Abstract
On 23 February 1944 the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) commenced an operation, in fulfilment of a decree of the State Committee for Defence (GOKO)2, to deport the Chechen and Ingush nations en masse from their homelands in the North Caucasus into exile. By the 1 March almost 500000 Chechens and Ingush had been loaded into special trains and sent off to Central Asia for ‘resettlement’. The Chechen-Ingush ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), set up in 1936, was abolished, its constituent parts being incorporated into Russia, Daghestan, North Ossetia and Georgia. Almost overnight the Chechen and Ingush nations ceased to exist: the republic disappeared from all maps and reference books, and there was almost no mention of its peoples in the Soviet press.
the old government, the landlords and the capitalists have left us such downtrodden peoples as … the Chechens … These peoples were doomed to incredible suffering and to extinction.1
Joseph Stalin, 1921
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Notes
J. Stalin, ‘Report on the Immediate Tasks of the Party in the National Question’, 10 March 1921, printed in English in J.V. Stalin, Works, vol.5 (Moscow: 1953), p.34.
R. Conquest, The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (London: Macmillan, 1960), p.ix.
Conquest’s map of the German advance into the Caucasus in 1942–3 shows that the Germans did not penetrate any further than the town of Malgobek, in the north-west corner of Checheno-Ingushetia; see his later work The Nation Killers (London: Macmillan, 1970), p.45.
N.S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol.1 (London: Penguin, 1977), p.621.
See Aleksandr Nekrich, The Punished Peoples. The deportation and fate of Soviet minorities at the end of the Second World War (New York: Norton, 1978), pp.192–202.
Anatoly Pristavkin, Nochevala Tuchka Zolotaia (Moscow: 1987).
O.L. Milova, Deportatsii Narodov SSSR (1930-e-1950-e gody) (Moscow: 1992), p.9.
The first declassified documents on the deportation were actually released in 1990. See Vera Tolz, ‘New Information about the Deportation of Ethnic Groups in the USSR during World War Two’, in J. and C. Garrard (eds.) World War 2 and the Soviet People (London: Macmillan, 1993), p.161.
There are two recent articles in English by Vera Tolz on the deportations: ‘New Information about the Deportation of Ethnic Groups in the USSR during World War 2’, in J. and C. Garrand (eds.) World War 2 and the Soviet People, (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp.161–80; ‘New Information about the Deportation of Ethnic Groups under Stalin’, Report on the USSR, 16 April 1991, pp.16–20.
N.F. Bugai, ‘Pravda o deportatsii chechenskogo i ingushskogo narodov’, Voprosy Istorii, 7 (1990), pp.32–44; ‘“Pogruzheny v eshelony i otpravleny k mestam poselenii”. L. Beriia-I. Stalinu’, Istoriia SSSR, 1 (1991) pp.143–60; ’40–50e gody: posledstviia deportatsii narodov (Svidetel’stvuet arkhivy NKVD-MVD SSSR)’, Istoriia SSSR, 1 (1992) pp.122–43; V.N. Zemskov, ‘Spetsposelentsy (po dokumentami NKVD-MVD SSSR)’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 2 (1990), pp.3–17; ‘Massovoe osvobozhdenie spetsposelentsev i ssyl’nykh (1954–1960gg.)’, Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 1 (1991), pp.5–26.
N.F. Bugai, Iosif Stalin-Lavrentiiu Berii: ‘Ikh nado deportirovat’ (Moscow: 1992); L. Beriia-I. Stalinu: ‘Soglasno Vashemu ukazaniiu…’ (Moscow: 1995).
The words used by Beriia in his report to Stalin on the progress of the deportations, used by Bugai as the title of the article in Istoriia SSSR, 1 (1991), pp.143–60, referred to above in note 17.
Bugai, L. Beriia-I. Stalinu, pp.100–1.
O.L. Milova, Deportatsiia narodov SSSR (1930e–1950e gody) (Moscow: 1992), p.21.
Bugai, L. Beriia-I Stalinu, p.108.
Bugai, op. cit., p.101.
Bugai, op. cit., p.103.
See: Aza Bazorkina, ‘Terpenie’, Tak Eto Bylo, vol. 2 (Moscow: 1993), p.107; and A. Avtorkhanov, Ubiistvo Checheno-Ingushskogo Naroda (Moscow: 1991) pp.61–2. For an example of the instruction issued to the operational staff of the NKVD, concerning preparations for deportation, see: Respublika Plius no.17, (Grozny, 1991), pp.3–4.
Kh.-M. Ibragimbeili, ‘Skazat Pravdu o Tragedii Narodov’, Politicheskoe Obrazovanie, 4 (1989), p.46.
