Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 9 – Sixty-two years ago today, Moscow allowed the Chechens and Ingush
it had deported to Central Asia 13 years earlier, actions that continue to cast
a dark shadow on the two Vainakh nations and their relationship with each other
and with Moscow, Mairbek Vachagayev says.
Indeed,
one cannot understand the passions behind the border dispute between the Ingush
and the Chechens and the Chechen aspirations to play a larger role in Daghestan
if one is not aware of what happened not only when these peoples were deported
to Central Asia during World War II but also when they came back in the late
1950s.
The
Chechen commentator and activist who earlier served as Ichkeria’s representative
in Moscow says that on this anniversary, the Chechens and Ingush are dealing
with problems “similar to those which existed in 1957” (kavkazr.com/a/beskonechnaya-deportacia/29698906.html).
Beginning in 1954, the Soviet state
began to loosen its control over the deported peoples, Vatchagayev says. By 1956, it has become clear that the authorities
were not going to be able to keep the Chechens in Kazakhstan for much longer. “Almost
all the entire adult poulationrefused to declare that they would not leave
their current place of residence.”
“Nevertheless, the adoption of the
decree about the return of the Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars
(permission for return to former place of residents was not given at that time
to Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks) to their historic place of resident
dragged on for years.”
Vatchagayev says that “if in 1957,
approximately 140,000 Chechens and Ingush arrived immediately – about a third
of the entire number of deportees,” others couldn’t return because their
homelands were in Daghestan’s Aukhov district or other restricted zones. Many were then concerned that “the political
situation in the country could change at any time” and thus rushed to take
advantage of this window.
The government wasn’t prepared for
the mass return, one that it quickly lost control of. On their return, they discovered
that people from Russia and Ukraine were in occupation of their homes and land
and were completely unprepared to give way to those whose homes and lands these
had been.
The Soviet authorities told those
from Russia and Ukraine not to leave, apparently fearful of a radical shift in
the ethnic composition of the population, but the Russians and Ukrainians
ignored that restriction and left quickly, thus creating new problems elsewhere
when they left, the Chechen analyst says.
The massive and
unexpected arrival of Chechens and Ingush “led to the first social clashes in
Chechen-Ingushetia,” Vachabayev says. “The
first public explosion of this kind was an ethnic Russian rising in 1958 in
Grozny against the return of the Chechens. Protesters shouted: “Chiechens, Get
Out of Grozny!” and “Bring new Russian migrants into Grozny!”
To suppress this rising, the Soviets
had to send in troops.
There were similar clashes over many
years between Ingush returning to the Prigorodny district of North Ossetia which
had been occupied by Ossetians and in Daghestan when Ingush were blocked from
going back to their villages by the Soviet authorities. And there were clashes
between Chechens and Russian officials in Chechnya because the Russians
restricted where the Chechens could live.
The lack of a resolution of land issues
“and also the discriminatory policy of the state toward the deported peoples as
far as cadres were concerned and regarding native languages led to a continuing
intensification of the socio-political situation in the region,” Vachabayev
continues.
“Many questions have not been
resolves even six decades after the decision of the state to restore the rights
of deported peoples,” and anniversaries are occasions when memories of these
injustices are especially strong.
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