IT WAS LIKE THAT...
M. Arsenov, 2 Žubat 2003, The Chechen Times

Touching upon the topic of the deportation of Chechens and Ingushs for the first time Inga Prelovskaya, a corespondent for Izvestia (Izvestia, March 14, 1992) asked the question: is it high time to publish such horrible evidence? And she gave the answer herself: yes, the time is right if we want to build our relations with Chechnya and Ingushetia on the basis of trust and openness without which there is no equality. 

The-then Russian state advisor on legal policy, Vice Premier Sergei Shakhrai gave journalists a carte-blanch at that time. In one of his statements he said: "Russia's moral duty -is not to hide the truth no matter how bitter it might be. The people are not to be blamed for what happened. That is a feature of the regime of "Communist Party-KGB", the debris of which are still on our path to democracy." 

These words pronounced by a Russian state official, gave journalists a possibility to openly speak about what many peoples of the Caucasus dared to retell only in whisper, only within a family. At that time the veil above the secret archive of the country was lifted. Today we will not talk about what happened later, we do not want to remind S. Shakhrai of his words two years later, in August of 1994: "Grozny faces the fate of Carfagen." Respected historians, if there are such historians in Russia, will study and estimate cynical acts of these people advocating a cynical ideology.

Today on the eve of the 58th anniversary of the deportation of Chechens and Ingushs we are not going to describe how it happened. We will give the tribute to those who became eyewitnesses to the tragic crime committed on Wednesday, February 23, 1944. In this and in subsequent materials we will try to describe the tragedy of the people on the example of one settlement - Haibakh. The name of Haibakh can be put in one row with Khatyn, Liditze, Songmi...

Dziyaudin Gabisovch Malsagov, the-then deputy justice commissar for the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic, became the chief prosecutor of the crime committed in the village of Haibakh. He saw with his own eyes everything that the authority preferred to keep silent about. Dziyaudin Malsagov constantly sent messages to N.S.Khruschev, describing the horror of the deportation in detail. Later he became the chief prosecutor for the tragedy in Haibakh. His memoirs have repeatedly been quoted in press, and we will try to retell them to our readers. 

Dziyaudin Malsagov

Dziyaudin Malsagov was born in 1913 in the village of Stary Achkhoi in the Achkhoi-Martan district of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic, a Chechen with higher education. He worked as a deputy justice commissar of the Republic from March 1942. 

On February 18, 1944, Lavrenty Beria and other top NKVD officials arrived in Grozny. In the morning on that day Supyan Mollayev, the chairman of the Soviet People's Commissariat, called me in and said that the Chechens and Ingushs would be deported soon. He warned me against leaving the city, because we had to be present at the meeting with the first secretary of the regional committee of the party Ivanov. Two hours later I was called in Ivanov's room. Mollayev, Beria's deputy Serov and Kruglov were present there. The meeting was top secret. 

During that meeting I was told to leave for the Galanchozh district. We departed together with Khalim Rashidov, the second secretary of the Chechen-Ingush regional committee of the Communist Party. Rashidov was to stay in the Sunzhensky district, and I was to head for the Galanchozh district. We drove together to the settlement of Sleptsovskaya. At the regional committee we were told that we would have to meet another deputy of Beria - Apollonov and other senior military officials. 

When we reached the station, we were invited into a railway carriage, where colonel-general Apollonov stayed with other generals. The representative of the top authority talked to us, and during our conversation the phone rang. I understood that was L. Beria, because Apollonov called the man by name - Lavrenty Pavlovich. Form the context of the conversation I realized that Beria was in the Republic. 

One of the generals present, senior officers and me accompanied by soldiers were to leave for Galanchozh. I did not know the name of the general: at that time they did not introduce themselves. 

