Seventy-nine years since Vainakhs' deportation

Today marks 79 years since the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. There are no official events dated for this anniversary in Chechnya.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in Chechnya, the Remembrance and Sorrow Day was marked on February 23 until 2011, when Chechen authorities decided to celebrate all the Russian state holidays on equal terms with other Russian regions. In April 2011, the special commission announced that the Nations Remembrance and Sorrow Day would be celebrated on May 10, the day of the funeral of the first president of Chechnya, Akhmat-Khadji Kadyrov, who was killed in a terror act on May 9, 2004.

The operation, during which almost 500,000 people were deported from Chechnya and Ingushetia to Kazakhstan and Central Asia, was conducted from February 23 to March 9, 1944.

The mass desertion, draft evasion in the wartime and the preparation of an uprising in the Soviet rear were announced as the reasons for repressions. The territory of the then Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was almost never occupied by fascists; and it was not easy to accuse its peoples of direct betrayal. Also, the deportation was undertaken when the Wehrmacht troops were thrown back hundreds of kilometres from the Caucasus; and there was no military necessity, but it was an openly punitive act.

About 120,000 state security agents were engaged in conducting the deportation of the Vainakhs. The eviction was accompanied by executions of civilians, including elderly women and cripples, but no one was punished.

Chechen authorities have urged residents to abandon the use of the term "deportation", replacing it with the words "eviction" or "repressions". However, analysts noted that Chechen authorities would not be able to erase the date of the start of the deportation from people's memory.