11:58, 23 February 2026

Residents of Ingushetia and Chechnya commemorate the victims of deportation.

Today, Ingushetia and Chechnya mark the 82nd anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Vainakh people.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on February 23, 2025, the 81st anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Vainakh people, memorial rallies were held in Ingushetia and the Novolaksky District of Dagestan. At a rally in Chechnya, the republic's Prime Minister, Magomed Daudov, demanded that the homes in the former Aukhovsky District of Dagestan be returned to the descendants of the repressed. In addition, residents of the North Caucasus Federal District republics honored the memory of the victims of the deportation with religious, educational and family gatherings.

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".

The government of Ingushetia invited residents and visitors to attend a memorial service today at the Memorial of Memory and Glory in Nazran. "The event was organized to preserve historical memory and express respect for the victims of tragic events," explained a post on the government's Telegram channel. As of 11:55 a.m. Moscow time, the republic's cabinet had not published a report on the rally.

The head of Ingushetia, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, posted an address to his fellow countrymen on his Telegram channel today. A translation of this address, made in the Ingush language, was published by the online newspaper "Ingushetia".

"The regional leader addressed words of special gratitude to representatives of other peoples who, in those harsh years, extended a helping hand, sharing the hardships of life in a foreign land with the Ingush," the publication noted.

The head of the human rights organization "Mashr" Magomed Mutsolgov timed the publication in his blog on the "Caucasian Knot" to coincide with the anniversary of the deportation.

The Vainakhs were vilely deprived of their homeland, unfairly condemned to death.

"82 years ago, the Ingush and Chechens, without exception, "Young and old, they were exiled by the Stalinist regime to the cold steppes of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The Vainakhs were vilely deprived of their homeland, unjustly condemned to death, forced to share the tragic fate of other repressed peoples of the Soviet Union. While thousands of men fought at the front, the elderly, women, and children were herded into freight cars and sent to where, according to the bloody executioners, they were supposed to die. After 13 difficult years of deportation, the Ingush and Chechens have received the long-awaited opportunity to return to their homeland," he wrote in his publication "Day of Deportation of the Ingush and Chechens!".

"Caucasian Knot" also prepared reports on the deportation of the Balkars in 1944 and the deportation of Kalmyks. In 1943, the Karachays were also subjected to mass deportation.

The Chechen people are also marking the "sad anniversary" of the deportation. In connection with this date, the Cinematography Department will hold an "Hour of Remembrance and Sorrow" on the theme "Black February," according to a publication posted today on the Kultura.RF website.

"There are fewer and fewer witnesses of those tragic days. But time cannot erase the people's memory, since the losses suffered are irreparable. The event's host will talk about the reasons for the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, the difficulties that arose at the resettlement sites and during the return of the peoples of Checheno-Ingushetia to their native land. The deportation was the greatest injustice against the Chechen people," the publication notes. announcement.

As a reminder, the reasons given for the deportation were mass desertion and the preparation of an armed uprising in the Soviet rear, even though the territory of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was practically unoccupied, and by February 1944, the Wehrmacht had already been pushed back hundreds of kilometers from the Caucasus. Historian and member of the Association of Russian Society Researchers Boris Sokolov told the Caucasian Knot in 2022 that the decision about which peoples to repress depended directly on Stalin.

Mass arrests, deportations, and executions based on ethnicity were widely practiced under Stalin, which is confirmed by numerous documentary evidence, according to the Caucasian Knot report "10 Myths about Stalin's Role in the Great Patriotic War".

Natives of the Caucasus took an active part in the Great Patriotic War, and myths about their mass desertion and collaboration are based on data. href="https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/262015">designed to justify repressions against the peoples of the Caucasus, historians Alexei Bezugolny, Nikolai Bugai, and Evgeny Krinko stated in 2015.

According to their research, in 1941-1942, a number of secret decrees and orders were issued restricting the conscription and military service of a significant number of peoples of the USSR, including some peoples of the South Caucasus and all North Caucasian peoples.

There was no mass support for the German fascists in the North Caucasus, and the Soviet authorities' theory that collaborationism served as the pretext for the deportation of peoples is unfounded, historians Pavel Polyan and Pieter van Huis previously pointed out. The historians' arguments are supported by Wehrmacht archival documents analyzed by the "Caucasian Knot," cited in the article "Operation Shamil: How the Abwehr's Failure Became the Reason for the Deportation of the Vainakhs."

The deportation of the Vainakhs is directly linked to the unresolved issue of the rights of the Chechens of Dagestan, who have been waiting for the restoration of the Aukh district for nearly 30 years, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Main Thing About Aukh: What the Chechens Demand from the Dagestani Authorities."

The restoration of the Aukh district, which was planned for completion by 2025, has in fact been stopped for many years. The resettlement of Laks and the construction of new houses have been disrupted, Dagestani activists stated in 2024.

Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/421048