Population transfer in the Soviet Union

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Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories.

In most cases their destinations were underpopulated remote areas (see Forced settlements in the Soviet Union). This includes deportations to the Soviet Union of non-Soviet citizens from countries outside the USSR. It has been estimated that, in their entirety, internal forced migrations affected some 6 million people.[1][2] Of these, some 1 to 1.5 million perished as a result.[3][4]

Contents

Deportation of social groups

Kulaks (peasants classified as rich by Soviet administration) were the most numerous social group deported by the Soviet Union.[5] Resettlement of people officially designated as kulaks continued until early 1950, including several major waves.[6]

Large numbers of kulaks regardless of their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931. Books say that 1,317,022 reached the destination. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521.[7]

Ethnic operations

Repression in the Soviet Union
General
Political repression • Economic repression • Ideological repression
Political repression
Red Terror • Collectivization • Great Purge • Population transfer • Gulag • Holodomor • Mass killings under Communist regimes • Political abuse of psychiatry

Ideological repression
Religion • Suppressed research • Censorship • Censorship of images

The partial removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career:[8] Poles (1939–1941 and 1944–1945), Romanians (1941 and 1944–1953), Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1941 and 1945–1949), Volga Germans (1941–1945), Ingrian Finns (1929–1931 and 1935–1939), Finnish people in Karelia (1940–1941, 1944), Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks, Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Karapapaks, Terekemes, Far East Koreans (1937), Chechens and Ingushs (1944). Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union.[2] It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics.[9] By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.[10]

The deportations started with Poles from Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia (see Polish minority in Soviet Union) 1932-1936. Koreans in the Russian Far East were deported in 1937. (See Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union.)

After the Soviet invasion of Poland following the corresponding German invasion that marked the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union annexed eastern parts (known as Kresy to the Polish) of the Second Polish Republic. During 1939-1941 1.45 million people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were Poles, and 7.4% were Jews.[11] Previously it was believed that about 1.0 million Polish citizens died at the hands of the Soviets,[12] however recently Polish historians, based mostly on queries in Soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939-1945.[13][14] From the newly conquered Eastern Poland 1.5 million people were deported.[15]

The same followed in the Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.[16] More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from the Baltic in 1940-1953. In addition, at least 75,000 were sent to Gulag. 10% of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps.[17][18] (See June deportation, Operation Priboi, Soviet deportations from Estonia.)

Likewise, Moldovans from Chernivtsi Oblast and Moldova had been deported in great numbers which range from 200,000 to 400,000.[19] (See Soviet deportations from Bessarabia.)

During World War II, particularly in 1943-44, the Soviet government conducted a series of deportations. Some 1.9 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Treasonous collaboration with the invading Germans and anti-Soviet rebellion were the official reasons for these deportations. Out of approximately 183,000 Crimean Tatars, 20,000 or 10% of the entire population served in German battalions.[20] Moreover, Tatar Council organized a mass slaughter of Russian in Crimea, killing between 70,000 and 120,000 Russians. Consequently, Tatars too were transferred en masse by the Soviets after the war.[21]

Volga Germans[22] and seven (non-Slavic) nationalities of the Crimea and the northern Caucasus were deported: the Crimean Tatars,[23] Kalmyks, Chechens,[24] Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, and Meskhetian Turks. All Crimean Tatars were deported en masse, in a form of collective punishment, on 18 May 1944 as special settlers to Uzbek SSR and other distant parts of the Soviet Union. According to NKVD data, nearly 20% died in exile during the following year and a half. Crimean Tatar activists have reported this figure to be nearly 46%.[25][26] (See Deportation of Crimean Tatars.)

Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians.

After World War II, the German population of the Kaliningrad Oblast, former East Prussia was replaced by the Soviet one, mainly by Russians.

Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges - Poles that resided east of the established Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (c.a. 2,100,000 persons) and Ukrainians that resided west of the established Poland-Soviet Union border were deported to Soviet Ukraine (see Operation Vistula. Population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to April 1946 (ca. 450,000 persons). Some Ukrainians (ca. 200,000 persons) left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily (between 1944 and 1945).[27]

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting as a joke that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Chechnya and the Baltic republics.

