03/07/2015 0 4784 Sabanchiev Kh.-M.
In the spring of 1944, more than a year had passed since the liberation of Kabardino-Balkaria from fascist invaders. The Republic healed war wounds and continued to selflessly help the front to smash the enemy. The suffering people were waiting for the end of the war, the return to peaceful life. No one imagined that an eviction was being prepared.
The Balkar people consider March 8 the day of their national mourning. More than half a century ago on this day, according to the decision of the State Defense Committee, all Balkars were forcibly evicted from their ancestral lands to remote regions of the country - Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Somewhat earlier, the same fate with the same sweeping accusation of complicity with the invaders befell other peoples. North Caucasus: Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush. The decisions to liquidate the autonomies of these and other repressed peoples were a continuation of the lawlessness prevailing in the totalitarian state and were the biggest political crime of the 20th century. Deprived of statehood, these peoples were turned into special settlers for decades, limited in civil rights and freedom of movement, received a ban on national self-determination, on native language and culture, the very possibility of ethnic self-development.
The main reason for the deportation of peoples is connected with Stalinism and the system that developed under it, which opened wide scope for repression and terror against Soviet people since the late 1920s. As a natural development of what was already there, Stalinism became fertile ground for new crimes - the eviction of entire peoples. Thus, Stalinism elevated national repressions to the rank of state policy.
Knowingly false information about the situation in various regions of the country was usually formed, for the sake of persuasiveness it contained an insignificant amount of truth, spiced with a fair amount of slander against the disgraced people. In the stream of messages from Kabardino-Balkaria about the facts of opposition to the Soviet authorities by part of the population of the republic during the period German occupation, the Balkars did not particularly stand out. But since 1944, the main emphasis has been placed on the Balkars. Particular zeal in this was shown by the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs and State Security of the KBASSR K.P. Bziava and S.I. Filatov, who wrote revelations upstairs. On their basis, the party leadership of the republic also gave false information to the highest authorities. Reports from the republic with a falsified negative assessment of the behavior of the Balkar population played the role of a legal justification for sentencing the whole people.
Knowingly false information was needed by the party leadership of the republic and the leadership of the law enforcement agencies of Kabardino-Balkaria in order to hide their helplessness and relieve themselves of responsibility for a number of gross miscalculations and failures in the fight against the invaders. Here are a few strokes from the life of the republic during the period of occupation. The enemy was left intact with a whole row industrial enterprises with their rich equipment and other valuables. In the occupied territory of the republic was left to the enemy 314.970 sheep ( 248 thousand. destroyed or taken away by the Germans), 45.547 head of cattle (over 23 thousand. destroyed by the Nazis 25.509 horses (ca. 6 thousand taken over by the Germans) 2.899 pigs (almost all exterminated by the Nazis).
It did not work out as planned, and the deal with the partisan movement in the republic. For operations behind enemy lines, it was planned to create several partisan groups and detachments with a total number of up to one thousand people. These detachments broke up because the families of the partisans were not evacuated. Only one united partisan detachment in the amount of 125 people.
Instead of a sober analysis of the situation in which the republic found itself and identifying those responsible for it, in 1944 the tendency prevailed to shift everything to bandit groups from among the Balkar population, to talk about national guilt and call for mass retribution.
But the nation, the people cannot be to blame. Therefore, all national guilt is mythological. However, the collective guilt of state and party bodies is real, and the most real is the personal guilt and responsibility of everyone who participated in the forced eviction of the Balkars from their native places.
The deportation of the Balkar people became possible also because during the period of repression in the 1920s and 1930s, the main condition for the unification of Kabarda and Balkaria on the parity formation of government bodies was violated. In these decades, the best part of Kabardino-Balkaria, its personnel and intellectual potential, underwent physical and moral destruction. With the total pre-war population of the republic 359.236 a person was arrested for political reasons 17 thousand citizens, of which 9.547 brought to criminal responsibility, incl. 2.184 man was shot. The victims of repression, along with others, were such prominent party and Soviet workers from among the Balkars as Ako Gemuev, Makhmud Eneev, Kellet Ulbashev, Kanshau Chechenov, writers Said Otarov, Khamid Temmoev, Akhmadia Ulbashev and others. This practice was continued in the pre-war and war years. A. Nastaev, chairman of the Elbrus regional executive committee, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was arrested and convicted; H. Appaev - Chairman of the Chegemsky District Executive Committee, Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR; A. Mokaev - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the KBASSR; S. Kumukov - head. department of the regional committee of the CPSU (b), etc. Was expelled from the party and removed from office the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) I. Mirzoev, who was later shot by the Germans. All of them were fully rehabilitated in the 1950s and 1960s. But in 1944, the artificial accusation against senior officials from among the Balkars was used against the entire Balkar people.
Another consequence of such actions was that by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the KBASSR, there were almost no leading workers from among the Balkars. With the beginning of the war, the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) M. Selyaev was recalled from the VPSh, appointed head of the political department of the 115th cavalry division and died in the Salsky steppes. Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars M. Mamukoev was removed from his post on false accusations and sent to the front, where he also laid down his head. By the time of the eviction, the Balkar people were practically decapitated and there was no one to intercede for them. Contrary to common sense, no measures were taken by the leadership of the republic to prevent the impending crime. In a situation of historical impotence, not a single responsible worker of the republic tried to protect the Balkar people when they found themselves outside the multinational family of the peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria.
These moments left an imprint on the fate of the Balkar people. As indicated in the literature, during the deportation of punished peoples, as a rule, the peoples who gave the name to their republic or region were subjected to eviction. So it was with the Germans in the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, with the Karachays in the Karachay Autonomous Okrug, the Kalmyks in the Kalmyk ASSR, Crimean Tatars in the Crimean ASSR. In Checheno-Ingushetia, this terrible fate befell the indigenous peoples who gave the name to the republic - Chechens and Ingush. A feature of Kabardino-Balkaria was that here one of the punished peoples was one component population of the republic - Balkars.
The events that preceded the eviction of the Balkars are evidenced by the then First Secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Z.D. Kumekhov. In his unpublished memoirs, he writes: “On February 25, at 9.00, Kobulov led me into a salon car (like a pullman). Beria, Serov, Bziava and Filatov were in the cabin (the latter headed the people’s commissariats of internal affairs and state security of Kabardino-Balkaria. - Kh.- M.S.) Beria met me extremely unfriendly and burst into swearing and swearing at Kabardino-Balkaria, which, according to him, did not hold the Elbrus region and handed it over to the Germans ... After the entire possible supply of abusive words was exhausted , he said that the population of Kabardino-Balkaria is subject to eviction ". After summary report Kumekhov about the political situation in the republic, Beria repeated again: "... in punishment for the fact that Kabardino-Balkaria is engulfed in banditry, a decision was made to evict." And further: "On March 2, 1944, Beria arrived in Nalchik by special train, accompanied by Kobulov and Mamulov ... I, Bziava and Filatov met them at the station." From the station, everyone went to the Elbrus region. When we reached the foot of Elbrus, Beria told Kumekhov that there was a proposal to transfer the Elbrus region to Georgia. To Kumekhov's question, what caused the need for the transfer, Beria answered: the territory is being liberated from the Balkars, and Kabarda will not master it. Georgia, on the other hand, should have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Range, because during the occupation this region of Kabardino-Balkaria ceded to the Germans. None of Kumekhov 's arguments were successful .
As first-hand information, it would seem that they should claim exclusivity, objectivity and impeccability of information. However, upon closer acquaintance with them, the impression is that the author of the memoirs wants to hide something all the time, and therefore did not avoid half-truths.
Z.D. Kumekhov was hindered by one important circumstance. Despite striving for objectivity, he was a person of interest. Years later, as he worked on his memoirs, he instinctively shunned anything that burdened his conscience.
Therefore, Z.D. Kumekhov reduces everything to the sinister mission of Beria. However, we should discard the primitive idea, writes A. Nekrich, a prominent military historian and expert on punished peoples, that the decisions made and being made on highest level, jump out unexpectedly, only because Stalin or someone else so wanted. In a state like ours, ... the most important role is played by the opened case, paper, information (in modern terms) or denunciation.
Such an important decision as the forcible expulsion of peoples had to come, and in fact it was like drawing a line under a large flow of reports about the situation in various regions. Messages were received through parallel channels: party-state, military, state security ... Thus, a memorandum from the secretary of the Kalmyk regional party committee P.F. Kasatkin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was the basis of the accusation brought by the government of the USSR against the Kalmyk people as a whole. Reports of the leadership of the partisan movement in the Crimea A.N. Mokrousov and A.V. Martynov with an incorrect assessment of behavior Tatar population played a fatal role in deciding their fate in Moscow. According to the apt remark of A. Nekrich: information based on the principle of likelihood, containing only part of the truth and flavored with a fair amount of disinformation, legalized fraud was one of the most significant features of the phenomenon, inaccurately called Stalinism. This tried and tested method, unfortunately, formed the basis of the filed case against the Balkar people.
How did it all really happen?
... February 20, 1944 People's Commissar of Internal Affairs USSR, General Commissioner state security L.P. Beria, accompanied by his deputies, Colonel-General I.A. Serov, Colonel General B.Z. Kobulov, head of the office of the NKVD of the USSR, Lieutenant General S.S. Mamulov and others arrived in Grozny on a special train to personally lead the operation to evict the Chechens and Ingush. At the same time, in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria, they began to draw up a certificate addressed to Beria "On the state of the Balkarian regions of Kabardino-Balkaria." Conventionally, it consists of two parts. The first part provides data on the population and territory of the regions of Balkaria - Elbrus, Chegem, Khulamo-Bezengievsky and Cherek - carefully calculated the number and size of land plots in them. The information is summarized in tables, which summarize data on the general characteristics of economic viability: population, land use, number of livestock, areas of arable, hayfield and pasture land in each of the four districts.
The second half of the reference begins with the statement: "Despite the great assistance to Balkaria provided by the Soviet government and the party, part of the population of the Balkarian regions showed a hostile attitude towards Soviet power". In support, materials of undercover files, information about the arrest of members of the counter-revolutionary nationalist organization from among the leadership of the Balkarian regions, as well as the activities of deserters who formed gangs, are cited.
The general conclusion of the reference: "Based on the foregoing, we consider it necessary to resolve the issue of the possibility of resettlement of the Balkars outside the KBASSR. The document was signed by the first secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional committee of the CPSU (b) Z.D. Kumekhov, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the KBASSR K.P. Bziava and the People's Commissar State Security of the Republic S.I. Filatov.
Bypassing the members of the bureau of the regional party committee and the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the republic, the certificate reached L. Beria. Having familiarized himself with it, he signed and put the date: 24.02. 1944
This political fake marked the beginning of the most tragic pages in the history of the Balkar people. It was she who made the eviction of the Balkars inevitable. Relying only on her, Beria deployed with all the might of his adventurous active nature the implementation of a criminal action against an entire people. On the same day, Beria sent a detailed telegram to Stalin. In it, he reported that he had familiarized himself with the materials on the behavior of the Balkars both during the offensive of the German fascist troops in the Caucasus and after their expulsion, reflected, with some exaggeration, the content of the negative part of the mentioned certificate. Beria ended his report with a statement of the strategic plan: “In connection with the upcoming final eviction of the Chechens and Ingush, I would consider it expedient to use part of the liberated troops and security officers to organize the eviction of the Balkars from the North Caucasus, with the expectation to complete this operation on March 15–20 of this year before the forests are covered with foliage .
... If you agree, I would be able to organize on the spot the necessary measures related to the eviction of the Balkars before returning to Moscow. I ask for your instructions."
On February 24, Beria's armored train left for the Ordzhonikidze station. The first secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional committee of the CPSU (b) was also invited here. In Ordzhonikidze, together with Z.D. Kumekhov arrived deputy. secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) for trade Ch.B. Uyanaev. He replaced the absent Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the KBASSR I.L. Ulbashev, who was on a business trip in Moscow.
Stalin's positive response to Beria's report was received the next day. On February 25, in the city of Ordzhonikidze, Beria met with Kumekhov. He was informed that a decision had been made to evict the Balkars. The meeting was held without the participation of Ch.B. Uyanaev, who was not admitted to the meeting.