We drove to the village of Galanchozh by cars. Just before the departure the regional committee hosted a meeting of the economic party activists. When we left the room of the first secretary, we were asked to wait in the hall. Later we were invited to the meeting hall and were told that in the near future the whole nation would be deported and we must take part in it. I asked the following question: 

- Why all of them have to be deported? What are they blamed for? For example, one of my brothers returned shell-shocked from the front, and the rest of my five brothers are on the front. Then why should my family, as well as thousands of other people, and me be resettled? 

In reply Serov said that it was a temporary measure, and that the bulk of the people would return shortly. 

We gave no written undertaking to keep secret the information about the total deportation of the Chechens, and only those who had access to top-secret information knew about it. But we were warned against unauthorized disclosure of the state secret and threatened with criminal prosecution up to death penalty. 

In the village of Galashki we were given horses, and the general, several officers and I accompanied by 15 soldiers left for the Galanchozh district. 

Six weeks before the deportation, soldiers began to appear in the villages of Checheno-Ingushetia. Under the pretext of maneuvers in the mountains they, as it later turned out, were prepared for a mass terror. 

By the evening we arrived in the village of Yalkhoroi in the Galanchozh district. Our arrival was kept secret. The deportation of Chechens was to begin on February 27 and end on February 28, 1944. Later I found out that by February 24, 1944, the plain districts of the republic were deported. Gveshiani told me about it. By the way, Gveshiani stayed in the village of Yalkhoroi for six weeks and guided the deportation of Chechens in the Galanchozh district. At that time he headed the Far East department of NKVD and was commissioned to Chechnya. In each district of the republic a General, led the deportation of my fellow countrymen. 

When we arrived in Yalkhoroi, Gveshiani introduced himself and asked about the trip. He looked calm and talked politely, called all of us by names, he said he was very tired and wanted to rest a little, but had to finish the mission within a short period. That was in the evening of February 19, 1944. 

Until February 24 we stayed in the village of Yalkhoroi and then together with captain Gromov followed the route Akki-Eski-Haibakh-Nashkhoi. I got to know Gromov on the way. On the night of February 27, 1944, we arrived in the village of Haibakh. At that time the residents of the Galanchozh district were not deported. Rumors said that the band of Israilov operated there and that was why the authority paid a special attention to this district and the deportation of Chechens residing in that district was delayed. 

On February 27 people from all the neighboring villages were gathered in Haibakh. An NKVD officer ordered those who could not walk to enter a building (the stables) saying special places were prepared for them; hay was delivered to make it warmer. A big number of old people, women and children, ill people and their relatives gathered there. Those who were late also joined them believing they would leave on trucks and sledges. Some people said they would be deported by air. I believe about 650-700 people entered the stables. 

All that happened before my eyes. The rest of the residents of the district were convoyed through the village of Yalkhoroi to Galashki and then to a railway station. Between 10 and 11, when the healthy residents were sent away the gate to the stable was closed. And then I heard the order: 

- Fire it up!

At that moment the fire broke out and engulfed the stables. It turned out everything was prepared in advance and soaked with kerosene. When the fire reached the top of the stable people broke out the gate and with desperate cries for help rushed outside. And then colonel-general Gveshiani who stood nearby ordered: 

- Fire!

People running out of the stable were shot dead from machineguns point blank. There was a pile of dead bodies in front of the stables. A young man ran out of there but was shot on the spot. Two other men were also killed. 

I was shocked and approached Gveshiani and asked him to order ceasing fire. I called everything that happened - arbitrariness. Gveshiani said he had an order from Beria and Serov and warned me not to interfere. He threatened me with execution. Captain Gromov was also indignant at the troops' action, but no one listened to him. We were able to do nothing. 

Later Gveshiani called us up, and ordered several soldiers to escort us and sent us to the village of Malkhesty. That village included several mountainous hamlets, which had more fighting towers than dwelling houses. We saw a terrible picture there. There were dead bodies of local residents on mountainous paths. In the village we could not find a single house without dead bodies of killed Chechens. 

Several days later on the way back, Gromov and me saw many dead bodies shot by the troops in a mountainous cave. I still remember a dead woman holding two dead children - a 2-3 year old boy and a baby. 

