Sixty Eight Years since the Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush

Today is the 68th anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to special settlement restrictions in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Beria carefully oversaw this mass uprooting of humanity which ultimately resulted in over a quarter of the Chechen and Ingush population perishing during the next five years. On 26 November 1948, the Stalin regime decreed the exile of the Chechens, Ingush, and other deported peoples to be permanent. I still maintain that the deportation of an entire group defined by an ethnicity assigned by the state at birth to restricted territories forever is a racist act. I also maintain that the very act of deporting to unprepared territories an entire national group consisting in the majority of women, children, and the elderly during war time conditions in the middle of winter shows an intent to kill off a large portion of them regardless of stated motives. I am well aware that the orthodox position in American academia is that the Soviet action was neither racist or genocidal, but I stand by my position.