Some peoples were deported after Stalin's death: in 1959, Chechen returnees were supplanted from the mountains to the Chechen plain. The mountaineers of Tajikistan, such as the Yaghnobi people, were forcibly settled to the plain deserts in the 1970s.

Labor force transfer

Punitive transfers of population transfers handled by Gulag[28] and the system of involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union were planned in accordance with the needs of the colonization of the remote and underpopulated territories of the Soviet Union. (Their large scale has led to a controversial opinion in the West that the economic growth of the Soviet Union was largely based on the slave labor of Gulag prisoners.) At the same time, on a number of occasions the workforce was transferred by non-violent means, usually by means of "recruitment" (вербовка). This kind of recruitment was regularly performed at forced settlements, where people were naturally more willing to resettle. For example, the workforce of the Donbass and Kuzbass mining basins is known to have been replenished in this way. (As a note of historical comparison, in Imperial Russia the mining workers at state mines (bergals, "бергалы", from German Bergauer) were often recruited in lieu of military service which, for a certain period, had a term of 25 years).

There were several notable campaigns of targeted workforce transfer.

Repatriation after World War II

When the war ended in May 1945, millions of former Soviet citizens were forcefully repatriated (against their will) into the USSR.[29] On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR.[30]

The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. British and U.S. civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR (some of whom collaborated with the Germans), including numerous persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship many years before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945-1947.[31]

At the end of World War II, more than 5 million "displaced persons" from the Soviet Union survived in German captivity. About 3 million had been forced laborers (Ostarbeiters)[32] in Germany and occupied territories.[33][34]

Survived POWs, about 1.5 million, repatriated Ostarbeiter, and other displaced persons, totally more than 4,000,000 people were sent to special NKVD filtration camps (not GULAG). By 1946, 80 per cent civilians and 20 per cent of PoWs were freed, 5 per cent of civilians, and 43 per cent of PoWs re-drafted, 10 per cent of civilians and 22 per cent of PoWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2 per cent of civilians and 15 per cent of the PoWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) transferred to the NKVD, i.e. the GULAG.[35][36]

