In their new homes, all of the Muslim deportees—Chechen, Ingush, Balkar, Karachai, and Tartar—were forced to send their children to Russian-language primary schools. All of them were discouraged from using their own languages, from practicing their religions, from remembering their past. Without a doubt, the Chechens, the Tartars, the Volga Germans, the smaller Caucasian nations—and, over a longer period, the Balts and the Poles—were meant to vanish, to be absorbed into the Russian-speaking Soviet world. In the end, these nations did “reappear” after the death of Stalin, albeit slowly.
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