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organizations in Turkey were very different to earlier European ones. “In Europe, 
an overt and covert political struggle was waged while in Turkey the keynote of the 
effort was preservation of an endangered community.”
452
 
These groups and their activities, in contrast to earlier European groups, 
interestingly enough, were not well informed on events in the Soviet Union and the 
North Caucasus region itself, nor were they particularly concerned with the 
situation there. 
 
During this period, the situation in the North Caucasus was much more 
dramatic than during the pre-War period. In late 1943 and early 1944 Stalin 
deported seven nationalities completely from their native countries to the Central 
Asia and Siberia, officially, for collaboration with the German armies. Among 
these nations were four North Caucasian nationalities: the Chechens, the Ingush, 
the Karachays and the Balkars.
453
 
Despite the Soviet claims of collaboration, the Germans in fact only reached 
to the Russian-inhabited Malgobek district in what is today northwestern 
Ingushetia and thus occupied only some parts of the Karachay and Balkar 
                                                                                                                                        
Balkan Göçmen Derneklerileri: Sivil Toplum ve Milliyetçilik,” in Stefanos Yerasimos,  ed. 
Türkiye’de Sivil Toplum ve Milliyetçilik. 2001. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 451-460 and 425-449. 
For a deatiled study on the North Caucasians publications see Lowell Bezanis, 1994. “Soviet 
Muslim emigrés in the Republic of Turkey,” Central Asian Survey, 13(1): 59-180. 
452
 Bezanis, “Soviet Muslim emigrés”, 92. He also stressed that the “North Caucasian activism after 
1950 served several purposes: to connect, inform and help preserve the North Caucasian community 
in Turkey, to counter assimilation, to fight communism in and out of Turkey, and to accomplish this 
within the parameters of acceptable political behavior in Turkey.” 
453
 The other three were the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, and the Volga Germans. For a detailed 
account of the deportations see R. Conquest, 1960. The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities, London: 
Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Alexandr Nekrich, 1978. The Punished Peoples: the Deportation and fate of 
Soviet minorities at the end of the Second World War, (trnsl.) George Saunders. New York: Norton. 
Abdurahman Avtorkhanov, “The Chechens and the Ingush during the Soviet Period and its 
Antecedents,” in The North Caucasus Barrier, 184-192. 

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territories in autumn 1942. They stayed until March 1943 and never reached the 
lands inhabited by the Chechens and Ingush. Thus Stalin’s accusations were 
unfounded. The selection of the peoples to deport, as Cornell put it, was the 
indication of the purpose of act: “the Chechens were traditionally the leaders of 
Caucasian rebellions, the Karachais and Balkars were both of Turkic origin, and 
were thus a potential pro-Turkish fifth column. These were the peoples seen as 
most dangerous to Soviet rule.”
454
 
In November and December 1943 all the Karachays were loaded on cattle 
wagons and transported to the Central Asia and Siberia. In February 1944 the 
Chechens and the Ingush, and in, March the Balkars followed them. In numbers, 
these deported North Caucasians comprised nearly half of the total deportees. The 
Chechens and Ingush alone totalled half a million. The former republics of these 
deported groups were, naturally dissolved and their territories were redistributed 
among the other neighbouring peoples. The peoples who used to live in the 
mountainous areas were forcibly resettled in the rural lowlands, while the Russians 
were drawn into the towns and cities. Not until the late 1950s were the deportees 
allowed return. Nevertheless, they lost more than a half of their populations over 
the course of deportation. 
In January 1957 the Chechen-Ingush ASSR and the autonomy of the 
Balkars, Karachays and Kalmyks was re-established. But the Soviet regime created 
a new discord among the Mountaineers. Clashes began to take place between the 
returnees and those who had been forcibly resettled in their former lands, with each 
                                                 
454
 Svante E. Cornell, 2001. Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in 
the Caucasus, Surrey: Curzon, 31. 

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side claiming the right to the territory. The iron fist of the Soviet regime, however, 
suppressed these discords and clashes in a ruthless manner.
455
 
 
1- Perestroika and Glasnost’: 
Following the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as First Secretary of the 
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in March 1985. The Soviet Union 
experienced major social, political and economic upheavals. This was activated by 
the efforts of the reform-minded leadership to carry out a so-called well-planned 
comprehensive reorganisation of the country. This ‘revolution from above’ 
inadvertently fuelled a scale of ethnic unrest unparalleled in Soviet history, as the 
various nationalities of the world’s largest multi ethnic society seized the 
opportunities opened by glasnost’ (openness) and democratization to put forward 
demands for greater national self-determination.
456
 Moreover, the complex and 
three-tiered hierarchy of ethnically defined, administrative units, of the Soviet 
Union did not affect the situation positively.
457
 When the Union Republics 
demanded sovereignty in the late 1980s, autonomous republics and oblasts began 
to demand a higher status and greater rights. 
                                                 
455
 The North Caucasian emigres were closely interested with the deportations and several numbers 
of articles were written on the issue. See, A. Bahadur, August 1951. “Kuzey Kafkasyada Halkın 
Toptan  İmhası,”  Kafkasya (Der Kaukasus), (Munich), 1: 10-12. Vassan-Ghiray Djabagui, 1955. 
“Soviet Nationality Policy and Genocide,” Caucasian Review, (Munich), 1: 71-80. R. Karcha, 1956. 
“Genocide in the Northern Caucasus,” Caucasian Review, (Munich), 2: 74-84. R. Traho, 1957. “The 
Restoration of National Autonomy in the Northern Caucasus,” Caucasian Review, (Munich), 4: 7-8. 
R. Karcha, 1957. “The Restoration of the Liquidated Republics and the Rehabilitation of the 
Deported Peoples,” Caucasian Review, (Munich), 5: 41-46. 
456
 Graham Smith, 1996. “The Soviet State and Nationalities Policy,” in Graham Smith, eds., The 
Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States.London: Longman, 2-22. 
457
 In late 1980s, the Soviet Union was consisted of 15 Union Republics (RSFSR and 14 SSRs) and 
administratively divided among 20 Autonomous Republics, 8 Autonomous Oblasts (AO). In 
addition to that, there were 6 Krais and several numbers of Okrugs. 

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