Timur Utsoyev, Grozny. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
On February 23rd in the Naurus region of Chechnya 82 soldiers of the Red Army, who were killed during the Great Patriotic War, were reburied. The remains of soldiers who died in 1942 in Ishcherskaya village were discovered in Chechnya last year.
Abdul Alaudinov, the chairman of the Council of the Russian Military History Society in the NCGD, told Vestnik Kavkaza that “remains of soldiers were buried near Ishchevskaya village. Two hectares were allocated to the graveyard. It will be a symbolic place. Scouts also found arms and household items which belonged not only to the Red Army soldiers, but also the army of Hitler. According to up-to-date information, about 20 thousand Soviet soldiers and more than 7 thousand fascist soldiers were killed or lost in fights for a few villages of the Naurus region.”
Personalities of Soviet soldiers buried in 1942 in the Naurus region haven’t been identified yet. Every item which was found during the digging was sent for an expertise in the Forensic Science Center in Mozdok, North Ossetia.
“Scouts discovered supplies of the Second World War times, ammunition and outfit items, but there were no so called ‘death tokens’ or things which would help us to identify personalities. There will be a lot of work. It is necessary to refer to archives for we would know in what regiments soldiers who were killed there serviced. And then we will work on each case separately,” Anzor Magomayev, a representative of ‘Terek’ Scout Group, says.
During the war the USSR had two oil hard points – Baku and Grozny. The army, aviation, tanks, and other war equipment received fuel from these two sources. If the Soviet power had been deprived of these oil centers, the Soviet industry could have collapsed. According to some information, an operation of capturing Grozny was developed at the beginning of the war; it was planned to come to Baku through Makhachkala and then to oil centers of Iran and Iraq.
“The enemy moved to Grozny in three directions – through Malgobek, across the right bank of the Terek River, and through Goragorsk. However, he failed to do it. The German intelligence came close to Chervlennaya Village, 20 km from Grozny. Major fights took place near Ishcherskaya Village,” Alexei Saiko, Head of the Regional Education Department of the Naurus region, told Vestnik Kavkaza. In Grozny they think that general counterattack which led to liberation of not only the Caucasus, but all South Front began from the borders of Chechen-Ingush ASSR.
