1944 Feb 23, Stalin ordered the mass deportation Caucasian Muslim nations. Chechens and Ingush to Kazakhstan were deported for resisting Soviet rule and abetting the Germans. "478,479 persons were evicted and loaded onto special railway cars, including 91,250 Ingush." More than a third of the population died before the rest were allowed to go home. Also deported were the Karachays, Balkars, and Meskhetian Turks.

Timeline 1944

Anyone can confirm this from elsewhere? Especially the death figures?

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"During World War II, when the German Army advanced into the Caucasus, there were more signs of Chechen unrest and collaboration with the enemy. In late February 1944, Lavrenti Beria’s NKVD carried out Stalin’s “solution” to the Chechen Question—the mass deportation of Chechens to Central Asia. Over 70,000 Chechens of the 450,000 expelled died during transit or on arrival. Chechnya ceased to exist. The exile became the defining event for succeeding generations of Chechens. In 1957 Nikita Khrushchev decreed that the Chechens could return to their ancestral homelands. Chechnya and Ingushetia were joined administratively into the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. This arrangement joined the rebellious Chechens with the traditionally loyal Ingush in a clear continuation of Moscow’s policy of divide and rule. Inside Chechnya, Soviet officials made their own arrangements with local clans while keeping an uneasy eye open for signs of resistance to Communist rule."

http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/documents/chechnatism.htm

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman

"In 1944 the nationalities themselves were abolished and their lands resettled when the Chechen and Ingush, together with the Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatars, and other nationalities were deported en masse to Kazakhstan and Siberia, losing at least one-quarter and perhaps half of their population in transit. (The reason, never clarified, seems to have been Stalin's wish to clear all Muslims from the main invasion routes in a contemplated attack on Turkey.) Though "rehabilitated" in 1956 and allowed to return in 1957, they lost land, economic resources, and civil rights. Since then, under both Soviet and post-Soviet governments, they have been the objects of (official and unofficial) discrimination and discriminatory public discourse. The Prigorodnyj district around Vladikavkaz was given to North Ossetia in 1944, and Ingush homes and lands were given to Ossetians. When the Ingush came back their property was not returned; they were forced to buy their houses and land back from the Ossetians, and the North Ossetian authorities prevented registration and employment of Ingush in the district. (There was an Ingush uprising in 1973 over this issue.) "

http://ingush.berkeley.edu:7012/ingush_people.html

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman