Hearing the word "deportation", most people nod their heads: "Well, they heard: Stalin, the Crimean Tatars, the peoples of the Caucasus, the Volga Germans, the Koreans of the Far East ..."

Our story will be about the deportation of Germans from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. Although this was the largest mass deportation of the 20th century, for unknown reasons, it is not customary to talk about it in Europe.

Disappeared Germans
The map of Europe was cut and redrawn many times. Drawing new lines of borders, politicians least of all thought about the people who lived on these lands. After the First World War, the victorious countries seized significant territories from the defeated Germany, naturally, along with the population. 2 million Germans ended up in Poland, 3 million in Czechoslovakia. In total, more than 7 million of its former citizens ended up outside Germany.

Many European politicians (British Prime Minister Lloyd George, US President Wilson) warned that such a redistribution of the world carries the threat of a new war. They were more than right.

The persecution of the Germans (real and imaginary) in Czechoslovakia and Poland became an excellent pretext for unleashing the Second World War. By 1940, Germany included the predominantly German-populated Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and the Polish part of West Prussia with its center in Danzig (Gdansk).

After the war, the territories occupied by Germany with the German population compactly residing on them were returned to their former owners. By the decision of the Potsdam Conference, Poland was additionally transferred to German lands, where another 2.3 million Germans lived.

But less than a hundred years later, these more than 4 million Polish Germans disappeared without a trace. According to the 2002 census, out of 38.5 million Polish citizens, 152 thousand identified themselves as Germans. Before 1937, 3.3 million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia, in 2011 there were 52 thousand of them in the Czech Republic. Where did these millions of Germans go?

people as a problem
The Germans living on the territory of Czechoslovakia and Poland were by no means innocent sheep. The girls greeted the Wehrmacht soldiers with flowers, the men threw out their hands in a Nazi salute and shouted “Heil!”. During the occupation, the Volksdeutsche were the backbone of the German administration, occupied high positions in local governments, took part in punitive actions, lived in houses and apartments confiscated from Jews. No wonder the local population hated them.

The governments of liberated Poland and Czechoslovakia rightly saw the German population as a threat to the future stability of their states. The solution to the problem, in their understanding, was the expulsion of "alien elements" from the country. However, for mass deportation (a phenomenon condemned at the Nuremberg trials), the approval of the great powers was required. And this was received.

In the final Protocol of the Berlin Conference of the Three Great Powers (Potsdam Agreement), Clause XII provided for the future deportation of the German population from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary to Germany. The document was signed by Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Stalin, US President Truman and British Prime Minister Attlee. The go-ahead was given.

Czechoslovakia

The Germans were the second largest people in Czechoslovakia, there were more of them than the Slovaks, every fourth inhabitant of Czechoslovakia was a German. Most of them lived in the Sudetes and in the regions bordering Austria, where they made up more than 90% of the population.

The Czechs began to take revenge on the Germans immediately after the victory. The Germans were to:

regularly reported to the police, they did not have the right to change their place of residence without permission;

wear an armband with the letter "N" (German);

visit stores only at the time set for them;

their vehicles were confiscated: cars, motorcycles, bicycles;

they were prohibited from using public transport;

it is forbidden to have radios and telephones ......

This is NOT an exhaustive list, but I would like to mention two more points: Germans were forbidden to speak German in public places and walk on sidewalks!!!
Read these points again, it's hard to believe that these "rules" were introduced in a European country.

Orders and restrictions against the Germans were introduced by the local authorities, and one could consider them as excesses on the ground, write off the stupidity of individual zealous officials, but they were only an echo of the mood that reigned at the very top.

During 1945, the Czechoslovak government, headed by Edvard Benes, passed six decrees against Czech Germans, depriving them of agricultural land, citizenship and all property. Together with the Germans, the Hungarians fell under the rink of repression, also classified as "enemies of the Czech and Slovak peoples." We recall once again that the repressions were carried out on a national basis, against all Germans. German? So, guilty.

It was not a simple infringement of the Germans' rights. A wave of pogroms and extrajudicial killings swept across the country, here are just the most famous:

Brunn Death March

On May 29, the Zemsky National Committee of Brno (Brunn - German) adopted a resolution on the eviction of Germans living in the city: women, children and men under the age of 16 and over 60 years old. This is not a typo, able-bodied men had to stay to eliminate the consequences of hostilities (i.e., as a gratuitous labor force). The deportees had the right to take with them only what they could carry in their hands. The deportees (about 20 thousand) were driven towards the Austrian border.

A camp was organized near the village of Pogorzhelice, where a "customs inspection" was carried out, i.e. the deportees were finally robbed. People died on the way, died in the camp. Today the Germans are talking about 8 thousand dead. The Czech side, without denying the very fact of the Brunn Death March, calls the figure 1690 victims.

Prsherov execution
On the night of June 18-19, in the city of Přerov, a Czechoslovak counterintelligence unit stopped a train with German refugees. 265 people (71 men, 120 women and 74 children) were shot, their property was looted. Lieutenant Pazur, who commanded the action, was subsequently arrested and convicted.

Ustica massacre
On July 31, in the town of Usti nad Laboi, an explosion occurred at one of the military depots. 27 people died. A rumor swept through the city that the action was the work of the Werwolf (German underground). The hunt for the Germans began in the city, since it was not difficult to find them due to the obligatory armband with the letter “N”. The captured were beaten, killed, thrown off the bridge into Laba, finishing off in the water with shots. Officially, 43 victims were reported, today the Czechs are talking about 80-100, the Germans insist on 220.

