The Day of the Return of the Karachay People to Their Homeland is celebrated every year on May 3. Sixty-six years ago, the first line arrived at the Erken-Shahara railway station with the deportees returning to their homeland. Today, at the Memorial to the victims of repression in Karachayevsk, local residents and authorities paid tribute to the memory of people who died on the way and during the years of exile in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. 

The Karachaev became the first repressed people of the North Caucasus. Later, Chechens, Balkarians and Ingush were also evicted in the same way. 
Deportation of the Karachayev began in the USSR on November 2, 1943, and as a result 69,267 people were evicted. In total, 79,000 people of Karachaev nationality were evicted before and after the war. Most of the repressed (more than 43,000 people, of whom 22,000 were children) died on the road, as well as in places of displacement. 

After the death of Stalin and the subsequent «Khrushchev Thaw» on November 25, 1956, the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution «On the restoration of national autonomy of the Kalmyk, Karachay, Balkar, Chechen and Ingush peoples». 
In January 1957, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the creation of a united Karachay-Cherkes Autonomous Region, after which the Karachayev returned to their homeland.