November 14, 2009 marked 20 years since the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Declaration recognizing repressive acts against peoples subjected to forced relocation as illegal and criminal.
Deportation (from Latin deportatio) - expulsion, exile. In a broad sense, deportation refers to the forced removal of a person or category of persons to another state or another locality, usually under escort.
Historian Pavel Polyan in his work “Not of one’s own will... History and geography of forced migrations in the USSR” points out: “cases when not part of a group (class, ethnic group, confession, etc.) is deported, but almost the entire group, are called total deportation."
According to the historian, ten peoples were subjected to total deportation in the USSR: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks. Of these, seven - Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Balkars and Crimean Tatars - also lost their national autonomy.
To one degree or another, many other ethnic, ethno-confessional and social categories of Soviet citizens were deported to the USSR: Cossacks, “kulaks” of various nationalities, Poles, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Iranian Jews, Ukrainians, Moldovans , Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Kabardians, Hemshins, Armenian “Dashnaks”, Turks, Tajiks, etc.
According to Professor Bugay, the vast majority of migrants were sent to Kazakhstan (239,768 Chechens and 78,470 Ingush) and Kyrgyzstan (70,097 Chechens and 2,278 Ingush). The areas of concentration of Chechens in Kazakhstan were Akmola, Pavlodar, North Kazakhstan, Karaganda, East Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk and Alma-Ata regions, and in Kyrgyzstan - Frunzensk (now Chui) and Osh regions. Hundreds of special settlers who worked in their homeland in the oil industry were sent to fields in the Guryev (now Atyrau) region of Kazakhstan.
On February 26, 1944, Beria issued an order to the NKVD “On measures for eviction from the Design Bureau of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Balkar population." On March 5, the State Defense Committee issued a decree on eviction from the Design Bureau of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The start date of the operation was set at March 10, but it was carried out earlier - on March 8 and 9. On April 8, 1944, the PVS Decree was issued on the renaming of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
The total number of deportees to places of resettlement amounted to 37,044 people, sent to Kyrgyzstan (about 60%) and to Kazakhstan.
In May-June 1944, forced resettlement affected Kabardians. On June 20, 1944, about 2,500 family members of “active German proteges, traitors and traitors” from among the Kabardians and, in a small proportion, Russians were deported to Kazakhstan.
In April 1944, immediately after the liberation of Crimea, the NKVD and NKGB began to “cleanse” its territory of anti-Soviet elements.
May 10, 1944 - "considering the treacherous actions Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people and based on the undesirability of the further residence of the Crimean Tatars on the border outskirts of the Soviet Union,” Beria addressed Stalin with a written proposal for deportation. State Defense Committee resolutions on the eviction of the Crimean Tatar population from the territory of Crimea were adopted on April 2, May 11 and May 21, 1944. A similar resolution on the eviction of Crimean Tatars (and Greeks) from the territory of the Krasnodar Territory and Rostov Region was dated May 29, 1944.
According to historian Pavel Polyan, citing Professor Nikolai Bugai, the main operation began at dawn on May 18. By 16:00 on May 20, 180,014 people had been evicted. According to final data, 191,014 Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families) were deported from Crimea.
About 37 thousand families (151,083 people) of Crimean Tatars were taken to Uzbekistan: the largest “colonies” settled in Tashkent (about 56 thousand people), Samarkand (about 32 thousand people), Andijan (19 thousand people) and Fergana (16 thousand people) ) areas. The rest were distributed in the Urals (Molotov (now Perm) and Sverdlovsk regions), in Udmurtia and in the European part of the USSR (Kostroma, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), Moscow and other regions).
Additionally, during May-June 1944, about 66 thousand more people were deported from Crimea and the Caucasus, including 41,854 people from Crimea (among them 15,040 Soviet Greeks, 12,422 Bulgarians, 9,620 Armenians, 1,119 Germans, Italians , Romanians, etc.; they were sent to Bashkiria, Kemerovo, Molotov, Sverdlovsk and Kirov regions of the USSR, as well as to the Guryev region of Kazakhstan); about 3.5 thousand foreigners with expired passports, including 3,350 Greeks, 105 Turks and 16 Iranians (they were sent to the Fergana region of Uzbekistan), from the Krasnodar region - 8,300 people (Greeks only), from the Transcaucasian republics - 16,375 people (only Greeks).
On June 30, 1945, by Decree of the PVS, the Crimean ASSR was transformed into the Crimean region within the RSFSR.
In the spring of 1944, forced relocations were carried out in Georgia.
According to Professor Nikolai Bugai, in March 1944, more than 600 Kurdish and Azerbaijani families(a total of 3,240 people) - residents of Tbilisi, were resettled within Georgia itself, to the Tsalka, Borchalin and Karayaz regions, then the “Muslim peoples” of Georgia living near the Soviet-Turkish border were resettled.
The certificate that Lavrentiy Beria sent to Stalin on November 28, 1944, stated that the population of Meskheti, connected “...by family relations with the residents of Turkey, was engaged in smuggling, showed emigration sentiments and served as sources for Turkish intelligence agencies to recruit spy elements and plant bandit groups " On July 24, 1944, in a letter to Stalin, Beria proposed to resettle 16,700 farms "Turks, Kurds and Hemshils" from the border regions of Georgia to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. On July 31, 1944, a decision was made to resettle 76,021 Turks, as well as 8,694 Kurds and 1,385 Hemshils. The Turks meant Meskhetian Turks, residents of the Georgian historical region of Meskheti-Javakheti.
The eviction itself began on the morning of November 15, 1944 and lasted three days. In total, according to various sources, from 90 to 116 thousand people were evicted. More than half (53,133 people) arrived in Uzbekistan, another 28,598 people in Kazakhstan and 10,546 people in Kyrgyzstan.
Rehabilitation of deported peoples
In January 1946, deregistration of special settlements of ethnic contingents began. The first to be deregistered were Finns deported to Yakutia, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Irkutsk Region.
In the mid-1950s, a series of decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Council followed to lift restrictions in the legal status of deported special settlers.
On July 5, 1954, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the Resolution “On the removal of certain restrictions on the legal status of special settlers.” It noted that as a result of the further consolidation of Soviet power and the inclusion of the bulk of special settlers employed in industry and agriculture in the economic and cultural life of the areas of their new residence, the need to apply legal restrictions to them disappeared.
The next two decisions of the Council of Ministers were adopted in 1955 - “On the issuance of passports to special settlers” (March 10) and “On the deregistration of certain categories of special settlers” (November 24).
On September 17, 1955, the PVS Decree “On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945” was issued.
The first decree specifically relating exclusively to the “punished people” also dates back to 1955: it was the Decree of the PVS of December 13, 1955 “On the removal of restrictions in the legal status of Germans and members of their families in special settlements.”
On January 17, 1956, the PVS Decree was issued lifting restrictions on Poles evicted in 1936; March 17, 1956 - from the Kalmyks, March 27 - from the Greeks, Bulgarians and Armenians; April 18, 1956 - from the Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds and Hemshils; On July 16, 1956, legal restrictions were lifted from Chechens, Ingush and Karachais (all without the right to return to their homeland).
