.
“They became engaged in anti-Soviet defeatist propaganda among the people and encouraged
desertion and evasion of military service to undermine the military might of the Soviet Union, thus
helping the German fascists. They drew bandits, deserters, those who avoided military service, and
other illegal elements into bandit rioting groups, or even units to carry out armed actions in the rear of
the Red Army.
“They stepped up their activities as German troops moved deeper into Soviet territory. By
October 1941, in certain rear regions of the Soviet Union the number of bandit groups was consid-
erable.
“By the latter half of 1941, local bodies of the NKVD of the U.S.S.R. had liquidated (in the
country as a whole):

5
State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), rec. gr. Р-9478 (classified), inv. 1, f. 63, sheet 6.
6
Ibid., sheet 8.
7
Ibid., sheet 11.
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 Groups of bandits ...............................................................................................178

 Members ........................................................................................................ 1,6048
Arrested:
 Deserters from the Red Army .....................................................................710,755
 Avoiders ........................................................................................................71,541
“In the latter half of 1941, 21 of the registered 50 bandit actions were exposed.” 9
According to the NKVD of the U.S.S.R., in the first three years of the Great Patriotic War (be-
tween 1 July, 1941 and 1 July, 1944), 185 bands with a total number of members of 4,368 were de-
stroyed in Checheno-Ingushetia.10
 The third accusation against the Chechens was raids of collective farms of the neighboring
regions, robbery and murders of Soviet people. This was partly true: in some districts of
Checheno-Ingushetia crimes did take place; they were perpetrated by individuals or small
groups, not by the entire nation.
 Fourth, it was alleged that many Chechens were fighting the Red Army. This accusation
appeared when the Chechens had been already living in deportation for two years and five
months. It would be interesting to know how many Chechens were fighting the Red Army
units and where. So far, no convincing information about that has been offered (and no
convincing information will be found); it is a fact that tens of thousands of Chechens and
Ingush were fighting in the ranks of the Red Army.
Official substantiation of the deportation stands on clay feet; accusations were heaped together
to accuse the Chechens of hideous crimes.
The deported Chechens lived through indescribable suffering and endured the stress of the
first years of exile and the thirteen years they spent in Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. All the deportees
were deprived of elemental legal and social rights; they faced the far-from-friendly local authorities
and, frequently, far-from-friendly local people. The NKVD went even further: it spread rumors
about cannibalism among the Chechens. Stalin’s death on 5 March, 1953 alleviated the harsh regime
of exile.

Deportation:
Khrushchev’s Criticism of
the Personality Cult and Repatriation of
the Deported Peoples
In 1956, speaking at the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U., Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s
personality cult: “The Soviet Union is justly considered a model multinational state because we have
assured in practice the equality and friendship of all [of the] peoples living in our great fatherland.
All the more monstrous are those acts whose initiator was Stalin and which were rude violations of
the basic Leninist principles [behind our] Soviet state’s nationalities policies. We refer to the mass
deportations of entire nations from their places of origin, together with all Communists and Komso-

8
Ibid., sheet 8.
9
Ibid., sheet 14.
10
Ibid., sheet 174.
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mols without any exception. This deportation was not dictated by any military considerations. Thus,
at the end of 1943, when there had already been a permanent change of fortune at the front in favor
of the Soviet Union, a decision concerning the deportation of all the Karachays from the lands on
which they lived was taken and executed.
“In the same period, at the end of December 1943, the same lot befell the Kalmyks of the Kalmyk
Autonomous Republic. In March (in February.—Authors) 1944, all the Chechens and Ingush were
deported and the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was liquidated. In April (in March.—Authors)
1944, all the Balkars were deported from the territory of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Re-
public to faraway places and their republic itself was renamed the Autonomous Kabardian Republic.
Ukrainians avoided meeting this fate only because there were too many of them and there was no
place to which to deport them. Otherwise, [Stalin] would have deported them also. No Marxist-Le-
ninist, no man of common sense can grasp how it is possible to make whole nations responsible for
inimical activity, including women, children, old people, Communists and Komsomols, to use mass
repression against them, and to expose them to misery and suffering for the hostile acts of individual
persons or groups of persons.”11
Khrushchev accused Stalin of flagrant violations of the Leninist principles of the Soviet
Union’s nationalities policy in the form of deportations of peoples and liquidation of their national-
state units.

