Monday, February 23, 2015

Today is the 71st anniversary of the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush

Today is the 71st anniversary of the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush. To celebrate Red Army Day in 1944, the NKVD systematically deported almost the entire Chechen and Ingush populations from their mountain homeland in the Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. There they lived under severe legal restrictions and in dire poverty. As a result of the extremely poor material conditions in their new places of settlement over 145,000 died prematurely before the end of 1952. Only in 1957 did the Soviet government restore the Chechen-Ingush ASSR and sanction the return home of the deportees and their children.

1 comment:

Dave Nichols said...

If memory serves, John Le Carre used these deportations as plot elements in his 1994 novel Our Game.