On January 9, 1957, five of the totally repressed peoples who previously had their own statehood had their autonomy returned, but two - the Germans and the Crimean Tatars - were not (this did not happen today).
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
The deportation of an entire people is a sad page of the USSR of the 1930-1950s, the “wrongness” or “criminality” of which almost all political forces are forced to admit.
There were no analogues to such an atrocity in the world. In ancient times and during the Middle Ages, peoples could be destroyed, driven from their homes in order to seize their territories, but no one thought of relocating them in an organized manner to other, obviously worse conditions, or to introduce such concepts as “people” into the propaganda ideology of the USSR. traitor", "punished people" or "reproached people".
February 23 marks 68 years since the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples from the territory of the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan. But, besides the Chechens and Ingush, in the USSR in different years... two dozen more ethnic groups were evicted, which for some reason are not widely discussed in modern history. So, who, when and for what of the peoples of the Soviet Union were forcibly resettled and why?
Which peoples of the USSR experienced the horrors of pre-war deportation?
Two dozen peoples inhabiting the USSR were subject to deportation. These are: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Balkars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, Bulgarians of the Odessa region, Greeks, Romanians, Kurds, Iranians, Chinese, Hemshils and a number of other peoples. Seven of the above-mentioned peoples also lost their territorial-national autonomy in the USSR:
1. Finns. The first to come under repression were the so-called “non-indigenous” peoples of the USSR: first, back in 1935, all Finns were evicted from a 100-kilometer strip in the Leningrad region and from a 50-kilometer strip in Karelia. They went quite far - to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
2. Poles and Germans. At the end of February of the same 1935, more than 40 thousand Poles and Germans were resettled from the territory of the border Kyiv and Vinnitsa regions deep into Ukraine. “Foreigners” were planned to be evicted from the 800-kilometer border zone and from places where it was planned to build strategic facilities.
3. Kurds. In 1937, the Soviet leadership began to “clean up” the border areas in the Caucasus. From there, all Kurds were hastily deported to Kazakhstan.
4. Koreans and Chinese. In the same year, all local Koreans and Chinese were evicted from the border areas in the Far East.
5. Iranians. In 1938, Iranians were deported from regions of Azerbaijan near the border to Kazakhstan.
6. Poles. After the partition of Poland in 1939, several hundred Poles were resettled from the newly annexed territories to northern Russia.
The pre-war wave of deportations: what is characteristic of such evictions?
It was typical for her:
The blow was struck against diasporas that have their own national states outside the USSR or live compactly on the territory of another country;
People were evicted only from border areas;
The eviction did not resemble a special operation, it was not carried out with lightning speed, as a rule, people were given about 10 days to get ready (this implied the opportunity to leave unnoticed, which some people took advantage of);
. all pre-war evictions were only a preventive measure and had no basis, except for the far-fetched fears of the top leadership in Moscow regarding the issue of “strengthening the defense capability of the state.” That is, the repressed citizens of the USSR, from the point of view of the Criminal Code, did not commit any crime, i.e. the punishment itself followed even before the fact of the crime.
The second wave of mass deportations occurred during the Great Patriotic War
1. Germans of the Volga region. The Soviet Germans were the first to suffer. All of them were classified as potential “collaborators.” There were a total of 1,427,222 Germans in the Soviet Union, and during 1941 the vast majority of them were resettled in the Kazakh SSR. The Autonomous SSR of the Volga Germans (existed from October 19, 1918 to August 28, 1941) was urgently liquidated, its capital, the city of Engels, and 22 cantons of the former Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were divided by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 7, 1941 and included in the Saratov ( 15 cantons) and Stalingrad (Volgograd) (7 cantons) regions of the Russian Federation.
2. Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians and Finns. In addition to the Germans, other preventively resettled peoples were Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians and Finns. Reasons: the allies of Nazi Germany that attacked the USSR in 1941 were Hungary, Romania, Italy, Finland and Bulgaria (the latter did not send troops to the territory of the USSR).
3. Kalmyks and Karachais. At the end of 1943 - beginning of 1944, Kalmyks and Karachais were subject to punishment. They were the first to be repressed as punishment for real actions.
4. Chechens and Ingush. On February 21, 1944, L. Beria issued a decree on the deportation of Chechens and Ingush. At the same time, the forced eviction of the Balkars took place, and a month later they were followed by the Karachais.
5. Crimean Tatars. In May-June 1944, mainly Crimean Tatars were resettled to Uzbekistan.
6. Turks, Kurds and Hemshils. In the fall of 1944, families of these nationalities were resettled from the territory of the Transcaucasian republics to Central Asia.
7. Ukrainians. After the end of hostilities on the territory of the USSR, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (from the western part of the republic), Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were subject to partial deportation.
What was characteristic of the second wave of deportations?
Suddenness. People could not even guess that tomorrow they would all be evicted;
Lightning speed. The deportation of an entire people took place in an extremely short period of time. People simply did not have time to organize for any resistance;
Universality. Representatives of a certain nationality were sought out and punished. People were even recalled from the front. It was then that citizens began to hide their nationality;
Cruelty. Weapons were used against those who tried to escape. Transportation conditions were terrible, people were transported in freight cars, not fed, not treated, not provided with everything necessary,
and in the new places nothing was ready for life; the deportees were often dropped off simply in the bare steppe;
. high mortality rate. According to some reports, losses along the way amounted to 30-40% of the number of internally displaced persons. Another 10-20% were unable to survive the first winter in a new place.
Why did Stalin repress entire nations?
The initiator of most of the deportations was the People's Commissar of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria, it was he who submitted reports with recommendations to the commander-in-chief. But the decision was made by Joseph Stalin and he personally bore responsibility for everything that happened in the country. What reasons were considered sufficient to deprive an entire people of their homeland, abandoning them along with children and old people in a deserted, cold steppe?
1.Espionage. All repressed peoples, without exception, were accused of this. “Non-natives” spied for their mother countries. Koreans and Chinese in favor of Japan. And the indigenous people provided information to the Germans.
2. Collaboration. Concerns those evicted during the war. This refers to service in the army, police and other structures organized by the Germans. For example, German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein wrote: “...The majority of the Tatar population of Crimea was very friendly towards us. We managed to form armed self-defense companies from the Tatars, whose task was to protect their villages from attacks by partisans hiding in the Yayla mountains.” In March 1942, 4 thousand people already served in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. By November 1942, 8 battalions were created, and 2 more in 1943. The number of Crimean Tatars in the fascist troops in Crimea, according to N.F. Bugay, consisted of more than 20 thousand people.
A similar situation can be observed for a number of other deported peoples:
Mass desertion from the ranks of the Red Army. Voluntary defection to the enemy's side.
. Help in the fight against Soviet partisans and the army. They could serve as guides for the Germans, provide information and food, and help in every possible way. Hand over communists and anti-fascists to the enemy.