Deportation:
Political and
Legal Rehabilitation Begins
The 20th Congress marked a turning point in the Soviet Union’s treatment of the repressed
peoples. Nearly all of them were returned to their homelands, where their national-state units were
restored. They were offered conditions conducive to their social, economic, and cultural rehabilitation
and development, even if it was not easy to find dwelling and suitable jobs because of certain preju-
dices in personnel policy, etc.
On 26 April, 1991, forty-six years after the deportation, the R.S.F.S.R. adopted a Law on Re-
habilitation of the Repressed People, the Preamble to which pointed out, for the first time in Soviet
legislative practice, that the peoples had been subjected to “genocide and slanderous attacks.” Article
1 of the Law stated that “the acts of repressions against these peoples are denounced as illegal and
criminal.”12
The Law was of an immense political, legal, material, and moral importance. As a vitally im-
portant legal act it restored historical justice and played the key role in complete rehabilitation of the
illegally punished peoples. Recently, President Putin issued a Decree on Measures on Rehabilitation
of the Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar, and German Peoples and State Support of Their
Renaissance and Development13; this can be described as another historically important step toward
rehabilitation of these peoples.
At the same time, it is important to analyze at the state level the results of execution of the Law
of the R.S.F.S.R. on Rehabilitation of the Repressed Peoples and, in particular, practical rehabilitation
of the Chechens.

11
[http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/26/greatspeeches5].
12
[http://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1452].
13
See: Rossiyskaia gazeta, 21 April, 2014.
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Deportation:
Falsifications and
the Need for Profound Critical Studies
Nikolay Bugay is one of the most active Russian students of the problems of deportation of all
peoples, the Chechens included; he has discovered a vast body of documentary sources, however his
personal treatment of the causes of the deportations perfectly fits the Stalinist logic, even though, from
his point of view, these were preventive measures to be implemented in wartime against “unreliable
ethnicities.”14 One cannot help but wonder what the reliability/unreliability criteria applied to eth-
nicities in the past and today were. Why were they applied to certain peoples when there were no
obvious war-related reasons? In any case, no gradation of nations by the highly doubtful reliable/
unreliable features can be accepted as tenable. Well, perhaps N. Bugay did discover reasonable qual-
ification in the classified documents of the NKVD (to which he alone had access). If the unreliability
of the Chechens was based on lies and slander, it cannot be accepted as the starting point of analysis;
subjectivism in politics and science leads nowhere.
At the same time, Bugay believes that “the Union state, on the eve and especially during the
war, committed numerous and serious errors in its nationalities policy. It was through deportation that
the Government of the U.S.S.R. stabilized the situation in places where ethnopolitical tension was the
highest.”15 According to the author, “the situation was taking shape in such a way that the authorities
found it much more suitable to deport ethnicities than to painstakingly stabilize the situation.” 16 And
on the next two pages: “The decision of the Government of the Union of S.S.R. to recall those mem-
bers of the deported peoples who were heroically fighting on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War can
be described as extremely anti-human.”17 This is one of his pet-subjects; he quoted the figures: in
1944-1945, 156,843 members of the deported peoples were demobilized from the Red Army while it
was fighting fascist Germany. According to the figures quoted in 1949, there were 209,545 of them.
Nikolay Bugay concluded: “They were treated as enemies of the people; there were 8,894 Chechens
and 4,248 Ingush among them.”18 According to information Nikolay Bugay supplied in some of his
publications, 17 units of the Red Army had been formed in Checheno-Ingushetia; over 50 thousand
had been mobilized, including 30 thousand Chechens. He is convinced that “the policy of deportation
of ethnicities caused unbearable suffering; it cannot be positively assessed. It should be condemned
and rejected.”19
Igor Pykhalov has offered an explanation: “During the war, Chechens and Ingush committed
crimes much more serious than the story of the notorious white horse Chechen elders allegedly pre-
sented to Hitler.”20 He repeats these doubtful accusations in an effort to justify the awful crimes of
the Stalinist regime, that is, deportation of peoples despite the fact that the Soviet and Russian laws
have already denounced them as anti-constitutional and criminal. This neo-Stalinist academic refers
to archival documents to justify deportations. It seems, however, that he never tried too hard to locate

