2th November.

On 2 November 1943, the mass deportations of the Karachays to Central Asia began. “In my family, we talk about it every time we get together,” says Fatima, an ethnic Karachay from a village outside Cherkessk in the North Caucasus.

Operation «Seagull» was the very first of the major mass deportations of entire ethnic groups from the Caucasus in 1943-44. Like the deportation of the Kalmyks one month later, the operation to gather all ethnic Karachays was implemented by Lavrenti Beria of the NKVD (present-day FSB). It was approved by Joseph Stalin in October 1943.

On the night of 2 November 1943, arrests began at 02:00 in the morning. Secret police cordoned off villages and gave inhabitants a few hours to collect some basic belongings, before they were systematically brought to cattle carts. Over the next three days, over 68,000 people were gathered up, the entire Karachay ethnic group. Thousands of Karachay men who at the time were fighting the German army on the frontlines were sent into exile if they survived. The Karachay Autonomous Region was dissolved.

After the death of Stalin and the subsequent «Khrushchev Thaw» on November 25, 1956, the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution «On the restoration of national autonomy of the Kalmyk, Karachay, Balkar, Chechen and Ingush peoples».

In January 1957, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the creation of a united Karachay-Cherkes Autonomous Region, after which the Karachayev returned to their homeland.

Nevertheless, the imprint of the deportation of peoples remained deep in the people. And therefore we mourn for those who was a victim of deportation. For us, Tatars, the grief of a people close in language and culture is our grief too.

Tatarlar sezneň belän.