Allied representatives expressed dissatisfaction with the escalation of violence against the German population, and in August the government began organizing deportations. On August 16, a decision was reached to evict the remaining Germans from the territory of Czechoslovakia. A special department for “resettlement” was organized in the Ministry of the Interior, the country was divided into regions, in each of which a person responsible for the deportation was identified.

Marching columns of Germans were formed throughout the country. They were given from several hours to several minutes for training. Hundreds, thousands of people, accompanied by an armed convoy, walked along the roads, rolling a cart with their belongings in front of them.

By December 1947, 2,170,000 people had been expelled from the country. In Czechoslovakia, the "German question" was finally closed in 1950. According to various sources (there are no exact figures), from 2.5 to 3 million people were deported. The country got rid of the German minority.

Poland
By the end of the war, over 4 million Germans lived in Poland. Most of them lived in the territories transferred to Poland in 1945, which were previously parts of the German regions of Saxony, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, West and East Prussia. Like the Czech Germans, the Polish turned into absolutely disenfranchised stateless people, absolutely defenseless against any arbitrariness.

The “Memorandum on the Legal Status of Germans on the Territory of Poland” compiled by the Polish Ministry of Public Administration provided for the obligatory wearing of distinctive armbands by the Germans, restriction of freedom of movement, and the introduction of special identity cards.

On May 2, 1945, Bolesław Bierut, Prime Minister of Poland's provisional government, signed a decree according to which all property abandoned by the Germans automatically passed into the hands of the Polish state. Polish settlers flocked to the newly acquired lands. They considered all German property as “abandoned” and occupied German houses and farms, moving the owners to stables, pigsties, haylofts and attics. Dissenters were quickly reminded that they were defeated and had no rights.

The policy of squeezing out the German population was bearing fruit, columns of refugees stretched to the west. The German population was gradually replaced by the Polish. (July 5, 1945, the USSR transferred the city of Stettin to Poland, where 84 thousand Germans and 3.5 thousand Poles lived. By the end of 1946, 100 thousand Poles and 17 thousand Germans lived in the city.)

On September 13, 1946, a decree was signed on the "separation of persons of German nationality from the Polish people." If earlier the Germans were squeezed out of Poland, creating unbearable living conditions for them, now “cleansing the territory from unwanted elements” has become a state program.

However, the large-scale deportation of the German population from Poland was constantly delayed. The fact is that back in the summer of 1945, "labor camps" began to be created for the adult German population. The internees were used for forced labor, and for a long time Poland did not want to give up free labor. According to the recollections of former prisoners, the conditions in these camps were terrible, the mortality rate is very high. Only in 1949, Poland decided to get rid of its Germans, and by the beginning of the 50s the issue was resolved.

Hungary and Yugoslavia

Hungary was an ally of Germany in World War II. Being a German in Hungary was very profitable, and everyone who had grounds for it changed their surname to German, indicated German in their native language in the questionnaires. All these people fell under the decree adopted in December 1945 "on the deportation of traitors to the people." Their property was completely confiscated. According to various estimates, from 500 to 600 thousand people were deported.

Ethnic Germans were expelled from Yugoslavia and Romania. In total, according to the German public organization "Union of the Exiles", which unites all the deportees and their descendants (15 million members), after the end of the war, from 12 to 14 million Germans were expelled from their homes, expelled. But even for those who made it to the Fatherland, the nightmare didn't end when they crossed the border.

In Germany
The Germans deported from the countries of Eastern Europe were distributed over all the lands of the country. In few regions, the share of repatriates was less than 20% of the total local population. In some it reached 45%. Today, getting to Germany and getting refugee status there is a cherished dream for many. The refugee receives benefits and a roof over his head.

In the late 40s of the XX century, everything was different. The country was ravaged and destroyed. Cities lay in ruins. There were no jobs in the country, nowhere to live, no medicines, and nothing to eat. Who were these refugees? Healthy men died on the fronts, and those who were lucky enough to survive were in prisoner of war camps. Women, old people, children, disabled people came. All of them were left to themselves and everyone survived as best they could. Many, not seeing prospects for themselves, committed suicide. Those who were able to survive remembered this horror forever.

"Special" deportation
According to Erika Steinbach, chairman of the Union of the Exiles, the deportation of the German population from the countries of Eastern Europe cost the German people 2 million lives. It was the largest and most terrible deportation of the 20th century. However, in Germany itself, the official authorities prefer not to mention it. The list of deported peoples includes the Crimean Tatars, the peoples of the Caucasus and the Baltic states, the Volga Germans.

However, the tragedy of more than 10 million Germans deported after World War II is silent. Repeated attempts by the "Union of the Exiled" to create a museum and a monument to the victims of deportation constantly run into opposition from the authorities.

Taken from maxflux in Deportation of peoples in European style

The American experience of deporting MILLIONS ....

By the early 1950s in the US, according to The New York Times, across the southern border with Mexico
penetrated up to one million illegal migrants per year (approximately as it is now in Europe).

Truman and Eisenhower decided to put an end to this and expel up to three million from the country.
people, and they were more concerned about the flourishing of corruption in the southern states associated with
profit from the illegal labor of Mexicans on American farms and ranches,
and dissatisfaction of the population with wage dumping. + Illegals were paid half of the standard
wages, so it was profitable for American landowners to hire such
people, and for this they were ready to bribe public servants.

