The Chechen Memory of Deportation: From Recalling a Silenced Past to the Political Use of Public Memory

Abstract

Chechnya has recently been torn apart by two deadly wars (1994–1996 and 1999 to the present). Many studies have addressed both the causes and consequences of these conflicts (Dunlop, 1998; Wood, 2007). Among the causes identified are the confrontational nature of Russo-Chechen history since the eighteenth century and the massive deportation in 1944 (Bennett, 1998; Gall & de Waal, 1998; Gammer, 2006). That deportation event has been often presented as a strong motivation for independence. On 23 February 1944, after having been accused of collaboration with the Nazi Army, about 350,000 Chechens were forcibly exiled to different places in the Soviet republics of Central Asia and in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Though they were eventually rehabilitated in 1956 and returned to Chechnya, they were denied the right to officially remember and commemorate that event.