SLEPTSOVSK, Russia, February 23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Unlike the rest of Russia celebrating Russian army day, Sunday, February 23, is not a day of happiness in Chechnya.

Here, in a camp on the edge of Russia's border with the Chechen Muslim republic -- where journalists are rarely allowed -- refugees tell the story and remember the deportation of an entire people ordered by Joseph Stalin in the dying days of World War II, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Around 80,000 Russian troops are now based around Chechnya, where schools are keeping their doors closed on February 24 -- Defenders of the Fatherland Day -- the same as elsewhere in Russia's sprawling regions.

Instead, Chechens mark a day of mourning and remember February 23, 1944, when the entire Chechen-Ingush people were swept away to Central Asia, thousands perishing along the way.

Chechens and Ingushetians were part of the "punished people," as they tragically became known, along with Crimean Tatars and Kalmyks on the Caspian Sea, who stood accused of collaborating with the Nazi invaders in World War II.

"My grandfather described to me what Chechen people suffered. Russian authorities should have decreed this day as a day of mourning. Perhaps then we could forgive the Russians," Salambek, 17-year-old student from the ruined Chechen capital Grozny, said.

"Neither I nor my pupils have any plans to views this day as a holiday," agreed Malika, who works in Grozny's school number seven as a teacher.

It was not until 1956, when Nikita Khruschev began to demolish Stalin's terror machine, that Chechens were allowed to return to the Caucasus region.

A more recent flight of Chechens -- from a second Russian incursion in the rebel republic began in October 1999 -- might see fewer return home.

Last November, some 300 refugees sheltering in the neighboring Ingushetia appealed to Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev to let them live "where Stalin had deported our ancestors," arguing that the current situation in Chechnya was "worse than deportation."

"Numerous families had already sent their relatives to Kazakhstan," according to a report by the Russian rights group Memorial, even if Kazakhstan made it clear that it would be "unrealistic" to expect the Central Asian republic to shelter all.

Ingush authorities regularly urge the refugees to return to their homeland, but daily outbreaks of violence, civilian disappearances and what are now commonly called "cleansing sweeps" conducted by federal troops reduce Moscow's arguments.

Meanwhile, the Russian army takes special precautions each year on February 23, fearing attacks, which occur on a nearly-daily basis.

Russia is keen to establish some semblance of security in Chechnya ahead of the March 23 constitutional referendum, which would be closely followed by presidential and legislative elections.

In Moscow Sunday, some 300 people lit candles and observed a moment of silence in memory of the deportees at a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB intelligence service.

Some of the signs at the small rally read: "The war in Chechnya is the shame of our country", "Europe and America -- stop Putin in Chechnya," and "Stop the Kremlin's terrorism in Chechnya."

"Today we commemorate the victims of Stalin's genocide and the victims of the Kremlin's genocide today," said Nikolai Khramov, leader of the Transnational Radical Party, a small political party on the fringes of Russia's mainstream.

"Russian troops must immediately withdraw from Chechnya," said Valeria Novodvorskaya, from the Democratic Union movement. "Negotiations between executioners and their victims are impossible."