The Prosecutor’s Office of Ingushetia has recommended that parliament withdraw a law prohibiting the glorification of Joseph Stalin. Ingush Deputy Prosecutor Girikhan Khazbiev claims that the draft law contains a ‘corrupt component’.
In his letter to parliamentarians, Khazbiev writes that he believes the bill contains ‘the use of unsettled, ambiguous terms and opinions’. In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office says that the ban violates citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of speech and thought.
The bill, adopted on 27 February 2017, prohibits not only the installation of monuments, busts and the naming of villages, streets, and institutions after Stalin, but also public justification or approval of his activities, including by placing his image in public places and administrative premises with the goal of exalting his personality or deeds.
The Ingush Parliament has signalled that it will not comply with the Prosecutor’s Office’s request. Zelimkhan Yevloyev, speaker of the parliament, expressed defiance in an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant.
‘Someone out there may have another opinion of the crimes of Stalin, let them think so, but we will go till the end, we will consider and adopt the law in any case’, he said, noting that MPs are also ready to defend the law in court.
Stalin’s deportations
The ban was passed unanimously on its first reading in parliament on 22 February, on the eve of the 73rd anniversary of Stalin’s mass deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples. On that day, over 91,000 Ingush were forcibly removed to Central Asia. The entire nation was deported on false charges of ‘state treason’. Nearly half of the population died on the journey or while in exile from hunger, cold, and disease. The deportation has been recognised by many, including the European Parliament as genocide.
In recent years, a campaign to glorify Joseph Stalin has been launched by nationalist groups in Russia. Hundreds of monuments and busts have been erected throughout the country. This includes the North Caucasus, for example in Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and Daghestan. The Russian authorities have encouraged the efforts of nationalist groups to rehabilitate Stalin.
Russia’s Ministry of Education has made changes to a history textbook that referred to North Caucasian nations that were deported from their homes during World War II as ‘Nazi collaborators’.
The textbook spurred controversy in the North Caucasus, where several nations were deported en masse to Siberia and Central Asia during World War II for allegedly collaborating with the invading Nazi Germany.
These included the Karachays, the Balkars, the Ingush, and the Chechens in the North Caucasus,
Since its conquest by Russia in the 19th century, the North Caucasus has been the scene of genocides, forced deportations, wars for independence, and insurgency. The dozens of nations indigenous to the region continue to be repressed socially and culturally by the Russian Federation.
However, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has once again raised the imperial nature of the Russian state and has shone a light on how this imperialism extends to the North Caucasus, as seve
On the anniversary of the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush people, a Russian ‘victory train’ is visiting the two republics — a grotesque parody of the trains that took so many to exile and death.
Today is the 78th anniversary of the deportation of the Vainakhs — the Chechen and Ingush people — to Siberia and Central Asia. Seventy-eight years since the entire population of Chechnya and Ingushetia were taken from their homes at gunpoint, in the dead of winter, and packed into cattle cars pu
Seventy-seven years after the deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush nations to Central Asia, Chechen returnees from a small corner of Daghestan still dream of returning to their homes.
Every year on 23 February, Chechens and Ingush people mark the tragic anniversary of the Soviet deportations of 1944 on the orders of Stalin — a genocidal event that cost the lives of up to one-third of their total population.
In recent years, the largest events to commemorate the day have been held not
The Prosecutor’s Office of Ingushetia has recommended that parliament withdraw a 