Timeline

Date of transfer Targeted group Approximate numbers Place of initial residence Transfer destination Stated reasons for transfer
April 1920 Cossacks, Terek Cossacks 45,000 North Caucasus Ukrainian SSR, northern Russian SFSR "Decossackization", stopping Russian colonisation of North Caucasus
1921 Cossacks, Semirechye Cossacks Semirechye Extreme North, concentration camps "Decossackization", stopping Russian colonisation of Turkestan
September 1922 "Socially dangerous elements" 18,000 Western border regions of Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR Western Siberia, Far East Social threat
1930–1936 Kulaks 2,323,000 "Regions of total collectivization", most of Russia, Ukraine, other regions Northern Russian SFSR, Ural, Siberia, North Caucasus, Kazakh ASSR, Kyrgyz ASSR Collectivization
November–December 1932 Peasants 45,000 Krasnodar Krai (Russia) Northern Russia Sabotage
1933 Nomadic Kazakhs 200,000 Kazakh SSR China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey
February–May 1935 Ingrian Finns 30,000 Leningrad Oblast (Russia) Vologda Oblast, Western Siberia, Kazakh SSR, Tajik SSR
February–March 1935 Germans, Poles 412,000 Central and western Ukrainian SSR Eastern Ukrainian SSR
May 1935 Germans, Poles 45,000 Border regions of Ukrainian SSR Kazakh SSR
July 1937 Kurds 2,000 Border regions of Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Turkmenian SSR, Uzbek SSR, and Tajik SSR Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR
September–October 1937 Koreans 172,000 Far East Northern Kazakh SSR, Uzbek SSR
September–October 1937 Chinese, Harbin Russians 9,000 Southern Far East Kazakh SSR, Uzbek SSR
1938 Persian Jews 6,000 Mary Province (Turkmen SSR) Deserted areas of northern Turkmen SSR
January 1938 Azeris, Persians, Kurds, Assyrians n/a Azerbaijan SSR Kazakh SSR Iranian citizenship
February–June 1940 Poles (including refugees from Poland) 276,000 Western Ukrainian SSR, western Byelorussian SSR Northern Russian SFSR, Ural, Siberia, Kazakh SSR, Uzbek SSR
July 1940 "Foreigners" / "Other ethnicities" n/a Murmansk Oblast (Russia) Karelo-Finnish SSR and Altai Krai (Russia)
May–June 1941 "Counter-revolutionaries and nationalists" 107,000 Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR Siberia, Kirov (Russian SFSR), Komi (Russian SFSR), Kazakh SSR
September 1941 – March 1942 Germans More than 780,000 Povolzhye, the Caucasus, Crimea, Ukrainian SSR, Moscow, central Russian SFSR Kazakh SSR, Siberia
September 1941 Ingrian Finns, Germans 91,000 Leningrad Oblast (Russian SFSR) Kazakh SSR, Siberia, Astrakhan Oblast (Russian SFSR), Far East
1942 Ingrian Finns 9,000 Leningrad Oblast (Russian SFSR) Eastern Siberia, Far East
April 1942 Greeks, Romanians, etc. n/a Crimea, North Caucasus n/a
June 1942 Germans, Romanians, Crimean Tatars, Greeks with foreign citizenship n/a Krasnodar Krai (Russian SFSR) n/a
August 1943 Karachais 70,500 Karachay-Cherkes AO, Stavropol Krai (Russian SFSR) Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR, other Banditism, other
December 1943 Kalmyks 93,000 Kalmyk ASSR, (Russian SFSR) Kazakh SSR, Siberia
February 1944 Chechens, Ingush, Balkars 522,000 North Caucasus Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR 1940-1944 insurgency in Chechnya
February 1944 Kalmyks 3,000 Rostov Oblast (Russian SFSR) Siberia
March 1944 Kurds, Azeris 3,000 Tbilisi (Georgian SSR) Southern Georgian SSR
May 1944 Balkars 100 Northern Georgian SSR Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR
May 1944 Crimean Tatars 191,014[37] Crimea Uzbek SSR
May–June 1944 Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks 42,000 Crimea Uzbek SSR (?)
May–July 1944 Kalmyks 26,000 Northeastern regions Central Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR
June 1944 Kalmyks 1,000 Volgograd Oblast (Russian SFSR) Sverdlovsk Oblast (Russian SFSR)
June 1944 Kabardins 2,000 Kabardino-Balkar ASSR, (Russian SFSR) Southern Kazakh SSR Collaboration with the Nazis
July 1944 Russian True Orthodox Church members 1,000 Central Russian SFSR Siberia
August–September 1944 Poles 30,000 Ural, Siberia, Kazakh SSR Ukrainian SSR, European Russia
November 1944 Meskhetian Turks, Kurds, Hamshenis, Karapapaks 92,000 Southwestern Georgian SSR Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR
November 1944 Lazes and other inhabitants of the border zone 1,000 Ajarian ASSR (Georgian SSR) Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Kyrgyz SSR
December 1944 Members of the Volksdeutsche families 1,000 Mineralnye Vody (Russian SFSR) Siberia (according to other sources Tajik SSR) Collaboration with the Nazis
January 1945 "Traitors and collaborators" 2,000 Mineralnye Vody (Russian SFSR) Tajik SSR Collaboration with the Nazis
1945–1950 Germans Tens of thousands Königsberg West or Middle Germany Soviet Union got new territory
1947 Ukrainians 200,000 People's Republic of Poland Former eastern territories of Germany
May 1948 Kulaks 49,000 Lithuanian SSR Eastern Siberia Banditism
June 1948 Greeks, Armenians 58,000 The Black Sea coast of Russian SFSR Southern Kazakh SSR For Armenians: membership in the nationalist Dashnaktsutiun Party
June 1948 "Spongers" ("тунеядцы") 16,000 n/a n/a "Social parasitism"
October 1948 Kulaks 1,000 Izmail Oblast (Ukrainian SSR) Western Siberia
1948—1951 Azeris 100,000 Armenian SSR Kura-Aras Lowland, Azerbaijan SSR "Measures for resettlement of collective farm workers"
March 1949 Kulaks 94,000 Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Estonian SSR Siberia, Far East Banditism
May–June 1949 Armenians, Turks, Greeks n/a The Black Sea coast (Russian SFSR), South Caucasus Southern Kazakh SSR Membership in the nationalist Dashnaktsutiun Party (Armenians), Greek or Turkish citizenship (Greeks), other
July 1949 – May 1952 Kulaks 78,400 Moldavian SSR, the Baltic States, western Byelorussian SSR, western Ukrainian SSR, Pskov Oblast (Russian SFSR) Siberia, Kazakh SSR, Far East Banditism, other
March 1951 Basmachis 3,000 Tajik SSR Northern Kazakh SSR
April 1951 Jehovah's Witnesses 8,576 Mostly from Moldavian SSR and Ukrainian SSR[38] Western Siberia Operation North

