AUL THAT IS NOT

KHAIBAKH - AUL THAT IS NOT

Said Bicoev


In February 1944, several hundred civilians were burned alive in the mountains of Chechnya. The oldest turned 110 years old, the youngest were born on the day of the tragedy...
On the night of February 27, 1944, heavy snow fell in the mountains, complicating movement to high-mountain villages for NKVD troops carrying out a special government task. A few days ago, the order to deport the Chechen-Ingush people was carried out. The most complex operation was carried out brilliantly: almost half a million people of the lowland part were herded to railway stations and, loaded into wagons, were sent to Central Asia.

In the mountains, where the Studebakers could not reach, there are still people in ancient stone huts who know nothing about the events on the plain. What to do with them? Send with new trains? This is fraught with enormous difficulties. In addition, the NKVD reported on the successful completion of the task.
As a result, they came to a decision - to drive part of the population down and send them after the others. Those who remain who cannot go down on their own: the sick, children, the elderly - are burned. Who came up with this inhumane criminal idea, who supported it, approved it, we will not know today. We will tell you about the events only what was conveyed to us by the testimony of miraculously surviving eyewitnesses.
There are many versions about the reasons for the expulsion of the Chechens and Ingush, starting with a white horse, supposedly intended as a gift to the Fuhrer, right up to direct complicity with the Nazis. Although, as you know, Hitler’s troops were not on the territory of the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic for a day. There were indeed bandits hiding in the mountains, with whom some of the population sympathized. Many of them came into conflict with the authorities over excessively harsh methods of collectivization. But even their number, according to the NKVD, did not exceed 335 people. Not so much for the whole republic. However, false reports were sent to Moscow about the heroic struggle of the security officers against local gangs, numbering almost tens of thousands of people, and all the Chechens and Ingush without exception supported them. This kind of propaganda most likely became the basis for the deportation of an entire people.
On February 23, 1944 (Beria liked to rush “events” to coincide with some special date), hundreds of trains set off for a cold, unknown land, carrying away the doomed inhabitants of centuries-old towers in frozen carriages. A few days later, columns of NKVD troops returned to the mountains. The remaining residents from all the villages of the Nashkhoevsky district were gathered in the village of Khaibakh under the pretext of forming a column for further transport to the plain. Drowning knee-deep in snow, lines of people slowly move, accompanied by military personnel. Residents were gathered in the stables of the collective farm named after Lavrentiy Beria, which had been previously prepared, lined with hay and straw, “so that before the carts with horses arrived, people would not freeze.” Together with the sick, children and the elderly, young people remained who did not want to leave their loved ones. When everyone had gathered (there were more than seven hundred mountaineers), the stable gates were tightly closed. The head of the Far Eastern Regional Directorate of the NKVD, Gveshiani, who headed the operation, gave the order... to set fire. Captain Gromov and a young fighter of the fighter battalion Dziyaudin Malsagov (the presence of a Chechen at that moment was a surprise to everyone), who tried to stop the mass atrocity, were quickly neutralized. The collective farm stable, surrounded on all sides, instantly burst into flames. Screams, groans of people, and women's crying were heard inside the building! When the walls and roof were on fire, the wooden gates collapsed under the pressure of people and the maddened crowd escaped from the hellish flames. Burning living torches with horror frozen on their faces. Gvishiani calmly commanded: “Fire!” A burst of machine gun fire was heard from dozens of guns. Those running are the first to fall under a hail of lead, blocking the exit. No one managed to get out. Not a single one was saved. A few days later, Gromov and Malsagov managed to return to Khaibakh. There were no more soldiers. Near the stables, from which only bloody ashes remained, several local residents were fiddling around. As it turned out, on that tragic day they went to the mountains at dawn to get firewood and only by chance remained alive. They saw the execution of their fellow countrymen. And when the troops left the mountains, they returned to bury their remains, according to Muslim custom. Zhandar and Yasu Gaevs, Elbert Khamzatov, Akhmad Gamargiev and others did an inhuman job. Risking every minute of falling under machine gun fire (those who remained in the mountains were de facto considered bandits), without sleep and rest, they hammered the frozen ground for three days and buried the burned people. Zhandar Gaev read Yasin over everyone.
In 1945, having recovered from the shock, Dziyaudin Malsagov wrote a letter from Kazakhstan to the “father of all nations.” He spoke about the mass burning of people in Khaibakh and the horrors of the KGB executioners. A month later, the head of the Taldy-Kurgan regional department of the NKVD, Yudin, summoned him.
“If you write again, I’ll take off your head,” he threatened.
Because of the letter, Malsagov was fired from his job. But Ziyaudin did not give up hope of publicizing the barbarity of which he had become an eyewitness. Captain Gromov often writes to him that he also cannot forget this nightmare...
In 1956, Khrushchev arrived in Alma-Ata. During a meeting at the opera house, Malsagov managed to give Nikita Sergeevich a letter, and later talk to him. After some time, a commission of the CPSU Central Committee, headed by the deputy head of the Department of the CPSU Central Committee, began an investigation. For several months, the situation was carefully studied, the remains of a bloody ashes, which even after 12 years kept traces of mass atrocities. Everything was confirmed.
Khatyn... Lidice... Salaspils... To this mournful list was added the name of the Chechen village of Khaibakh, which is no longer on any map of the world...
"Komsomol tribe", 1989