. Sabotage or preparation of sabotage at strategic facilities or communications.
Organization of armed detachments for the purpose of attacking Soviet citizens and military personnel.
Traitors. Moreover, the percentage of traitors among representatives of the deported people should be very high - much higher than 50-60%. Only then were there sufficient grounds for his forced eviction.
Naturally, this does not apply to peoples punished before the war. They were repressed only because they, in principle, could have committed all of the above crimes.
What other motives could the “Father of All Nations” have pursued?
1. Secure the most important regions for the country on the eve of a possible Third World War. Or “prepare” the place for some important event. Thus, the Crimean Tatars were evicted just before the Yalta Conference. No one, even hypothetically, could allow German saboteurs to make an attempt on the Big Three on the territory of the USSR. And the Soviet intelligence services knew very well how extensive the Abwehr’s intelligence base was among the local Tatars.
2. Avoid the possibility of major national conflicts, especially in the Caucasus. The people, who for the most part remained loyal to Moscow, after the victory over the Nazis could begin to take revenge on the people, many of whose representatives collaborated with the occupiers. Or, for example, demand a reward for yourself for your loyalty, and the reward is the lands of “traitors”.
What do Stalin’s “defenders” usually say?
The deportations of Soviet peoples are usually compared to internment. The latter is a common practice, formalized at the level of international legislation. Thus, according to the Hague Convention of 1907, the state has the right to settle the population belonging to the titular nation (!) of the opposing power, “... to settle, if possible, far from the theater of war. It may keep them in camps and even imprison them in fortresses or places adapted for this purpose.” This is what many countries that participated in the First World War did, and this is what they did in the Second World War (for example, the British in relation to the Germans or the Americans in relation to the Japanese). In this regard, it is worth saying that no one would have blamed I. Stalin if his repressions were limited only to the Germans. But hiding behind the Hague Convention to justify the punishment of two dozen ethnic groups is, to say the least, absurd.
Ottoman trace. They also often try to draw parallels between Stalin’s policies and the actions of the colonial administrations of Western countries, in particular England and France. But the analogy is again lame. European colonial empires only increased the presence of representatives of the titular nation in the colonies (for example, Algeria or India). British government circles have always opposed changes in the ethno-confessional balance of power in their empire. What is the cost of the British administration's obstruction of the mass emigration of Jews to Palestine? The only empire that practiced using nations as chess pieces was the Ottoman Empire. It was there that they came up with the idea of resettling Muslim refugees from the Caucasus (Chechens, Circassians, Avars and others) to Bulgaria, the Balkans and the Arab countries of the Middle East. Stalin may have learned national politics from the Turkish sultans. In this case, angry accusations against the West are absolutely groundless.
War communism was not invented by Lenin. This was the implementation of the emergency mobilization program of Tsarist Russia in case things on the fronts went very badly and the situation with internal resources was bad. That's how deportations work. At the General Staff, at the end of the 19th century, a whole science was developed, military demography. This science calculated the population of certain nationalities or religions in any territory and, based on these data, calculated the loyalty index in this territory. And if such an index was lower than necessary, then in order to achieve harmony, the expulsion of the population and even its extermination was allowed.
This was also applied in peacetime. In the 90s of the 19th century, there were at least two evictions of Jews from Moscow who were living there unnecessarily, when Isaac Levitan was forced to leave Moscow. EThis may seem like an anecdote - Jews were expelled from the front line during the First World War. In the Baltics, the Russian military command considered that Jews speaking Yiddish, similar to German, may not be loyal to the Russian government. This seems like a historical anecdote compared to what happened next.
If we talk about the migrations of entire peoples, we can recall, for example, the 30s, deportation of Koreans from the Far East to Central Asia, deportation of the Karelian peoples on the eve of the war with Finland in 39-40. Well, and 41 years - the deportation of Soviet Germans.
But people began to be evicted en masse in 1943. Why? There is an opinion among the people that these are traitor nations who en masse went over to the side of the Nazis and let down the “white horse” for Hitler. This is said in particular about the Chechens. It's funny though. How could the Chechens cooperate with the Nazis if on the territory of Checheno-Ingushetia the Wehrmacht only reached the North of the Malgobek region. There was no possibility of such cooperation.
However, where cooperation existed, it hardly differed from other regions (Ukraine, indigenous Russia, the Baltic states) in scale and depth. There were units formed from Kalmyks who fought on the side of the Wehrmacht. There were auxiliary units from the Crimean Tatars, but here we are more likely not talking about selectivity on ethnic grounds; the Germans needed to control the mountainous areas, and for this it was logical to recruit residents of this very mountainous and wooded area into their units. Moreover, such cooperation was never continuous; there were also partisan detachments formed from Tatars. There were Tatars who went over to the partisans. Commanders of partisan detachments who fought in Crimea write about this.
What happened if there was collaboration in all territories? To do this, it is necessary to study specifically the motives that the Soviet party nomenklatura based the plan for these punitive deportations.
In part, it seems that officials have shifted responsibility to the local population. Someone must be responsible for the failure of the partisan movement in Crimea. Someone must be to blame for the flight of the Red Army in 1942, when it turned out that the population in the territory occupied by the Germans was cooperating with them only because the security officers had already “been artistic” there. It was easier to point out those who collaborated rather than list our own mistakes.
It was very easy to talk about the massive scale and cruelty of the insurgent movement in mountainous Chechnya, because while numerous NKVD units were sent to fight this movement, they were not sent to the front. The fact that the real scale of the insurgent movement, which rarely subsided in the Chechen mountains since the 20-30s, was written, in particular, by the Deputy People's Commissar of Justice of Checheno-Ingushetia Dziyaudin Malsagov. But it is obvious that such an overestimation of the number of the internal enemy was in the interests of the local KGB leadership. There are many prerequisites of this kind, which eventually formed, at first, into relatively moderate, according to Soviet concepts, documents.
The Karachais who were deported were the first to appear on the list in the fall of 1943; initially it was planned not to deport all of them, but only a small part. Enemy collaborators and their families were listed. But for some reason a new resolution appeared on the document. And for some reason, a plan of complete punitive deportation was subsequently developed and implemented.
Suddenly this machine malfunctioned. In the summer of 1944, when the next eviction resolution was being prepared, the resolution was negative. And another complete deportation did not take place.
We can, based on indirect evidence, reconstruct the logic of why this happened. The territories were needed not as such, but as economic entities continuing to run the economy. The complete eviction of a large part of the population knocked out entire republics from economic activity. If it may seem that in industry it is possible to replace some people with others without much damage, in fact, the “territories liberated from the enemies of the people” were then repopulated both by residents of the neighboring Caucasian republics and by the so-called “legal” population imported from central Russia. But if machines can survive for some time without people working on them, then what will happen to agriculture? And perhaps the Master, having lit his pipe and looked at the far from encouraging correlations from the newly populated regions, decided that enough was enough, no need, that, in the end, the “cure” turns out to be worse than any disease.