Bugai suggests that in fact many senior figures in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR already knew of the deportation plans before Beriia informed them. He also quotes a letter from a certain Batazhev of the Soviet of the Prigorodnyi district to Beriia, written on 27 January 1944, in which he states: ‘The rumour has spread in all the national regions that preparations are afoot to deport the Checheno-Ingush nation.’ (See Bugai, L Beriia-I. Stalinu, pp.101–2)
D. Khozhaev, Zhivaia Pamiat’. O zhertvakh stalinskikh repressii (Grozny: 1991), p.11; see also note 32.
See the account of a Russian student who witnessed the deportations, in Avtorkhanov, Ubiistvo, pp.61–3. For an example of the instructions Beriia issued on conducting the deportation operation, see GARF, f.9401, op.2, d.37, 1.64–5ob.
GARF, f.9401, op.2, d.64, 1.158. Beriia to Stalin, ‘Concerning the Conferring of Decorations on Participants in the Operation for the Deportation of the Chechens and the Ingush.’ On 8 March 1944 the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Kalinin, signed a decree which awarded the Order of Suvorov (First Rank) for examplary execution of special government tasks to Beriia, Kobulov, Kruglov and Serov. For further details see: A.I. Kokupin, ‘Spetspereselentsy v SSSR v 1944 godu ili god bol’shogo pereseleniia’, Otechestvennye Arkhivy, 5 (1993), p.99.
Bugai, L Beriia-I. Stalinu, p.109. See also Bugai, ‘Posledstviia deportatsii narodov’, p.134, for the number of former Red Army soldiers living in special settlements. According to Bugai, many of the Red Army soldiers were forced to five in the special settlement areas but were not actually subject to the special settlement regime.
For accounts of the Khaibach tragedy, including Mal’sagov’s, see Respublika Plius, pp.1–12; D. Khozhaev, Zhivaia Pamiat’ pp.33–48.
Bugai, I. Stalin-L. Berii, p.107. For other eye-witness accounts see: Aza Bazorkina, ‘Terpenie’ (1993), pp.111–12, and M.Iu. Dzhurgaev, Krugi ada (Grozny: 1989), pp.14–15.
Aleksandr Nekrich, op. cit., p.89.
For an example, see Avtorkhanov, Ubiistvo, p.63.
See Vera Tolz op. cit., p.163.
For a personal account of life as a special settler see the interview with Ruslan Khasbulatov, quoted in Avtorkhanov, Ubiistvo, pp.73–4.
For a personal account, see Bugai, ‘40–50e gody’, p.107: ‘From the memoirs of Hero of Socialist Labour and President of the Association of Dramatic Artists of the USSR Makhmud Esambaev.’
Nekrich, Punished Peoples, pp.118–19.
Bugai,‘Posledstviia deportatsii narodov’, p.124. This ruling also included Uzbekistan; however there is no mention of it applying to other areas, where there were special settlements.
Bugai quotes the slightly different figure of 145 raion spetskomendatury and 375 settlement (poselkovyi) spetskomendatury with a total of 1358 employees (Bugai, L. Beriia-I. Stalinu, p.103). For more information on the functions of the spetskomendatur and how it fitted into the structure of other NKVD bodies, see ‘Polozhenie o spetskomendaturakh NKVD’, GARF, f.5446, op.48, d.3205, 1.27–8.
Bugai, Josif Stalin-Lavrentiiu Berii, pp.117–18.
Ibid., pp.251–2.
Ibid., pp.117–18. For an idea of the figures just for the Chechen-Ingush contingent, one should bear in mind that the latter made up 80.6 per cent of the contingent from the North Caucasus at the time of settlement. See below, note 76.
For information on the preparations that were undertaken in Kazakhstan and Kirgizia in anticipation of the arrival of the Chechen and Ingush special settlers, see Bugai, op. cit., pp.102–3
See Bugai, op. cit., pp.251–2.
Bugai, op. cit., p.244.
Bugai, ‘40–50-e gody’, pp.135–7: ‘Report on provisioning difficulties among the deportees in the Kazakh SSR’.
Dzhurgaev, Krugi ada, p.28.
Dzhurgaev, Krugi ada, p.39.
Bugai, ‘40–50-e gody’, pp.138–40.
Nekrich, Punished Peoples, p.122. For an insight into the housing situation in the early years of resettlement, see Bugai, op. cit., pp.127–8 and 129–30.
Bugai, op. cit., pp.129–30: ‘Report on the situation of the economic administration of the special settlers settled in the Kazakh SSR’.
Zemskov, ‘Spetsposelentsy’, p.9.
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Flemming, W. (1998). The Deportation of the Chechen and Ingush Peoples: A Critical Examination. In: Fowkes, B. (eds) Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26351-6_3
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