North Caucasus commemorated the victims of political repressions

Today, Russia marks the Memory Day of the victims of political repressions. Under the law, the status of repressed persons may be awarded to the presidents of Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Chechnya who were born in Stalin's exile areas. The memorial services and meetings dedicated to the All-Russian Memory Day of the victims of political repressions were also held in other regions of the South Federal District (SFD).

Among the nations recognized as repressed are the Kalmucks, Chechens, Ingushes, Balkarians, Karachays, Germans, Greeks, and Crimea Tatars. The exact number of people victimized during the USSR years of totalitarian ruling is still unknown. Under some updated information, over four million persons were repressed in the period of 1920s-1950s. However, a great number of repressed persons had never been accounted anywhere.

According to some data, the number of persons deported in 1944 from the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) made over 0.5 million.

In the same year, the population of the Karachay Autonomous Region was repressed and exiled to the Middle Asia and Kazakhstan. The territory of the Region was split among the Stavropol and Krasnodar Territories and Georgia. The Decision of the 20th CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) Congress and Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated January 9, 1957, the Karachays were rehabilitated and the Karachayevo-Cherkess Autonomous Region was restored.

Kalmykia presently hosts 22,100 repressed and later rehabilitated persons.

According to the General Prosecutor's Office, during the validity period of the Law "On Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions" a total of 636,302 criminal cases were reconsidered in relation to 901,127 persons, of whom 637,614 persons were rehabilitated, the web-site "Skavkaz.RFN.ru" reports.

Rehabilitation of victims of political repressions in the USSR started in 1954. In the middle of 1960s, the work was wound up, and resumed only in late 1980s. The Memory Day of the victims of political repressions was first marked in Russia in 1991 in memory of the hunger strike of Mordovian camps' inmates that started October 30, 1974.