The wounds of the 1944 deportation still fester in Chechnya and beyond | Opinions

A day before Ukraine marks three years since the full-scale Russian invasion, the Chechen and Ingush peoples are commemorating the 81st anniversary of their forced expulsion by the communist regime in Moscow. The impact of this genocidal operation, which began on February 23, 1944 on the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, continues to reverberate today throughout the North Caucasus and beyond.

The decades-long efforts to suppress the memory of this violent expulsion and the refusal of Moscow to acknowledge and apologise for it have ensured that it remains an open wound for the Chechen and Ingush people.

I distinctly recall being six or seven years old when I first heard the term “deportation”. It slipped from the lips of one of my parents, only to be swiftly followed by silence. Soviet authorities in the early 1980s still had a strong grip over the country and resolutely suppressed discussions of this topic, particularly within the Chechen and Ingush autonomous republics.

Adults lived in an atmosphere of fear and mistrust and were very cautious about discussing the topic even in front of their children. A child repeating the word in front of strangers or at school could attract the attention of the Soviet secret police, the KGB, and lead to some kind of punishment.

The era of Perestroika, marked by increased openness and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union, lifted the veil of silence surrounding taboo subjects, including the various crimes the Soviets had committed. The younger generations of Chechen and Ingush peoples began to learn about what had happened to their parents and grandparents.

They finally heard the stories of how, during World War II, elite divisions of the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, and the military were deployed to deport the entire Chechen and Ingush populations from their ancestral lands. Even more chilling was the revelation that Soviet soldiers did not hesitate to kill the elderly and sick to meet the deportation schedule. Their bodies were callously disposed of in mountain lakes.

Entire communities were burned down. In the case of the village of Khaibakh, the NKVD burned alive 700 of its residents, including pregnant women, children and the elderly, who could not be transported to train stations in time for deportation due to heavy snowfall.

The gruelling three-week journey in rail cars meant for livestock, where people faced starvation and unsanitary conditions, further contributed to the staggeringly high death toll. Dropped off in the Central Asian steppe with no food or shelter, the deportees had little chance of survival. Due to the deportation, the Chechens and Ingush lost almost 25 percent of their populations, according to the official estimate, before they were allowed to go back to their homes in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death.

In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first democratic elections in the Russian Federation, the state started paying monetary compensation to those who were born or lived in exile. But the amount paid out was meagre and insulting. Still, the Chechen people hoped they would receive a formal apology from newly elected Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

In 1993, during a visit to Poland, he honoured the more than 20,000 Polish officers executed by the Soviets in Katyn at a monument commemorating the massacre. However, neither he nor any of his successors issued a formal apology for the more than 100,000 Chechen and Ingush deaths during the deportation.

In 2004, during the raging war in Chechnya, the European Parliament raised a question about recognising this tragedy as genocide. The initiative was not successful and the genocide was not formally recognised.

The violent and traumatic experience of deportation was a driving force behind the declaration of Chechnya’s independence in 1991. The Chechens did not want to have a repetition of this experience and therefore sought the protection of their statehood through international law.

However, Russia’s aggression in 1994 against Chechnya shattered these hopes. Even after achieving victory against Russia in 1996, the Chechens found themselves abandoned by the world, meaning it was for Moscow to decide what came next.

Three years later, the second Russian aggression against Chechnya followed. During the war, which lasted until 2009, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, installed an authoritarian regime led by the Kadyrov family.

To demonstrate his loyalty to the Kremlin, in 2011, Ramzan Kadyrov, who inherited the presidency of Chechnya from his father Akhmat after his assassination in 2004, forbade the commemoration of the deportation on February 23. Instead, he forced people to celebrate the Russian holiday, the Day of the Motherland Defender.

It was only five years ago, in 2020, that some commemoration events were permitted in the republic on February 23. Yet, these ceremonies primarily served to legitimise Kadyrov’s power in Chechnya and propagate the cult of personality surrounding his father, Akhmat.

In 2023, Kadyrov took a step further and compelled the authors of a newly issued Russian history textbook to revise the section that had justified Stalinist deportations. Of course, this move does not signal a shift in Kadyrov’s relationship with the Kremlin. He will remain loyal to Putin as long as he maintains power.

But the fact that the Chechen leader who wields absolute power in Chechnya feels compelled to revise his own policies of erasure means he understands that the memory of the deportation will continue to serve as a rallying cry for the Chechens for years to come.

The memory of the deportation continues to inspire support for Chechen independence, despite the brutality and devastation of the two Chechen wars. It also motivated hundreds of Chechens to go to Ukraine and fight the invading Russian army in 2022.

It is important to remember what happened to the Chechen people today, as Ukrainians also face the danger of suppression and erasure. Ukraine risks being abandoned by the world just as Chechnya was in the 1990s. The consequences can be devastating, just as they have been for the Chechen people who continue to suffer under brutal authoritarianism.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.