On February 26, 1944, L. Beria telegraphed Stalin via special communications: “In connection with the eviction of Chechens and Ingush ... it was planned earlier to include two regions in the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - Psedakh and Malgobek. However, they found it expedient to transfer the Psedakh region to North Ossetia, especially since after the proposed resettlement of the Balkars, who occupy an area of about 500 thousand hectares, the Kabardians will receive the vacated lands... On the same day, February 26, the NKVD of the USSR, signed by L.P. Beria, issued an order "On measures to evict the Balkar population from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic." To prepare and conduct the operation to deport the Balkars, it was proposed to carry out the following activities:
Organize five operational sectors: The first - Elbrus, as part of the Elbrus region, the location of the village. Lower Baksan. Major General Petrov, head of the operational sector, his deputies: for operational work, Major of State Security Afanasenko, for troops - Colonel Drozhenko;
the second operational sector - Chegemsky, as part of the Chegemsky district, the place of deployment with. Lower Chegem. Head of the sector, Major General Proshin, his deputies; for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel GB Partskhaladze, for military work - Colonel Shevtsov;
the third operational sector - Khulamo-Bezengievsky as part of the Khulamo-Bezengievsky district, the location of the village. Kashkatau. The head of the sector, Lieutenant Colonel GB Shestakov, his deputies: for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel Krasnov, for troops - Lieutenant Colonel Kamenev;
the fourth operational sector - Chereksky as part of the Chereksky district, the place of deployment with. Kusparta. Head of the sector, Commissioner of the State Security Committee Klepov, his deputies: for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel of the State Security Committee Khapov, for the troops - Colonel Alekseev;
the fifth operational sector - Nalchik, as part of the city of Nalchik, with. Tashly-Tala, Leskensky district, ss. Khabaz and Kichmalka of the Nagorny region. Location Nalchik. The head of the sector, Lieutenant Colonel GB Zolotov, his deputies: for operational work, Colonel of Militia Egorov, for troops - Colonel Kharkov.
Responsible for the preparation and conduct of the operation is assigned to Major General Piyashev. To appoint as his deputies People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Colonel GB Bziava, People's Commissar of State Security of the KBASSR Colonel GB Filatov, Major General Sladkevich;
Allocate the following formations and units of the NKVD troops for the operation:
Moscow rifle division without the 10th regiment; 23rd Rifle Brigade, 263rd, 266th, 136th, 170th Rifle Regiments, 3rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, Moscow Military Technical School, Saratov military school, Ordzhonikidze Border School, School for the Improvement of Political Staff, Separate Battalion of Industrial Troops. Total number - 17.000 Human.
In addition, 4,000 NKVD-NKGB operatives were allocated to provide the necessary operational measures. The 244th regiment of the NKVD escort troops was assigned to escort the deported. The term for the concentration of the regiment in the city of Nalchik is March 1, 1944; troops and operational personnel in sections - March 5, 1944.
Before the resettlement operation, the head of the operational sectors proposed, on the basis of operational materials, to arrest anti-Soviet-minded persons after the cordon of settlements.
The coordination of all work on the resettlement, transportation, escort and protection of the evicted, as well as the supply of troops and the provision of communication between the operation management and operational sectors, was entrusted to a group consisting of: head of the 3rd department of the NKGB of the USSR, commissioner of the 3rd rank GB Milstein, head of the armored service 1- Major Ilyinsky, head of the escort troops of the NKVD of the USSR, Major General Bochkov, head of communications of the 1st Moscow rifle division Fedyunkin, deputy head of the military supply department of the NKVD of the USSR, Lieutenant Colonel Brodsky.
The day the operation began was set by order on March 10, 1944, but then the day X became March 8.
As can be seen, 5 generals, 2 commissars of state security, military units and a large operational group of the NKVD-NKGB with a total strength of more than 21 thousand Human. And it's on 38 thousand. evicted, i.e. 1 soldier for two children or women. A significant part of the troops participated in the operation to evict Chechens and Ingush and had experience in punitive and repressive actions.
On February 29, 1944, Beria telegraphed Stalin from Grozny that all necessary measures were being taken to ensure the preparation and successful conduct of the operation to evict the Balkars. " Preparatory work, - it was noted in the telegram, - will be completed before March 10, and from March 15 the eviction of the Balkars will be carried out. Today we are finishing work here (in Checheno-Ingushetia - H.-M.S.) and leaving for one day to Kabardino-Balkaria and from there to Moscow.
As indicated above, on the morning of March 2, 1944, Beria, accompanied by Generals Kobulov and Mamulov, arrived in Nalchik on a special train. At the station they were met by Kumekhov, Bziava and Filatov. Cars were lowered from the Beria train platform and everyone drove to the Elbrus region. On the way we stopped at the Baksan hydroelectric power station and the Tyrnyauz plant. As a member of the State Defense Committee, Beria was interested in the progress of the restoration of these largest enterprises of the republic. Then the cortege moved towards Elbrus. In the Elbrus region, Beria suggested that Kumekhov conclude an oral agreement on the division of land belonging to the Balkars. It was another redrawing of borders in the North Caucasus. It began with the deportation of Karachais, Chechens and Ingush from their original habitats, which was accompanied by significant changes in the administrative and political division of the region. Now they verbally discussed the division of the regions of Balkaria, which was subsequently reflected in the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces on the eviction of the Balkars of April 8, 1944 and recorded in the act of surrender and acceptance of the land, drawn up by representatives of the Kabardian ASSR and the Georgian SSR of April 28 of the same year.
All these acts were gross violation the then constitution of the RSFSR and Kabardino-Balkaria, according to which the territory of the republic could not be changed without its consent.
Returning to Moscow, L. Beria, in order to legitimize the decision already made to deport the Balkar people, raises the question of State Committee Defense. On March 5, the GKO, headed by Stalin, decides to deport the entire Balkarian population of Kabardino-Balkaria to the Kazakh (25,000 people) and Kirghiz SSR (15,000 people). The Decree was adopted as an addition to the Decree of the State Defense Committee on January 31, 1944, when the issue of deporting Chechens and Ingush was decided. Therefore, some authors mistakenly believe that the fate of the Balkar people was sealed as early as January 1944.
An order issued by the NKVD of the USSR was transmitted to the republic in encryption. According to the order, on March 5 in the Balkar settlements troops dispersed. It was explained to the population that the troops arrived to rest and replenish before the upcoming battles. The soldiers and officers were hospitably received, the population endured treats, the elderly provided all kinds of assistance to the soldiers.
On March 7, the text of the order of the NKVD of the USSR dated February 26, 1944 was delivered to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Bziava. In the evening of the same day, the first secretaries of the district committees of the party were summoned to the regional committee of the CPSU (b) for an emergency meeting: Chereksky - Zh. Zalikhanov, Khulamo-Bezengievsky - M. Attoev, Chegemsky - M. Babaev, Elbrussky - S. Nastaev. When they entered, Kumekhov was attended by Bziava, Filatov, Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the KBASSR Barsokov and a group of military men led by Major General I.I. Piyashev. Kumekhov gave the floor to Piyashev. The general verbally announced that he was instructed to lead the implementation of a special task of the government to evict the Balkar population of the republic without any exemptions and exceptions. He appealed to the leadership of the republic to contribute to the organized and precise implementation of the decisions of the State Defense Committee, and suggested that the party secretaries arrive at the places, complete the act of handing over party documents by morning and be ready for resettlement. The beginning of the operation is 6 am on March 8.
At the dawn of the next day, butts rumbled in all five gorges of Balkaria, sharp shouts and menacing orders were heard. Soldiers with machine guns burst into houses, not giving time to get ready for the road, drove people without things, without food. Nobody wanted to leave, but it was not only useless to resist, but also mortally dangerous. The old men, women and children raised from their beds were ordered to assemble in a matter of minutes. They were loaded into pre-prepared Studebakers and taken to railway station Nalchik. The operation to evict the Balkars lasted only 2 hours. It was conducted under the leadership of the deputies of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel-General I.A. Serov and Colonel General B.Z. Kobulov. Everyone, without exception, underwent transportation - active participants in the Civil and Patriotic Wars, war invalids, parents, wives and children of front-line soldiers, deputies of Soviets at all levels, heads of party and Soviet bodies. The guilt of the deportee was determined exclusively by his Balkar origin. Guilt for nationality was mechanically transferred to those born already in deportation.
During the operation, it was proposed to be guided by the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR on the procedure for eviction. According to the instructions, each migrant was allowed to take food and property weighing up to 500 kg per family. However, the organizers of the eviction gave twenty minutes for packing. Old people, women and children were expelled from their homes in what they were shod and dressed, without warm clothes, without food, with little luggage. On the way, for 18 days of travel in unequipped wagons, died of hunger, cold and disease 562 person. They were hastily buried at the railroad tracks during brief stops. When they drove non-stop, the guards simply threw those who died along the way down a slope. The entire path from the Caucasus to Central Asia, 5 thousand km long, is littered with the bones of settlers. Money and jewelry were not subject to seizure - however, those who performed the action were not lost, pocketing gold, silver and other valuables. The sixth paragraph of the instruction provided that livestock, agricultural products, houses and buildings were to be transferred on the spot and reimbursed in kind at new places of resettlement. The local commissions were required to receive an act, which was to be drawn up in three copies: one, through the NKVD, should be sent to the places of resettlement of special settlers to make settlements with the owners on the spot. All this was not done. In fact, it was impossible. Where could they get the republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, where the repressed peoples were evicted, hundreds of thousands of apartments and houses, millions of cattle?
On March 11, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin: the operation to evict the Balkars from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was completed on March 9. 37,103 Balkars were loaded into trains and sent to the places of a new settlement in the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR ....
From the Nalchik railway station, the settlers were sent in 14 echelons, and the total number of deported Balkars was 37.713 people, mostly children, women and the elderly. No one had property, and 40-50 people were pushed into the cars.
On March 14, 1944, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, L. Beria reported on the successful operation. Stalin's reaction to this was as follows: "On behalf of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the USSR Defense Committee, I express gratitude to all units and subunits of the Red Army and the NKVD troops for the successful completion of an important government task in the North Caucasus. I. Stalin." Not limited to this, for the exemplary and accurate fulfillment of the special task of the government and the courage and courage shown at the same time, by decree of the USSR PVS of August 22, 1944, 109 people were awarded orders and medals of the USSR. They became heroes for dooming entire nations to suffering and death.
The eviction took place at a time when every fourth Balkar was in the ranks of the warring Red Army. Every second of them died defending the Fatherland from the Nazi invaders. The Balkar warriors were among the first to meet the enemy on western border USSR, becoming participants in the heroic defense Brest Fortress. The sons of Balkaria defended Moscow and Leningrad, took part in all major operations of the Great Patriotic War, participated in the partisan movement in Ukraine and Belarus, in anti-fascist resistance in Europe, in the final liberation of the peoples of Europe from the Nazi yoke. Many of the Balkars reached Berlin, taking part in the assault on the lair of German fascism. The 115th Kabardino-Balkarian Cavalry Division fought as part of the active army. Official documents note the courage and bravery of the Balkars, drafted into the Red Army. The brave pilot Alim Baysultanov became the first Hero of the Soviet Union from the natives of Kabardino-Balkaria, thousands of Balkar warriors were awarded government awards. Shoulder to shoulder with representatives of other peoples of the USSR, they bravely fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and contributed to the defeat of the enemy.
When the vast majority of the male population was at the front, the accusation of complicity with the invaders looks ridiculous and it was nothing more than an anti-people propaganda myth. The absurdity of this accusation is obvious: of the total number of deported Balkars, 52 percent were children, 30 percent were women, and 18 percent were men. The men are disabled people who have returned from the war, deep elders, disabled children, Soviet and party workers left on reservation, employees of state security and internal affairs. Thus, the victims of deportation were children, women and the elderly, therefore, the charges made in the decree were not addressed. As you can see, aiding the occupiers is not a reason, but a reason, and a far-fetched reason, obviously slanderous. After all, the whole enormity of Stalinism lies in the fact that millions of its victims suffered completely innocently.
In order to give the arbitrariness a look of legality, L. Beria on April 7 presented Stalin with a draft Decree of the USSR Armed Forces on the eviction of the Balkars and asked for the decision of the father of the peoples. Instructions followed immediately. On April 8, 1944, a criminal document was signed in the Kremlin: Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR On the resettlement of the Balkars living in the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR and on the renaming of the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR into the Kabardian ASSR.