However, it all started during the Second World War. In 1942 as
contribution to the fight against Japan, Mexico, under an agreement with the United States, did not provide direct military assistance, but provided laborers (braceros) for the US agricultural and railway industries. Under this program, up to two million people legally arrived in the United States. But this was not enough to fight illegal immigrants.
Mexican migrants at their shack, Imperial Valley, California, 1935
Image from the collection of the Oakland Museum of California.

Famine, population growth, privatization and mechanization of agriculture in Mexico and
the ensuing unemployment pushed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans into the US. In 1945
Mexico and the United States have developed a deportation program, according to which illegal immigrants are not only
expelled from the US to Mexico, and delivered them inland or even to the southern borders
Mexico so they can't quickly re-enter the US.

But all this did not help stop the flow of migrants. In 1954 Mexico loses its nerves
and five thousand soldiers are sent to the border with the United States to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

General Joseph Swing (1894 - 1984)

Meanwhile, Eisenhower appoints the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service of his
old friend - General Joseph Swing, with whom he once studied together at West Point
and who with General Pershing in 1916 made a raid into Mexico against Pancho Villa,
He also commanded the 11th Airborne Division during World War II.
In the spring and summer of 1954, the general public became aware of the Operation
"Wet back" on the deportation of Mexican illegal immigrants.

“Wet back” was the name given to the Mexicans who swam across the Rio Grande. Although there
and another version that illegal immigrants were so called due to the fact that while working in the fields
all you could see was their sweat-drenched backs.

Detention of migrants during Operation Wet Back.

But back in 1950, Border Patrol Inspector Albert Quillin of Texas
came up with his own method of dealing with illegal immigrants. He is with a small group of agents in cars, two
buses and with the support of an aircraft, advanced to the border and in the field smashed
a small migrant registration camp. The plane conducted reconnaissance and gave tips to agents,
they quickly overtook illegal immigrants in cars, drove them to the camp, where they were registered and on
buses were immediately sent to the border and handed over to the Mexican border guards. In four days, these tactics of Quillin allowed his group to capture a thousand people. Quillin's know-how was soon adopted by the rest of the patrols, and by 1952 such operations were being referred to among the border patrols as Operation Wetback.

Anyway, the first thing Joseph Swing did was send everyone
corrupt employees of his service away from the border with Mexico.
And in the spring and summer of 1954, according to various sources, from 700 to 1000 border guards, with the support of
the army and various federal and local services set to work even more zealously.
They were given 300 jeeps, buses and other vehicles, two ships and seven aircraft.
The main actions and raids took place in the border regions of Texas, Arizona and
California, but the operation also affected illegal immigrants in San Francisco, Los Angeles and even Chicago.

Arrested Mexican illegals, 1950s.

It's hard with numbers. There is confusion about the number of arrests and estimates
the number of people who left the country. In 1953, according to one source, 875,000 were deported
illegal immigrants. From May to July 1954, after the public announcement of the operation and
populist measures were seized across the country, according to various sources, from 130,000 to
170,000 illegal immigrants (in 1955 there were about 250,000), and within a year after
Just over one million have left the US since the start of the operation. It is believed that one
a million illegal immigrants left the United States on their own, fearing to fall under the flywheel of deportation and
related problems. The Immigration and Naturalization Service believed that in a year she
managed to expel 1.3 million migrants from the country, although most commentators
of these events were considered such figures as excessively inflated and boastful.

Baseiro being deported to Mexico by bus, 1954 .

It is believed that the campaign in general was largely a populist show, and the real program
mass deportation without noise and dust and unnecessary publicity in the press acted quite
has been active since the early 1950s.

Deportation to Mexico, presumably July 1954

The captured migrants were handed over to the Mexican authorities, sent to Mexico by ships,
buses, trucks, planes, and then the Mexicans deported their
compatriots are already deep into the country, sometimes landing simply somewhere in the desert.
Ethical questions arose about their abuse, beatings,
property in the United States, separation from families, being left destitute in an unfamiliar
Mexican wilderness, etc. After the first successful months of American
security officials, the total number of caught illegal immigrants began to decrease every year and
averaged about 50,000 people a year.

Operation Wetback was able to temporarily reduce the number of immigrants in the United States.

Already in March 1955, Joseph Swing reported that the operation was successful, the flow
illegal immigrants was stopped and now they catch only 300 illegal immigrants a day, and not 3000 as in
the beginning of the operation. From 1950 to 1955, 3,675,000 people were deported.
The Truman-Eisenhower plan was formally carried out. This figure also included those who
and returned to the USA. The reverse flow of deported illegal immigrants to the United States did not dry up.
From 1960 to 1961, about 20% of the deportees returned steadily.

A group of Mexican workers from northern Indiana and Illinois board a train to Chicago, Illinois. Then they will be deported to Mexico. July 27, 1954

Some agents of the Border Patrol Service (of which there were 1,700 by 1962 and they were given another plane) simply shaved the heads of migrants in order to immediately identify such “returnees”. Today, American veterans of Operation Wetback believe that with the political will it is quite possible to deport 12 million illegal immigrants from the country, that there is nothing impossible in this. They miss the Eisenhower days, looking forward to Trump (who has already mentioned Operation Wetback in his
election campaign) and recommend current European colleagues to study their experience in the mass deportation of people. Critics of Operation Wetback in the United States believe that Eisenhower, in turn, learned this policy of mass deportations and forced migration of peoples from Stalin, and the operation is a shameful page in US history.
Opinions on the problem of migrants, as they say, are divided.

