Timur Utsayev, Grozny. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
Recently a Kazakh style mosque has been opened in Chechnya.
… During preparing of deportation of 500 thousand Chechens and Ingushs in November 1943 the deputy people’s commissar for internal affairs Chernyshev conducted a meeting with the head of NKVD Department in the Altai and Krasnoyarsk Territories, the Omsk and Novosibirsk Regions. The operation “Lentil” required that 35-40 thousand Vainakhs resettle to the Altai Territory, the Omsk Region, and the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and 200 thousand – to the Novosibirsk Region. According to one version, these regions managed to avoid this, and the mountaineers were sent to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzia.
On January 9th, 1957, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR canceled a prohibition for Chechens and Ingushs to return home. This date is marked annually as a tragedy – 13 years in the exile. Kazakh people shared food and homes with Chechens. Now in Chechnya they say: “If you meet a Kazakh, you meet a brother.” Dozens of thousands Chechens are living in Kazakhstan today. Most of them have local citizenship.
Kazakh Yerbol Bazhekenov and Chechen Ziyavdi Terloyev are friends for 26 years. Both of them are businessmen, they studied in Moscow. The resident of the Kazakh city Aktyube is well-known not only in Chechnya, but also in Ingushetia. Five years ago Yerbol decided to build a road mosque for Muslims of the Sunzhen district. The idea was born after he had seen pilgrims from Ingushetia. They headed to the Veden district for marking an Islamic holiday. “I have once been a guest of Ziyavdi. He showed me where he would like to build a rest area near the federal highway “Kavkaz.” I saw people who walked through sacred places. In the morning I asked Ziyavdi to give me a part of land in his rest area. He gladly agreed to do it and I was free to choose any part of the land. I chose the one near the road. I have already built two mosques – 15 years ago the biggest mosque in the Central Asia and 8 years ago a Muslim cathedral in the village of my ancestors. I decided to devote this construction to my grandfather who was lost in the North Caucasus during the Second World War. There are a lot of Muslims. I have seen how Chechnya has been developing: in 6-7 years Grozny became beautiful,” Yerbol Bazhekenov says.
The double-decker building has necessary equipment, literature, rooms. Yerbol built the mosque for his own money. “As far as I know Chechnya is the only republic where water, electricity, and gas are free for mosques. It is a big advantage because in our republic we sponsor mosques by ourselves. Chechen men helped me very much during the construction.”