This Decree completely contradicted the then existing laws, was a discriminatory act that had no precedent in the history of law. The people were expelled, and the Decree appeared retroactively, after the actual event. It is also known that the Decrees of the PVS of the USSR come into force after they are approved by the session of the Supreme Soviet. This happened years later, in June 1946, when the eviction took place long ago. Although the Decree makes an attempt to legally justify the repressive action of a state body against an entire people, the act itself and the mechanism for its implementation are unconstitutional, politically and morally untenable, and therefore criminal. The accusations made in the Decree did not contain any political, legal and moral grounds for ethnic deportation. Neither the constitution of the USSR (basic law), nor the criminal code of the country, nor any other by-laws contained legal norms giving any rights to state authorities to punish the entire Balkar people.
The Decree of the PVS of the USSR of April 8, 1944 legalized the liquidation of the autonomy of the Balkar people and the division of their ethnic territory. Contrary to the constitutions of the RSFSR and the KBASSR, Elbrus and the Elbrus region went to Georgia, and the rest of the territory was transferred to the use of the Kabardian ASSR. The purpose of redrawing the borders was to make it impossible in the future to restore the statehood of the Balkar people. In order to eradicate the very memory of the Balkars, orders were issued to rename the settlements. The village of Janika became Novo-Kamenka, Kashkatau - Soviet, Khasanya - Suburban, Lashkuta - Zarechny, Byly - Coal, etc. Even Balkar history was subjected to ethnic cleansing. The so-called scientific works L. Lavrova, G. Zardalishvili and P. Akritas, who, trying to give a scientific justification for the genocide, deliberately refuted the autochthonous nature of the Balkar ethnos, distorted the questions of its origin and the right to ethnic territory. In 1957, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was restored by the Decree of the PVS of the USSR, and the people returned to their homeland. However, the measures taken then did not lead to the actual restoration of the political rights of the Balkar people. Nowadays, in connection with the rehabilitation of repressed peoples, incl. political and territorial, some authors reanimate and exaggerate the thesis about the ethnic territory of the Balkar people.
Forcibly deported Balkars irretrievably and gratuitously lost their property, the people suffered enormous material damage. Houses, lands, tens of thousands of heads of cattle, household utensils, home furnishings, valuables, clothes, and everything acquired and accumulated by several generations of ancestors were confiscated by the state, looted and destroyed. The cattle left without supervision and care dispersed in the mountains, and part of it died. The surviving livestock was distributed among the collective farms and agricultural enterprises of the republic. All collective-farm property, mined by common sweat and blood, was also confiscated.
Having lost their autonomy, the Balkars turned into powerless special settlers settled in small groups in the vast expanses of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Those who survived the road and hardships ended up in fenced and carefully guarded places. Decree of the PVS of the USSR of November 26, 1948 declared expulsion eternal. In places of exile, life did not proceed in accordance with the usual norms and laws, but under the conditions of a special, special regime, determined by strict rules and instructions from Beria's department. According to them, all special settlers, starting with infants, were registered on a special basis. On a monthly basis, special settlers were required to register at the place of residence in the special commandant's offices and did not have the right to leave the area of settlement without the knowledge and sanction of the commandant. Unauthorized absence was considered as an escape and entailed criminal liability without trial or investigation. The heads of families were required to report within three days to the special commandant's office about changes that had occurred in the composition of the family (birth of a child, death of a family member, escape). Special settlers were obliged to unquestioningly obey the orders of the special commandant's office. For any violation, disobedience to the commandant, they were subject to administrative penalties, criminal charges and arrest.
The first years of the stay of the Balkars in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were also complicated by the negative attitude towards them from the local population, which was subjected to ideological indoctrination and saw in the unfortunate enemies of the Soviet power. With the stigma of traitors, the authorities imposed a complex of guilt on the repressed people, responsibility for uncommitted crimes. In addition, by confiscating residential buildings, property, livestock, food supplies and giving nothing in return, the state artificially caused massive starvation among the Balkar people. In order to survive, women, who traditionally performed various household chores, and children who had not reached physical maturity shared all the hard work with men. Weakened people could not stand the hunger, the climate, hard labor, domestic disorder, and died prematurely. In the very first year of exile, thousands of children who were left without parents died. Died of exhaustion great poet Kazim Mechiev. Only in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan from April 1944 to July 1946 died 10.336 people or 69.5% of the total number of Balkars, Chechens and Meskhetian Turks who arrived here. Whole families of people died out, genealogical lines were cut off, the gene pool of the nation and the health of the survivors were undermined. In other settlements, all the settlers died. There was no one to even bury them. Most of the settlers died without receiving any medical care. It was a real genocide against the settlers. During 1942–1948, the death rate among the Balkars exceeded the birth rate and there was practically a question of the extinction and disappearance of the ethnic group. There is not a single Balkar family that did not bury their loved ones on the way, in a settlement in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. They were all heartbroken and destitute. The Balkars restored their pre-war numbers only in the second half of the 60s. The sharp decline in the population is a direct consequence of the deportation of the people.
While Balkar women with children and old people were trying to survive in the inhuman conditions of exile, their fathers, husbands and older brothers were at the front far in the West. Since the spring of 1944, the attitude towards soldiers and officers of the Balkar nationality has changed. They no longer rose in rank, as a rule, they were not awarded, and if they received an award, then it was underestimated. Of the 8 Balkars presented for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, not one received it. Dozens of years later, in 1990, only Mukhazhir Ummaev was posthumously awarded this title (in total, 22 Balkars were nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, of which this moment got it only 2 - approx. ed.).
The moral suffering of the soldiers and officers who honestly and courageously fulfilled their military duty was of a deeper and more vulnerable nature. Since the summer of 1945, demobilized front-line soldiers began to return to peaceful work. Balkar warriors returned from the fields of war with military orders and medals on their chests, and they did not have the right to live in their native land. They were ordered to go to the places of exile of their relatives. Not everyone found their families right away. Arriving there, yesterday's victorious warriors were registered as special settlers with all the restrictions and accusations of betraying the Motherland. Many front-line soldiers returned disabled and died shortly after the war in difficult conditions of exile.
During the years of exile, the Balkars lost many elements of material culture. Traditional buildings and utensils in the places of the new settlement were almost never reproduced. Local conditions, the reduction of traditional sectors of the economy led to the loss of national types of clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry, national cuisine, types and means of transport.
The injustice committed against the repressed peoples caused great damage to their national culture, the further development of which was artificially thrown back. For the vast majority of Balkar children, it was difficult to receive even school education. Of the Balkar children, only one in six went to school. And getting higher and average special education was practically impossible. The consequences of the inferiority of the educational process are well known: the people have lost their existing intellectual contingent and have not received a new one. Settlers did not have the right to study at universities, publish and have their own centers of culture. The Kavkaz Ensemble, organized in 1945 in the Frunze Region, was forced to stop its work the following year by order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Artists, poets, writers, teachers were forced to do something other than their own. During the years of exile, the main cultural function of the Balkars was performed by the folklore tradition.
The Balkar people suffered the most tangible losses in the field of artistic culture. During the eviction, silver and gilded men's and women's belts, women's breastplates, rings, rings and bracelets with precious stones, skillfully decorated with silver and gold family daggers, checkers and sabers. Some of these highly artistic works of art are hidden in the storerooms of a prestigious museum and have been removed from the cultural fund of the people for all these years.
The years of deportation marked the beginning of the secularization of the family and cultural traditions. The multigenerational family, common for the Balkars, contributed to the transmission of traditions. During the eviction, many members of family-related structures found themselves isolated from each other. There was a gap in generations, the tradition of transferring the experience of folk culture from parents to children was violated. The rituals associated with the traditional design of a wedding, the birth and death of a person have lost their expressiveness and stability, the calendar customs and rituals, and the traditional festive culture have lost their integrity.
After the eviction of the Balkars, the villages, which had a unique national flavor, were destroyed, the resources of Balkaria, its lands were developed poorly and for a short time fell into disrepair and decay. By the time the Balkars returned, these territories in Kabardino-Balkaria were the most backward in economic and social development. Unfortunately, in the following decades, the policy of conservation of economic and cultural backwardness was carried out here. The placement of capital investments in Balkar settlements and farms was much lower than the average for the republic. Many complex and unresolved problems have accumulated. Adopted in June 1993 by the Government Russian Federation the resolution "On the socio-economic support of the Balkar people" was the first practical step towards the complete rehabilitation of the Balkar people. Hadji Murat Sabanchiev,
Candidate of History, Associate Professor of the Department of History and Culture, KBSU
Today we will continue the topic started in the last program - the deportation of the peoples of the Caucasus in late February - early March 1944. On February 29 - 60 years ago - a telegram from the people's commissar of the NKVD, Beria, landed on Stalin's desk.
Top secret
1. I am reporting on the results of the operation to evict Chechens and Ingush. The eviction began on February 23 in most areas, with the exception of high-mountain settlements. As of February 29, 478,479 people have been evicted and loaded into railway cars... 177 trains have been loaded, of which 159 trains have already been sent to the place of the new settlement. Today a train with former Chechen-Ingushetian leaders and religious authorities, who were used by us during the operation, was sent. From some points of the high-mountainous Galanchozh region, 6 thousand Chechens remained not taken out, due to heavy snowfall and impassability. But the pickup will be finished in 2 days. The operation proceeded in an orderly manner and without major incidents of resistance or other incidents. Cases of attempts to escape and shelter from eviction were isolated and, without exception, were suppressed. A combing of forest areas is being carried out, where the NKVD troops and the task force of the Chekists are temporarily left up to the garrison. During the preparation and conduct of the operation, 2016 people of the anti-Soviet element from among the Chechens and Ingush were arrested, 20,072 firearms were confiscated, including: 4868 rifles, machine guns and 479 machine guns. The leaders of the Soviet and party bodies of North Ossetia and Dagestan and Georgia have already begun work on the development of the areas that have ceded to these republics.
2. All necessary measures have been taken to ensure the preparation and successful conduct of the operation to evict the Balkars. The preparatory work will be completed by March 10, and from March 10 to 15 the Balkars will be evicted.
Beria blamed this people for the inability to defend Elbrus - the Elbrus region was occupied from August 1942 to January 1943. On February 24, 1944, Beria suggested to Stalin that the Balkars be evicted and that their lands be transferred to Georgia so that it could have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus; Kabarda, however, would be “compensated” by the lands of Karachay and Circassia. The operation was carried out, apparently, effortlessly: after Chechnya and Ingushetia, everything would have seemed like a cakewalk.
Beria's memorandum to Stalin
The NKVD reports that the operation to evict the Balkars from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was completed on March 9. 37,103 Balkars were loaded into trains and sent to the places of the new settlement in the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR; in addition, 478 people of the anti-Soviet element were arrested. 288 firearms were confiscated. There were no noteworthy incidents during the operation. There was a case of shelling of our ambush by a gang of 3 people who are being searched.
To ensure order and security in the mountainous regions of Balkaria, operational-Chekist groups with small military teams were temporarily left.
People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Beria
On April 8, 1944, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The liberated lands were settled by Kabardians. The southwestern regions of the republic were transferred to the Georgian SSR. It is worth noting that among the Balkars there were quite a few Kabardians who were taken by mistake (they were usually sent back). But in May-June, the clouds thickened over the Kabardians, however their mass deportation did not take place. On June 20, 1944, 2,492 family members of “active German henchmen, traitors and traitors” were scheduled to be deported to Kazakhstan. True, they did not resettle relatives of employees in the Red Army, and people over 70 years old. “In total” 1672 Kabardians were deported to Kazakhstan.
After the death of Stalin, more precisely, at the end of the 50s, the rehabilitation and repatriation of the Caucasian peoples began. The Vainakhs and Kalmyks were only partially rehabilitated. They, unlike Russian Germans, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, were allowed to return and even regained autonomy, slightly changing the borders of the republic. However, a number of mountainous regions were closed to Chechens (Itumkalinsky, Galanzhosky and Sharoevsky regions; before the deportation, more than 75 thousand people lived in them), and their inhabitants began to be settled in Cossack villages and flat auls. It was forbidden to return to their native villages of Akkin Chechens who lived before deportation in the Khasavyurt, Aukh (Novolak) and Kazbek regions of Dagestan: a special passport regime was established for them in 1958. Approximately 1/6 of the Ingush lands were not returned either. At the same time, North Ossetia was redrawn. Ossetian population from Nazran, Psedakh and Achaluk regions in 1957-58 was resettled - but not to Georgia, from where he was brought here, but to the Prigorodny district, which was not returned to the Ingush (the official version: “the district economically merged with Vladikavkaz”). However, the Ingush were not forbidden to return to the Prigorodny district, which was called upon to become and be known as an exemplary “region of Ossetian-Ingush friendship”. But they had to return not to their own, but to villages occupied by strangers, to build on the outskirts and backyards. So, over time, the Prigorodny district turned into an area of interspersed, mixed and very dense settlement of two ethnic groups with strained relations, which programmed the conflicts that broke out in the early 90s. What was facilitated by the beginning, more precisely, resumed in the 60s-70s. process of de-Russification of the region. Pushing the Russians out of their republic, the Vainakhs willingly moved to the sparsely populated areas of the Stavropol Territory and Rostov region contributing to the de-Russification of these regions as well.
