Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush
The deportation of the Chechens and Ingush also known as Operation Lentil and the Aardakh genocide, was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Vainakh populations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on 23 February 1944, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet leader and dictator Joseph Stalin as part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s.
The deportation was prepared from at least October 1943 and 19,000 officers as well as 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR participated in this operation. The deportation encompassed their entire nations, as well as the liquidation of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The demographic consequences of this eviction were catastrophic and far-reaching: of the 496,000 Chechens and Ingush who were deported, at least a quarter died. In total, the archive records show that over a hundred thousand people died or were killed during the round-ups and transportation, and during their early years in exile in the Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSR, as well as Russian SFSR where they were sent to the many forced settlements. Chechen sources claim that 400,000 died, while presuming a higher number of deportees. A higher percentage of Chechens were killed than any other ethnic group persecuted by population transfer in the Soviet Union. Chechens were under administrative supervision of the NKVD officials during that entire time.
The exile lasted for 13 years and the survivors would not return to their native lands until 1957, after the new Soviet authorities under Nikita Khrushchev reversed many of Stalin's policies, including the deportations of nations. A local report indicated that some 432,000 Vainakhs had resettled to the Chechen-Ingush ASSR by 1961, though they faced many obstacles while trying to settle back to the Caucasus, including unemployment, lack of accommodation and ethnic clashes with the local Russian population. Eventually, the Chechens and Ingush recovered and regained the majority of the population. This eviction left a permanent scar in the memory of the survivors and their descendants. February 23 is today remembered as a day of tragedy by most Ingushs and Chechens. Many in Chechnya and Ingushetia classify it as an act of genocide, as did the European Parliament in 2004.
Historical background
The Chechens and the Ingush speak languages that are closely related and have a degree of passive intelligibility, both being Vainakh languages. The Chechen-Russian conflict is one of the longest and most protracted conflicts in modern history, spanning three centuries. Its origins date back to 1785, when the Chechens fought against Russian expansionism into the Caucasus. The Caucasus War was fought between 1817 and 1864. The Russian Empire succeeded in annexing the area and subjugating its people, but also killed or deported numerous non-Russian peoples and was responsible for the Circassian genocide. The Circassians, the Ubykh and the Abaza were subsequently resettled to the Ottoman Empire. However, other Caucasus people were affected as well. There were up to 1.5 million Chechens in the Caucasus in 1847, but as a result of this war and ensuing expulsions, their number dropped to 140,000 in 1861, and then further to 116,000 in 1867. In 1865, at least 39,000 Chechens were exiled to the Ottoman Empire by the Russian Empire.In spite of this, the Chechens intermittently demanded a restoration of their independence and rebelled again against the Russian Empire in 1878. During the early era of the Soviet rule, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Chechens rejected the collectivization and Sovietization policies of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. This social resistance was nicknamed the 'Chechen problem'. During this time, Stalin constantly changed their territory, until the Chechen and Ingush Autonomous Oblasts were merged into a single Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936.
In 1940, another Chechen insurgency, led by Khasan Israilov, started in Galanchozh. It was partly inspired by the resistance of Finns against the invading Soviets in the Winter War in 1939. In February 1942, Mairbek Sheripov's group rebelled in Shatoysky and Itum-Kalinsky Districts. They united with Israilov's army to rebel against the Soviet system. The Soviet Air Force bombarded the Chechen-Ingush republic in the spring of 1942 to suppress the rebellion. During World War II, the Soviet government accused Chechens and Ingush of cooperating with the Nazi German invaders. The Nazis wanted to reach the Azerbaijan SSR, whose oil reserves around Baku were the goal of Case Blue. On 25 August 1942, a group of German paratroopers, led by saboteur Osman Gube, landed near the village of Berezhki in the Galashkinsky district in order to organize anti-Soviet actions yet managed to only recruit 13 people in the area.
There were some 20 million Muslims in the USSR, and the Soviet government feared that a Muslim revolt could spread from Caucasus to the whole of Central Asia. In August 1942, the Wehrmacht entered North Caucasus, seizing the Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics. It also encouraged anti-Sovietism among the local populace. However, the Nazis never reached Grozny and the only town in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR they briefly occupied was Malgobek, which was predominately inhabited by Russians.
The key period of the Chechen guerilla war started in August–September 1942, when German troops approached Ingushetia, and ended in the summer-autumn of 1943. The Soviet counter-offensive drove the Wehrmacht from the North Caucasus early in 1943.
