BLOG: Window on Eurasia: Stalin Deported Balkars to Give Their Territory to Georgia, Activists Say

By Paul Goble

Vienna, March 9 – On the 65th anniversary of the Stalin-era deportation of the Balkars, activists of that national group said that the Soviet dictator had taken that step in order to transfer part of their territory to the Georgian SSR, a charge that could have contemporary relevance given Moscow’s continuing campaign against Georgia.
Yesterday, the leaders of the Balkar nation held a meeting in memory of the deportation of the Balkar people to the wilds of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1944, an action as the result of which more than a third of the members of this Turkic people died and one which continues to cast a shadow on the North Caucasus (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/150579).
On the one hand, disputes between the Balkars and the Kabardinians continue not only over political power in that republic but also over its administrative-territorial divisions, arrangements that the Balkars and some of their supporters in Moscow and elsewhere say work against the Turkic nationality (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/kbr_podpisi).

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