In the autumn of 1992, the Ingush made an attempt to recapture Vladikavkaz and the Prigorodny district, and the current stage of history began. But that is another topic. But I still want to understand what goal Stalin pursued by expelling the Vainakhs. In search of an answer to this question, the collection "Conflict Ethnos and Imperial Power. The Chechen Question in domestic politics Russia and the USSR at the beginning of the 19th - the middle of the 20th century, "and I asked one of the authors of the collection, the historian Pavel Polyan, about this. It cannot be that Stalin did not understand the far-fetchedness of the accusations against the deported peoples. According to Polyan, having made a political revolution, more than once or twice, the Bolsheviks were mistaken for social revolutions.The idea that not just people, individuals, but entire nations are just some kind of chess pieces on the board and you can walk with these pieces, this is also called social engineering, this idea it was very close to the communist party, and to Stalin personally. And where problems arose, Stalin took up the pieces and rearranged these pawns. And here is the deportation of the Chechens or "Vainakhs", who have already been such a thorn in the eye for about two hundred years of Russian history, seemed to him a relatively mild decision compared to genocide, and even some kind of humane move. He does not kill anyone, he simply moves them from place to place. And in particular, those places from where the deported peoples were evicted, they did not remain empty . Some other figures moved there, also by force, instead of the same Chechens and Ingush from Dagestan, from Georgia, from Ossetia, from Russia, other people were settled. By the way, approximately in the proportion of two to five, that is, for five deportees, two were settled. These people, by the way, were also deported. Nobody really asked them. The same Laks who moved to the place of the Chechens. They are also the same victims of this social engineering of Stalin. They were also uprooted from the place where they lived...
Here is the time to return to the events that took place after 1917.
Then, taking advantage of the right of nations to self-determination declared by the Bolsheviks, and most importantly, the weakness of the central government, anti-Russian sentiments immediately surfaced. In November 1917 the Mountain Republic was proclaimed, and in December the Provisional Terek-Dagestan government was formed. True, it did not have real power, the highlanders gravitated towards their National Councils, and they were distinguished by separatist sentiments. So, the Chechen and Ingush Soviets ordered to dismantle the railway track in order to isolate themselves from the center and from the rest. In March 1918, the Bolsheviks liquidated Tersko-Dagestan.
The headquarters of the Bolshevik influence in the North Caucasus was Stalin's People's Commissariat of Nationalities. On July 12, 1918, a special Department for the Highlanders of the Caucasus was organized in it. It was this department that, at the beginning of 1919, proposed to hang portraits of Shamil, certified as a figure, in mountain institutions in the Caucasus, - ” ... for decades fighting for the interests of the mountain proletariat with tsarism and enjoying great popularity among the mountain masses.
However, in Shamil's homeland - in Dagestan - already in May 1918, the Republic of the Union of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus was proclaimed with a green seven-star national flag. Its prime minister was the Chechen Tapa Chermoev. Already on May 11, she announced her complete independence and withdrawal from the RSFSR, and already on June 8 she concluded a friendly alliance with Turkey, recognized by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The liquidators of this pro-Turkish autonomy were white general Denikin, who spoke under the slogan "For a united, indivisible Russia". Relying on the Cossacks, he did not even think of putting up with mountain separatism.
Such is the outline of the events of just two years in a telegraphic presentation, filled with a bloody and ruthless struggle of everyone against everyone, and organized or not, but all the time, as in the 19th century, the highlanders carried out a “de-Russification” of the region, or, more simply, Russians survived from the Caucasus peasants, Cossacks, German colonists. How? Systematic and devastating raids on German colonies, Russian economies, farms, villages, settlements and even railway stations of Khasavyurt and adjacent districts, historians write. At the same time, the actions and tactics of the Ingush and Chechens were different, and there were significant differences between them themselves. At the beginning of 1919, Major General of the Denikin General Staff Lazarev wrote that
The Ingush are the most close-knit peoples of the North Caucasus... They successfully defend their interests, conclude favorable agreements, seek to clear from the Cossacks parts of the Sunzhenskaya line that separates the plane Ingushetia from the mountainous (in fact, it has already been achieved), Chechnya near the river from the rest and Ingushetia from Chechnya (the villages of Sunzhenskaya, Tarskaya and Aka-Yurtovskaya, in Chechnya - Kokhanovskaya, Petropavlovskaya, Goryachevodskaya and Voznesenskaya); the Cossacks must move to spare military lands. The Ingush seek to form special Mountain and Cossack units to maintain order in the common territory and jointly disarm the Red Army units. All Ingushetia is an armed people, gathering with extreme speed on alarm. In general, most of the Ingush forces are able to concentrate at any point within a few hours, and 2 hours is enough to bring 2-3 thousand Ingush into battle.
The Ingush are strongly prone to robberies, but, by the measures taken and thanks to the innate spirit of unity of action, these occur relatively systematically and, so to speak, in order (compared to other nationalities), having little negative effect on the development of military operations; There are no misunderstandings when dividing the loot. The leaders of the Ingush are trying in every possible way to combat robbery and abreism, they have already achieved some results, but they are not able to eradicate it by their own means, but can only limit it in certain cases. At present, for political reasons, the Ingush are in alliance with the Bolsheviks, but it is the Ingush who are the masters of the situation and the Bolsheviks obey them. The Ingush are aware that such an alliance is only temporary and are waiting for a favorable situation for the liquidation of the Bolshevik power in Vladikavkaz.
About Chechnya, Major General of the Denikin General Staff Lazarev wrote in early 1919
Chechnya is strongly divided into parties and fragmented. The Vedeno district gravitates politically towards Dagestan. Groznensky acts in contact with the Bolsheviks. In each district there is a struggle of parties and the persons who lead them, mainly sheikhs. In January, there were about 70 sheikhs in Chechnya, each with his own followers and each intriguing against the others. Chechen representatives told me that now the sheikhs have largely lost their influence and the unification of Chechnya is far from being achieved.
Politically, Chechnya operates in contact with Ingushetia, and as far as its fragmentation allows, the interests and tasks in Chechnya are the same, but there is no ability to achieve profitable results.
Chechens are even more prone to robbery than the Ingush, but at the same time they are completely upset and lose everything, even the most rudimentary signs of organization, everyone drags what they can, for example, the plan to encircle and forcibly evict the village of Petropavlovskaya and Goryachevodskaya failed, as the Chechens got carried away some herd. The Khasavyurt district became the scene of strong Chechen robberies, directed mainly against the Russian population, which was completely ruined and fled.
Do historians or ethnographers have any explanation for the causes of the Chechen mentality, or do we have to agree with those who are convinced that all this is predetermined at the genetic level? I asked Pavel Polyan
The point is not that they, so to speak, are genetically predisposed to professions of dubious, from the point of view of Roman law, properties. I mean banditry. And the fact is that it was not reprehensible in their minds, in their worldview, in their cultural cosmos. It was an element of military culture. This is a warrior people, this is a people living on raids: a horse, harness, weapons, now amazing machine guns and SCAD missiles. It has always been the subject of the most loving attitude towards oneself. A person may no longer have anything, a person may live in such poverty, but everything will be in the best order for him. Such valor has a completely different moral coloring. At the same time, cowardice is absolutely unacceptable and, by the way, then the Chechens are more or less defeated when their enemy, whoever it is, white or red, the current federals, when their enemy is filled with a similar spirit.
That is, it accepts their mentality, their understanding of life...
Including combat skills, the ability to be in the mountains, in the forests for weeks or months, to fight in a certain way, cruelty, treachery, anything. What happened to the corpses and prisoners in this war on both sides is a high degree of dehumanization, savagery, which seemed already overcome after such terrible wars brought to us by the twentieth century. But the upland society managed to preserve its values, which have nothing to do with Islam, but go back to their local adats, which these peoples have always had in these places.
General Denikin once called the Caucasus a seething volcano. It would seem clear that it is impossible to fight a volcano, it cannot be tamed, it is impossible to live on a volcano, one can only reckon with it. About the attempts of Denikin and others, in spite of everything, to conquer this volcano - another time. For now, that's all.
Deportation of the Balkar people. March 8, 1944 Today marks the 74th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkar people, carried out on March 8, 1944 by decision of the Stalinist authorities of the USSR. The descendants of the evicted believe that the reasons for the exile and its impact on the future of the people are not fully understood. The operation to evict the Balkars took place within one day and lasted only two hours. Disabled war veterans, families of front-line soldiers, leaders of party and Soviet bodies were evicted to Central Asia. 37,713 Balkars were sent to the places of settlement, of which 52% were children, 30% were women, and 18% were men. During the 18 days of the journey, 562 people died in unequipped cars. It was only in 1957 that the Balkars were allowed to return to their homeland, the Caucasian Knot writes. According to historians representing the deported peoples themselves, they lost up to 40% of their population during the exile. Today in Nalchik, a mourning rally dedicated to the 74th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkars was held at the memorial to the victims of repression, TASS reports. People from all over the country gathered on the square. Trees were planted at the memorial, which symbolized the return of the Balkars to their homeland and the beginning of a new life. A special appeal for this date was prepared by the Congress of the kindred Balkars Karachai people: “On March 8, 1944, according to the criminal and inhuman decision of the current regime, the Balkars were deported from their historical homeland. Exactly 74 years have passed since one of the most terrible days in the history of the Karachay-Balkarian people. This tragedy touched every Balkar family. While the men at the fronts heroically defended the fatherland, their families were loaded on trains under escort and sent to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The deportation caused irreparable damage to our people. The Karachay-Balkarian people have not yet been able to recover from this blow.” The appeal ends with the words "however, despite all the horrors and hardships, the Balkar people managed to survive and returned to their homeland." Doctor historical sciences, Professor Khadzhimurat Sabanchiev. Two peoples related to each other - Karachays and Balkars were deported from their homeland with a difference of several months. By the time the Balkars were deported on March 8, 1944, what did they know about the fate that befell their Karachai brothers in the autumn of 1943? What moods reigned in the Balkar environment? Did they expect a similar fate to be repeated with their people? These operations took place in the strictest secrecy, but information about the eviction of the Karachais reached the population. Usually they detained individuals suspected of anti-Soviet activities. But for a whole nation to be deported within a few hours ... Such a practice was wild, and people did not believe that this was possible. After the deportation of the Balkars, were they evicted to the same lands as the Karachays? Did the Karachays manage to settle in a new place by the time the Balkars were deported? How could they help their fellow Balkars by the time they settled in places of exile? The Karachays were expelled in the fall of 1943, and the Balkars in the spring of March 1944. The journey from the Caucasus to Central Asia took 18-20 days. By this time, the Karachays were already equipped. But the situation in Central Asia was difficult. Because earlier Koreans were deported there, more than 1 million Germans. There was a war, the locals lived in poverty. They were not ready to receive such a large number of people. They had to be provided with housing, work, food, etc. The first years were difficult for all the repressed peoples, especially the first 4 years. High mortality, unusual climate, water, stress also affected. At first, the exiles thought that this was a mistake, the malice of Beria. And as soon as the unknowing Stalin finds out about this, he will return them back. But in 1948 a decree was issued stating that the peoples were exiled forever. Then people lost hope of returning to their homeland. They began to adapt, settle down firmly, build houses, and so on. The situation has more or less improved. How does each new generation of Balkars change, as it fades into historical memory former pain for those lost during the years of deportation? Are they starting to take this tragedy lighter? Less appreciate the homeland preserved by their grandfathers? Or do young Balkars still try to remember that tragedy? What does this memory give them in their life? This is the inescapable pain of the people. More than 70 years have passed since then. IN Soviet years this topic was banned. The older generation was afraid of persecution. Therefore, if something was remembered about the years of exile, then only some funny cases. And there was no talk about this as a tragedy, about a hard life lived, lawlessness. Studies and books could not be published about this. With the collapse of the USSR and the declaration of democratic freedoms, after the adoption of the law on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples, people began to talk about it. The question of why they were expelled remained open. And only now people know the truth. The deported peoples left up to 40% of their fellow tribesmen in Central Asia. Historical books, stories, novels, poems appeared, a collection of songs that they composed in exile came out. The topic has acquired special significance in the eyes of the whole people, especially among young people. What was hidden received wide publicity and aroused interest among the young. There is no family where someone has not died in exile. Therefore, the younger generation is acutely aware of this topic. Young people show interest, participate in all actions, in TV programs, make films, read books, recite poems. The topic of deportation is an unhealed wound that will always be an open pain in the memory of the people.
