A festival “Repressed but not broken down” passed off in Kalmykia

An inter-regional art festival of repressed peoples “Repressed but not broken down” passed off in Elista on November, 18 and 19. The participants came from Ingushetia, Chechen Republic, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. The hosts and guests demonstrated their culture to each other and discussed questions of the repressed peoples’ rehabilitation.

According to initiator of the festival Nicolay Sandzhiev, Honoured worker of culture of the Russian Federation, member of the Writer’s Union of Russia, the festival’s mission was to integrate the repressed peoples of Russia and become an area where they could meet and show one another that in spite of getting under such a press they are alive and their culture, traditions and wish to share experience are alive together with them.

A requiem meeting in memory of the victims of political repression was held within the framework of the festival on November, 18.

In particular, opening the meeting Larisa Vasilieva said: “Several decades passed since the Russian peoples underwent repression and were deported to Siberia and other regions of our vast country. The period when it was impossible to speak, remember or even think of those events is far behind.

We, the modern generation, will always remember the people who remained in the places of deportation forever and honour their memory”. 

“The Russian people like all the peoples of the Soviet Union underwent repression, too, although not so much as the people of Kalmykia and peoples of Northern Caucasus. But we know what it is and feel your offence from unfair humiliation and unfair repression in full”, Ivan Golubnichy, Secretary of the Board of the Russian Writers’ Union, Editor-in-Chief of “Moscow Writer” newspaper, said.

Boris Ochirov, Chairman of the Union of repressed peoples, said that he was currently working at creation of a museum of deportation of the peoples of the USSR and collecting opinions on the first volume of his book “Contribution of repressed peoples of the USSR into the victory in the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945”.

After the meeting a round table conference was organized during which the participants of the festival unanimously arrived at a conclusion that the intellectuals’ mission was to “explain the reasons of what happened and is still going on in the country, indicate the ways that could help people overcome the blemishes and learn historical lessons”.

It was the second festival of this kind. The first one passed off in Kalmykia in 1996.