Chechen Frontier in the Socio-Cultural Space of East Kazakhstan in Conditions of Deportation

Abstract

The article covers the history of the totalitarian regime in the 40s of the 20thCentury on the territory of the Soviet Union, including Kazakhstan as an integral part of the Soviet empire. The chronological framework of events is connected with the Second World War, namely with the aggression of the Third Reich against the USSR. The regime of everyday military life reinforced the repressive actions of the Soviet government, the point was directed against the peoples accused of loyalty to the German troops. Chechens who were deported to Kazakhstan, including East Kazakhstan on 23 February  1944, became one of such ethnic groups affected by the totalitarian policy.

The methodological basis of the study was an interdisciplinary approach, theoretical and methodological concepts of ‘collective memory’ in the projection of collective-individual, ‘cultural memory’, and ‘generational memory’.

In the article, based on a wide range of sources and materials, the integration processes of Chechens and the ethnic dialogue with the Kazakh ethnic group and ethnic palette residing in East Kazakhstan in terms of production and outside its sphere are analysed.

The research introduces to the scientific circulation archival and documentary sources and records of materials collected as a result of field expeditions, allowing to show the interaction of Chechens with the local population in conditions of deportation, with an attempt to improve social status by participating in socio-economic processes and preserving ethnic identity.

The authors believe that the strategy of behaviour and the adaptation of the Chechen ethnos differed by their internal attitude to the status of the deported; their dispersed state and frontier conditions determined the individual strategy and tactics of survival.

Keywords

World War II, Great Patriotic War, Repression, Deportation, Chechens, Special Settlement, Socio-Cultural Space of East Kazakhstan

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