Early in the morning of March 8, 1944, the elderly, women, and children were ordered to immediately get ready for the journey. In just two hours, the entire population of Balkar villages was loaded into trucks. Everyone was deported without exception: active participants in the Civil and Patriotic Wars, war invalids, even those bedridden, children, wives. The "guilt" of the deportee was determined solely by his Balkar origin. 37,713 Balkars were sent to the places of the new settlement in Central Asia in 14 echelons.
The settlement of the Balkars was carried out in small groups in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. On the ground, no land and funds were allocated to them. On the way, for 18 days of the road, in unequipped cars, 562 people died from hunger, cold and disease. Those who survived the road and hardships ended up in fenced and carefully guarded places. For 13 years the Balkars lived in barracks. Unauthorized absence was considered as an escape and entailed criminal liability. The sons of Balkaria defended Moscow and Leningrad, took part in all major operations of the Great Patriotic War, participated in the partisan movement in Ukraine and Belarus, in anti-fascist resistance in Europe, in the final liberation of the peoples of Europe from the Nazi yoke. Many of the Balkars reached Berlin. A brave pilot - Balkar Alim Baisultanov became the first Hero of the Soviet Union from the North Caucasus. Of the total number of deported Balkars, 52 percent were children, 30 percent were women, and 18 percent were the elderly and the disabled. Thus, the victims of deportation were children, women and the elderly.
For 9 months in 1944, only 56 children were born, and 1592 people died. From April 1, 1944 to September 1946, 4849 Balkars died in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and this is every eighth migrant. The people practically died out in exile. ...Those who experienced the horror of deportation, and today can not remember the days, hours and years of humiliation without a shudder. As if the executors of the resettlement reported to Moscow about the departure of some kind of cargo: “... 14 echelons are loaded, 14 echelons are in motion (Orenburg Railway- 9 echelons, Tashkent - 5 echelons). A total of 37,713 people were loaded into echelons. Settlers are sent to the Frunze region - 5446 people, Issyk-Kul - 2702 people, Semipalatinsk - 2742 people, Alma-Ata - 5541 people, South Kazakhstan - 5278 people, Omsk - 5521 people, Jalal-Abad -2650 people, Pavlodar - 2614 people, Akmola - 5219 people. The text of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the transformation of the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR into the Kabardian ASSR” of April 8, 1944 sounds ominous, when the deportation had already taken place, the Balkars were scattered across the cold steppes of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. In particular, this Decree prescribed: “All Balkars living on the territory of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic should be resettled in other regions of the USSR. The lands vacated after the eviction of the Balkars should be settled by collective farmers from the small-land collective farms of the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Rename the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic"
At the same time, again in violation of the Constitution of the USSR, part of the territory of the republic, (without asking the peoples) of the RSFSR, transferred to the Georgian SSR, arbitrarily changing the borders.
The consequences of this Decree were also experienced by combat officers who were on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. They were recalled in disgrace from the active army, sent to the rear in the labor camps of the NKVD of the USSR, and military awards were confiscated from the partisans, thus they were subjected to double humiliation. The fact that the eviction was carefully planned in advance is also evidenced by the fact that on March 4 the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR recommended organizing a republican commission, including representatives of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, Narkomfin, Narkomzag, People's Commissariat of Meat and Dairy Industry of the USSR. She was ordered to organize the reception and accounting of agricultural products and property of special settlers, 450 responsible workers were sent to her disposal. It is surprising how quickly the collective farms and state farms were liquidated, the settlements were renamed. Khasanya was no longer on the map of the republic, but there was the village of Prigorodny, Gundelena (village Komsomolskoye), Lashkuty (village Zarechnoye), Bylym (village Coal), Kashkhatau (village Sovetskoye), etc. Already in April 1944, the republican commission reported that “... out of 19,573 heads of cattle to be accepted, 18,626 heads were accepted, and out of 39,649 heads of sheep and goats, 28,843 heads were accepted. The commission explained the shortage by the fact that "... the cattle remained neglected for 3 days ... part of the cattle scattered over the mountains, and part was plundered." The commission also noted in its report that “... residential buildings were counted - 7122, sewing machines - 1163, separators - 101, beds - 5402, cabinets and chairs - 8764, boilers and basins - 6649, horse plows - 313, harrows - 359. The total property was accounted for in the amount of 1,985,057 rubles.”
There are many pages of memoirs about the hardships that befell the special settlers. Firstly, they were transported in cold calf wagons, blown from all sides by icy winds, where gray-bearded mountain old men, old women, children and youth were accommodated without elementary human conditions. Many died on the way - rather than from physical, but from moral and psychological suffering. The dead were supposed to be buried at the nearest railway station. But, in order to avoid this, many brought with them the already stiffened corpses of their loved ones. Of course, in the places where the Balkars were evicted, no one was waiting for them. And the very population of those places lived poorly, crowded, without any special amenities. And, as noted in the certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kirghiz SSR, "... from the first days of arrival in the republic, the bulk of the settlers (Balkarians) were placed in order of compaction to the collective farmers..." The resettlement took place in the spring-winter period. Most of the settlers were poorly provided with clothing and footwear, overcrowding in trains and a large amount of lice led to an outbreak of typhus along the way. After arriving at the places of resettlement, as a result of unsatisfactory living conditions, as well as a sharp change in climatic conditions and inability to adapt to local conditions, epidemic diseases became widespread and caused high mortality among the settlers. So, only in 1944, almost 10% of those who arrived died. Entire volumes can be written about the hardships and sufferings of the Balkars. Here we will refer only to a few memories.
Here is what Ali Bayzula, a Balkar poet, writes. “My father retreated to Moscow, but he defended it. On the Kursk Bulge, he was shell-shocked, wounded, was captured and escaped from captivity. And again he went to the West: during the storming of Warsaw he was again shell-shocked and wounded. And at that time we - mother, sister and I, and all my long-suffering people, abandoned to the mercy of fate - endured hunger and cold, and the harsh winter of 1944 in the Kyzyl-Orda, Dzhambul and Kirghiz steppes. And here is how those events were described by Shamil Shahangerievich Chechenov, a military officer who went through the military roads from the foothills of the Caucasus to the Elbe, on March 8, on the day of eviction, “... old people, children, women managed to take only wearable things, many did not want to leave, cried, kissed stones of mountains, tombstones of ancestors... People fell to their knees, crying, kissing stones...” There were many humiliations: a front-line officer who returned with military awards in 1947 to his family in Kyrgyzstan was forced to go to the commandant’s office to check in every 10 days, and restricted in movement . The documents wrote: "He has the right within the boundaries of such and such a village." All. You have no right to go anywhere else. Live there and die there. This hurt the most. Some of the migrants could not even get to the regional hospital, and died without receiving medical care.
The deportation of the Balkars is a form of repression that was subjected to ethnic Balkars, who mainly lived in the territory of the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR, by the leadership of the USSR. The Balkars resettled in Kazakhstan and Central Asia were accused of banditry and collaborationism. Their lands were transferred to the Georgian SSR.
The first secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Kumekhov Zuber Dokshukovich (Adyg by nationality) is considered the local initiator. The main initiator is Joseph Dzhugashvili. The official basis for raising the question of the eviction of the Balkar people is a slanderous denunciation against L.P. Beria, signed by the leadership of the KBASSR in the person of Kumekhov, with a request to evict the Balkar people for supposedly taking place mass banditry. The issue of the eviction of the Balkar people was finally resolved in February 1944 in the city of Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz) during a meeting between L. Beria and Kumekhov. The only Balkar who accompanied Kumekhov on this trip, the young instructor of the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks K. Uyanaev, was not allowed to see L. Beria. And the highest official at that time from among the Balkars - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Design Bureau of the ASSR, 30-year-old I.L. Ulbashev was sent on a business trip to Moscow in advance.
16.3 thousand representatives of the small (about 53 thousand people in 1941) Balkar people fought in the ranks of the Red Army. This is every fourth Balkar. Every second of them died. Many of the Balkars reached Berlin, taking part in the storming of the Reichstag. Pilot - Balkar Alim Baysultanov became the first Hero of the Soviet Union from the North Caucasus.
In January 1944, the first preliminary discussion of the question of the possibility of resettlement of the Balkars took place.
More than 21,000 NKVD troops were assigned to carry out the operation. On March 5, military units dispersed in the Balkar settlements. The population was informed that the troops had arrived to rest and replenish before the upcoming battles. The deportation was carried out under the leadership of the deputies of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel General I. Serov and Colonel General B. Kobulov.
The operation to evict the Balkars began on March 8, 1944. It lasted only two hours. Everyone, without exception, underwent transportation - active participants in the Civil and Patriotic Wars, war invalids, parents, wives and children of front-line soldiers, deputies of the Soviets at all levels, heads of party and Soviet bodies. The guilt of the deportee was determined exclusively by Balkar origin.
The deportees were loaded into Studebakers prepared in advance and taken to the Nalchik railway station. 37,713 Balkars were sent to the places of settlement in Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 14 echelons. Of the total number of deportees, 52% were children, 30% were women, and 18% were men (mainly the elderly and the disabled). Thus, the victims of deportation were children, women and the elderly. In addition, 478 people of the "anti-Soviet element" were arrested. There was a case of shelling of the NKVD ambush by a group of three people. During the operation, it was proposed to be guided by the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR on the procedure for eviction. According to the instructions, each migrant was allowed to take food and property weighing up to 500 kg per family. However, the organizers of the eviction gave twenty minutes for packing. All movable and immovable property of the Balkars remained in the KBASSR. The sixth paragraph of the instruction provided that livestock, agricultural products, houses and buildings were to be transferred on the spot and reimbursed in kind at new places of resettlement. However, this did not happen - the resettlement of the Balkars was carried out in small groups, on the ground no land and no funds were allocated to them.
During the 18 days of the journey, 562 people died in unequipped cars. They were buried at the railroad tracks during brief stops. When the trains followed without stopping, the bodies of the dead along the way were thrown downhill by the guards.
The search for the Balkars also went beyond the republics. So, in May 1944, 20 families were deported from the liquidated Karachaev Autonomous District, 67 people were identified in other regions of the USSR. The deportation of the Balkars continued until 1948 inclusive.
On April 8, 1944, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The southwestern regions of the republic - Elbrus and the Elbrus region - were transferred to the Georgian SSR with the formation of the Verkhnesvanetsky region. Orders to rename settlements followed. The village of Janika began to be called Novo-Kamenka, Kashkatau - Soviet, Khasanya - Suburban, Lashkuta - Zarechny, Bylym - Coal.
In places of exile, all special settlers were registered. On a monthly basis, they were required to report to the place of residence in the special commandant's offices and did not have the right to leave the area of settlement without the knowledge and sanction of the commandant. Unauthorized absence was considered as an escape and entailed criminal liability.
For any violation or disobedience to the commandant, the settlers were subject to administrative penalties or criminal charges.
During the years of exile, the Balkars lost many elements of material culture. Traditional buildings and utensils in the places of the new settlement were almost never reproduced. The reduction of traditional sectors of the economy led to the loss of national types of clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry, national cuisine, and means of transport.
For the majority of Balkar children, it was difficult to get a school education: only one in six of them attended school. Obtaining higher and secondary specialized education was almost impossible.
The first years of the Balkars' stay in Central Asia were complicated by the negative attitude towards them from the local population, which was subjected to ideological indoctrination and saw them as enemies of the Soviet power.
Since the summer of 1945, demobilized Balkar front-line soldiers began to return from the army. They were ordered to go to the places of exile of their relatives. Arriving there, the front-line soldiers were registered as special settlers.
In November 1948, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On criminal liability for escapes from places of compulsory and permanent settlement of persons evicted to remote areas of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War” was issued, the essence of which was that the repressed peoples were deported forever, without the right to return to their ethnic homeland. By the same decree, the special settlement regime was tightened even more. The document provided for unauthorized departure from the places of settlement 20 years of hard labor. In fact, special settlers could move freely only within a radius of 3 km from their place of residence.