14
N.F. Bugay, “Deportatsia narodov—repressivnaia mera gosudarstvennoy politiki v sfere natsionalnykh otnosheniy.
20-40-e gody,” in: Kraynosti istorii i kraynosti istorikov, Moscow, 1997, p. 173.
15
N.F. Bugay, “Repressirovannye grazhdane na zashchite Otechestva,” in: N.A. Aralovets, E.N. Bikeykin, N.F. Bugay,
O.M. Verbitskaya et al., Narod i voyna: ocherki istorii Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny 1941-1945, ed. by A.N. Sakahrov,
A.S. Senyavsky, Grif and Co, Moscow, 2010, p. 273.
16
Ibid., pp. 273-274.
17
Ibid., pp. 274-275.
18
Ibidem.
19
Ibid., p. 287.
20
I. Pykhalov, “Kavkazskie orly tretyego reikha,” Otechestvo, No. 4, 2002; idem, Za chto Stalin vyselial narody? Sta-
linskie deportatsii—prestupny proizvol ili spravedlivoe vozmezdie? Yauza-press, Moscow, 2008, p. 266.
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suitable documentary evidence. He prefers lies to well-established truths, including the myth of the
white horse. We have enough documentary evidence to say that none of the deported peoples ever
presented either a white or a black horse to Hitler.
V. Loginov, A. Martirosian, M. Poltoranin, and I. Pykhalov rely on falsifications to arrive at
dubious conclusions about the mass banditry in the Checheno-Ingush A.S.S.R. at the turn of the 1940s,
desertion, and cooperation with fascists.
Arsen Martirosian, the author of an apologetic work about Lavrentiy Beria, insists that many of
the members of the deported peoples, including Chechens and Ingush, encouraged and approved by
the majority of these peoples, committed numerous villainous crimes during the Great Patriotic War. 21
He further writes: “If the Defense Committee of the U.S.S.R. and personally Supreme Commander
Joseph Stalin decided to treat these scoundrels and criminals in full accordance with the criminal law
of the time and the specifics of wartime, practically all the men of these peoples should have been
executed by shooting.” The so-called humane Soviet leaders opted for deportation, which the author
describes as a milder punishment far removed from genocide.22
Arsen Martirosian describes the deported peoples as scoundrels and criminals and their deporta-
tion as just punishment, not genocide. An inveterate cynic and falsifier of historical events, he writes
that in exile the deported peoples “continued multiplying.” These words could have been said either
by those directly involved in the cruelties against the deported peoples or their descendants trying to
exonerate those who committed these crimes. The Law of the R.S.F.S.R. on Rehabilitation of the
Repressed Peoples says that the repressed peoples were victims of genocide and slander.23 It seems
that Martirosian either does not know or is deliberately ignoring the laws of the RF. In both cases, he
demonstrates not only legal ignorance, but also hurls slanderous accusations at the deported peoples
and insults their national feelings. It seems that this work should be analyzed by experts to decide
whether it can be called extremist.
It is important to say that the neo-Stalinists and neo-Beria-ists of our days remain devoted to old
thinking and completely ignore the laws of Russia that contain objective and moral-humanitarian
assessments of the repression of millions of people and many ethnicities.
So far, we have not received clear answers to many questions related to the prerequisites, causes
of deportation, and return of the Chechens. There are no answers in the second volume of Istoria
Chechni s drevneyshikh vremen do nashikh dney (History of Chechnia from Ancient Times to Our
Days) published in 2008. It seems that the authors should have paid much more attention to the very
complicated and contradictory situation that predated the deportation, to the economic activities of
the authorities and their efforts to preserve political stability, efficiently oppose criminal elements,
rehabilitate the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R., and also to what was done by those who prevented this, as
well as the events of 1958-1959.
Mikhail Poltoranin, one of the closest associates of President Yeltsin, has offered the following
tale-telling comment on what the political beau monde thought about the return of the Chechens and
Ingush to their homeland: “The Vaynakhs are a hole in the country’s strategic defenses. This means
that they should not be returned to their homeland, while their lands should be occupied forever by
Cossack villages, Russian settlements, and Avar auls as reliable allies of Russia in the Northern Cau-
casus. The region itself will no longer be a deep and very painful thorn in the country’s hindquarters,” 24
eloquent evidence of how President Yeltsin’s closest circle, responsible for the military conflicts of
the 1990s in Chechnia, distrusted the Vaynakhs.
What is more, Mikhail Poltoranin brings together the real facts of Stalin’s time and the far from
polite emotions about the country’s “hindquarters.” This speaks volumes about this gentleman’s ideas