Various historians, including Moshe Gammer, Ben Fowkes and Tony Wood, refute the Chechens' ties with the Germans, some pointing out that the Nazis stopped at the northwest outskirts of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, near Mozdok, in Northern Ossetia, and that a majority of the Vainakh never even came into contact with the German army. While there were secret negotiations with the Germans near this border, the Chechen rebels pointed out that they did not favor a rule from Berlin nor from Moscow. Sheripov reportedly gave the Ostministerium a sharp warning that "if the liberation of the Caucasus meant only the exchange of one colonizer for another, the Caucasians would consider this... only a new stage in the national liberation war". In October 1942, Chechens assisted other volunteers to help erect a defensive barrier around Grozny. Between December 1942 and March 1943, Chechens and Ingush contributed 12 million roubles to the Soviet defensive war. 17,413 Chechens joined the Red Army and were awarded 44 decorations while a further 13,363 joined the Chechen-Ingush ASSR People's Militia, ready to defend the area from an invasion. By contrast, Babak Rezvani points out that only about a 100 Chechens collaborated with the Axis powers.
Deportation
On orders from Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the NKVD, the entire Chechen and Ingush population of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR were to be deported by freight trains to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The operation was called "Chechevitsa", its first two syllables pointing at its intended targets. The operation is referred to by Chechens often as "Aardakh". This operation was being prepared and planned since at least October 1943, and included Beria's two most trusted NKVD officers, Ivan Serov and Bogdan Kobulov. Beria complained to Stalin about the "low level of labour discipline" among Chechens, the "prevalence of banditry and terrorism", the "failure of Chechens to join the communist party" and the "confession of a German agent that he found a lot of support among the local Ingush". Beria then ordered to implement the operation. When Supian Kagirovich Mollaev, the leader of the local government in the Checheno-Ingush ASSR, heard about the decision, he burst into tears, but soon pulled himself together and decided to follow orders. The Chechen-Ingush Republic was never fully occupied by the Nazi army, but the repressions were officially justified by "an armed resistance to Soviet power". The charges of the Vainakh collaboration with the Nazis were never subsequently proven in any Soviet court.During World War II, 3,332,589 individuals were encompassed by Stalin's policies of deportations and forced settlements. Some of the stated reasons were allegedly to "defuse ethnic tensions", to "stabilize the political situation" or to punish people for their "act against the Soviet authority". According to the 1939 census, 407,690 Chechens and 92,074 Ingush were registered in the Soviet Union. On October 13, 1943, Operation Lentil commenced when about a hundred thousand troops and operative workers were moved into Checheno-Ingushetia, supposedly for mending roads and bridges. The soldiers even lived for a month inside the homes of the Chechens, who considered them guests. On February 20, 1944, Beria arrived to Grozny to supervise the operation.
On February 23, 1944, the operation began. The NKVD troops went systematically from house to house to collect individuals. The inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker US6 trucks, before being packed into unheated and uninsulated freight cars. The people were given only 15 to 30 minutes to pack for the surprise transfer. According to a correspondence dated March 3, 1944, at least 19,000 officers and 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR were sent to implement this operation. Some 500 people were deported by mistake even though they were not Chechens or Ingush. The plan envisaged that 300,000 people were to be evicted from the lowland in the first three days, while in the following days the remaining 150,000 people living in the mountain regions would be next in line.
Many times, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the aul of Khaibakh, about 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death by NKVD General Mikheil Gveshiani, who was praised for this conduct and promised a medal by Beria. Many people from remote villages were executed per Beria's verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush deemed 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot. This meant that the old, the ill and the infirm were to either be shot or left to starve in their beds alone. The soldiers would sometimes plunder the empty homes. An eyewitness recalled the actions of the NKVD forces:
Those who resisted, protested or walked too slow were shot on the spot. In one incident, NKVD soldiers climbed up Moysty, a high mountain, and found 60 villagers there. Even though their commander ordered the soldiers to shoot the villagers, they fired in the air. The commander then ordered half of the soldiers to join the villagers and another platoon shot them all. 2,016 'anti-Soviet' people were arrested, and 20,072 weapons were confiscated in the operation.
