| The Beslan tragedy returned to the information field the half-forgotten topic of Ossetian-Ingush contradictions. This was done partly through the efforts of the media, many of which, even before the end of September 3, hastened to report that among those who attacked the school there were many participants in the raid in Ingushetia on June 21-22 - and it is known that that raid was carried out largely by the forces of the Ingush themselves. Although, even without Beslan, the new plenipotentiary representative in the Southern District would have to deal with the problems of relations between the Ossetians and their Ingush neighbors and the latter's close relatives - the Chechens.
To characterize them as conflicting even 50 years ago would have been unjustified. Suffice it to say that in the first years of Soviet power, when the borders in the North Caucasus were redrawn more than once, North Ossetia and Ingushetia at one time had a common capital - Vladikavkaz. The city itself, or rather, was not part of either autonomy, but two regional committees coexisted quite peacefully in it. From the point of view of the settlement of peoples, this was a completely understandable decision: both Ossetians and Ingush live in Vladikavkaz, and the rural territories of both of these peoples are directly adjacent to it.
Having a common capital, Ossetians and Ingush, however, in the 20s and 30s chose very different destinies for themselves. Ossetia had already become Moscow’s outpost in the Caucasus; the Ossetians had the largest layer of communists in the region. But among the Ingush it was, on the contrary, the lowest. Collectivization practically failed on their territory; Islamic traditions were literally abandoned with fighting. The first secretary of the regional committee of the Ingush Autonomous Region, Idris Zyazikov (a maternal relative of the current president of Ingushetia), was repressed for insufficient rigidity in pursuing the party line, and the Russian “firm party member” sent to replace him was killed on the way from the village in which he tried to hold an anti-religious rally. Perhaps the dissimilarity of Ossetians and Ingush even in those days could have ended in their conflict, but such a development of events was stopped by the deportation of the Ingush to Kazakhstan.
The aggravation of Ossetian-Ingush relations began after the Ingush began to return from exile. They, of course, laid claim to part of the living space in Vladikavkaz (Ordonikidze), which often led to purely everyday conflicts. Thunder struck in 1981, when the murder of a taxi driver in one of the districts of Vladikavkaz was interpreted as the beginning of an interethnic conflict. A spontaneous rally began at the building of the North Ossetian regional committee. The crowd demanded that the national issue be resolved in Vladikavkaz. People took stones from the Terek and threw them at the regional committee windows. The cadets, placed in a cordon, could not cope with the crowd, so tanks were brought into the city under the command of General Pliev, an Ossetian - a hero of the Great Patriotic War.
No radical decisions were made after the events of 1981, but the conflict, obviously, was not resolved. In the Ingush consciousness, the image of the Ossetians as a people who completely occupied Vladikavkaz during Stalin’s times grew stronger, and the Ossetians blamed the high crime rate among the Ingush. All this ultimately led to a bloody conflict in 1992, as a result of which about 60 thousand Ingush were forced to leave North Ossetia.
The direct consequences of this conflict have not yet been eliminated. To date, not all refugees have returned to the Prigorodny district of Northern Ossetia and the Industrial region of Vladikavkaz - where the Ingush mainly lived. The Deputy Prime Minister of Ingushetia, Magomed Markhiev, who is responsible for refugee problems, in an interview with REGNUM last year, estimated the number of returnees at 20-25 thousand. The returnees are experiencing significant difficulties. Some villages are not allowed into them at all - refugees huddle in trailers on the outskirts of the villages. In a number of open villages, there are various kinds of unspoken prohibitions for the Ingush - for example, Ingush children may be allowed to go to only one of several schools. The mountain village of Tarskoye in the Prigorodny district testifies to the unhealed wounds of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict - the Ingush have returned there, but live separately from the Ossetians. A couple of years ago, a passing observer could distinguish the Ingush part from the Ossetian part in only one way: the Ossetians have pigs roaming the streets, the Ingush do not. Now the Ingush part is distinguished by a newly built mosque. Riot police of some third nationality (for example, Kalmyk) are constantly on duty in the village.
After the Beslan tragedy, some predicted a resumption of the Ossetian-Ingush war, but it did not happen. Nevertheless, we had to once again become convinced of how sensitive the area remains in the Prigorodny district. Immediately after the Beslan tragedy, tension arose at the Chermensky Circle, a checkpoint on the border of North Ossetia and Ingushetia. The fact is that a very small part of the Ingush who returned to Ossetia were able to find work there. They have a choice - either to live as a subsistence farmer or to find work in Ingushetia. Those who chose the second path, on September 4, as usual, went to the Chermensky circle - and then they learned that by order of the President of the Russian Federation the borders of North Ossetia were closed. Police officers of both nationalities had to explain the president's policies to people who did not get to work. Konstantin Kazenin
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