Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
Two ethnic groups that were specifically targeted for persecution by Stalin's Soviet Union were the Chechens and the Ingush. Unlike the other nationalities that could be suspected of connection to foreign states which shared their ethnic background, the Chechens and the Ingush were completely indigenous people of the Soviet Union. Rather than being accused of collaboration with foreign enemies, these two ethnic groups were considered to have cultures which did not fit in with Soviet culture – such as accusing Chechens of being associated with “banditism” – and the authorities claimed that the Soviet Union had to intervene in order to “remake” and “reform” these cultures. In practice this meant heavily armed punitive operations carried out against Chechen “bandits” that failed to achieve forced assimilation, culminating in an ethnic cleansing operation in 1944, which involved the arrests and deportation of over 500,000 Chechens and Ingush from the Caucasus to Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The deportations of the Chechens and Ingush also involved the outright massacre of thousands of people, and severe conditions placed upon the deportees – they were put in unsealed train cars, with little to no food for a four-week journey during which many died from hunger and exhaustion.
Demographics of the Czech Republic
According to the 2011 census there were 543,000 permanent (i.e. legal) foreign residents in the Czech Republic (5% of the total population). Residents from Ukraine are the largest group (118,000), followed by residents of Slovakia (84,000). There are also Asian minorities in the Czech Republic. The largest is the Vietnamese one (83,000 in 2011). During the communist era the governments of Czechoslovakia and Vietnam had a deal concerning the education of Vietnamese people in Czechoslovakia. Vietnamese people came to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1956 and then the number of new migrants grew until the fall of communism. First generation Vietnamese work mostly as small-scale businessmen in markets. Still, many Vietnamese are without Czech citizenship. One of the towns with the largest Vietnamese communities is Cheb.
There are also many people from Russia (36,000), Germany (21,000) and Poland (18,000).The Czech language (divided into three dialects in Bohemia, four dialects in Moravia, and two dialects in Czech Silesia) is the official language of the state. There is also the transitional Cieszyn Silesian dialect as well as the Polish language in Cieszyn Silesia, both spoken in Czech Silesia. Various Sudeten German dialects are currently practically extinct: present Czech Germans speak mainly Czech or Standard German. Czech Sign Language is the language of most of the deaf community.