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Tens of thousands of Kalmyks were forcibly resettled to Siberia
Fragment of the memorial complex “Exodus and Return”, Elista panoramio.comToday, December 28, Kalmykia celebrates the Day of Remembrance and Mourning for the victims of the deportation of Kalmyks in 1943. The key mourning event took place at the Exodus and Return memorial in Elista.
– On December 28, 1943, our people were illegally deported to Siberia, where they spent thirteen long years, endured difficult trials, but continued to believe in their return to their homeland. The Kalmyk people, along with many other peoples of our multinational country, experienced all the hardships of Siberian exile, but despite all the hardships they were able to maintain national dignity and faith in justice,– says the official address of the head of Kalmykia Alexei Orlov. – It is impossible to change the course of time, to correct what has already become part of history, but our sacred duty is to remember those who found eternal peace in the Siberian land, who endured inhuman suffering during the difficult years of illegal repression.
The commemorative event in the capital of the republic was attended by the clergy of the Central Khurul, the chairman of the regional government Igor Zotov, the rector of the Kalmyk State University Badma Salayev, activists of the ONF, and activists.
Today, December 28, at 18.30 on the Hamdan-Kalmykia TV channel (22 button of the Rostelecom interactive television) they will show the film “He Could Not Be Silent” about the author of the book “The Fate of the Kalmyk” Anatoly Grigoriev. The presentation of the second part of the book (the first was published in 2008) took place the day before at the Amur-Sanan library. The film tells how a Siberian shared his childhood with deported Kalmyk peers.
Funeral events are also held in the village of Iki-Burul, the village of Priyutnoye and other settlements.
The deportation of Kalmyks or Operation Ulus is a large-scale action by the NKVD for the forced deportation of ethnic Kalmyks in 1943-1944 to the regions of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia. The operation was recognized by the RSFSR Law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples” as genocide. On December 27, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the formation of the Astrakhan region as part of the RSFSR” was issued. The next day, a decree was issued on the deportation of Kalmyks. About three thousand NKVD officers and the third motorized rifle regiment of the NKVD, which had previously evicted the Karachais, took part in it. During the first stage of the operation, 93 thousand people or more than 26 thousand families were evacuated. During January 1944, another 1,014 people were deported.
Today in Russia we celebrate the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. This date is a reminder to everyone of the tragic events in the history of our country, when millions of our innocent compatriots were subjected to repression, who experienced all the horror and tragedy of social upheavals, undeserved accusations and moral suffering. The Kalmyk people, along with many other peoples of our multinational country, experienced all the hardships of illegal deportation - Siberian exile.In his address to the residents of the republic, the Head of Kalmykia, Alexei Orlov, emphasized that “our common duty is not to forget about them, to maintain conditions for providing social support for citizens who survived repression, to do everything so that the younger generation remembers their past and can empathize with millions people who died as a result of terror and political tyranny.”
It is impossible to calculate the exact number of all victims of the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union. The lists of those repressed include entire nations, including Kalmyk. Today, the memory of the national tragedy is sacred to each of its representatives. The topic will be continued by Elena Aleksenko.
“The Volga of People's Grief” is what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called the endless stream of repressed people. There are millions of people on the lists of innocently convicted people. And the total number of victims - their relatives and children - is even greater. On this day, it is they who remember these bitter pages in the history of the country, people and their family. Claudia and Gennady Badmaev were born in Siberia. They are the children of the so-called enemies of the people. This stigma fell on the entire Kalmyk people in December 1943. Gennady and Klavdia say that their parents always remembered with trepidation the difficult times: cold freight trains carrying them to an unknown future, hunger, constant hard work. Local residents helped them survive, start a family and preserve the traditions and customs of their people. They speak of Siberians with gratitude.
Listening to the stories of the older generation, you understand that the years of repression remained an indelible wound in the soul of the people. Almost 120 thousand Kalmyks were forcibly resettled to Siberia. Most of them never returned to their homeland. Together with the Kalmyks, many other ethnic, ethno-confessional and social categories of Soviet citizens shared the terrible fate. Chechens, Ingush, Karachais, Balkars, Crimean Tatars,
Germans. Thus, February 23, 1944 will forever remain in the memory of the Chechen and Ingush peoples as one of the most tragic dates.
Every year there are fewer and fewer people who have personally become victims of political repression. However, the younger generation is picking up the baton of memory. To restore historical justice and so that similar horrors of the totalitarian regime do not happen again.
At the Palmov National Museum, an exhibition is dedicated to the tragic events. In three halls you can get acquainted with the pre-war life and conditions in which all the special settlers found themselves.
The tragedy of the first half of the twentieth century affected the fate of many citizens of the country who fell into the millstone of mass arrests, evictions, and executions. And today throughout the country we remember the victims of those black pages in the country’s history.
The topic of deportation of the Crimean Tatars, raised to the surface of the troubled Sea of Discussion, has become another red rag for lovers of a virtual “liberal-patriotic” get-together. Meanwhile, not all Internet experts in the field of historical expertise remember that the Crimean Tatars were only one of a dozen peoples who were resettled during the Great Patriotic War. For example, January 28 throughout Kalmykia, starting in 2004, has been declared a non-working day, since this date corresponds to the start date of Operation Ulus, as a result of which Kalmyks lost their national autonomy and were forced to move to a habitat that was risky for them .