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Pavel Polian. Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Central European University Press, 2004. p. 4. ISBN 9789639241688. 
  2. ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2009). Red Holocaust. Routledge. pp. 83. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5. 
  3. ^ Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. p. 131. ISBN 0-691-14784-1
  4. ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2009). Red Holocaust. Routledge. pp. 84. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5. 
  5. ^ What Were Their Crimes?
  6. ^ Liquidation of the Kulaks
  7. ^ Stephane Courtois, The Black Book of COMMUNISM
  8. ^ Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949, Greenwood Publishing Group 1999, ISBN 0-313-30921-3
  9. ^ The Stalin Era
  10. ^ Soviet Transit, Camp, and Deportation Death Rates
  11. ^ Poland's Holocaust, Tadeusz Piotrowski, 1998 ISBN 0-7864-0371-3, P.14
  12. ^ Franciszek Proch, Poland's Way of the Cross, New York 1987 P.146
  13. ^ Project In Posterum [1](go to note on Polish Casualties by Tadeusz Piotrowski)
  14. ^ Piotr Wrobel. The Devil's Playground: Poland in World War II
  15. ^ The scale and nature of German and Soviet repression and mass killings
  16. ^ Soviet Mass Deportations from Latvia
  17. ^ The Baltic States
  18. ^ Communism and Crimes against Humanity in the Baltic states
  19. ^ Russification and Ethnic Consciousness of Romanians in Bessarabia
  20. ^ Alexander Statiev, "The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942-44", Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (Spring 2005) 285-318
  21. ^ A. Bell-Fialkoff, A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing. Foreign Affairs, 1993, 110-122)
  22. ^ Deportation
  23. ^ Deportation of Crimean Tatars by Stalin
  24. ^ Remembering Stalin's deportations
  25. ^ 60 Years After: For Victims Of Stalin's Deportations, War Lives On
  26. ^ Crimean Tatars mark wartime deportations
  27. ^ Forced migration in the 20th century
  28. ^ NIKOLAI GETMAN: The Gulag Collection
  29. ^ The United States and Forced Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, 1944-47 by Mark Elliott Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 253-275
  30. ^ Repatriation -- The Dark Side of World War II
  31. ^ Forced Repatriation to the Soviet Union: The Secret Betrayal
  32. ^ Final Compensation Pending for Former Nazi Forced Laborers
  33. ^ Forced Labor at Ford Werke AG during the Second World War
  34. ^ The Nazi Ostarbeiter (Eastern Worker) Program
  35. ^ (“Военно-исторический журнал” (“Military-Historical Magazine”), 1997, №5. page 32)
  36. ^ Земское В.Н. К вопросу о репатриации советских граждан. 1944-1951 годы // История СССР. 1990. № 4 (Zemskov V.N. On repatriation of Soviet citizens. Istoriya SSSR., 1990, No.4
  37. ^ Бердинских В. А. Спецпоселенцы: Политическая ссылка народов Советской России. — М., 2005. — С. 650
  38. ^ "Recalling Operation North", by Vitali Kamyshev, "Русская мысль", Париж, N 4363, 26 April 2001 (Russian)

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