There is a myth that complete punitive deportations were a success. But it's a myth, based primarily on the fact that the Caucasian peoples did not leave a chronicle of their resistance to deportation. It is known that in Chechnya the armed resistance after February 1944 did not weaken at all, but increased many times over. Many men went to the mountains with weapons. And if organized groups were liquidated by the beginning of the 50s, the return of residents to mountain villages was still prevented until the 70s and 80s. And not unreasonably, because The last abrek of Chechnya, Khasukha Magomadov, was killed only in 1976. At the same time, two years earlier he killed the head of the Shatoi district department of the KGB . Everything we know indicates that these armed groups have strengthened many times over as a result of the deportations. Instead of giving up, they went into the forest, into the mountains. The history of such resistance is better known from the Baltic states or Western Ukraine.
Security had not improved in any way, and losses were great. In order not to withdraw territories from economic circulation, in the future the Soviet government did not return to the practice of continuous punitive deportations. Even when the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine and the Baltic states, where the resistance was most brutal and organized, deportations, along with other depressions, were widespread, but not complete. They concerned only a certain part of the population.
How did the deportation process technically take place?
While we looked at it from the point of view of a man with a pipe, who was looking at the map from above. What was it like on a human scale? Troops were brought into Chechnya on the eve of February 23, ostensibly for exercises. Only on the eve of the operation were the Soviet party activists informed what would actually happen. And in collaboration with the Soviet party activists, with local communists and security officers, including from among those nationalities who were deported, this operation was prepared. The troops stopped at each settlement. And on February 23 it was said: “you have two hours to get ready, you can take so many things with you, and then get into the carriages and they will take you away.” What happened next was what can be called the excesses of the performer. In general, it is a war crime, a crime against humanity.
Snow fell in the mountains. And from many mountain villages, only men could be brought down on foot to the plain. Women, children and old people could not cope with such a descent. Motivated by this, The head of the operation in the mountain village of Khaibakh locked women, children, and old people in the stable of the Beria collective farm, which was then set on fire, and the people locked in it were shot. Hundreds of people died. This story was confirmed by correspondence documents, documents of the party investigation that took place in the late 50s, memories of eyewitnesses and excavations that were carried out there around 1990.
This is not the only execution, not the only destruction, killing of people, whom the state machine could not take with it. This happened in other mountain villages of western Chechnya and Ingushetia. And the already mentioned Deputy People’s Commissar Dziyaudin Malsagov, who participated there on behalf of the local leadership in the deportation, wrote about this. He tried to complain to the generals in charge of the operation, tried to complain to People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria. But, obviously, by a miracle, he himself was not destroyed then.
And then the echelons went east. At the same time, the train with the party and Soviet leadership, with the administrative workers who participated in this deportation, set off a month later. In more comfortable, non-freight carriages, where people were loaded in large numbers, with potbelly stoves, without a proper supply of food and water, which is why there was a high mortality rate along the way. They were not dumped in an open field in Central Asia, but these party Soviet people were allowed to live in cities. And some were appointed to quite responsible positions. The same Malsagov lost his prosecutorial position after he wrote about the crimes committed and the need to investigate them several years later.
They talk about high mortality rates, primarily during the transportation of deportees. It happened in different ways. Many people remember those unloaded into the snow during the deportation of the winter of 1944. Let's think about those who were deported in May 1944 - the Crimean Tatars - when it was already hot, and the trains were heading east, and people did not have enough water. Here the mortality rate reached ten percent of the total number loaded into the wagons. The monstrous conditions at the resettlement sites also led to high mortality. Often even more than along the way.
Currently, there are studies that make it possible to track the dynamics of the numbers of these peoples after deportation. The first year was the hardest. And just because thiscarried out exclusively selectively only on a national basis, we can talk about calling these crimes genocide.Of course, additional legal work is required, but, in my opinion, all formalities have been completed. Because existing definitions of genocide speak of selectivity precisely on racial-national, ethnic grounds, and not on social ones.
What then? People took root, somehow survived where they seemed to be exiled forever. One of my acquaintances, who by coincidence entered the institute in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, in the late 60s, and started talking to his classmates, was surprised to learn that they were born in very different places - from Norilsk and further south. All the people were scattered. They found themselves in different conditions. Crimean Tatars, for example, ended up in the Fergana Valley, including in the Leninabad region, where there were uranium mines and generally relatively high-tech production, for which professional training was needed. Other peoples often found themselves in conditions that did not require such professional training and, accordingly, did not receive such education. Their youth did not receive such an education. The Germans found themselves in very difficult conditions in the so-called labor armies. There, the mortality rate was also very high starting at the end of 1941. But perhaps the most terrible word was “eternal,” because all these peoples found themselves far from their homeland in an eternal settlement.
Eternity began to collapse in 1953. The special settlement regime was relaxed after Stalin's death. However, no one was in a hurry to return and rehabilitate the “punished peoples”. The fact is that the death of Stalin and the fall of Beria did not affect the position of those who directly supervised the deportations. For example, generals Serov and Kruglov, who became the support of Nikita Khrushchev.
After numerous complaints, including to Khrushchev personally, a decree was issued on the return of the Chechens and Ingush, on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush SSR. Only the resolution was late, because the Chechens and Ingush began to return without permission. There is a well-known story about the old “Cossack”, a hunchbacked one, who transported many dozens of people from more than one family over many flights from Kazakhstan, bypassing the Caspian Sea. This was a process that is difficult to stop in a country where totalitarian orders are retreating a little, where it is impossible to anchor people on the earth.
| Estimation of actual number of deaths | Forecast for the “no loss” scenario | Direct casualties | Excess mortality index | % of losses to the number of deportees | |
| Germans | 432,8 | 204,0 | 228,8 | 2,12 | 19,17 |
| Karachais | 23,7 | 10,6 | 13,1 | 2,24 | 19,00 |
| Kalmyks | 45,6 | 33,1 | 12,6 | 1,38 | 12,87 |
| Chechens | 190,2 | 64,8 | 125,5 | 2,94 | 30,76 |
| Ingush | 36,7 | 16,4 | 20,3 | 2,24 | 21,27 |
| Balkars | 13,5 | 5,9 | 7,6 | 2,28 | 19,82 |
| Crimean Tatars | 75,5 | 41,2 | 34,2 | 1,83 | 18,01 |
| Total | 818,1 | 376,0 | 442,1 | 2,18 | 21,13 |
| Total - for “punished” peoples (without Germans) | 385,3 | 172,0 | 213,3 | 2,24 | 23,74 |
And before 1953, were there any mass attempts to escape from these special settlements? Was it technically possible for them to do this, or was it completely unrealistic?
There could be no mass escapes, of course. The regime in the special settlement was very cruel. For leaving the place of the special settlement, people could be sentenced to a long prison term. Control was regular. In essence, it was a colony-settlement regime. Regular searches: they were looking for surplus food, and indeed the minimum supply of food. How people survived under these conditions is difficult to understand.
