03:43, 6 March 2014

Kabardino-Balkaria releases a book on Balkars' deportation

The publishing house of Maria and Victor Kotlyarov in Kabardino-Balkaria has published a book written by them – "Balkaria: Deportation. Eyewitnesses Evidence", dated to the 70^th anniversary of the deportation of the Balkar people.

The mass deportation of Balkars was undertaken on March 8, 1944 – at least 37,713 Balkars were sent to Central Asia in 14 echelons.

Victor Kotlyarov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that to prepare the book they had to travel almost over all Balkar villages, meet dozens of people and record their memoirs.

The book includes more than 100 personal stories that narrate a tragedy of a little man caught into the millstones of Stalin's repressions. The Annex contains the sections "Execute In-Situ" and "Tragedy of Repressed Intelligence", telling about the process of truth recovery about what happened in the Cherek Gorge in 1942 and about the tragedy of unrealized creative possibilities for many young people, who became special settlers after the deportation.

Author: Lyudmila Maratova

Source: CK correspondent