Eisenhower and Kennedy

War communism was not invented by Lenin. This was the implementation of an emergency mobilization program of tsarist Russia in case things went really badly on the fronts, and the situation with internal resources was bad. So are deportations. In the general staff, at the end of the 19th century, a whole science was developed, military demography. This science calculated the population of various nationalities or religions in any territory and, based on these data, the loyalty index was calculated 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 lived there unnecessarily, when Isaac Levitan was forced to leave Moscow. EIt 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 who spoke Yiddish, similar to German, might not be loyal to the Russian authorities. This seems like a historical anecdote against the backdrop of what happened next.

If we talk about the migrations of entire peoples, then we can recall, for example, the 30s, deportation of Koreans from the Far East to Central Asia, the deportation of the Karelian peoples on the eve of the war with Finland in 39-40. Well, 41 years - the deportation of Soviet Germans.

But peoples began to be evicted en masse in 43. Why? There is an opinion among the people that these are traitor peoples who en masse went over to the side of the Nazis and brought the "white horse" to Hitler. This is said in particular about the Chechens. Although it's funny. How could the Chechens cooperate with the Nazis, if on the territory of Checheno-Ingushetia the Wehrmacht reached only the North of the Malgobek region. There was no possibility of such cooperation.

However, where there was cooperation, it hardly differed from other regions (Ukraine, indigenous Russia, the Baltic states) in terms of 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 rather not talking about ethnic selectivity, 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 detachments. Moreover, such cooperation has never been continuous; there were also partisan detachments formed from the Tatars. There were Tatars who went over to the partisans. The commanders of the partisan detachments who fought in the Crimea write about this.

What happened if the collaboration was in all territories? To do this, it is necessary to study specifically those motives that the Soviet party nomenklatura laid at the basis of the plan for these punitive deportations.

In part, it seems that the responsibility for officials has been shifted to the local population. Someone must be responsible for the failure of the partisan movement in the 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 Chekists had already “artistically” done there. It was easier to point out those who collaborated rather than list our own mistakes.

It was very easy to talk about the mass nature and cruelty of the rebel movement in mountainous Chechnya, because while numerous units of the NKVD 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 Chechen-Ingushetia Dziaudin Malsagov. But it is obvious that such an overestimation of the number of the internal enemy was in the interests of the local Chekist leadership. There are many prerequisites of this kind, which eventually formed at first into relatively moderate, according to Soviet concepts, documents.

The Karachays who were deported were the first to be on the list in the fall of 1943, initially it was supposed to expel not all, but only a small part. The accomplices of the enemy and their families were listed. But for some reason, a new resolution appeared on the document. And for some reason, in the future, a plan was developed and implemented precisely for a complete punitive deportation.

All of a sudden, the car crashed. In the summer of 1944, when the next resolution on eviction was being prepared, the resolution was put in the negative. And another continuous deportation did not take place.

We can, by indirect signs, restore the logic of why this happened. Territories were needed by no means as such, but as economic entities continuing to manage the economy. The continuous eviction of a large part of the inhabitants knocked out entire republics from economic circulation. 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 by residents of the neighboring Caucasian republics, and the so-called “legal” population imported from central Russia. But if machine tools can survive for a while without people working on them, what will happen to agriculture? And, perhaps, the Boss, having lit his pipe and looked at the by no means pleasing correlations from the newly populated regions, decided that enough was enough, no, that, in the end, the “medicine” turns out to be worse than any disease.

There is a myth that continuous punitive deportations have succeeded. But this is 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 armed resistance in Chechnya after February 1944 did not at all weaken, but increased many times over. Many men went to the mountains with weapons. And if the organized groups were liquidated by the beginning of the 50s, then all the same, the return of residents to the mountain villages was prevented until the 70s and 80s. And not without reason, 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 multiplied as a result of the deportation. Instead of giving up, they went into the forest, into the mountains. The history of such resistance is better known in the Baltics or Western Ukraine.

Security did not increase in any way, and the losses were great. In order not to withdraw the 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 the most brutal and organized, the deportations, along with other depressions, were massive, but not continuous. They concerned only some part of the population.

How technically did the deportation process take place?

So far we've been looking at it from the point of view of a man with a pipe looking at the map from above. How was it on a human scale? On the eve of February 23, troops were brought into Chechnya, ostensibly for exercises. It was only on the eve of the operation that the Soviet party activists were told what would actually happen. And in cooperation with the Soviet party activists, with local communists and Chekists, including from among those nationalities who were deported, this operation was being prepared. The troops stood up in every settlement. And on February 23, it was said: “You have two hours to pack, you can take so many things with you, and then go to the cars, and they will take you away.” What happened next was what can be called the excesses of the performer. But in general - a war crime, a crime against humanity.

Snow fell in the mountains. And from many mountain villages, only men could be lowered on foot to the plain. Women, children and old people could not master such a descent. Motivating this, The head of the operation in the mountain village of Khaibakh locked women, children, 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, eyewitness accounts and excavations that took place there around 90.