Rehabilitation
The restrictions on the special settlement of the Balkars were lifted on April 18, 1956, but the right to return to their homeland was not granted. On January 9, 1957, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a Decree "On the transformation of the Kabardian ASSR into the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR." At the same time, the territories that had ceded to Georgia were returned, their former names were restored; the ban on returning to their former place of residence was also lifted.
On March 28, 1957, the Law of the KBASSR "On the transformation of the Kabardian ASSR into the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR" was adopted.
The return of the Balkars to their homeland was very intensive: by April 1958, about 22 thousand people had returned. By 1959, about 81% had already returned, by 1970 - more than 86%, and by 1979 - about 90% of all Balkars.
On November 14, 1989, by the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, all repressed peoples were rehabilitated, repressive acts against them at the state level were recognized as illegal and criminal in the form of a policy of slander, genocide, forced resettlement, the abolition of national-state formations, the establishment of a regime of terror and violence in places of special settlements.
In 1991, the law of the RSFSR "On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples" was adopted, which determines the rehabilitation of peoples who have been subjected to mass repression in the USSR, as the recognition and exercise of their right to restore the territorial integrity that existed before the forcible redrawing of borders.
In 1993, the government of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution "On the socio-economic support of the Balkar people."
In 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree "On measures for the rehabilitation of the Balkar people and state support for their revival and development."
March 8 in the modern KBR is the Day of Remembrance of the victims of the deportation of the Balkar people, and March 28 is celebrated as the Day of the revival of the Balkar people.
However, the application of these documents in practice turned out to be complicated by many factors. Thus, not one of the four regions of Balkaria that existed at the time of the forced eviction of the Balkars from their territories in 1943 was restored to its former borders. After returning from exile, part of the Balkars were settled in the Kabardian regions.
As a result of the unification of Balkar villages with villages isolated from the regions of Kabarda, a mixed Chegemsky district was formed with a predominance of the Kabardian population and, accordingly, the administrative power of the Kabardians, and the most densely populated Balkar villages of Khasanya and Belaya Rechka were transferred to the administrative subordination of Nalchik, along with those adjacent to him with vast tracts of land.
Sources: P.Polyan "Not by choice...History and geography of forced migrations in the USSR". - O.G.I - Memorial, Moscow 2001; N. Bugay "Deportation of peoples", collection "War and society, 1941-1945 book two". - M.: Nauka, 2004; HM. Sabanchiev. Eviction of the Balkar people during the Great Patriotic War: causes and consequences. - Portal "Turkolog. Turkological publications".
Hadji-Murat Sabanchiev
Sabancheev Hadji Murad. Born in 1953 in Kazakhstan, graduated from the Faculty of History of the Rostov state university, postgraduate student of the Moscow Institute national history RAN. Cand. ist. Sciences. Currently - Associate Professor of the Department of History and Culture of KBSU.
In the spring of 1944, more than a year had passed since the liberation of Kabardino-Balkaria from the fascist invaders. The Republic healed war wounds and continued to selflessly help the front to smash the enemy. The suffering people were waiting for the end of the war, the return to peaceful life. No one imagined that an eviction was being prepared.
The Balkar people consider March 8 the day of their national mourning. More than half a century ago on this day, according to the decision of the State Defense Committee, all Balkars were forcibly evicted from their ancestral lands to remote regions of the country - Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Somewhat earlier, the same fate, with the same sweeping accusation of complicity with the invaders, befell other peoples of the North Caucasus - Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush. The decisions to liquidate the autonomies of these and other repressed peoples were a continuation of the lawlessness prevailing in the totalitarian state and were the biggest political crime of the 20th century. Deprived of statehood, these peoples were turned into special settlers for decades, limited in civil rights and freedom of movement, they received a ban on national self-determination, on their native language and culture, and on the very possibility of ethnic self-development.
The main reason for the deportation of peoples is connected with Stalinism and the system that developed under it, which opened wide scope for repression and terror against Soviet people since the late 1920s. As a natural development of what was already there, Stalinism became fertile ground for new crimes - the eviction of entire peoples. Thus, Stalinism elevated national repressions to the rank of state policy.
Knowingly false information about the situation in various regions of the country was usually formed, for the sake of persuasiveness it contained an insignificant amount of truth, spiced with a fair amount of slander against the disgraced people. In the flow of reports from Kabardino-Balkaria about the facts of opposition to the Soviet authorities by part of the population of the republic during the German occupation, the Balkars did not stand out in particular. But since 1944, the main emphasis has been placed on the Balkars. Particular zeal in this was shown by the People's Commissars of Internal Affairs and State Security of the KBASSR K.P. Bziava and S.I. Filatov, who wrote revelations upstairs. On their basis, the party leadership of the republic also gave false information to the highest authorities. Reports from the republic with a falsified negative assessment of the behavior of the Balkar population played the role of a legal justification for sentencing the whole people.
Knowingly false information was needed by the party leadership of the republic and the leadership of the law enforcement agencies of Kabardino-Balkaria in order to hide their helplessness and relieve themselves of responsibility for a number of gross miscalculations and failures in the fight against the invaders. Here are a few strokes from the life of the republic during the period of occupation. A number of industrial enterprises with their rich equipment and other valuables were left intact to the enemy. In the occupied territory of the republic, 314,970 sheep were left to the enemy (248,000 were destroyed or taken out by the Germans), 45,547 heads of cattle (more than 23,000 were destroyed by the Nazis), 25,509 horses (about 6,000 were appropriated by the Germans), 2,899 pigs (almost all exterminated fascists) 1.
It did not work out as planned, and the deal with the partisan movement in the republic. For operations behind enemy lines, it was planned to create several partisan groups and detachments with a total number of up to one thousand people. These detachments broke up because the families of the partisans were not evacuated. Only one united partisan detachment was created in the amount of 125 people. 4
Instead of a sober analysis of why the republic found itself in such a position, and to be honest about who is responsible for this, in 1944 the tendency prevailed to shift everything to bandit groups from among the Balkar population, to talk about national guilt and call for mass retribution.
But the nation, the people cannot be to blame. Therefore, all national guilt is mythological. However, the collective guilt of state and party bodies is real, and the most real is the personal guilt and responsibility of everyone who participated in the forced eviction of the Balkars from their native places.
The deportation of the Balkar people became possible also because during the period of repression of the 1920s and 1930s, the main condition for the unification of Kabarda and Balkaria on the parity formation of government bodies was violated. In these decades, the best part of Kabardino-Balkaria, its personnel and intellectual potential, underwent physical and moral destruction. With a total pre-war population of the republic of 359,236 people, 17,000 citizens were arrested for political reasons, of which 9,547 were prosecuted, incl. 2184 people were shot. The victims of repression, along with others, were such prominent party and Soviet workers from among the Balkars as Ako Gemuev, Makhmud Eneev, Kellet Ulbashev, Kanshau Chechenov, writers Said Otarov, Khamid Temmoev, Akhmadia Ulbashev and others. This practice was continued in the pre-war and war years. A. Nastaev, chairman of the Elbrus regional executive committee, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was arrested and convicted; H. Appaev - Chairman of the Chegemsky District Executive Committee, Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR; A. Mokaev - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the KBASSR; S. Kumukov - head. department of the regional committee of the CPSU (b), etc. Was expelled from the party and removed from office the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) I. Mirzoev, who was later shot by the Germans. All of them were fully rehabilitated in the 1950s and 1960s. But in 1944, the artificial accusation against senior officials from among the Balkars was used against the entire Balkar people.
Another consequence of such actions was that by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the KBASSR had almost no leading workers from among the Balkars. With the beginning of the war, the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) M. Selyaev was recalled from the VPSh, appointed head of the political department of the 115th cavalry division and died in the Salsky steppes. Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars M. Mamukoev was removed from his post on false accusations and sent to the front, where he also laid down his head. By the time of the eviction, the Balkar people were practically decapitated and there was no one to intercede for them. Contrary to common sense, no measures were taken by the leadership of the republic to prevent the impending crime. In a situation of historical impotence, not a single responsible worker of the republic tried to protect the Balkar people when they found themselves outside the multinational family of the peoples of Kabardino-Balkaria.
These moments left an imprint on the fate of the Balkar people. As indicated in the literature, during the deportation of punished peoples, as a rule, the peoples who gave the name to their republic or region were subjected to eviction. 5 So it was with the Germans in the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, with the Karachays in the Karachaev Autonomous Okrug, the Kalmyks in the Kalmyk ASSR, and the Crimean Tatars in the Crimean ASSR. In Checheno-Ingushetia, this terrible fate befell the indigenous peoples who gave the name to the republic - Chechens and Ingush. A feature of Kabardino-Balkaria was that here one component of the population of the republic, the Balkars, fell into the number of punished peoples.
About the events that preceded the eviction of the Balkars, there is evidence of the then First Secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Z.D. Kumekhov. In his unpublished memoirs, he writes: On February 25, at 9:00 am, Kobulov led me into a saloon car (like a pullman). In the cabin were Beria, Serov, Bziava and Filatov (the latter headed the people's commissariats of internal affairs and state security of Kabardino-Balkaria. - H.-M.S.). Beria greeted me extremely unfriendly and burst into public abuse and obscene curses against Kabardino-Balkaria, which, according to him. did not hold the Elbrus region and handed it over to the Germans ... After the entire possible supply of abusive words was exhausted, he said that the population of Kabardino-Balkaria was subject to eviction. 6 After a brief report by Kumekhov on the political situation in the republic, Beria repeated again: ... in punishment for the fact that Kabardino-Balkaria is engulfed in banditry, a decision was made to evict. And further: on March 2, 1944, Beria arrived in Nalchik by special train, accompanied by Kobulov and Mamulov ... I, Bziava and Filatov met them at the station. From the station, everyone went to the Elbrus region. When we reached the foot of Elbrus, Beria told Kumekhov that there was a proposal to transfer the Elbrus region to Georgia. To Kumekhov's question, what caused the need for the transfer, Beria answered: the territory is being liberated from the Balkars, and Kabarda will not master it. Georgia, on the other hand, should have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Range, because during the occupation this region of Kabardino-Balkaria ceded to the Germans. None of Kumekhov's arguments were successful 7 .
As first-hand information, it would seem that they should claim exclusivity, objectivity and impeccability of information. However, upon closer acquaintance with them, the impression is that the author of the memoirs wants to hide something all the time, and therefore did not avoid half-truths.
Z.D. Kumekhov was hindered by one important circumstance. Despite striving for objectivity, he was a person of interest. Years later, as he worked on his memoirs, he instinctively shunned anything that burdened his conscience.
Therefore, Z.D. Kumekhov reduces everything to the sinister mission of Beria. However, we should discard the primitive idea, writes A. Nekrich, a prominent military historian and expert on punished peoples, that decisions made and made at the highest level pop up unexpectedly, only because Stalin or someone else so wanted. In such a state as ours, ... the most important role is played by the opened case, paper, information (in modern terms) or denunciation.
Such an important decision as the forcible expulsion of peoples had to come, and in fact it was like drawing a line under a large flow of reports about the situation in various regions. Messages were received through parallel channels: party-state, military, state security… Kasatkin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was the basis of the accusation brought by the government of the USSR against the Kalmyk people as a whole. Reports of the leadership of the partisan movement in the Crimea A.N. Mokrousov and A.V. Martynov with an incorrect assessment of the behavior of the Tatar population, played a fatal role in deciding their fate in Moscow. According to the apt remark of A. Nekrich Information based on the principle of likelihood, containing only part of the truth and spiced with a fair amount of disinformation, legalized fraud was one of the most significant features of the phenomenon, inaccurately called Stalinism 9 . This tried and tested method, unfortunately, formed the basis of the filed case against the Balkar people.
How did it all really happen?
... February 20, 1944 People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, General Commissar of State Security L.P. Beria, accompanied by his deputies, Colonel General I.A. Serov, Colonel General B.Z. Kobulov, head of the office of the NKVD of the USSR, Lieutenant General S.S. Mamulov and others arrived in Grozny on a special train to personally lead the operation to evict the Chechens and Ingush. At the same time, in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria, they began to draw up a certificate addressed to Beria on the state of the Balkarian regions of Kabardino-Balkaria. Conventionally, it consists of two parts. The first part provides data on the population and territory of the regions of Balkaria - Elbrus, Chegem, Khulamo-Bezengievsky and Cherek - carefully calculated the number and size of land plots in them. The information is summarized in tables that summarize data on the general characteristics of economic viability: population, land use, number of livestock, areas of arable, hayfield and pasture land in each of the four districts.
