Balkar and Karachay nationalism

Contrary to the Soviet view of the whole nations as treacherous Nazi-collaborators, according to the official statistics, 4428 of deported Chechens, 946 Ingush, 698 Karachai, and 386 Balkars were veterans of the Red Army.

So valued were the Karachais that before their departure home in 1957, authorities in both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan offered to create an autonomous oblast for them if they agreed to stay.

The returnees were better educated that those who remained, better versed in Islam than they had been before, and were instilled with a deep sense of indignation for the unjust and inhumane acts committed against them by the Soviet government.

[4] Balkar/Karachay nationalism in its current reincarnation first became visible during the glasnost era when the Soviet Union was ruled by the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev although the population may have had various nationalist sentiments widely manifested among themselves before, as many of their neighbors did.

In 1986, an important stepping stone was the release and popularity of the Georgian film Repentance,[15] which had undertones regarding the falsification of history by Moscow and the repression of nations.

[18] Kavkaz was originally disguised as an environmentalist group, perhaps earnestly, though it was agreed early on by its members that an establishment of autonomy would be the only way to secure their demands, including environmental protection.

Due to the Georgians' more powerful and confident position, it was inclined to much more inflammatory and openly nationalistic rhetoric of the historian and literary critic Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

As the ethnic Armenian Caucasus expert Georgi Derluguian points out, All-Union conferences, intended for national unity, accomplished the opposite.

However, as was the case with other such movements, the rhetoric was slowly stepped up, especially as, after the Russian Federation was formed, Balkars and Karachais were angered by the perception that the center in Moscow wanted to re-centralize their territory (including a possible abolition of their autonomy).

[2] On March 8, 2010, one such rally in Nal'chik (Kabardino-Balkaria) attracted hundreds of protesters, demanding "self-determination" for the Balkar people, claiming the Kabardin and Russian dominated parliament did nothing to address their woes.

In 2010, in a conciliatory move (an attempt to defuse the three-way tensions between Russians, Circassians and Balkars in Kabardino-Balkaria), President Kanokov of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic recognized the deportations as genocide, echoing statements made by the Chechen separatist government, Estonia[23] and a memorial at Vilna in Lithuania[24] in solidarity with the Balkars and Karachai people as fellow deportation victims.