Resistance

THE RESISTANCE OF AN ORGANISM

[Izvestia.ru 17.03.04]

http://www.izvestia.ru/life/45386_print

My quick translation:

60 years ago the deportation of the peoples of the Northern Caucasus was completed


From a report by General Bochkov, commander of the NKVD escort troops:

“To Comrade L.P. Beria. I wish to report that… for the convoy operation 180 special trains have been dispatched – with 65 box-cars on each, and a total of 493,269 persons to be resettled… Dispatch of the trains to the points of destination began on 23.2.44 and ended on 2 March…

“The causes of mortality during the journey are: the advanced and immature ages of those who are being resettled, resulting in the lack of the necessary resistance of their organism to altered atmospheric and social factors.”

“There is no locality named Khaibakh in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR”

In 1944 705 people were burned alive in the horse stables of the mountain village (aul) of Khaibakh.

The old people, women and children of the mountain village were unable to get down the mountainside, and thereby disrupted the deportation plans. Their subsequent fate is described by the director of the Podvig Reconnaissance Centre of the International Association of War Veterans and Veterans of the Armed Forces Stepan Kashurko, who in 1990 headed a special commission of inquiry into the genocide in Khaibakh.

− Why were you chosen to head the special commission?
− On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the victory in World War II, Marshal Konev was appointed chairman of the Central Staff of the All-Union War Route Campaign. I was a naval captain-lieutenant, in the reserve, working as a journalist. I considered myself a pupil of Sergei Sergeyevich Smirnov, the author of the famous documentary narrative “The Brest Fortress” (http://lib.ru/PRIKL/SMIRNOW/brest.txt). Konev needed an assistant of this kind, and he took me as a special messenger on especially important matters concerning the search for and locating of war heroes.

− In the Soviet Union this tragedy was kept a secret. How did you learn about it?
− Its trace was discovered in the Ukraine, near the town of Novgorod-Seversky. During the flooding of the banks of the River Desna, the remains of cavalry soldiers dressed in Caucasian burkas (felt cloaks) were exposed. These were scouts of the 2nd Caucasus Horse Guards, killed on 12 March 1943 as they carried out a special operation in the enemy’s rear on the orders of General Rokossovsky. One of them was found to be carrying a waterproof envelope containing a death medallion, a personal photograph, a clipping from an army newspaper and a letter from his mother in Khaibakh. He was the platoon’s commander, Beksultan Gazoyev. I sent a report back to Russia on this war hero. The reply from Grozny was: “There is no locality named Khaibakh in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR”. But Gazoyev’s mother’s letter showed her address: “Khaibakh, Galanchozh District, Nachkhoy Village Soviet.” I flew to Grozny.

“You’re obsessed with this Khaibakh!” I was told by Doku Zavgayev, first secretary of the Grozny regional committee. “Well, it did exist before the war. But it disappeared during it.” I insisted: we must find the hero’s relatives. For a long time he evaded the discussion, but in the end admitted: “People were burnt alive during the deportation.” How could that be? A man gave his life for his country, but his relatives were – burnt? “Don’t get so worked up!” Zavgayev said. “Those were Stalin’s orders. It’s forbidden to talk or write about what happened.”

− And what did you do?
− I went back to Moscow, to find archive materials. Documents of the special commission of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party were kept in the office of the director of the Central Committee’s general department. I had to apply to Gorbachev. He gave permission. I went back to Grozny – and people started coming to the hotel. They begged me not to give up: “We’ll carry you to Khaibakh ourselves!” (All the roads leading into the prohibited zone had been blown up.) The chairman of the Chechen-Ingush Council of Ministers (Sovmin) Sergei Bekov proposed the creation of a special commission for the study of the genocide at Khaibakh. I was chosen to be its chairman.

− What did you see in Khaibakh?
− The ancestral minaret, the burned pillars of the stables. And old Chechens – it had taken them two days and nights to get there. We rushed to site of the fire. To my horror, my foot passed through the ribcage of a burned corpse. Someone shouted that it was his wife. I freed myself from that trap with difficulty. An eyewitness of the burning, Dziyaudin Malsagov (former deputy people’s commissar in the law court) told the weeping old people what he had experienced in this place 46 years ago, when he had been sent here to assist the NKGB. People were murdered. They talked of mothers, wives, fathers, uncles who had been burned…

− The beginning of the 1944 tragedy is well-known – people were loaded into box-cars and shipped to Kazakhstan.
− Yes, but the details are not so well-known. Units and sub-units of the NKGB and NKVD were stationed in the republic in the guise of front-line soldiers on leave. On the morning of 23 February the “Panther” radio signal was given for the entire population to be deported. At six a.m. 150,000 operatives of the NKGB/ NKVD and SMERSH, soldiers and officers of the NKVD troops, broke into the houses of the people, who were asleep. They were taken in trucks to the railway, and from there trains of goods and cattle wagons moved through the steppes of Kirghizia and Kazakhstan, leaving thousands of unburied corpses on the platforms. At 11 a.m. Beria sent a telegram to Stalin: “Resettlement proceeding normally. No incidents deserving attention.” In the evening Beria held a celebratory dinner in Grozny.

− Why were those 705 people not deported with the rest?
− The day before the deportation began, there was snow. It was impossible for the women with children, the sick and the old to come down the mountainside. All of the disabled were driven to Khaibakh, into that same kolkhoz horse stables named after Beria. The escort soldiers said: “If you don’t want to freeze to death, keep the warm.” And people spread the walls and flooring with straw and hay. The commander of the Galanchozh operative sector reported on his progress to Major General Gvishiani, the 3rd rank state security commissar in charge of the operation. He asked what they should do with the children: they were hungry. “We’ll feed them all!” the general replied. At 11 Beria came on the radio line – and all was decided. The incendiaries surrounded the stables, and Gvishiani gave the order: “Set fire to it!” There was a rattle of machine guns… Soon rain fell, extinguishing the flames – but the people were dead…

− Did you discover all that in Khaibakh?
− Yes. In addition to Malsagov, there were another two eyewitnesses – they observed from afar and did not dare to return. They remembered it all their lives, and didn’t believe that the culprits would be punished. We wrote up an investigative document. They admitted: the killing of people in Khaibakh was a genocide, and the culprits must be brought to justice. The Chechens asked that Gvishiani be brought to them, and made to look people in the eye. I promised to fulfil that request.

− Incredible. You were going to get Gvishiani to go to Khaibakh?
− We decided to kidnap him. With the help of Zviad Gamsakhurdia [Georgian dissident who became the first democratically elected president of the post-Soviet republic of Georgia, tr.] we reached his luxurious house. But fate kept the brute from being held responsible – we were too late: broken by paralysis, he had died. We went back to Khaibakh three days later. The mountaineers just said: “To a jackal a jackal’s death!” To the beat of a drum we burned a large portrait of him in the place where he had given the order to set fire to the stables.

− What happened after that?
− A week later Ruslan Tsakayev, the public prosecutor of the Urus-Martanov region, opened criminal inquiry No. 90610010. The proceedings lasted for three years. Finally the inquiry was handed over to the military prosecutor’s office of the Grozny garrison, and then transferred to Rostov on Don… But it was never concluded, and a judicial-legal evaluation of this most heinous crime has never been given – the criminals have remained unnamed and unpunished.