To prepare an organized, mass (and at least partial) escape in conditions when in the country the entire system of internal affairs bodies is “sharpened” not on public safety, not on ensuring public safety, but, as we now know from documents, primarily on the search for fugitives from factories, enterprises, when people were actually enslaved at enterprises (leaving a job was a criminal offense) - in these conditions it was very difficult to do anything.
But the peoples somehow settled down. There is a well-known story, a letter written by one of the schoolchildren, which he wrote about his grandfather, when a family of Germans and a family of Chechens lived nearby. In both cases, the old people, the heads of families, were distinguished by their humor. And in the morning the German greeted the Chechen: “Hello, bandit!” He answered him: “Hello, fascist.” When the local commandant was indignant at this, the old people explained to him: “I was exiled here as a fascist, and he was sent as a bandit - what’s the complaint?” People lived and survived.
But, of course, before the 20th Congress, before the lifting of the special settlement regime, before the whole people were allowed to return, such a return could not have happened. This is especially clearly seen in the fate of those peoples who were not allowed to return to their roots. The most famous three peoples are the Volga Germans, who were not allowed to restore their national and territorial autonomy, the Crimean Tatars and the Meskhetian Turks
As far as I understand from your story, forced evictions stopped in 1944 precisely because Stalin realized that it was simply unprofitable?
Another note was prepared on the deportation of yet another Caucasian people. But she did not receive a positive resolution. And the deportation there was carried out selectively, specifically of Nazi collaborators and their families.
Comrade Stalin turned out to be smarter than his epigones, who, speaking about the current situation in the Caucasus or somewhere else, call for complete deportation. Comrade Stalin, Stalin's Soviet Union has learned a lesson. Obviously, if we are not talking about inheriting scorched earth, but about the fact that the territory is needed primarily for economic purposes, as a relatively safe territory, then continuous punitive deportations turn out to be by no means a means of ensuring security, not a means of achieving stability and prosperity, but on the contrary - lay the foundation for long-term instability and failure in the economy.
This is especially interesting in the context of recent, including modern, news, such as: the riot in Pugachev and political talk about the separation of some regions of Russia...
Let's look at this issue from two sides. This is not only about the fact that this kind of deportation is a crime, that the state must ensure the rights of all its citizens throughout its territory, that people in uniform must ensure that criminals (be they Russian or Chechen) are punished to the same extent anywhere in the country ( be it Moscow, Pugachev or Grozny). The authorities don't do this.
But we forget another important point: the mass labor migration of Caucasians and Chechens across the territory of Russia began precisely as a result of deportation. Deportation and subsequent return. The fact is that when the Chechens and Ingush were returned to the Caucasus in 1957, it turned out that there were, in general, no jobs for them here. Places in industry are occupied by the so-called “legal population”.
Several tens of thousands of young men remained in Chechnya for the summer of 1991. There - August and the events that are sometimes called the Chechen revolution. Who knows, if they had been working at that time, finishing the construction of various kinds of necessary buildings in Russia, how things would have turned out. But one way or another, high labor migration, high labor mobility of the population was partly due to the consequences of deportation.
This is simply a matter of substituting concepts. If the police do not maintain order and do not equally punish violators of this order (whether they are Russians or Chechens), then the consequences will be disastrous. If we ourselves do not respect order and do not respect ourselves, then it is unlikely that anyone else will respect us or respect order to a greater extent. If the police or the court turn out to be corrupt and, for example, the same Caucasians are released from the police or released from the courtroom, and this is obviously unfair, then this is a problem, first of all, of the corrupt court and the authorities that we seem to elect. But it is much easier to advocate not to take control of our own power, but to oppose migrants.
Deportations of peoples to the USSR: sad lessons of Stalin's ethnic policy
The deportation of an entire people is a sad page of the USSR of the 1930-1950s, the “wrongness” or “criminality” of which almost all political forces are forced to admit .
There were no analogues to such an atrocity in the world. In ancient times and during the Middle Ages, peoples could be destroyed, driven from their homes in order to seize their territories, but no one thought of relocating them in an organized manner to other, obviously worse conditions, or to introduce such concepts as “people” into the propaganda ideology of the USSR. traitor", "punished people" or "reproached people".
February 23 marks 68 years since the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples from the territory of the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan. But, besides the Chechens and Ingush, in the USSR in different years... two dozen more ethnic groups were evicted, which for some reason are not widely discussed in modern history. So, who, when and for what of the peoples of the Soviet Union were forcibly resettled and why?
Which peoples of the USSR experienced the horrors of pre-war deportation?
Two dozen peoples inhabiting the USSR were subject to deportation. These are: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Balkars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, Bulgarians of the Odessa region, Greeks, Romanians, Kurds, Iranians, Chinese, Hemshils and a number of other peoples. Seven of the above-mentioned peoples also lost their territorial-national autonomy in the USSR:
1.Finns. The first to come under repression were the so-called “non-indigenous” peoples of the USSR: first, back in 1935, all Finns were evicted from a 100-kilometer strip in the Leningrad region and from a 50-kilometer strip in Karelia. They went quite far - to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
2. Poles and Germans. At the end of February of the same 1935, more than 40 thousand Poles and Germans were resettled from the territory of the border Kyiv and Vinnitsa regions deep into Ukraine. “Foreigners” were planned to be evicted from the 800-kilometer border zone and from places where it was planned to build strategic facilities.
3. Kurds. In 1937, the Soviet leadership began to “clean up” the border areas in the Caucasus. From there, all Kurds were hastily deported to Kazakhstan.
4. Koreans and Chinese. In the same year, all local Koreans and Chinese were evicted from the border areas in the Far East.
5. Iranians. In 1938, Iranians were deported from regions of Azerbaijan near the border to Kazakhstan.
6. Poles. After the partition of Poland in 1939, several hundred Poles were resettled from the newly annexed territories to northern Russia.
The pre-war wave of deportations: what is characteristic of such evictions?
It was typical for her:
the blow was dealt to the diasporas who have their own national states outside the USSR or live compactly on the territory of another country;
people were evicted only from border areas;
the eviction did not resemble a special operation, was not carried out with lightning speed, as a rule, people were given about 10 days to get ready (this implied the opportunity to leave unnoticed, which some people took advantage of);
all pre-war evictions were only a preventive measure and had no basis,
except for the far-fetched fears of the top leadership in Moscow regarding the issue of “strengthening the defense capability of the state.” That is, the repressed citizens of the USSR, from the point of view of the Criminal Code, did not commit any crime, i.e. the punishment itself followed even before the fact of the crime.
The second wave of mass deportations occurred during the Great Patriotic War
1. Germans of the Volga region. The Soviet Germans were the first to suffer. All of them were classified as potential “collaborators.” There were a total of 1,427,222 Germans in the Soviet Union, and during 1941 the vast majority of them were resettled in the Kazakh SSR. The Autonomous SSR of the Volga Germans (existed from October 19, 1918 to August 28, 1941) was urgently liquidated, its capital, the city of Engels, and 22 cantons of the former Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic were divided by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 7, 1941 and included in the Saratov ( 15 cantons) and Stalingrad (Volgograd) (7 cantons) regions of the Russian Federation.
2. Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians and Finns. In addition to the Germans, other preventively resettled peoples were Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians and Finns. Reasons: the allies of Nazi Germany that attacked the USSR in 1941 were Hungary, Romania, Italy, Finland and Bulgaria (the latter did not send troops to the territory of the USSR).
3. Kalmyks and Karachais. At the end of 1943 - beginning of 1944, Kalmyks and Karachais were subject to punishment. They were the first to be repressed as punishment for real actions.
4. Chechens and Ingush. On February 21, 1944, L. Beria issued a decree on the deportation of Chechens and Ingush. At the same time, the forced eviction of the Balkars took place, and a month later they were followed by the Kabardians.
5. Crimean Tatars. In May-June 1944, mainly Crimean Tatars were resettled to Uzbekistan.
6. Turks, Kurds and Hemshils. In the fall of 1944, families of these nationalities were resettled from the territory of the Transcaucasian republics to Central Asia.
7. Ukrainians. After the end of hostilities on the territory of the USSR, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (from the western part of the republic), Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were subject to partial deportation.
What was characteristic of the second wave of deportations?
suddenness. People could not even guess that tomorrow they would all be evicted;
lightning speed. The deportation of an entire people took place in an extremely short period of time. People simply did not have time to organize for any resistance;
universality. Representatives of a certain nationality were sought out and punished. People were even recalled from the front. It was then that citizens began to hide their nationality;
cruelty. Weapons were used against those who tried to escape. Transportation conditions were terrible, people were transported in freight cars, not fed, not treated, not provided with everything necessary,
and in the new places nothing was ready for life; the deportees were often dropped off simply in the bare steppe;
high mortality rate. According to some reports, losses along the way amounted to 30-40% of the number of internally displaced persons. Another 10-20% were unable to survive the first winter in a new place.
Why did Stalin repress entire nations?
The initiator of most of the deportations was the People's Commissar of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria, it was he who submitted reports with recommendations to the commander-in-chief. But the decision was made by Joseph Stalin and he personally bore responsibility for everything that happened in the country. What reasons were considered sufficient to deprive an entire people of their homeland, abandoning them along with children and old people in a deserted, cold steppe?
1.Espionage. All repressed peoples, without exception, were accused of this. “Non-natives” spied for their mother countries. Koreans and Chinese in favor of Japan. And the indigenous people provided information to the Germans.
2. Collaborationism. Concerns those evicted during the war. This refers to service in the army, police and other structures organized by the Germans. For example, German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein wrote: “...The majority of the Tatar population of Crimea was very friendly towards us. We managed to form armed self-defense companies from the Tatars, whose task was to protect their villages from attacks by partisans hiding in the Yayla mountains.” In March 1942, 4 thousand people already served in self-defense companies, and another 5 thousand people were in the reserve. By November 1942, 8 battalions were created, and 2 more in 1943. The number of Crimean Tatars in the fascist troops in Crimea, according to N.F. Bugay, consisted of more than 20 thousand people.
A similar situation can be observed for a number of other deported peoples:
Mass desertion from the ranks of the Red Army. Voluntary defection to the enemy's side.
Help in the fight against Soviet partisans and the army. They could serve as guides for the Germans, provide information and food, and help in every possible way. Hand over communists and anti-fascists to the enemy.
Sabotage or preparation of sabotage at strategic sites or communications.
Organization of armed units with the aim of attacking Soviet citizens and military personnel.
Traitors. Moreover, the percentage of traitors among representatives of the deported people should be very high - much higher than 50-60%. Only then were there sufficient grounds for his forced eviction.
Naturally, this does not apply to peoples punished before the war. They were repressed only because they, in principle, could have committed all of the above crimes.
What other motives could the “Father of All Nations” have pursued?
1. To secure the most important regions for the country on the eve of a possible Third World War. Or “prepare” the place for some important event. Thus, the Crimean Tatars were evicted just before the Yalta Conference. No one, even hypothetically, could allow German saboteurs to make an attempt on the Big Three on the territory of the USSR. And the Soviet intelligence services knew very well how extensive the Abwehr’s intelligence base was among the local Tatars.
2. Avoid the possibility of major national conflicts, especially in the Caucasus. The people, who for the most part remained loyal to Moscow, after the victory over the Nazis could begin to take revenge on the people, many of whose representatives collaborated with the occupiers. Or, for example, demand a reward for yourself for your loyalty, and the reward is the lands of “traitors”.
What do Stalin’s “defenders” usually say?
The deportations of Soviet peoples are usually compared to internment. The latter is a common practice, formalized at the level of international legislation. Thus, according to the Hague Convention of 1907, the state has the right to settle the population belonging to the titular nation (!) of the opposing power, “... to settle, if possible, far from the theater of war. It may keep them in camps and even imprison them in fortresses or places adapted for this purpose.” This is what many countries that participated in the First World War did, and this is what they did in the Second World War (for example, the British in relation to the Germans or the Americans in relation to the Japanese). In this regard, it is worth saying that no one would have blamed I. Stalin if his repressions were limited only to the Germans. But hiding behind the Hague Convention to justify the punishment of two dozen ethnic groups is, to say the least, absurd.
Ottoman trace. They also often try to draw parallels between Stalin’s policies and the actions of the colonial administrations of Western countries, in particular England and France. But the analogy is again lame. European colonial empires only increased the presence of representatives of the titular nation in the colonies (for example, Algeria or India). British government circles have always opposed changes in the ethno-confessional balance of power in their empire. What is the cost of the British administration's obstruction of the mass emigration of Jews to Palestine? The only empire that practiced using nations as chess pieces was the Ottoman Empire. It was there that they came up with the idea of resettling Muslim refugees from the Caucasus (Chechens, Circassians, Avars and others) to Bulgaria, the Balkans and the Arab countries of the Middle East. Stalin may have learned national politics from the Turkish sultans. In this case, angry accusations against the West are absolutely groundless.
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History does not always bring great discoveries and happy moments to humanity. Often irreversible events occur in the world that forever destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This was also the case with the deportation of peoples to the USSR. The causes, conditions, results and consequences now remain an open question that worries historians and causes controversy and clarification. And yet, this tragedy cannot be regarded as a positive event in the history of mankind. Why? Let's look into this issue further.
Concept
The deportation of peoples to the USSR is an event that shook the country in the thirties of the last century. This scale had never been carried out before, so it came as a shock to people. The main feature of deportation is that the process itself was outside the scope of legal proceedings. The masses of the people were moved, without taking into account mutual determination, to different habitats, which were unusual for everyone, far from their home, and sometimes dangerous.
Historical reference
Historically, it so happened that the deportation of peoples to the USSR ruined the lives of ten nationalities. Among them were Germans and Koreans, there were also Chechens, Kalmyks and other residents who, at the same time, also lost their national autonomy.
