Chechen authorities launch website on 1944 deportation

A new website named "Never-to-be-forgotten" appeared on the Internet; its topics are the issues relating to Stalin's deportation. The site was launched by the Archive Department of the Chechen Government and the Committee on Youth Matters with the support of the republic's parliament. It took them about four months to start a new web portal; and its database already keeps 60,000 deportees' personal files.

The official presentation of the new website was held yesterday, on February 22, at the parliament of Chechnya and dated to the 67th anniversary of deportation of the Chechen nation, marked today.

The deportation website deport-chr.ru consists of several sections: "Eyewitnesses' Memoirs", "Photo Gallery", "Scientific Articles" and "Video Materials". The site already keeps 60,000 personal files of the so-called "special resettlers" from the currently available 300,000 documents of this sort. According to official data, in total about 400,000 Chechens were deported.

"Gathering information about the deportees will continue; the work was and is conducted in almost all the districts of our republic. Accordingly, the website will be continually updated; new memoirs of survivals, archive data and other materials will be added," an employee of the Archive Department of Chechnya told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Today, Chechnya will hold large-scale events dated to the 67th anniversary of Stalin's deportation in 1944, where almost 50 percent of Chechens and Ingushes perished. February 23 in Chechnya is marked as the Day of Memory and Grief. The local mosques will held various religious rites and sacrifice ceremonies. Grozny will host the 9th Congress of Russian Nations "We are Russians".