This is not the only execution, not the only destruction, the killing of peoplewhich the state machine could not take with them. This happened in other mountain villages of western Chechnya and Ingushetia. And the already mentioned deputy people's commissar Dziyaudin Malsagov, who participated there from the local leadership in the deportation, wrote about this. He tried to complain to the generals in charge of the operation, he tried to complain to People's Commissar Lavrenty Beria. But, apparently by a miracle, he himself was not destroyed then.

And then the trains went east. At the same time, the train with the party and Soviet leadership, with administrative workers who participated in this deportation, left a month later. In more comfortable, not freight cars, where people were loaded in large numbers, with stoves, potbelly stoves, without a proper supply of food and water, which was why the death rate was high along the way. They were not dumped in an open field in Central Asia, but were allowed to live in cities, these party Soviet people. And some were appointed to quite responsible positions. The same Malsagov lost his position as a prosecutor after he wrote about the crimes committed and the need to investigate them a few years later.

They talk about high mortality, primarily during the transportation of deportees. It happened differently. Many recall those unloaded into the snow during the deportation of the winter of 1944. Let's think about those who were deported in May 1944 - about the Crimean Tatars - when it was already hot, and the trains were going east, and people did not have enough water. Here mortality reached ten percent of the total number loaded into the wagons. The appalling conditions at the resettlement sites also led to high mortality. Often even more than along the way.

Currently, there are studies that allow you to track the dynamics of the number of these peoples after deportation. The first year was the hardest. And just because itcarried out exclusively selectively only on a national basis, we can say that these crimes are called genocide.Of course, additional legal work is required, but, in my opinion, all the formalities have been completed. Because the existing definitions of genocide speak of selectivity precisely on a racial, national, ethnic basis, and not on a social basis.

What then? People took root, somehow survived where they seemed to be exiled forever. One of my acquaintances, who, by coincidence, entered an institute in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, at the end of the 60s, and spoke with his classmates, was surprised to learn that they were born in very different places - from Norilsk and south. All the people were scattered. They were in different conditions. Crimean Tatars, for example, found themselves in the Ferghana Valley, including the Leninabad region, where there were uranium mines and, in general, relatively technological 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. Mortality there was also very high from the end of 1941. But perhaps the most terrible was the word "forever", because all these peoples found themselves far from their homeland in an eternal settlement.

"Eternity" began to crumble in 1953. After Stalin's death, the special settlement regime was softened. However, no one was in a hurry with the return and rehabilitation of 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 led the deportations. For example, Generals Serov and Kruglov, who became the backbone of Nikita Khrushchev.

After numerous complaints, including Khrushchev, he personally issued a decree on the return of the Chechens and Ingush, on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush SSR. Only the decision was belated, because the Chechens and Ingush began to return without permission. There is a well-known story about an old “Zaporozhets”, a humpbacked man who transported many dozens of people from more than one family over many flights from Kazakhstan around the Caspian Sea. It was a process that is difficult to stop in a country where the totalitarian order is receding a little, where it is impossible to fix people on the ground.

	Estimating the actual number of deaths	Forecast under the "no loss" scenario	Direct human losses	Supermortality Index	% losses to the number of deported
Germans	432,8	204,0	228,8	2,12	19,17
Karachays	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 the "punished" peoples (excluding 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? Could they technically have that possibility, or was it completely unrealistic?

Mass escapes, of course, could not be. The regime in the special settlement was very cruel. For leaving the place of the special settlement, people could be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. Control was regular. In fact, it was the regime of a colony-settlement. Regular searches: looking for surplus food, and indeed the minimum supply of food. How people survived in these conditions is difficult to understand.

To prepare an organized, mass (or at least partial) escape under conditions when the entire system of internal affairs bodies in the country is “sharpened” not for public safety, not for ensuring public safety, but, as we now know from documents, primarily for searching for fugitives from factories, enterprises, when people were actually enslaved at enterprises (leaving a workplace was a criminal offense) - in these conditions it was very difficult to do something.

But the people somehow settled down. A story is known, a letter written by one of the schoolchildren, which he wrote about his grandfather, when a German family and a Chechen family lived nearby. And there, and there the old people, the heads of families, were distinguished by humor. And in the morning the German greeted the Chechen: "Hi, bandit!" He answered him: "Hi, fascist." When the local commandant was indignant at this, the old men explained to him: "I was exiled here as a fascist, and he is like a bandit - what is the claim?" People lived and survived.

But, of course, before the 20th Congress, before the removal of the special settlement regime, before the permission to return as a whole people, such a return could not have happened. This is especially evident 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, the forced eviction stopped in 1944 precisely because Stalin realized that it was simply unprofitable?

Another note was prepared on the deportation of another Caucasian people. But she did not receive a positive resolution. And the deportation there was carried out selectively, just accomplices of the Nazis 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, the Stalinist Soviet Union has learned its lesson. Obviously, if we are not talking about receiving scorched earth as an inheritance, but about the fact that the territory is needed primarily as a business, 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 vice versa - lay for a long time instability and failure in the economy.

This is especially interesting in the context of the latest, including modern, news, such as: the riot in Pugachev and political talk about secession of some regions of Russia...