People lost everything they had: home, family, relatives, jobs and money. They were forcibly removed and settled in terrible conditions in which only the most resilient survived. To this day, it is not known exactly which peoples of the USSR were deported, since their numbers were enormous. Social strata and the ethno-confessional population fell into this “repressive meat grinder.” Soviet citizens survived the terrible events of the 30s, and later during the Second World War.
This cruelty disturbed the peace of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks and other ethnic groups. It was only in 1991 that this event could be called a violation of human rights. Then the law recognized that the deportation of peoples to the USSR took place, and the repressed people were subjected to genocide, slander, forced relocation, terror and other violations.
Causes of injustice
Why did the deportation of peoples to the USSR begin? The reasons are usually interpreted in the light of the beginning. So to speak, it was the terrible events of the 40s that became the basis for the eviction of unwanted peoples. But those who dig deep into these events will realize that this is not the main reason. After all, the deportation of peoples to the USSR began long before the war tragedy.
Why did the Soviet government mercilessly send its population to their deaths? There is still controversy about this. It is officially accepted that betrayal became the reason for the deportation of peoples to the USSR to begin. The reason lay in the assistance of representatives of these nations to Hitler, as well as their active actions against the Red Army.
A striking example of injustice in the repression of nationalities can be considered the history of the Chechens and Ingush. Their forced eviction was hidden and the real reasons were not disclosed. People were led to believe that tactical exercises would take place on their homeland. According to many historians, the problem of such cruel treatment of these peoples was their struggle for national independence and resistance to the terror of Soviet power.
A similar situation happened with the Koreans. They began to be evicted because of espionage for Japan, which representatives of this nationality were allegedly engaged in. But if we look at those events in more detail, a political motive for the repression emerges. Thus, thanks to the eviction of Koreans, the USSR demonstrated its readiness to cooperate with China, opposition to Japan and, in general, its political position in the Far East.
In general, it is worth noting that the deportation of peoples to the USSR briefly showed the attitude of the authorities to the political situation throughout the world. If previously they tried to eliminate only peoples striving for independence, then during the war they, thanks to the eviction of nations, pleased the allies.
First wave
The first example of violent events was found back in 1918. Then, for seven years, the Soviet government tried to evict the White Guard Cossacks and those who had large plots of land. The first experimental subjects were the Cossacks of the Terek region. In addition to having to go to other areas, the Donbass and the North Caucasus, their home region was handed over to other future victims, the Ingush and Chechens.
Of course, the deportation of peoples to the USSR could not end in anything good. Historiography shows that in 1921 even Russian residents were evicted from their Semirechensk region when they were forcibly removed from Turkestan.
The following events took place already in the 30s. In Leningrad, mass arrests of Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Germans, Finns and Lithuanians began. This was followed by the eviction of the Finnish Ingrians. A couple of years later, the families of Poles and Germans who settled in Ukraine were repressed.
War
Deportation during the war years was more active and cruel. At this time, a huge number of nations were evicted, among them Kurds, Crimean Gypsies, Pontic Greeks, Nogais, etc. All of them were repressed due to collaboration. Because of the alleged cooperation of these nationalities with the aggressor country and its allies, people were deprived of their autonomy, homes and families. The deportation of peoples to the USSR, the table of which is historically replenished with new nations, ruined the lives of more than 60 nationalities. The table shows those nationalities that suffered the most.
| Time | Germans | Crimean | Chechens | Ingush | Karachais | Kalmyks | Balkars |
| Autumn 1941 | 1193 | ||||||
| Autumn 1943 | 137 | ||||||
| Winter 1944 | 731 | 174 | 192 | ||||
| Spring 1944 | 190 | 108 | |||||
| Spring-autumn 1945 | 151 | 328 | 77 | 121 | 79 | 33 | |
| 1946-1948 | 999 | 295 | 608 | 154 | 115 | 150 | 63 |
| Summer 1949 | 1078 | 295 | 576 | 159 | 115 | 153 | 64 |
| 1950 | 2175 | 300 | 582 | 160 | 118 | 154 | 63 |
| 1953-1989 | 9870 | 1227 | 3381 | 852 | 606 | 722 | 325 |
As history shows, there could be many reasons for such behavior of the Soviet Union. These are conflicts between the country and nations, this is Stalin’s personal whim, geopolitical considerations, various kinds of prejudices, etc. Let’s try to consider how the deportation of individual peoples of the USSR took place and how repressions influenced the destinies of people.
Chechens and Ingush
So, as historical documents show, these people were evicted because of tactical exercises. This was due to the assumption that there were bandit groups in the mountains. On the one hand, this state of affairs was justified. In the mountains then one could observe bandit elements trying to overthrow the Soviet regime. On the other hand, these forces were so few that they could not do anything.
Nevertheless, since 1944, people began to be transported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan. As usual, many people died during the relocation. Those who survived were simply left in the steppe. Students were sent to the lands abandoned by the Chechens and Ingush to maintain livestock and other farms.
It is worth noting that researchers have repeatedly assured that accusations that the Chechens support the Germans are not justified. This is due to the fact that not a single German soldier was seen in this republic, and cooperation and joining the ranks of the fascist detachments could not happen, since there was no mobilization in this area.
As mentioned earlier, the Chechens and Ingush fell under the “hot hand” only because they always fought for their independence and tried to resist Soviet power.
Germans
It is probably obvious that the first to be subjected to repression during the Great Patriotic War were the Germans. Already in 1941, a decree was issued according to which it was necessary to “destroy” the Autonomous Republic of the Volga region, which was inhabited by this nation. In just two days, a lot of people were sent to Siberia, Kazakhstan, Altai and the Urals. Their number reached 360 thousand people.
The reason for such repressions was the emergence of information about future espionage and sabotage, which should have begun immediately after Hitler gave the signal. However, as history and the documents found show, there was no reason to believe that these events would occur. These rumors became only a pretext to evict the German people.
Those Germans who were mobilized into the army were recalled from there. Men over the age of 17 were drafted into labor columns the following year. There they worked hard in the factory, logging and mines. The same fate befell those peoples whose historical homelands were allies of Hitler. After the war, expelled, they tried to return home, but in 1947 they were deported again.
Karachais
The Karachays suffered from repression already in 1943. At the start of World War II, their number was just over 70 thousand people. For a whole year their territory was under German occupation. But after their release, people were never able to find peace.
In 1943, they were accused of collaborating with German troops, whom the Karachais helped, showed the way and sheltered from the Red Army. To expel this nation to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it was necessary to use the military, a total of 53 thousand. As a result, more than 69 thousand Karachais were taken from their native land. During transportation, 600 people died. Half of those repressed were children under 16 years of age.
Those who at that time served in the Red Army were deported in 1944 after demobilization.
Kalmyks
The Kalmyks suffered the same misfortune as the Karachais. At the end of 1943, a decree was issued that envisaged the eviction of this nation. The reason for their expulsion was opposition to the government of the USSR and refusal to help the Red Army in the national conflict. The main event in these repressions was Operation Ulus, which was carried out by the Soviet military.
