The first trailer for "The Letter", a film by director Amur Amerkhanov, was released in 2024 to mark the 100th anniversary of Ingush statehood. In the republic, this refers to the creation of the Ingush Autonomous Region within the RSFSR.
The film focuses on the deportation of the Ingush and on one of the most painful and least discussed stages of that history: the people’s return to their homeland, which began in 1957.
Deportation and losses
On 23 February 1944, the largest ethnically based deportation in the history of the Soviet Union began. Vainakh communities were forcibly removed from the Chechen-Ingush ASSR to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
During the deportation and later in exile, one in four deported Chechens and Ingush died.
A return without a home
When Ingush families came back, they found that their homes and land had been occupied, redistributed, or destroyed. The problem was especially acute in the Prigorodny District, which before the deportation had been a historic area of Ingush settlement but after their expulsion was transferred to neighboring North Ossetia.
Ingush residents were not allowed to return to their homes in Prigorodny, register there, or find work. The film presents this inability to return to one’s own home as a continuation of the trauma that began with the deportation.