Russia's Kalmykia region has marked the 80th anniversary of the start of mass deportations of Kalmyks to Siberia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Kalmykia, a republic located in the North Caucasus, has marked December 28 as a holiday, the Day of Memory and Sorrow, since 2004.
Prayers in Kalmykia's Buddhist temples were dedicated on December 28 to the thousands who died between 1943 and 1956 as a result of the deportation.
Kalmykia head Batu Khasikov, Prime Minister Gilyana Boskhomdzhiyeva, and other top Kalmyk officials attended a collective Buddhist prayer ceremony at the central Buddhist temple in the Kalmyk capital, Elista.
Flowers were laid at the monument of Exodus and Return in Elista -- a memorial created by the late Russian-American sculptor, Ernst Neizvestny.
In Moscow, activists laid flowers at the Wall of Grief, a monument to the victims of Stalin's political persecution, to commemorate Kalmyks who perished during the deportation.
Later in the day, the Gulag History Museum also planned to hold a commemoration.
Days before the 80th anniversary of the Kalmyk deportation, a plaque commemorating the victims was unveiled at a railway station in the city of Volgograd, from which Kalmyks were sent to Siberia in cattle cars in late December 1943.
However, on December 27, two days after it was unveiled, unidentified perpetrators destroyed the plaque, causing an outcry among Kalmyks.
Khasikov called the plaque's destruction "a senseless provocation" and demanded that 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 Stalin's Soviet government, which accused them of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
On December 28-29, 1943, almost 100,000 Kalmyks were loaded into cattle cars headed for Siberia.
According to unofficial estimates, at least one-third of those who were forced onto the trains died during the journey.
Those who survived were allowed to return to Kalmykia in 1956.