At the first stage, more than 93 thousand Kalmyks were liquidated. Among them there were 700 bandits and those who actively collaborated with the Germans. A month later, another 1,000 people were evicted. More than 50% of the Kalmyks were settled in Due to the fact that the deportation took place in December/January, many residents died during transportation.
Those presented to this nation who had already served for the benefit of the Red Army, were called up from the fronts and educational institutions. Moreover, at first they were distributed to different military districts, and then dismissed from service. And yet there is historical information that Kalmyks still remained in the army and served the USSR.
Crimean Tatars
Over time, the counter-offensive of the Red Army began, followed by the liberation of regions and cities. At the same time, Stalin did not calm down and continued to evict nation after nation from their native lands. Thus, after the expulsion of the Germans from the Crimean lands, the repression of the Tatars began.
According to the documents found, it turned out that the reason for the relocation lay in desertion. According to Beria, more than 20 thousand people of this nationality became traitors to the Red Army. They decided to move some of them to Germany. The other part remained in Crimea. Here they were arrested, and during a search they found a huge amount of weapons.
The USSR at that time was afraid of Turkey's influence on this situation. It was there that many Tatars lived before the war, and some of them remained there until then. Therefore, family ties could disturb the peace of civilians, and the presence of weapons would lead to uprisings and other unrest. These doubts of the Soviet government were also connected with the fact that Germany tried in every possible way to persuade Turkey to join the union.
The deportation lasted about two days. 32 thousand military personnel were sent for repression. The Crimean Tatars had to pack their things in a few minutes and go to the station. If a person did not want to leave home or could not walk, he was shot. As usual, many of the repressed died on the way due to lack of food, medical care and difficult conditions.
The deportation of the peoples of the USSR during the Second World War took place monthly. Azerbaijanis who lived in Georgia also came under repression. They were sent to Borchaly and Karayaz districts. The result of this tragedy was that only 31 families remained in the area. Armenians were evicted from their homelands in 1944. In the same year, Meskhetian Turks, Greeks, Turks and Kurds were repressed.
Results of the tragedy
As a result, the deportation of peoples to the USSR led to terrible results that remained forever in the heart of every resident of the repressed nation. As historical information indicates, the number of Germans who were subjected to forced relocation reached almost 950 thousand people. The total number of deported Chechens, Balkars, Ingush and Karachais was 608 thousand. Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks and Armenians were deported in the amount of 228 thousand.
In order to settle down in the new territory, the settlers had to endure many difficulties. The mortality rate among these nationalities increased several times; during the years of deportation, on average, a quarter of the nation died.
It is also worth noting the attitude of residents towards the deportees. Some perceived this event with understanding, while others, on the contrary, considered the repressed outcasts and despised them. This state of affairs also led to aggression on the part of the victims of these events. Thus, many turned against the Soviet regime and tried to organize unrest in society.
Cruel consequences
Naturally, the deportation of peoples to the USSR was a terrible tragedy. The causes, conditions, results and consequences were negative. A lot of effort was devoted to repression, instead of fighting the fascists. A huge amount of equipment and military personnel were engaged in deportation, although there were not enough of them at the front. Statistics show that more than 220 thousand soldiers worked on the resettlement. Almost 100 thousand employees of various law enforcement agencies also collaborated with them.
In addition, the repressions frightened other nationalities, who were sure that they would soon come for them. Thus, Estonians, Ukrainians and Karelians could fall under the “hot hand”. The Kyrgyz also feared the loss of their native land, as there were rumors that all the indigenous inhabitants would be replaced by settlers.
The deportation of the peoples of the USSR and its consequences led to the fact that all boundaries of nationality were completely erased. Due to the fact that the settlers found themselves in an unfamiliar environment, the indigenous people mixed with the repressed. National-territorial entities were liquidated. The repressions left a huge imprint on the way of life of the settlers, on their culture and traditions.
The deportation of the peoples of the USSR and its consequences led to the fact that now many peoples are at war with each other, they are not able to divide the land. It is important to understand that many of the reasons for this process were not justified. It cannot be said that the Soviet government made fair decisions that would have helped during the Second World War. Some nations paid for their opposition to power, while the Germans became victims of revenge because of Hitler and his aggression.
Replenishment of Kazakhstan
Astana also at one time became a place that “sheltered” immigrants. The deportation of the peoples of the USSR to Kazakhstan began long before the war. A huge number of deportees arrived on the territory of the republic; back in 1931 there were about 190 thousand of them. Six years later, settlers arrived here again; there were almost twice as many of them, 360 thousand. So Kazakhstan became a place of residence for victims of repression.
Many of those who arrived here for permanent residence got jobs as workers in industrial enterprises and state farms. They had to live in barracks, yurts and makeshift buildings in the open air.
Ukrainians came here back in the 19th century. In the pre-war period there were even more of them. After the war, the number of Ukrainians amounted to more than 100 thousand inhabitants. Among those deported were families of kulaks and members of the OUN. By the beginning of the 50s, those who were released from KarLAG began to arrive in Kazakhstan.
Korean deportees who were brought from the Far East in 1937 also went here. The Poles, who were sent here due to the threat of world war, also arrived in Kazakhstan, just at the end of the 30s. With the beginning of World War II, even more representatives of this nation arrived in Astana.
After the war, huge numbers of settlers continued to migrate to the area. The deportation of the peoples of the USSR to Kazakhstan led to the fact that all nationalities living on the territory of the Soviet Union ended up on the territory of this republic. Already in 1946, another 100 thousand victims of repression were added, which in total amounted to about 500 thousand deportees.
Many of the displaced people tried to leave their new place of life, which was considered escape and a violation of criminal law. Once every three days they had to report to the NKVD about any important events that would concern numbers.
The main goal of resettlement was considered to be eternal residence in foreign territory. To fulfill such a plan, the Soviet government tried to impose harsh sanctions on violators. If someone tried to escape from the territory of the settlement, he was sentenced to up to twenty years of hard labor.
The assistants of these people also faced retribution - imprisonment for up to 5 years. The main task of the Soviet government was to limit the desire and attempts of the repressed to get to their homeland.
According to recent studies, over the entire period of deportation, over one million migrants arrived in Kazakhstan. Already in the mid-50s, 2 million strangers lived here.
For what?
Over the course of several years, the deportation of peoples to the USSR took place. Photos of those events to this day reflect the harshness of power. The destinies of people were crippled, and time was not favorable. Each of them dreamed of returning home to restore the previous order of life. People tried to find their home, their family and their happiness.
The Soviet Union tried to eliminate not just entire peoples, but also their lands, languages, cultures and traditions. If all this is taken away from a person, then he will become an obedient slave of totalitarian politics. The deported people suffered severe mental and physical trauma. They were hungry and sick, they tried to find their home and peace.
After Stalin’s death, the situation began to change; a rehabilitation policy was pursued in relation to the settlers, but it was no longer possible to improve the destinies of the people. Their fate and lives were irrevocably distorted and destroyed.
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