Ingush

   Ethnic group. With a population of some 400,000, the Ingush or Ghalghay are the smaller of the two Vainakh peoples of the North Caucasus (the Chechens being the larger). Their language, Ingush or Ghalghay, is a member of the Nakh subgroup of the Northeast Caucasian language family. They are an indigenous mountain people whose relations with the Turkic and Indo-European “foothill” peoples of the Caucasus have been checkered. However, unlike their Chechen cousins, they did not actively resist incorporation into the Russian empire. The Ingush are the titular majority of Ingushetiya; prior to 1991, they were one of two represented groups in the ChechenoIngush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). The Ingush are a Sunni Muslim people with a strong Sufi orientation, embracing the Naqshbandi and Qadiriyyah tariqas (paths). Due to its remote location, Ingushetiya was the last region of the North Caucasus to embrace Islam, occurring in the 19th century. The Ingush’s identification with Islam is less dramatic when compared to the Chechens, who also have a history of using the faith as a tool of war. Unlike in Chechnya, Wahhabism is officially banned in the Ingush Republic. Vainakh society has traditionally been egalitarian and lacking the stratifications that characterize other Caucasian peoples, particularly the Circassians. Clans or teips remain central to political, professional, organizational, and social structures, even in urban areas.

   During World War II, the entire nation (along with seven others) was deported to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia for alleged collaboration with Nazi Germany. Between 25 and 50 percent of the population perished as a result of the “forced evacuations.” When they returned to their truncated ethnic homeland in the 1950s, many of their homes were in the hands of Ossetian settlers, a situation that triggered sporadic ethnic tensions over the next four decades, including a major uprising in 1973. Further clashes occurred in the early 1990s in the Prigorodny region of North Ossetiya.

   See also Ossetian-Ingush conflict.