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In the Stalin era, Kazakhstan was seized by a terrible famine, during collectivization. After that, the republic was
covered by labor camp tochki and it was a place of prison and exile for so-called "kulaks," Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Poles,
Ukrainians, Koreans, and many others.
Valentina Shevchenko, imprisoned in ALZhIR, a special camp for women on the outskirts of Akmolinsk, wrote these lines:
Akmola, Akmola
White Grave
You buried, you stole
All that was dear to my soul
These Lands Cannot Become Our Grave
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The deported people adapted to their condition very differently.
The behavior of Chechens and Ingush was unique. It is an episode of great significance not only for our understanding
of Stalinism but of the subsequent history of the relationship between Russia and Chechnya. Read my article about the Chechens
and Ingush in exile in Akmolinsk (and other articles about Chechen history) at the Chechnya Advocacy Network website. It was
published as “’It Cannot be that
Our Graves Will be Here:’The Survival of Chechen and Ingush Deportees in Kazakhstan, 1944-1957,” in
the Journal of Genocide Research (Vol.
4, No. 3 (2002), pp. 401-430.
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A Russian translation of this article was published
in the Moscow journal Diaspory: "Neuzheli
eti zemli nashei mogiloi stanut? Chechentsy i Ingushi v Kazakhstane (1944-1957 gg.)," Vol. 4, No. 2 (2002), pp. 158-204. See
reference to the article:
An abridged version was carried in installments in Ob'edinennaia Gazeta, a Chechen newspaper based in Moscow, in
2004. Read excerpts from the article at their site:
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