The second half of the reference begins with a statement: Despite the great assistance to Balkaria provided by the Soviet government and the party, part of the population of the Balkarian regions showed a hostile attitude towards Soviet power. In support, materials of undercover files, information about the arrest of members of the counter-revolutionary nationalist organization from among the leadership of the Balkarian regions, as well as the activities of deserters who formed bandit groups are cited.
The general conclusion of the reference: Based on the foregoing, we consider it necessary to resolve the issue of the possibility of resettlement of the Balkars outside the KBASSR. 10 The document was signed by Z.D. Kumekhov, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the KBASSR K.P. Bziava and the People's Commissar of State Security of the Republic S.I. Filatov.
Bypassing the members of the bureau of the regional party committee and the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the republic, the certificate reached L. Beria. Having familiarized himself with it, he signed and put the date: 24.02. 1944
This political fake marked the beginning of the most tragic pages in the history of the Balkar people. It was she who made the eviction of the Balkars inevitable, relying only on her, Beria deployed with all the might of his adventurous active nature the implementation of a criminal action against an entire people. On the same day, Beria sent a detailed telegram to Stalin. In it, he reported that he had familiarized himself with the materials on the behavior of the Balkars both during the offensive of the German fascist troops in the Caucasus and after their expulsion, reflected, with some exaggeration, the content of the negative part of the mentioned certificate. Beria ended his report with a statement of the strategic plan: In connection with the forthcoming final eviction of the Chechens and Ingush, I would consider it expedient to use part of the liberated troops and security officers to organize the eviction of the Balkars from the North Caucasus, with the expectation to complete this operation on March 15-20 this year before the forests are covered with foliage.
... If you agree, I would be able to organize on the spot the necessary measures related to the eviction of the Balkars before returning to Moscow. I ask for your instructions. eleven
On February 24, Beria's armored train left for the Ordzhonikidze station. The first secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional committee of the CPSU (b) was also invited here. In Ordzhonikidze, together with Z.D. Kumekhov arrived deputy. secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b) for trade Ch.B. Uyanaev. He replaced the absent Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the KBASSR I.L. Ulbashev, who was on a business trip in Moscow.
Stalin's positive response to Beria's report was received the next day. On February 25, in the city of Ordzhonikidze, Beria met with Kumekhov. He was informed that a decision had been made to evict the Balkars. The meeting was held without the participation of Ch.B. Uyanaev, who was not admitted to the meeting. 12
On February 26, 1944, L. Beria telegraphed Stalin via special communications: In connection with the eviction of Chechens and Ingush ... it was planned earlier to include two districts, Psedakhsky and Malgobeksky, into the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. However, they found it expedient to transfer the Psedakh region to North Ossetia, especially since after the alleged resettlement of the Balkars, who occupy an area of about 500 thousand hectares, the Kabardians will receive the vacated lands 13. On the same day, February 26, the NKVD of the USSR, signed by L.P. Beria issued an order on measures to evict the Balkarian population from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. To prepare and conduct the operation to deport the Balkars, it was proposed to carry out the following activities:
Organize five operational sectors: The first - Elbrus, as part of the Elbrus region, the location of the village. Lower Baksan. Major General Petrov, head of the operational sector, his deputies: for operational work, Major of State Security Afanasenko, for troops - Colonel Drozhenko;
The second operational sector is Chegemsky, as part of the Chegemsky district, the location of the village. Lower Chegem. Head of the sector, Major General Proshin, his deputies; for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel GB Partskhaladze, for military work - Colonel Shevtsov;
The third operational sector is Khulamo-Bezengievsky as part of the Khulamo-Bezengievsky district, the location of the village. Kashkatau. The head of the sector, Lieutenant Colonel GB Shestakov, his deputies: for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel Krasnov, for troops - Lieutenant Colonel Kamenev;
The fourth operational sector is Chereksky as part of the Chereksky district, the location of the village. Kusparta. Head of the sector, Commissioner of the State Security Committee Klepov, his deputies: for operational work, Lieutenant Colonel of the State Security Committee Khapov, for the troops - Colonel Alekseev;
The fifth operational sector is Nalchik, as part of the city of Nalchik, with. Tashly-Tala, Leskensky district, ss. Khabaz and Kichmalka of the Nagorny region. Location Nalchik. The head of the sector, Lieutenant Colonel GB Zolotov, his deputies: for operational work, Colonel of Militia Egorov, for troops - Colonel Kharkov.
Responsible for the preparation and conduct of the operation is assigned to Major General Piyashev. To appoint as his deputies People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Colonel GB Bziava, People's Commissar of State Security of the KBASSR Colonel GB Filatov, Major General Sladkevich.
Allocate the following formations and units of the NKVD troops for the operation:
Moscow rifle division without the 10th regiment; 23rd Rifle Brigade, 263rd, 266th, 136th, 170th Rifle Regiments, 3rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, Moscow Military Technical School, Saratov Military School, Ordzhonikidze Border School, School for the Improvement of Political Staff, Separate Battalion industrial troops. The total number is 17.00 people.
In addition, 4,000 NKVD-NKGB operatives were allocated to provide the necessary operational measures. The 244th regiment of the NKVD escort troops was assigned to escort the deported. The term for the concentration of the regiment in the city of Nalchik is March 1, 1944; troops and operational personnel in sections - March 5, 1944.
Before the resettlement operation, the head of the operational sectors proposed, on the basis of operational materials, to arrest anti-Soviet-minded persons after the cordon of settlements.
The coordination of all work on the resettlement, transportation, escort and protection of the evicted, as well as the supply of troops and the provision of communication between the operation management and operational sectors, was entrusted to a group consisting of: head of the 3rd department of the NKGB of the USSR, commissioner of the 3rd rank GB Milstein, head of the armored service 1- Major Ilyinsky, head of the escort troops of the NKVD of the USSR, Major General Bochkov, head of communications of the 1st Moscow rifle division Fedyunkin, deputy head of the military supply department of the NKVD of the USSR, Lieutenant Colonel Brodsky.
The day the operation began was set by order on March 10, 1944, but then the day X became March 8, 14.
As can be seen, 5 generals, 2 commissars of state security, military units and a large operational group of the NKVD-NKGB with a total number of more than 21 thousand people were involved in the punitive action. And this is for 38 thousand evicted, i.e. 1 soldier for two children or women. A significant part of the troops participated in the operation to evict Chechens and Ingush and had experience in punitive and repressive actions.
On February 29, 1944, Beria telegraphed Stalin from Grozny that all necessary measures were being taken to ensure the preparation and successful conduct of the operation to evict the Balkars. The preparatory work, the telegram noted, will be completed by March 10, and from March 15 the Balkars will be evicted. Today we finish our work here (in Checheno-Ingushetia - Kh.-MS) and leave for one day to Kabardino-Balkaria and from there to Moscow. 15 .
As indicated above, on the morning of March 2, 1944, Beria, accompanied by Generals Kobulov and Mamulov, arrived in Nalchik on a special train. At the station they were met by Kumekhov, Bziava and Filatov. Cars were lowered from the Beria train platform and everyone drove to the Elbrus region. On the way we stopped at the Baksan hydroelectric power station and the Tyrnyauz plant. As a member of the State Defense Committee, Beria was interested in the progress of the restoration of these largest enterprises of the republic. Then the cortege moved towards Elbrus. In the Elbrus region, Beria suggested that Kumekhov conclude an oral agreement on the division of land belonging to the Balkars. It was another redrawing of borders in the North Caucasus. It began with the deportation of Karachais, Chechens and Ingush from their original habitats, which was accompanied by significant changes in the administrative and political division of the region. Now they verbally discussed the division of the regions of Balkaria, which was subsequently reflected in the Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces on the eviction of the Balkars of April 8, 1944 and recorded in the act of surrender and acceptance of the land, drawn up by representatives of the Kabardian ASSR and the Georgian SSR of April 28 of the same year. 16
All these acts were a gross violation of the then constitution of the RSFSR and Kabardino-Balkaria, according to which the territory of the republic could not be changed without its consent.
Returning to Moscow, L. Beria, in order to legitimize the decision already made to deport the Balkar people, raises the issue in the State Defense Committee. On March 5, the GKO, headed by Stalin, adopts a resolution on the deportation of the entire Balkarian population of Kabardino-Balkaria to the Kazakh (25 thousand people) and Kirghiz SSR (15 thousand people). The Decree was adopted as an addition to the Decree of the State Defense Committee on January 31, 1944, when the issue of deporting Chechens and Ingush was decided. Therefore, some authors mistakenly believe that the fate of the Balkar people was sealed as early as January 1944.
An order issued by the NKVD of the USSR was transmitted to the republic in encryption. According to the order, on March 5, military units dispersed in the Balkar settlements. It was explained to the population that the troops arrived to rest and replenish before the upcoming battles. The soldiers and officers were hospitably received, the population endured treats, the elderly provided all kinds of assistance to the soldiers.
On March 7, the text of the order of the NKVD of the USSR dated February 26, 1944 was delivered to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Bziava. In the evening of the same day, the first secretaries of the district committees of the party were summoned to the regional committee of the CPSU (b) for an emergency meeting: Chereksky - Zh. Zalikhanov, Khulamo-Bezengievsky - M. Attoev, Chegemsky - M. Babaev, Elbrussky - S. Nastaev. When they entered, Kumekhov was attended by Bziava, Filatov, Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the KBASSR Barsokov and a group of military men led by Major General I.I. Piyashev. Kumekhov gave the floor to Piyashev. The general verbally announced that he was instructed to lead the implementation of a special task of the government to evict the Balkar population of the republic without any exemptions and exceptions. He appealed to the leadership of the republic to contribute to the organized and precise implementation of the decisions of the State Defense Committee, and suggested that the party secretaries arrive at the places, complete the act of handing over party documents by morning and be ready for resettlement. The beginning of the operation is 6 am on March 8.
At the dawn of the next day, butts rumbled in all five gorges of Balkaria, sharp shouts and menacing orders were heard. Soldiers with machine guns burst into houses, not giving time to get ready for the road, drove people without things, without food. Nobody wanted to leave, but it was not only useless to resist, but also mortally dangerous. The old men, women and children raised from their beds were ordered to assemble in a matter of minutes. They were loaded into pre-prepared Studebakers and delivered to the Nalchik railway station. The operation to evict the Balkars lasted only 2 hours. It was conducted under the leadership of the deputies of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Colonel General I.A. Serov and Colonel General B.Z. Kobulov. Everyone, without exception, underwent transportation - active participants in the Civil and Patriotic Wars, war invalids, parents, wives and children of front-line soldiers, deputies of Soviets at all levels, heads of party and Soviet bodies. The guilt of the deportee was determined exclusively by his Balkar origin. Guilt for nationality was mechanically transferred to those born already in deportation.
During the operation, it was proposed to be guided by the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR on the procedure for eviction. According to the instructions, each migrant was allowed to take food and property weighing up to 500 kg per family. However, the organizers of the eviction gave twenty minutes for packing. Old people, women and children were expelled from their homes in what they were shod and dressed, without warm clothes, without food, with little luggage. On the way, for 18 days of travel in unequipped wagons, 562 people died from hunger, cold and disease. They were hastily buried at the railroad tracks during brief stops. When they drove non-stop, the guards simply threw those who died along the way down a slope. The entire path from the Caucasus to Central Asia, 5 thousand km long, is littered with the bones of settlers. Money and jewelry were not subject to seizure - however, those who performed the action were not lost, pocketing gold, silver and other valuables. The sixth paragraph of the instruction provided that livestock, agricultural products, houses and buildings were to be transferred on the spot and reimbursed in kind at new places of resettlement. The local commissions were required to receive an act, which was to be drawn up in three copies: one, through the NKVD, should be sent to the places of resettlement of special settlers to make settlements with the owners on the spot. All this was not done. In fact, it was impossible. Where could they get the republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, where the repressed peoples were evicted, hundreds of thousands of apartments and houses, millions of cattle?
On March 11, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin: the operation to evict the Balkars from the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was completed on March 9. 37,103 Balkars were loaded into trains and sent to the places of a new settlement in the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR ... 20
From the Nalchik railway station, the settlers were sent in 14 echelons, and the total number of deported Balkars was 37,713 people, mostly children, women and the elderly. No one had property, and 40-50 people were pushed into the cars.
