CC BY
37
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
The 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 consequences are as topical as they were in the 1960s. The same applies to the rehabilitation of the victims of the political repressions, including 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 nothing 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 development.
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 accusations; even today, certain researchers and publicists have not yet abandoned the attempts to justify 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 maintain 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 Liquidation 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 completed. 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 strategy, 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 diversion 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 hundred, 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.
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 Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the U.S.S.R. cited in its report on the struggle against banditry 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:
O Groups of bandits ...........................................................................................7,161
O Members.......................................................................................................54,130
In the process:
O Killed bandits .................................................................................................4,076
O Arrested........................................................................................................42,529
O Legalized ........................................................................................................7,525
In the territory of Western Ukraine, 34,878 UPA and OUN members were liquidated, including:
O Killed
.16,338 .15,991 ...2,549 89,0083
O Imprisoned .....................................................
O Gave themselves up .......................................
O Liquidated bandits, total ................................
In the Soviet Union arrested (in the same period):
O Deserters from the Red Army .......................
O Draft avoiders ................................................
Including in the Northern Caucasus:
O Deserters from the Red Army .......................
O Draft avoiders ................................................
Including in the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R.:
O Deserters from the Red Army .......................
O Draft avoiders................................................
1,210,224 ...456,667
49,362 13,389
4,441 . 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:
O Soviet and Party functionaries...........................................................................342
O Officials of NKVD and NKGB .........................................................................187
O Officers and rank-and-files of the Red Army and NKVD ................................392
O Other citizens .................................................................................................2,013
O 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
O Groups of bandits ................................................................................................56
O 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 .... 196
Members ...........971
..285 1207
O In the U.S.S.R.................................................................
From them:
O In Ukraine ................................................................................ 94 .................476
O In Byelorussia ......................................................................... 17 ...................90
O In the Northern Caucasus and
Transcaucasus .......................................................................... 65
O The rest of the country ............................................................. 20
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 considerable.
"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.
O Groups of bandits .................
O Members ...............................
Arrested:
O Deserters from the Red Army O Avoiders ...............................
710,755 ..71,541
....178
1,6048
"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 (between 1 July, 1941 and 1 July, 1944), 185 bands with a total number of members of 4,368 were destroyed 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.
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.
Deportation: Khrushchev's Criticism of the Personality Cult and Repatriation of the Deported Peoples
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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 Republic 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-Leninist, 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 nationalstate 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 prejudices in personnel policy, etc.
On 26 April, 1991, forty-six years after the deportation, the R.S.F.S.R. adopted a Law on Rehabilitation 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 important 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.
[http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/26/greatspeeches5].
; [http://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1452].
1 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 ethnicities 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 qualification 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 members 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 presented 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 deportation 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 Caucasus . 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 kprokliatiyam. 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 deliberate 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 feelings 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-seredinaXXv.) (Vaynakhs and Imperial Power: The Problem of Chechnia and Ingushetia in the Domestic 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 circumstances 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 refusal 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 willingness 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 component 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 resentment 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 anniversary 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 regional 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 deported.
26 L. Maratova, "V Nalchike proshel miting, posviashchenny 70-letiiu deportatsii balkartsev," available at [http://www. kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/239202/].
27 Ibidem.
