Source: NUPI - Centre for Russian Studies

History and distribution of the Ingush people ("Ethnic Groups") [ID 11359]

Document(s): Ethnic Groups

31.12.2003 - Source: Minorities at Risk

University of Maryland – Minorities at Risk Project: Ingush are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally closely related to the Chechens ("Assessment for Ingush in Russia") [#8240],  [ID 11355]

"The Ingush are an Islamic people of the northern Caucasus whose territories are adjacent to those of the Chechens, to whom they are closely related ethnically, linguistically, and culturally. They are concentrated in their traditional homeland, the Russian republic Ingushetia, where they settled long before the region was incorporated into the Russian empire in the 19th century.
The similarities between the Chechens and the Ingush were strong enough that in 1934 the two groups were administratively united under the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Like their Chechen neighbors, the Ingush have a high degree of group cohesion and suffered enormously under both the Czar and the communists. Both groups were brutally deported from their homeland in the 1940s following Stalin's accusations of collaboration with the Nazis. But unlike the Chechens, the Ingush have not asserted their independence from Moscow in the 1990s, and have therefore managed to avoid the warfare that has visited their neighbor."

Document(s): Open document

07.1996 - Source: Library of Congress

Ingushetia declared itself a sovereign republic within the Russian Federation in June 1992 ("Country Studies: Russia: Ethnic groups") [ID 11360]

"Both the Chechens and the Ingush remain strongly attached to clan and tribal relations as the structure of their societies. Primary use of their respective North Caucasian languages has remained above 95 percent, despite the long period that the two groups spent in exile. Chechnya was fully converted to Islam by the seventeenth century, Ingushetia only in the nineteenth century. But the region has a two-century history of holy war against Russian authority. When the indigenous populations were exiled in 1944, Soviet authorities attempted to expunge Islam entirely from the region by closing all mosques. Although the mosques remained closed when the Chechens and Ingush returned, clandestine religious organizations spread rapidly.
Despite the close ethnic relationship of the Ingush and Chechen peoples, the Ingush opted to remain within the Russian Federation after Chechnya initially declared its sovereignty in 1991. In June 1992, Ingushetia declared itself a sovereign republic within the Russian Federation. At that time, Ingushetia claimed part of neighboring North Ossetia as well. When hostilities arose between the Chechens and the Ingush following their split, Russian troops were deployed between the two ethnic territories. Ingushetia opposed Russia's occupation of Chechnya, but it supported the regime of President Boris N. Yeltsin on other issues in the mid-1990s. The capital of Ingushetia is Nazran."

Document(s): Country Studies: Russia: Ethnic groups