On March 14, 1944, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, L. Beria reported on the successful operation. Stalin's reaction to this was as follows: On behalf of the CPSU (b) and the USSR Defense Committee, I express gratitude to all units and subunits of the Red Army and the NKVD troops for the successful completion of an important government task in the North Caucasus. I. Stalin 20 . Not limited to this, 109 people were awarded orders and medals of the USSR 21 for the exemplary and precise fulfillment of the special task of the government and the courage and courage shown at the same time by the decree of the USSR PVS of August 22, 1944. They became heroes for dooming entire nations to suffering and death.
The eviction took place at a time when every fourth Balkar was in the ranks of the warring Red Army. Every second of them died defending the Fatherland from the Nazi invaders. The Balkar warriors were among the first to meet the enemy on the western border of the USSR, becoming participants in the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress. The sons of Balkaria defended Moscow and Leningrad, took part in all major operations of the Great Patriotic War, participated in the partisan movement in Ukraine and Belarus, in anti-fascist resistance in Europe, in the final liberation of the peoples of Europe from the Nazi yoke. Many of the Balkars reached Berlin, taking part in the assault on the lair of German fascism. The 115th Kabardino-Balkarian Cavalry Division fought as part of the active army. Official documents note the courage and bravery of the Balkars, drafted into the Red Army. The brave pilot Alim Baysultanov became the first Hero of the Soviet Union from the natives of Kabardino-Balkaria, thousands of Balkar warriors were awarded government awards. Shoulder to shoulder with representatives of other peoples of the USSR, they bravely fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and contributed to the defeat of the enemy.
When the vast majority of the male population was at the front, the accusation of complicity with the invaders looks ridiculous and it was nothing more than an anti-people propaganda myth. The absurdity of this accusation is obvious: of the total number of deported Balkars, 52 percent were children, 30 percent were women, and 18 percent were men. The men are disabled people who have returned from the war, deep elders, disabled children, Soviet and party workers left on reservation, employees of state security and internal affairs. Thus, the victims of deportation were children, women and the elderly, therefore, the charges made in the decree were not addressed. As you can see, complicity with the occupiers is not a reason, but a reason, and a far-fetched reason, obviously slanderous. After all, the whole enormity of Stalinism lies in the fact that millions of its victims suffered completely innocently.
In order to give the arbitrariness a look of legality, L. Beria on April 7 presented Stalin with a draft Decree of the USSR Armed Forces on the eviction of the Balkars and asked for the decision of the father of the peoples. Instructions followed immediately. On April 8, 1944, a criminal document was signed in the Kremlin: Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR On the resettlement of the Balkars living in the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR and on the renaming of the Kabardino-Balkarian ASSR into the Kabardian ASSR. 22
This Decree completely contradicted the then existing laws, was a discriminatory act that had no precedent in the history of law. The people were expelled, and the Decree appeared retroactively, after the actual event. It is also known that the Decrees of the PVS of the USSR come into force after they are approved by the session of the Supreme Soviet. This happened years later, in June 1946, when the eviction took place long ago. Although the Decree makes an attempt to legally justify the repressive action of a state body against an entire people, the act itself and the mechanism for its implementation are unconstitutional, politically and morally untenable, and therefore criminal. The accusations made in the Decree did not contain any political, legal and moral grounds for ethnic deportation. Neither the constitution of the USSR (basic law), nor the criminal code of the country, nor any other by-laws contained legal norms giving any rights to state authorities to punish the entire Balkar people.
The Decree of the PVS of the USSR of April 8, 1944 legalized the liquidation of the autonomy of the Balkar people and the division of their ethnic territory. Contrary to the constitutions of the RSFSR and the KBASSR, Elbrus and the Elbrus region went to Georgia, and the rest of the territory was transferred to the use of the Kabardian ASSR. The purpose of redrawing the borders was to make it impossible in the future to restore the statehood of the Balkar people. In order to eradicate the very memory of the Balkars, orders were issued to rename the settlements. The village of Janika became Novo-Kamenka, Kashkatau - Soviet, Khasanya - Suburban, Lashkuta - Zarechny, Byly - Coal, etc. Even Balkar history was subjected to ethnic cleansing. The so-called scientific works of L. Lavrov, G. Zardalishvili and P. Akritas appeared, which, trying to give a scientific justification for the genocide, deliberately refuted the autochthonous nature of the Balkar ethnos, distorted the questions of its origin and the right to ethnic territory. In 1957, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was restored by the Decree of the PVS of the USSR, and the people returned to their homeland. However, the measures taken then did not lead to the actual restoration of the political rights of the Balkar people. Nowadays, in connection with the rehabilitation of repressed peoples, incl. political and territorial, some authors reanimate and exaggerate the thesis about the ethnic territory of the Balkar people.
The forcibly deported Balkars lost their property irretrievably and free of charge, the people suffered enormous material damage. Houses, lands, tens of thousands of heads of cattle, household utensils, home furnishings, valuables, clothes, and everything acquired and accumulated by several generations of ancestors were confiscated by the state, looted and destroyed. The cattle left without supervision and care dispersed in the mountains and part of it died. The surviving livestock was distributed among the collective farms and agricultural enterprises of the republic. All collective-farm property, mined by common sweat and blood, was also confiscated.
Having lost their autonomy, the Balkars turned into powerless special settlers settled in small groups in the vast expanses of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Those who survived the road and hardships ended up in fenced and carefully guarded places. Decree of the PVS of the USSR of November 26, 1948. deportation declared eternal. In places of exile, life did not proceed in accordance with the usual norms and laws, but under the conditions of a special, special regime, determined by strict rules and instructions from Beria's department. According to them, all special settlers, starting with infants, were registered on a special basis. On a monthly basis, special settlers were required to register at the place of residence in the special commandant's offices and did not have the right to leave the area of settlement without the knowledge and sanction of the commandant. Unauthorized absence was considered as an escape and entailed criminal liability without trial or investigation. The heads of families were required to report within three days to the special commandant's office about changes that had occurred in the composition of the family (birth of a child, death of a family member, escape). Special settlers were obliged to unquestioningly obey the orders of the special commandant's office. For any violation, disobedience to the commandant, they were subject to administrative penalties, criminal charges and arrest.
The first years of the stay of the Balkars in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were also complicated by the negative attitude towards them from the local population, which was subjected to ideological indoctrination and saw in the unfortunate enemies of the Soviet power. With the stigma of traitors, the authorities imposed a complex of guilt on the repressed people, responsibility for uncommitted crimes. In addition, by confiscating residential buildings, property, livestock, food supplies and giving nothing in return, the state artificially caused massive starvation among the Balkar people. In order to survive, women, who traditionally performed various household chores, and children who had not reached physical maturity shared all the hard work with men. Weakened people could not stand the hunger, the climate, hard labor, domestic disorder, and died prematurely. In the very first year of exile, thousands of children who were left without parents died. The great poet Kazim Mechiev died of exhaustion. Only in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan from April 1944 to July 1946, 10,336 people died, or 69.5% of the total number of Balkars, Chechens and Meskhetian Turks who arrived here. Whole families of people died out, genealogical lines were cut off, the gene pool of the nation and the health of the survivors were undermined. In other settlements, all the settlers died. There was no one to even bury them. Most of the settlers died without receiving any medical care. It was a real genocide against the settlers. During 1942–1948, the death rate among the Balkars exceeded the birth rate and there was practically a question of the extinction and disappearance of the ethnic group. There is not a single Balkar family that did not bury their loved ones on the way, in a settlement in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. They were all heartbroken and destitute. The Balkars restored their pre-war numbers only in the second half of the 60s. The sharp decline in the population is a direct consequence of the deportation of the people.
While Balkar women with children and old people were trying to survive in the inhuman conditions of exile, their fathers, husbands and older brothers were at the front far in the West. Since the spring of 1944, the attitude towards soldiers and officers of the Balkar nationality has changed. They no longer rose in rank, as a rule, they were not awarded, and if they received an award, then it was underestimated. Of the 8 Balkars presented for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, not one received it. Dozens of years later, in 1990, only Mukhazhir Ummaev was posthumously awarded this title.
The moral suffering of the soldiers and officers who honestly and courageously fulfilled their military duty was of a deeper and more vulnerable nature. Since the summer of 1945, demobilized front-line soldiers began to return to peaceful work. Balkar warriors returned from the fields of war with military orders and medals on their chests, and they did not have the right to live in their native land. They were ordered to go to the places of exile of their relatives. Not everyone found their families right away. Arriving there, yesterday's victorious warriors were registered as special settlers with all the restrictions and accusations of betraying the Motherland. Many front-line soldiers returned disabled and died shortly after the war in difficult conditions of exile.
During the years of exile, the Balkars lost many elements of material culture. Traditional buildings and utensils in the places of the new settlement were almost never reproduced. Local conditions, the reduction of traditional sectors of the economy led to the loss of national types of clothing, shoes, hats, jewelry, national cuisine, types and means of transport.
The injustice committed against the repressed peoples caused great damage to their national culture, the further development of which was artificially thrown back. For the vast majority of Balkar children, even school education was difficult. Of the Balkar children, only one in six went to school. And getting higher and secondary specialized education was almost impossible. The consequences of the inferiority of the educational process are well known: the people have lost their existing intellectual contingent and have not received a new one. Settlers did not have the right to study at universities, publish and have their own centers of culture. The Kavkaz Ensemble, organized in 1945 in the Frunze Region, was forced to stop its work the following year by order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Artists, poets, writers, teachers were forced to do something other than their own. During the years of exile, the main cultural function of the Balkars was performed by the folklore tradition.
The Balkar people suffered the most tangible losses in the field of artistic culture. During the eviction, silver and gilded men's and women's belts, women's breastplates, rings, rings and bracelets with precious stones, skillfully trimmed with silver and gold, family daggers, sabers and sabers, carefully kept by the people, were confiscated and looted. Some of these highly artistic works of art are hidden in the storerooms of a prestigious museum and have been removed from the cultural fund of the people for all these years.
The years of deportation marked the beginning of the secularization of the family and cultural traditions. The multigenerational family, common for the Balkars, contributed to the transmission of traditions. During the eviction, many members of family structures found themselves isolated from each other. There was a gap in generations, the tradition of transferring the experience of folk culture from parents to children was violated. The rituals associated with the traditional design of a wedding, the birth and death of a person have lost their expressiveness and stability, the calendar customs and rituals, and the traditional festive culture have lost their integrity.
After the eviction of the Balkars, the villages, which had a unique national flavor, were destroyed, the resources of Balkaria, its lands were poorly developed and in a short time fell into desolation and decline. By the time the Balkars returned, these territories in Kabardino-Balkaria were the most backward in economic and social development. Unfortunately, in the following decades, a policy of conservation of economic and cultural backwardness was carried out here. The placement of capital investments in Balkar settlements and farms was much lower than the average for the republic. Many complex and unresolved problems have accumulated. The Decree On the Social and Economic Support of the Balkar People, adopted in June 1993 by the Government of the Russian Federation, was the first practical step towards the complete rehabilitation of the Balkar people.
As can be seen, the elimination of the autonomy of the Balkar people entailed a large-scale physical destruction of the ethnic group, the violent destruction of the entire structure of its socio-economic and cultural development. In general, deportation from the very beginning was and remains a monstrous crime and the gravest atrocity against the repressed peoples.
Sources and literature
- Documentation Center recent history CBD, f. 1, op. 3, d. 6, l. 116.
- There, l. 115.
- There, f. 1, op. 5, d. 2, l. 324.
- There, l. 116.
- Khutuev Kh.I. Problems of restoration and development of the national statehood of the Balkar people. - In the book: Repressed peoples: history and modernity. Abstracts of reports. Nalchik, 1994, p. 16.
- Center for Documentation of the Contemporary History of the KBR, f. 259, op. 1, d. 16, l. 26–27.
- There.
- Nekrich A. Punished peoples. New York, 1978, p. 86.
- Ibid, p. 67.
- Archive of the KGB of the USSR, Special folder No. 52 - 14 SPO-8.
- State Archive of the Russian Federation, F. 9401, op. 2, d. 64, l. 162–167.
- Author's archive.
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- State Archive of the Russian Federation, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 37, l. 21–22 rev.
- Ibid., d. 64, l. 160–162.
- CSA KBR, f. 717, op. 2, d. 1, l. 23.
- Author's archive.
- Bugai N.F. To the question of the deportation of the peoples of the USSR in the 30-40s. - History of the USSR, 1989, No. 6, p. 139.
- Telegrams from Beria to Stalin. Publication N.F. Bugai. - and. History of the USSR, 1991, No. 1, p. 148.
- See gas. Russia, 1994, February 23–March 1.
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