A film about the consequences of the deportation of the Vainakhs has been made publicly available.
The Ingush National Film Studio has released the film "Letter," about the consequences of the Vainakh deportation, which had been blocked from being shown in the republic.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," the film "Letter," directed by Amur Amerkhanov, about the consequences of the Vainakh deportation, was shown in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but in the republic, authorities are blocking the film's screening.
On February 23, 1944, Operation Lentil began, during which nearly 500,000 Chechens and Ingush were deported en masse from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. More details about these events and their consequences can be found in the "Caucasian Knot" report "Deportation of Chechens and Ingush".
The Ingush National Film Studio has released director Amur Amerkhanov's film "Letter" about the return of the Ingush to their homeland after the 1944 deportation, Fortanga reported.
The film has completed its festival tour and is now reaching the general public. It so happened that the organizational issue was resolved by our Kazakh brothers, who created a separate platform for this, writes the Ingush National Film Studio on its Telegram channel.
"This work was, first and foremost, a tribute to our parents. And if our team fulfilled this purpose, then everything else is unimportant. We continue working," the publication quotes the film's director and director of the film studio, Amur Amerkhanov, as saying.
The film "Letter" by the Ingush National Film Studio is the winner of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia competition among the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District, as well as the winner of the debutants' competition of the Ministry of Culture of Russia for the production of national films. It is a prize-winner of the Karama Film Festival in Jordan. It participated in the Dhaka International Film Festival in Bangladesh and Bridge of Peace in Paris, France, according to the website where the film is posted.
According to the plot of the film, in 1972, a young oncologist surgeon accompanies a group of communists of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, who are carrying A letter to Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, according to information on the Kinopoisk website.
The letter details violations of Lenin's nationality policy regarding former deportees: after returning from exile, their homes were occupied by others, cemeteries were destroyed, and there are restrictions on admission to universities and employment, Serdalo reports.
As a reminder, the reasons given for the deportation were mass desertion and the preparation of an armed uprising in the Soviet rear, even though the territory of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was practically unoccupied, and by February 1944, the Wehrmacht had already been pushed hundreds of kilometers away from the Caucasus. According to historians, mass arrests, deportations, and executions based on ethnicity were widespread under Stalin, which is supported by numerous documentary evidence, as stated in the Caucasian Knot report "10 myths about Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War."
The "Caucasian Knot" also prepared reports on the deportation of the Balkars in 1944 and the deportation of the Kalmyks. In 1943, the Karachays were also subjected to mass deportation.
Historian and member of the Association of Researchers of Russian Society Boris Sokolov told the "Caucasian Knot" in 2022 that the decision on which peoples to subject to repression depended directly on Stalin.