Let's look at this issue from two angles. The point is not only 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 the punishment of criminals (whether Russian or Chechen) to the same extent anywhere in the country ( be it Moscow, Pugachev or Grozny). The government doesn't do it.
But we forget one more important point: the mass labor migration of Caucasians and Chechens through 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 stayed in Chechnya for the summer of 1991. There - August and the events that are sometimes called the Chechen revolution. Who knows, if they were working at that time, finishing the construction of various necessary buildings in Russia, how things would turn out. But one way or another, high labor migration, high labor mobility of the population was partly due to the consequences of deportation.

It's just a matter of changing concepts. If the police do not maintain order and do not equally punish violators of this order (whether Russians or Chechens), then the consequences will be deplorable. 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 primarily of a corrupt court and the government that we seem to be electing. But it is much easier to speak not for bringing our own power under control, but to speak out against migrants.

Deportation of peoples- a form of repression, a kind of instrument of national policy.

Soviet deportation policy began with the eviction of White Cossacks and large landowners in 1918-1925

The first victims of Soviet deportations were the Cossacks of the Terek region, who in 1920 were evicted from their homes and sent to other areas of the North Caucasus, to the Donbass, as well as to the Far North, and their land was transferred to the Ossetians. In 1921, Russians from Semirechie, evicted from the Turkestan region, became victims of the Soviet national policy.

By 1933, there were 5300 national village councils and 250 national districts in the country. Only in one Leningrad region there were 57 national village councils and 3 national regions (Karelian, Finnish and Veps). There were schools where teaching was conducted in national languages. In Leningrad in the early 1930s, newspapers were published in 40 languages, including Chinese. There were radio broadcasts in Finnish (About 130,000 Finns lived in Leningrad and the Leningrad region at that time).

From the mid-1930s, the former national policy began to be abandoned, expressed in the elimination of the cultural (and in some cases, political) autonomy of individual peoples and ethnic groups. In general, this took place against the background of the centralization of power in the country, the transition from territorial to sectoral administration, and repressions against real and potential opposition.

In the mid-1930s, many Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Finns and Germans were first arrested in Leningrad. Since the spring of 1935, on the basis of a secret order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. G. Yagoda dated March 25, 1935, local residents were forcibly evicted from the border regions in the north-west, most of whom were Ingrian Finns.

15 thousand families of people of Polish and German nationalities (about 65 thousand people) were evicted from Ukraine, territories adjacent to the Polish border, to the North Kazakhstan and Karaganda regions. In September 1937, on the basis of the joint resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks No. 1428-326 "On the eviction of the Korean population from the border regions of the Far East Territory", signed by Stalin and Molotov, 172 thousand ethnic Koreans were evicted from the border regions of the Far East. The expulsion of certain nations from the frontier territories is sometimes associated with military preparations.

From the end of 1937, all national districts and village councils outside the titular republics and regions were gradually liquidated. Also, outside the autonomies, the teaching and publication of literature in national languages ​​was curtailed.

Deportations during the Great Patriotic War

In 1943-1944. mass deportations of Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Karachays, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Nogais, Meskhetian Turks, Pontic Greeks, Bulgarians, Crimean Gypsies, Kurds were carried out - mainly on charges of collaborationism, extended to the whole people. The autonomies of these peoples were liquidated (if they existed). In total, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, peoples and groups of the population of 61 nationalities were resettled.

Deportation of the Germans

On August 28, 1941, the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans was liquidated by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 367,000 Germans were deported to the east (two days were allotted for collection): to the Komi Republic, to the Urals, to Kazakhstan, Siberia and Altai. Partially, the Germans were withdrawn from the active army. In 1942, the mobilization of Soviet Germans from the age of 17 into work columns began. The mobilized Germans built factories, worked in logging and mines.

Representatives of peoples whose countries were part of the Nazi coalition (Hungarians, Bulgarians, many Finns) were also deported.

Based on the decision of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front on March 20, 1942, about 40 thousand Germans and Finns were deported from the frontline zone in March-April 1942.

Those who returned home after the war were again deported in 1947-1948.

Deportation of Karachays

According to the 1939 census, 70,301 Karachays lived on the territory of the Karachay Autonomous District. From the beginning of August 1942 until the end of January 1943 it was under German occupation.

On October 12, 1943, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, and on October 14, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR stopped the deportation of Karachais from the Karachaev Autonomous Region to the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR. These documents explained the reasons for the eviction.

For the forceful support of the deportation of the Karachay population, military formations with a total number of 53,327 people were involved, and on November 2, the deportation of Karachays took place, as a result of which 69,267 Karachays were deported to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Deportation of the Kalmyks

In early August 1942, most of the uluses of Kalmykia were occupied and the territory of Kalmykia was liberated only at the beginning of 1943.

On December 27, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, and on December 28, the decision of the Council of People's Commissars signed by V. M. Molotov on the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the eviction of Kalmyks to the Altai and Krasnoyarsk Territories, Omsk and Novosibirsk regions. The operation to evict the Kalmyk population, code-named "Ulus", involved 2,975 NKVD officers, as well as the 3rd motorized rifle regiment of the NKVD, and the head of the NKVD for the Ivanovo region, Major General Markeev, was in charge of the operation.

