Soviet deportations of Chechens and Ingush

Soviet deportations of Chechens and Ingush
Part of Genocides by the Soviet Union
LocationChechnya[1]
Date1944[1]
TargetChechens and Ingush[1]
Attack type
Ethnic cleansing[1]
Deaths33% of pre-war Chechen and Ingush population[1]
Victims400,000 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush deported to camps across Central Asia and Siberia[1]
PerpetratorsSoviet Union[1]
MotiveEthnic cleansing[1]

The Soviet deportations of Chechens and Ingush were a series of deportations conducted by Joseph Stalin's totalitarian regime in the later stage of World War II after the Soviet Red Army retook the part of Chechnya previously occupied by Nazi Germany.[1] The deportations saw 400,000 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush expelled from the area within eight days.[1]

Events

Fearing that the Chechnya's mountainous terrain favors guerrilla war, the Soviets entrapped the Chechens and Ingush by inviting them to join the Red Army Day celebrations on February 23, 1944.[1] Once they showed up, they were arrested by soldiers armed with machine guns.[1] The Chechen and Ingush deportees were sent to camps across Central Asia and Siberia.[1] They were not allowed to return to Chechnya until 1957.[1]

Impact

The Chechens and Ingush lost as much as 33% of their total pre-war population under the Soviet invasion.[2] This is around the same percentage of population that Cambodia lost during the Cambodian genocide (1975‒79) under the pro-Soviet Khmer Rouge regime.[3]

Academic views

Some historians classify the Soviet deportations of Chechens and Ingush as a genocide,[1] just as the many other crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet Union.[4]

Footnotes

References

  1. 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14
    • Vatchagaev, Mairbek (1970). "Remembering the 1944 Deportation: Chechnya's Holocaust". North Caucasus Weekly. 8 (8). Retrieved March 19, 2025.
    • Brauer, Birgit (2002). "Chechens and the survival of their cultural identity in exile". Journal of Genocide Research. 4 (3): 387–400. doi:10.1080/14623520220151970. Retrieved December 21, 2024. Published online: 03 Aug 2010
    • Aurélie, Campana (November 5, 2007). "The Massive Deportation of the Chechen People". Science Po. Retrieved March 19, 2025.
  2. Dunlop, John B. (1998). Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63619-3. LCCN 97051840.