Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 7 – “Ever more
Russians secretly dream about a new Stalin” who will carry out “Stalin-style
repressions in the Caucasus,” according to Ingush writer Akhmed Yevloyev, who
points to a recent article in a St. Petersburg newspaper bearing the title “The
Ingush Must Be Grateful to Stalin for Their Deportation and Put Up Monuments to
Him.”
That article, in Petersburgskaya gazeta four days ago,
has already led Ingush officials to demand its author, Andrey Apalin, be
investigated for extremism (interfax.ru/russia/561348);
but Yevloyev argues North Caucasians are now “powerless to defend themselves” against
such ideas (onkavkaz.com/news/1674-o-novom-staline-dlja-kavkaza-vtaine-mechtaet-vse-bolshe-rossijan-i-kavkaz-bessilen-zaschitit-se.html).
The rapidly growing popularity of
Stalin in Russian society, a popularity promoted by the Kremlin, has “already
born sad fruit” in the North Caucasus, Yevloyev says, with “the number of
people in Russia who assert that Stalin’s repressions against the Caucasus
peoples were completely justified growing” emerging from the margins and
becoming mainstream.
That carries with it not only the
certainty that Russians will view North Caucasians ever more negatively but also
the likelihood some will back new “Stalinist” measures against them. Yevloyev
asked Bagaudin Khautiyev, head of the Coordination Council of Youth
Organizations of Ingushetia, and Rasul Kubanov, a lawyer from Karachayevo-Cherkessia,
for comment.
The two agreed that bringing charges
against those who defend Stalin’s deportations is difficult if not impossible.
There is no specific Russian law against such arguments, although both think
there should be. And writers who make that argument can cite the positions of
officials and thus escape any chance of punishment.
Efforts by the Russian Congress of
Peoples of the Caucasus and the Ingushetia legislature to change this and to
introduce criminal punishments for any justification of Stalin’s crimes are
useful in calling attention to the problem, but they have little chance of success
given current attitudes in Russia in general and the Russian government in particular,
the two say.
For the peoples of the North
Caucasus, Stalin’s deportations have left deep physical and psychological wounds.
Half of those deported died from hunger, cold or illness, and the false charge
that they had collaborated with the Germans – the ostensible reason for Stalin’s
actions – continues to inform Russian attitudes, despite new laws in the 1990s
intended to change that.
Now, the pendulum is swinging back
to a situation even worse than the one that existed before that time, with the
survivors of the deportations mostly but not entirely back in their homelands
but with ever more Russians convinced that what Stalin did was right – and that
the North Caucasians should be “grateful” that they weren’t simply executed for
treason.
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