21
See: A. Martirosian, Sto mifov o Berii. Ot slavy k prokliatiyam. 1941-1953 gg., Veche, Moscow, 2010, p. 217.
22
See: Ibid., p. 218.
23
[http://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1452].
24
M.N. Poltoranin, Vlast v trotilovom ekvivalente. Nasledie tsaria Borisa, Eksmo, Algoritm, Moscow, 2011, p. 211.
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about life in general and his lifestyle. A researcher should sift the grain from the chaff. No one doubts
that the Chechens would have never been returned to their homeland during Stalin’s life. We all know
that their lands were immediately occupied by others; what one of the cronies of “Tsar Boris” (who
betrayed his idol and friend) says about “a hole in the country’s strategic defenses” is a lie.
The 58th volume of the Rossiiskaia entsiklopedia (Russian Encyclopedia) published by Terra
Publishers was convincingly criticized by academics of Grozny and Moscow; they applied to court
to denounce this volume as extremist, which ruled that its copies should be removed from bookshops
and libraries and banned its quoting. It justifies deportation; it treats the restoration of the Checheno-
Ingush A.S.S.R. as nothing short of a mistake by the people in power and says that, after their return,
Chechens persecuted Russians and removed them from their dwellings. It is difficult to imagine how
reasonable people could slide so deep into the abyss of ignorance and lies and could spare no effort
to slander the Chechens.
Today, heaps of Checheno-phobic fiction, publicist writings, and what passes for academic
works are being published; these authors falsify the past and present. Some of the Internet resources
shape negative attitudes toward peoples, including the Chechens. This should be denounced as delib-
erate misinformation and opposition to multinational consent in the Russian state. There are laws that
envisage criminal punishment for slander, xenophobia, fanning ethnic strife, insults of religious feel-
ings and extremist literature. The people in power spare no efforts to prevent or cut short everything
that may cause ethnic tension. Problems, however, persist; the science of history, which relies on the
truth as its main criterion, should play an important role in the process.
In 2011, a fundamental work appeared based on a vast body of archival documents called Vaynakhi
i imperskaia vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrenney politike Rossii i SSSR (nachalo XIX-
seredina XX v.) (Vaynakhs and Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechnia and Ingushetia in the Domes-
tic Policy of Russia and the U.S.S.R. (early 19th-mid-20th cent.), which supplies a new explanation:
“The decision on deportation of the Chechens and Ingush provoked and justified by specific circum-
stances was nothing but an extreme attempt to cope with a problem that appeared not before World
War II, but before the Bolsheviks came to power: the high internal stability of the ethnicity, its re-
fusal to adjust, its ability to stand opposed to imperial assimilation and ‘absorption,’ as well as to the
Soviet atomization of social and ethnic entities, the high level of open confrontation, and the willing-
ness to use force to exacerbate the conflict.”25 The authors of the above V. Kozlov and M. Kozlova
reflect the anti-popular nature of the tyrannical regime that punished certain peoples who were com-
ponent parts of the so-called new historical community of people, the Soviet people.
Study of the problems of deportation and rehabilitation of the repressed peoples has not yet been
completed. We should find and bring into academic circulation new archival documents and analyze
them in detail.

Deportation:
Ethnic Memory
Exile, violence, and lawlessness bruise the historic memory of any ethnicity; they breed resent-
ment and a negative attitude toward the relations between different nations and ethnicities within the
state and its nationalities policy.
This much is invariably said by members of ethnic elites and academics of the deported nations
at all sorts of scientific-practical forums held at the regional and federal levels. The international

25
Vaynakhi i imperskaia vlast: problema Chechni i Ingushetii vo vnutrenney politike Rossii i SSSR (nachalo XIX-se-
redina XX v., ROSSPEN, Moscow, 2011, p. 681.
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scientific-practical conference on the problems of deportation and rehabilitation of repressed peoples

held in Elista (Kalmykia) in the fall of 1913 to mark the 70th anniversary of deportation of the
Kalmyks and liquidation of their national autonomy was no exception.
On 8 March, 2014, at a memorial meeting held in Nalchik on the occasion of the 70th anniver-
sary of deportation, Vice Premier of Kabardino-Balkaria Ruslan Firov said that the memory of the
tragic pages in the history of deportation of the Balkars “unite all the people living in the republic in
the firm conviction that this should not happen again.”26
Acting head of Kabardino-Balkaria Yury Kokov deemed it necessary to point out at the same
meeting that “seventy years ago the government made a big mistake by deporting the Balkars; this
was a criminal decision.”27 Compassion for the deported peoples by dealing, among other things, with
the problems created by deportation is an important condition for overcoming the negative stereotypes,
ensuring multinational harmony, and creating the firm conviction that similar tragedies will never
happen again.

Conclusion
The problems of deportation and rehabilitation should be further studied, which means that the
academic community should become even more active when dealing with the subject; it should learn
to use new approaches and deal with specific practical problems in order to protect these peoples
against possible repetitions. This means that we should learn the whole truth about deportation and
its repercussions.
Federal and regional power structures, public organizations, and academics should pool forces
to achieve sustainable agreement, unity between peoples, and religious and cultural tolerance, as well
as insist on deeper civil and democratic changes very much needed by the national communities. It
should be said that today positive socioeconomic, spiritual, and cultural processes are going on in the
Chechen Republic, in the Northern Caucasus, and across the country that strengthen the foundations
of multinational and multicultural development of the peoples of Russia.
This process will be even more successful if the state and society closely cooperate in:
(1) resolute condemnation of all statements made at any level that might trigger ethnic tension
or even enmity and undermine the unity of the family of Russian nations;
(2) profound and objective studies of the so-called white spots of history, including its re-
gional aspects;
(3) regular analysis of publications dealing with multinational relations;
(4) holding campaigns at the federal and local level to extend material and moral support to the
deported peoples;
(5) setting up memorial complexes in the capitals of republics from which peoples were de-
ported.

26
L. Maratova, “V Nalchike proshel miting, posviashchenny 70-letiiu deportatsii balkartsev,” available at [http://www.
kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/239202/].
27
Ibidem.