On the way to Malkhesty and back we met not a single living resident. There were many soldiers, and the rest of the mountaineers hid in the mountains. As a rule, they were automatically considered bandits and finished off. 

On the way back from Malkhesty, we visited Haibakh to see what happened there. At the stables several people collected the remains of the burnt people. Having noticed us they ran away. I shouted to them in Chechen to approach us. Only one of them dared to come up, the rest disappeared. That was Zhandar Gaev. He looked terrible. For the past several days together with other villagers he collected what was left of the burnt people and buried them in another place. Zhandar told me they had buried 137 bodies by that time. 

Talking to us Zhandar said they fell behind and had to hide in the mountains. I recommended to them surrendering to the authorities. Zhandar said Chechens who voluntarily went to the military asking to send them to their relatives were killed. He asked me to give him a document not to be executed. I translated our conversation to Gromov. While leaving we gave Zhandar a document saying that the given group of people fell behind their relatives and asked to help them to reach the place of the deportation. We warned Zhandar we had no seal and could not guarantee it would be of any help to him. 

When we reached the railway station "Sleptsovskaya" we met a colonel-Georgian. We asked him where Beria and Serov stayed. We wanted to report about the atrocities we had witnessed. 

- Many people were killed and burnt, - I told the colonel hoping for his compassion. 

The colonel told something to his driver in Georgian. Gromov understood everything, because he used to work in Gerogia and knew Georgian well enough. He suggested leaving immediately. We took the first vehicle and left. On the way Gromov explained that the colonel called for soldiers to execute us as unwanted witnesses of the crimes in Haibakh and Malkhesty. 

We hardly passed Zakan-Yurt when a military vehicle caught up with us and an officer driving it said we were lucky because shortly after our departure a group of soldiers searched for us. 

In Grozny I reported everything in detail to Serov. That was on March 8. The general was outraged, he ordered me to keep silence. At that time I could not talk about the crimes committed by the troops. I could have been liquidated as a witness. 

During all his life Dziyaudin Malsagov carried a terrible pain of memories. In the above mentioned article "Crimes of NKVD troops during the deportation of Chechens and Ingushs in the winter of 1944" Inga Prelovskaya paid special attention to the painstaking and very dangerous job done by D. Malsagov trying to make the authorities hear him. "I wrote to Stalin about the facts of the atrocities after my arrival to Kazakhstan in 1945, however no measures were taken, I was dismissed from the post of deputy judge of the Taldy-Kyrgansky regional court. Then I was deported to the town of Tekeli in Kazakhstan," - D. Malsagov writes in his memoirs. After Beria's arrest, having taken part in his disclosure, Malsagov testified at the General Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, he told about the atrocities he witnessed. In order to tell about these and other facts, and after his release from the special place of living, in 1954 and in March 1945, he visited Moscow to meet N.S.Khruschev, but in vain. However certain job was done on the statements D. Malsagov sent to the country's leadership. 

The time passed. The humiliated, offended, labeled, morally and physically suffering people desperately tried to survive in inhuman conditions. Deported during winter colds to lifeless Kazakh steppes, people died from hunger, cold and diseases. The long thirteen years passed. In the early January of 1957 the USSR Supreme Council signed the decree to restore the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic. Vainakhs were allowed to return to their Motherland. N.S. Khruschev gave them such possibility although he did not dare to publicly try the hangmen. And I. Prelovskaya makes a conclusion of her own in this respect: "A coincidence of their actions with the methods the world condemned in Nuremberg seemed very dangerous. The leadership was afraid of touching upon the fundamentals of the state and the party."

Today the executioners of Haibakh fill the Republic. There isn't a single spot of land they have missed. Whenever they appear they bring death, destruction, grief and suffering. Old injustice results in a long chain reaction. The state tried for many years to bury the terrible secret of Haibakh that has not passed away from people's memory even for a moment. 

[02.02.2003 17:19] M. Arsenov.