Unidentified perpetrators on December 27 destroyed a plaque commemorating the victims of the deportation of Kalmyks just two days after it was unveiled at a railway station in Volgograd. In late December 1943, almost 100,000 Kalmyks were sent in cattle cars from that station to Siberia. One-third of the Kalmyk deportees died. The head of Kalmykia, Batu Khasikov, called the plaque's destruction a "senseless provocation" and demanded from local officials find the perpetrators. Kalmyks are a Mongol-speaking and predominantly Buddhist ethnic group -- one of several that were deported en masse in the 1940s by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin under the accusation of collaborating with Nazi Germany. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Caucasus.Realities, click here.
Plaque Commemorating Kalmyk Deportation Victims Destroyed After Unveiling
The memorial plaque in memory of the deportation of Kalmyks