In Elista, a criminal case has been opened against 66-year-old human rights activist Boris Todayev for rehabilitating Nazism. The charges stem from his publication on the forced deportation of Kalmyks in December 1943. The author compared the actions of Soviet soldiers to Nazi crimes. Todayev is now charged with rehabilitating Nazism and insulting the memory of defenders of the fatherland. Memorial has recognised him as a political prisoner.
Boris Todayev’s article, ” In Short Queues,” appeared in his newspaper, Narn, after the unveiling of a memorial on Remembrance Day for the Victims of Deportation, 30 October, 2025. The article features eyewitness accounts, including the story of a 90-year-old woman from Kalmykia who was exiled to Siberia as a child. “Her father was fighting the Nazis at the front at the time, while other Nazis, represented by Soviet soldiers, were exiling his children, his family, to cold Siberia. Forever,” Todayev wrote. It was in these words that investigators discovered the statement that became the basis for the criminal prosecution.
The deportation of the Kalmyks remains one of the most painful topics in the nation’s history. On 28 December, 1943, on orders from the Soviet government, hundreds of thousands of people were loaded onto cattle cars and sent to Siberia. The territory of the Kalmyk ASSR was divided among other regions.
Boris Todaev
In January 1957, the authorities declared the restoration of the Kalmyk people’s autonomy and permitted them to return to their homeland. In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognised the deportation of the Kalmyks, along with other repressed peoples, as a “barbaric act of the Stalinist regime” and a “grave crime.” The exact number of victims remains unknown. According to Nikolai Bugai, a researcher of the Soviet deportations, based on official documents, over 1,500 Kalmyks, most of them elderly and children, died in just three weeks of the transports’ journey—from 28 December 1943 to 22 January 1944.
According to the official formulation, the deportation was punishment for the Kalmyks’ “collaboration with the enemy during the Great Patriotic War.” This was the standard accusation for all peoples subjected to forced resettlement during the Stalin years.
In 1989, Todayev was one of the co-founders of the People’s Front of Kalmykia. He is known in the region as a human rights activist, organiser of the sports movement, entrepreneur, and opponent of former head of the republic Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.
A criminal case was opened against Todayev on 1 September of this year. The following day, security forces searched his home, seizing his equipment. The activist was detained, and on 3 September, the Elista City Court placed him under house arrest. Meanwhile, the human rights activist has been diagnosed with cancer, reported Kalmyk journalist Valery Badmayev.
One of Boris Todayev’s close acquaintances, speaking anonymously, told Kavkaz.Realii how he’s been living since the Elista City Court’s decision: “Boris has been confined to his home. They took his phone, laptop, and, apparently, his passport, and cut off his internet connection. He has a special ankle bracelet, and a tracking device is installed in his house. However, all of this is covered by the criminal procedure code. What surprised me was that people can visit him.”
According to the source, Boris is feeling fine; on the second day of his arrest, they even managed to “drink some good cognac.” In 2023, the human rights activist underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor and is currently under observation at an oncology centre.
His acquaintance sees nothing surprising in the fact that Todayev was arrested only a year after the publication of his article: “Our fellow countryman was arrested almost two years after the alleged ‘crime’ he committed. There are many such cases in Russia now.”
Angela Klimova