Facts and emotions
According to the 1939 USSR census, 134,402 representatives of the Kalmyk people lived in the country, of which at least 107,300 people lived within the borders of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. During the first part of Operation Ulus, which occurred at the end of 1943, about 93,139 Kalmyks were taken from their usual place of residence to the Omsk, Novosibirsk and Tyumen regions, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Altai, and in January 1944 - more than a thousand more. Dry figures convey only the general state of affairs, without indicating specific subtleties, of which there were many: for example, women of other nationalities who were married to a Kalmyk were subject to deportation...
Statistics also do not take into account specific human destinies. One of the most famous deported representatives of the Kalmyk people was the Soviet poet David Kugultinov. In 1941, he went to fight at the front, and in 1944 he was resettled along with other representatives of his people. Ultimately, the poet spent 15 years in his non-native Norilsk, and embodied his moral suffering in a whole elegiac series. One of his poems written during this period is called “The Sun in the Arctic.” In it, he talks about how hard he experienced an unusual natural phenomenon - the polar night - and what happiness he experienced when he saw the sun again.
One day during lunch break
The world changed suddenly.
"Sun! Sun!" - opened the door,
My friend screamed at me.
And the phone that was dozing in silence,
Suddenly woke up from sleep.
"The sun is rising!" - she screamed at me
My wife is on the phone.
Throwing away what he was doing, exclaiming: “Hurry!”
Along the corridor in a crowd
People ran towards the doorway,
Invite your friends to follow you.
The snow was cheerful, busy, sparkling;
The courtyards quickly brightened.
The sun rose slowly
From behind the top of the mountain.
Like a crimson month, with fire
The clouds were colored.
How we live in darkness without him,
It was as if he was asking questions.
Eternal happiness for everyone and everything,
Given to everyone and everything, -
How I lived for three months without him,
Really, I don’t understand it myself.
Sun! You see? We endured
Long, long darkness...
The sun!.. And, as if at a rally, we
They applauded him.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 25 thousand Kalmyks fought at the front in the ranks of the Soviet army, and for many, the news of the deportation of their families came as a complete surprise. Muscovite Vera
Nemeeva recalls the story of her ancestors this way:
“My father Dordzhiev Vladimir (Lidzhi) Dordzhievich is a participant in the Soviet-Finnish War, a member of the CPSU since 1943, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a veteran of labor and a holder of the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree. He served from 1940 to August 1945. After demobilization, he went to his native Khoton, but did not find either his wife or son there. I went to Siberia for them, but never found them. As a result, after a long fruitless search, he married my mother in 1950, and met his first family only in 1958, when the Kalmyks had the opportunity to return to their homeland.”
but on the other hand
In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the deportation of the Kalmyk people as a barbaric act and a crime of the Stalinist regime, and in 1991 the mass resettlement of Kalmyks was declared genocide. Despite the harsh assessment of this historical episode, experts do not undertake to accurately assess the losses incurred during the events of 1943-44: thus, according to the “Book of Memory of the Kalmyk People”, as a result of pestilence and disease during the deportation, at least half of the population of the former KASSR died, and according to information from Soviet and Russian scientist Natalya Zhukovskaya - about one third. At the same time, according to the new All-Union Population Census, which took place after the rehabilitation of the Kalmyks, in 1959 at least 106,600 representatives of this people lived in the USSR.
As in the situation with the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, in the “Kalmyk case” everything is not as clear as it might seem at first glance. The official reason for tough measures on the part of the Soviet government was numerous collaborationist acts on the part of the population of the KASSR. “The Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the formation of the Astrakhan region as part of the RSFRS,” signed by M. Kalinin, directly accuses the Kalmyks of a crime against the interests and security of the country. Strict measures are proposed to be taken,
“considering that during the period of occupation of the territory of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic by the German fascist invaders, many Kalmyks betrayed their Motherland, joined military detachments organized by the Germans to fight against the Red Army... captured and handed over to the Germans collective farm cattle evacuated from the Rostov region and Ukraine, and after the Red Army expelled the occupiers organized gangs and actively opposed the bodies of Soviet power..."
Created in 1941 on the territory of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the 110th separate Kalmyk cavalry division of the Red Army at the very beginning of the war showed instability and gave rise to mass desertion, defeatism and rebellious sentiments in the KASSR. During the German occupation of this territory, part of its population actively collaborated with the invaders as intelligence agents, police officers, informants and informers, employees of the occupation administration, propagandists and translators. In addition, according to various estimates, from 5 to 7 thousand Kalmyks performed military service on the side of the Third Reich.
The figure, of course, is considerable, but, taking into account all the data listed, the question undoubtedly and inevitably arises about the advisability of such harsh measures against peaceful representatives of the Kalmyk people. The accusation of total betrayal looks absurd, you just have to look at the ratio of numerical indicators.
December 28 in Kalmykia is the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Deportation. Traditionally, on this day, residents of the republic gather for mourning events, hold rallies and minutes of silence. In Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, the center of special attraction is the memorial by Ernst Neizvestny called “Exodus and Return,” cast in memory of the victims of Stalin’s repressions. Another memorable object is a carriage, symbolizing the freight cars in which Kalmyks were taken to new places of settlement. Along the railway track on which it stands there are 14 stones, shaped like tombstones - according to the number of years the Kalmyks spent in exile.
Text: Ekaterina Ragozina
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