Deportation of Chechens and Ingush

On January 29, 1944, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Lavrenty Beria, approved the "Instruction on the procedure for the eviction of Chechens and Ingush", and on January 31, a resolution of the State Defense Committee on the deportation of Chechens and Ingush to the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSR was issued. On February 20, together with I. A. Serov, B. Z. Kobulov and S. S. Mamulov, Beria arrived in Grozny and personally led the operation, which involved up to 19 thousand operatives of the NKVD, the NKGB and SMERSH, and also about 100 thousand officers and fighters of the NKVD troops drawn from all over the country to participate in "exercises in the highlands." On February 21, he issued an order to the NKVD on the deportation of the Chechen-Ingush population. The next day, he met with the leadership of the republic and the highest spiritual leaders, warned them about the operation and offered to carry out the necessary work among the population, and the eviction operation began the next morning.

The deportation and dispatch of trains to their destinations began on February 23, 1944 at 02:00 local time and ended on March 9, 1944. The operation began with the code word "Panther", which was broadcast over the radio. The deportation was accompanied by a few attempts to escape to the mountains or insubordination on the part of the local population.

According to official figures, 780 people were killed during the operation, 2016 "anti-Soviet elements" were arrested, and more than 20,000 firearms were seized, including 4,868 rifles, 479 machine guns and machine guns. 6544 people managed to hide in the mountains.

Deportation of the Balkars

On February 24, 1944, Beria suggested that Stalin evict the Balkars, and on February 26, he issued an order to the NKVD "On measures to evict the Balkar population from the Design Bureau of the ASSR." The day before, Beria, Serov and Kobulov held a meeting with the secretary of the Kabardino-Balkarian regional party committee, Zuber Kumekhov, during which it was planned to visit the Elbrus region in early March. On March 2, Beria, accompanied by Kobulov and Mamulov, went to the Elbrus region, informing Kumekhov of his intention to evict the Balkars and transfer their lands to Georgia so that it could have a defensive line on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus. On March 5, the State Defense Committee issued a resolution on eviction from the Design Bureau of the ASSR, and on March 8-9, the operation began. On March 11, Beria reported to Stalin that “37,103 people were evicted from Balkars”

Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

In total, 228,543 people were evicted from Crimea, 191,014 of them were Crimean Tatars (more than 47,000 families). From every third adult Crimean Tatar they took a subscription stating that he had familiarized himself with the decision, and that 20 years of hard labor were threatened for escaping from the place of special settlement, as for a criminal offense.

Deportations of Azerbaijanis

In the spring of 1944, forced resettlements were carried out in Georgia. At the end of March, 608 Kurdish and Azerbaijani families numbering 3240 people - residents of Tbilisi, “who arbitrarily left work in agriculture and arrived to live in Tbilisi”, were resettled inside the Georgian SSR, in the Tsalka, Borchala and Karayaz regions. Only 31 families of servicemen, war invalids, teachers and university students were left in the city. In accordance with GKO resolution No. 6279ss of July 31 of the same year, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds, Hemshils and others were evicted from the border regions of the Georgian SSR, and the “other” sub-contingent consisted mainly of Azerbaijanis. In March 1949, the number of Azerbaijani special settlers evicted from the republic was 24,304 people, who during 1954-1956. were actually removed from the register of special settlements.

In 1948-1953. Azerbaijanis living in Armenia were resettled. In 1947, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Armenian SSR, Grigory Arutinov, achieved the adoption by the Council of Ministers of the USSR of a resolution “On the resettlement of collective farmers and other Azerbaijani population from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Araks lowland of the Azerbaijan SSR”, as a result of which up to 100,000 Azerbaijanis were resettled “on a voluntary basis” ”(and in fact - repatriation) to Azerbaijan. 10,000 people were resettled in 1948, 40,000 in 1949, 50,000 in 1950.

Deportation of Meskhetian Turks

He noted that “The NKVD of the USSR considers it expedient to overpower 16,700 households of Turks, Kurds, Hemshins from Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki, Adigen, Aspindza, Bogdanovsky districts, some village councils of the Adjara ASSR”. On July 31, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution (No. 6279, “top secret”) on the deportation of 45,516 Meskhetian Turks from the Georgian SSR to the Kazakh, Kirghiz and Uzbek SSRs, as noted in the documents of the Department of Special Settlements of the NKVD of the USSR. The entire operation, on the orders of Beria, was led by A. Kobulov and the Georgian People's Commissars for State Security Rapava and Internal Affairs Karanadze, and only 4 thousand NKVD operational officers were allocated for its implementation.

The position of the deported peoples

In 1948, a decree was adopted prohibiting the Germans, as well as other deported peoples (Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Finns, etc.) from leaving the areas of deportation and returning to their homeland. Those who violated this decree were sentenced to camp labor for 20 years.

Rehabilitation

In 1957-1958, the national autonomies of the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachais, and Balkars were restored; these peoples were allowed to return to their historical territories. The return of the repressed peoples was not carried out without difficulties, which both then and subsequently led to national conflicts (thus, clashes began between the returning Chechens and the Russians settled during their exile in the Grozny region; the Ingush in the Prigorodny district inhabited by Ossetians and transferred to the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

However, a significant part of the repressed peoples (Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, Greeks, Koreans, etc.) and at that time neither national autonomies (if any) nor the right to return to their historical homeland were returned.

On August 28, 1964, that is, 23 years after the start of the deportation, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR canceled the restrictive acts against the deported German population, and the decree that completely removed the restrictions on freedom of movement and confirmed the right of the Germans to return to the places from which they were expelled , was adopted in 1972.

On November 14, 1989, by the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, all repressed peoples were rehabilitated, repressive acts against them at the state level were recognized as illegal and criminal in the form of a policy of slander, genocide, forced resettlement, the abolition of national-state formations, the establishment of a regime of terror and violence in places of special settlements.

