A couple of yrs. ago, before Chris got to calling me , "a complete buffoon, " he admitted to me offlist, to not knowing much about Stalin's mass deportation of the Chechen's in 1944.
A lbo-talk post of mine, http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040202/002354.html On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 03:55:28 -0500, Chris Doss <itschris13 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Completely unlike when Stalin deported the Ingush, Chechens and Cherkess
> for taking arms against the Soviet state, of course.
John Dunlop (recently deceased, book reviewer for The Nation during the 40's and 50's) confirms the observations of the first historians of the Chechen-Ingush deportations that there were no more than a hundred recorded instances of " aiding and abetting" the enemy. Even the NKVD reports from the period stated that no more than 335 "bandits" were in the Republic. fn. 48, citing Dunlop, "Russia Confronts Chechnya, " and Robert Conquest, " Nation Killers."
From, "Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe, " by Norman Naimark, Harvard Univ. Press, 2001. Chapter entitled, "Soviet Deportation of the Chechen-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars, " section entitled, :the Chechen-Ingush during WWII, "starting pg 94..."WWII formed the immediate background for the deportations of the Chechen and Ingush peoples.The official justification for the deportations emphasized the collaboration of the Chechens during the fighting, 'Many Chechens were traitors to the homeland, changing over to the side of the fascist occupiers, joining the ranks of the diversionaries and spies left behind by the Germans. They formed armed bands at the behest of the Germans fighting Soviet power.' (fn. 46 citing Order of the Supreme Soviet dated March 7th, 1944)...But, available evidence indicates they did not collaborate in any significant way. Moreover they participated in the war effort at a level similiar to that of other non-Russian peoples who were not subject to removal from their homelands. (fn. 47, citing Nekrich [one of the historians censured in the mid-60's by the CPSU for a co-written work, "June 22, 1941." ]" and an essay by William Fleming in Ben Fowkes edited vol., "Russia and Chechnya: Essays in Russo-Chechen Relations, " St. Martins Press, 1998. Fowkes, btw, has an excellent book on the German Communist Party, that along with Ruth Fischer's autobiographical acct. on the KPD, recently reissued by Transaction Books. this http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/5889.html and, "The Last Revolutionaries:German Communists and Their Century, " by Catherine Epstein, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/EPSLAS.html just published are good reads on the KPD and SED and GDR) Back to Naimark now..."John Dunlop (recently deceased, book reviewer for The Nation during the 40's and 50's) confirms the observations of the first historians of the Chechen-Ingush deportations that there were no more than a hundred recorded instances of " aiding and abetting" the enemy. Even the NKVD reports from the period stated that no more than 335 "bandits" were in the Republic. fn. 48, citing Dunlop, "Russia Confronts Chechnya, " and Robert Conquest, " Nation Killers." End of quote. -- Michael Pugliese