March 8 – day of deportation of the Balkar people

Official ceremonies on the 66th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkar people are being held in Nalchik.

On March 8, 1944, about 40,000 Balkars were deported by the Russians in 24 hours from their country to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

Like some other Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus, the Balkars underwent a massacre because of their unloyalness to Moscow.

Here is what a world-renowned political scientist, Abdurahman Avtorhaov, wrote about the reasons for the deportation of the Caucasians: 

The reasons for the extermination of the mountainous people were:

1. Continuous struggle of Chechens and the Caucasian highlanders for national independence. An actual rejection of the oppressive system of the Soviet colonial regime;

2. Moscow's desire to secure the Caucasus as a rear in future confrontations with the West against an imminent national all-Caucasian Front against the Soviet metropolis;

3. [...]

4. Not only to keep the Caucasus as a strategic base, free of internal risks and vulnerability, but also to transform it into a reliable base for future expansion against Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India.

These purposes were not declared but they are the real motivation of the Kremlin's policy for extermination of the Caucasian peoples.

One million mountaineers - Chechens, Ingushs, karachaevtsy and balkartsy ... »became the first victim of this wolf policy also.

The first victims of this beasty policy were one million highlanders - Chechens, Ingushs, Karachayevs and Balkarians ...".