Throughout the North Caucasus, about 650,000 people were deported in 1943 and 1944 by the Soviet forces. 478,479 people were forcibly resettled in the Aardakh: 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush. They were loaded onto 180 special trains, about 40 to 45 persons into each freight car. A combined total of 14,200 freight cars and 1,000 flat cars were used for this mass forcible transfer from February 23 to March 13, a rate of almost 350 freight cars per day. Some 40% to 50% of the deportees were children. The Chechens were the second most numerous repressed peoples in the USSR, after the Volga Germans. Tens of thousands of Kalmyks, Balkars, Meskhetian Turks and Karachays were also deported from the region. Only Chechen and Ingush women married to non-punished peoples were spared from the deportation. However, Russian women married to Chechen or Ingush men were subject to deportation unless they divorced. Their livestock was sent to kolkhozes in Ukrainian SSR, Stavropol Krai, Voronezh and Orel Oblasts. Many of these animals perished from exhaustion.
Some 6,000 Chechens were stuck in the mountains of the Galanzhoy district due to the snow, but this slowed the deportation only minimally: 333,739 people were evicted, of which 176,950 were sent to trains already on the first day of the operation. Beriya reported that there were only six cases of resistance, 842 were "subject to isolation" while 94,741 were removed from their homes by 11 p.m. on the first day of the operation. Each family was allowed to carry up to 500 kg of personal belongings on the trip. The people were transported in cattle trains that were not appropriate for human transfer, lacking electricity, heating or running water. The exiles inside endured epidemics, which lead to deaths from infections or hunger. The transit to Central Asia lasted for almost a month. Some of the epidemics included typhus. One witness, who was seven years old at the time of her family's deportation, recalls that the wagons were so full of people that there was no space to move inside them. The exiles were given food only sporadically during the transit and did not know where they were being taken to. The wagons did not even stop for bathroom breaks: the passengers had to make holes in the floor to relieve themselves. The special trains traveled almost 2,000 miles and discharged the peoples into desolate areas of Central Asia, devoid of shelters or food. 239,768 Chechens and 78,479 Ingush were sent to the Kazakh SSR, whereas 70,089 Chechens and 2,278 Ingush arrived in Kirgiz SSR. Smaller number of the remaining deportees were sent to Uzbek SSR, Russian SFSR and Tajik SSR.
The persecution of the Chechens did not stop there. In May 1944, Beria issued a directive ordering the NKVD to browse the entire USSR in search for any remaining members of that nation, "not leaving a single one". As a result, an additional 4,146 Chechens and Ingush were found in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Krasnodar Krai, Rostov and Astrakhan Oblast. In April 1945, Beria was informed that 2,741 Chechens were deported from the Georgian SSR, 21 from the Azerbaijan SSR and 121 from Krasnodar Krai. In Moscow, only two Chechens managed to avoid eviction. All the Chechen and Ingush were discharged from the Red Army and sent to Central Asia as well. With these supplementary exiles, the number of the deported Chechens and Ingush grew to a total of 493,269. In July 1944, Beria reported an even higher figure to Stalin, claiming that a total of 496,460 Chechen and Ingush were deported. This ethnic cleansing operation was marked by an utter "culture of impunity". Many perpetrators of Operation Lentil were, in fact, even awarded the Suvorov First Class prize for arresting and capturing Chechens and Ingush.
As with eight other "punished peoples" of the Soviet Union, the Chechens were put into the regime of special settlements. There was no barb wire around their compound, but any Chechen aged 16 or over had to report to the local NKVD officials each month. Those who tried to escape were sent to the gulag. This status of a special settler was supposed to be inherited by the children of the exiles. The exiles were assigned with the heaviest tasks, such as constructing sites, mines and factories in the most inhospitable places. The only compensation they received for their work was food coupons. They would be punished if they would not do any work assigned to them. Local authorities would act harshly towards them: sometimes they would beat the children of the Chechens to death. At Krasnoyarsk about 4,000 Chechens were assigned to forced labor camps. This, combined with malnutrition due to the negligence of the authorities to provide enough food for the newly arrived exiles, led to high death rates. The settlers were not provided with adequate accommodation: on September 1, 1944, only 5,000 out of the 31,000 families in Kirgiz SSR were provided with housing. One district prepared only 18 apartments for 900 families. Some exiles had to live in unheated tents. The Chechen children had to attend school in the local language, not their own. Several cases of rebellion were reported: in Krasnoyarsk in October 1954, some 4,000 Chechens managed to escape from a gulag concentration camp. The Soviet police found and killed half of them, but the other half managed to hide in the vast outdoors.