Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush (1944)

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.

In March, 1944, all the Chechens and Ingushi were deported and the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was liquidated.

In fulfillment of the decree of the State Defense Committee, the NKVD moved 602,193 residents of the Northern Caucasus, among them 496,460 Chechens and Ingushetians, 68,327 Karachaevs, and 37.406 Balkirs to permanent residence in the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs from February through March 1944.

The main mass of the special settlers was settled on the territor of the Kazakh SSR (477,809 people).

429 Special NKVD Commendants have been created to watch over the living regime of the special settlers, to prevent fugitives from fleeing, to ensure the Cheka-like efficiency of serving and aiding the settler families to be quickly set up in their homes.

19 thousand special troops of the NKVD and SMERSH participated in the operation and up to 100 thousand NKVD officers and soldiers, drawn from a variety of regions

The operation began at dawn on 23 February 1944. By 11 a.m., Stalin had received the first report from Lavrentiy Beria: 94,741 people have been removed from populated localities of the republic

The harshest measures were applied to those unable to move—the disabled, the elderly, the sick—as well as to those who resisted: they were simply killed.

According to M. Kuznetsov, colonel of State Security and head of the NKVD Special Settler Department, 1,361 people (0.27 per cent) died en route, and 1,070 were hospitalized.

Approximately 200,000 Chechens and 30,000 Ingush died during the deportation. One in every two or three Chechens and Ingush perished.

It is difficult to determine how objective these estimates are.

On the last day of January 1944, under the top secret classification, the State Defense Committee issued Decree No. 5073, titled ‘On Measures for the Placement of Special Settlers within the Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSRs’.

The decree made no explicit mention of Chechens or Ingush, referring instead to the resettlement of 400,000 ‘special settlers’ to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (Kazakh SSR) and 90,000 to the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyz SSR).

On 29 January , the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria approved the ‘Instructions on the Procedure for the Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush’.

The Vainakh managed to survive in Kazakhstan thanks to the kindness of the local Kazakhs, who, even amid near-starvation during the war, shared their homes and meager food supplies.

They were then transferred onto freight trains waiting in Grozny.

During these difficult war years, as in many other regions of the country, there were armed gangs, acts of sabotage, and occasional collaboration with German forces. These incidents, however, were not more widespread there than in other areas.

The accusations of collaboration against the Chechens and Ingush were without an objective basis, since those who fought in the Red Army demonstrated courage and valor in defending the Motherland.

During the Great Patriotic War, particularly during the German-Fascist campaigns in the Caucasus, many Chechens and Ingush allegedly betrayed the Motherland, sided with the fascist occupiers, joined saboteur and reconnaissance units sent behind Red Army lines

Almost two weeks after the start of Operation Lentil, on 7 March 1944, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree titled ‘On the Liquidation of the Chechen–Ingush ASSR and the Administrative Organization of Its Territory’ under the classification ‘Not for Publication’

On a single night in February 1944 tens of thousands of NKVD troops assembled and deported at one hour’s notice the vast majority of the Chechen and Ingush populations, killing the most recalcitrant and those too ill to be moved.

Believes that the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on the orders of Stalin constitutes an act of genocide within the meaning of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 and the Convention for the Prevention and Repression of the Crime of Genocide

101,036 Chechens, Ingush, Balkardians, and Karachaevtsy died in this period (23.3 percent of the deportees), 485 Kalmycks (20.7 percent), 443 Crimean Tatars (10.1 percent), and 19,501 Germans, representing 8.9 percent of the German exiles.

In Kazakstan, according to an NKVD report on excess deaths, 16.5 percent of all special settlers perished between 1944 and 1949, a total of 125,564 out of a special settler population of 760,642 individuals.

it appears that approximately 23,700 Caucasians perished in Akmola in 1944-1949.

The number of deaths in Akmola can be approximated using the results of a special settler census that was carried out in 1949.

Over one third of the Chechens and Ingush exiled to Akmola perished.

Without minimizing in any way the brutality and injustice of deportation itself, Bugai argues that on site the special settlers were successfully mobilized into the labor force,

Pohl argues that the deportations “constituted acts of ethnically motivated murder,”

Already in 1978 the •migr• historian Alexander Nekrich cited evidence from memoirs and unpublished dissertations that testified to extremely harsh conditions

From July 1941 to April 1942 more than 1500 men drafted into the Red Army and labor battalion deserted, and more than 200 people evade military service.

In 1932 an armed rebellion was organized involving over 3000 persons which included all villages of the Nozhai-Yurtovsk District, and several other villages.

Of one ethnic Cavalry Division, 850 people deserted.