In 1991, the Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples was adopted, which recognized the deportation of peoples as a "policy of slander and genocide" (Article 2).

Fifteen years after recognition in the USSR, in February 2004, the European Parliament also recognized the deportation of Chechens and Ingush in 1944 as an act of genocide.

All countries of the world, including Russia, are faced with the issue of migrants. People coming to Russian territory may have different goals - from tourism to obtaining a job and permanent residence. In some cases, the authorities apply deportation in relation to those who are seen in violation of the order in the country. Everyone needs to know what this procedure is.

Process history

The expulsion of a person from the state is not a new mechanism for working with apostates. World history knows many such cases. People were often expelled, and almost all modern states resorted to this method. The term itself refers to the expulsion of a person from the place where he currently resides.

THE USSR. Newspaper "Red Banner", 1937

If you look at the history of the Soviet Union, it becomes obvious that at that time expulsion was practically the main way to solve domestic problems. It was carried out without court decisions, and very large groups of people were immediately sent to remote, poorly adapted for life edges of the state. Most often, it was about the northern, uninhabited lands, as well as the so-called virgin lands. Entire nations suffered as a result of such a policy - the Ingush, Karachais, Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Koreans and others. But harm was done not only to them, but also to the economy of the state itself, as well as to its cultural development.

In order to restore a positive opinion about the authorities, they passed a law rehabilitating such repressed migrants. This allowed them to return back to where they lived.

The current state of affairs

Of course, the situation is different these days. No one else deports without trial and investigation, such procedures are carried out exclusively in accordance with the legal framework. In addition, today it is impossible to apply deportation in relation to full-fledged citizens of the country. Only migrants who have violated the rules of stay are subject to it.

It is important to understand that this is not a punishment, but a method of influencing unscrupulous immigrants. The essence of deportation is that a person is moved outside the Russian Federation. This distinguishes it from deprivation of citizenship or administrative expulsion. The main reason is the violation by the guest of the state of any of the paragraphs of the legislation relating to migration issues.

Regulations that must not be violated

Citizens of other states, arriving in Russia, must be familiar with the provisions of the country's migration legislation. This means they must:

• stay in the territory of the state for no more than the period for which they have official permission (for example, a visa is considered such);
• when the permit expires, the foreigner must return to his native country within three days;
• in case of cancellation of a document allowing to stay on Russian territory, a foreigner must leave it within 15 days.

The body controlling compliance with these and other norms is the Federal Migration Service, which has branches throughout the country. Her duties also include explaining the rules to foreign citizens.

Reasons for deportation

Today, deportation is not carried out without good reason. These are understood as:

• crossing the border of the Russian Federation without permission;
• non-compliance with the visa regime;
• non-extension of a temporary residence permit or residence permit.

It is also mandatory to be expelled from the country the person who got into it using forged documents or illegally. At the same time, the procedure can be performed voluntarily by a migrant or forcibly, with the involvement of migration control forces, which implies an escort to the border.

Who can't be sent

• refugees who have confirmed their status officially;
• who applied for political asylum in Russia.

In this case, persons must be registered at the place where they live. Moreover, if a person arrived in the state in order to obtain refugee status, but has not yet had time to submit documents or submitted, but his request has not yet been approved, he cannot be deported either. During the entire period of consideration of documents, a person may be in the Russian Federation. If a person has already lost the status of a political refugee, but still cannot return to his homeland, because there is a threat to his life, the government cannot send him out of the country.

The third category of persons who are not subject to the described procedure are people who officially work in international organizations represented on the territory of the state. These include employees of diplomatic missions and consular offices.

Separately, it is necessary to mention persons who do not have any citizenship. There is simply nowhere to send them out of the country. Therefore, instead of being deported, they end up in life imprisonment. However, they can appeal against such a verdict at any time.

Removing the status of "deported"

To expel a migrant from the country, you need to have an appropriate court decision. At the same time, even before the hearing of the case takes place, the employees of the FMS warn the foreign citizen about what threatens him. In this situation, he must leave the country on his own as soon as possible. If he refuses to do so, the court will force him to do so.

But, if the decision has already been made, it can be canceled. First of all, this is done through filing an appeal against the decision. This can be done no later than 10 days from the date of the court session, at which time no one will evict a foreign citizen, because the decision comes into force only on the 11th day.

If a person had a good reason for not meeting the 10-day deadline, but wants to file an appeal, they can do so later. The right thing to do would be to use the help of a migration lawyer who specializes in such cases, because the stakes are very high and residence in the country is at stake.

To remove the status "" and cancel the need to leave the country, you need to prove to the judge that:

• a marriage was concluded between foreign and Russian subjects, and a common child was born;
• the foreigner has a job, a temporary residence permit or a residence permit legally obtained and therefore cannot be expelled;
• a person who has arrived from abroad is studying in institutions of Russia (at the same time, the state accreditation of the university must be confirmed);
• a person needs to live in the Russian Federation in order to undergo a course of therapy or a medical examination.

In this case, all documents must be carefully collected and certified with the appropriate signatures and seals.

How does deportation work?

There is a certain mechanism according to which a person can be expelled from the country. Deportation is divided into several stages.

Table. Stages of deportation of migrants.

Stage	What's happening
Making a decision on the need to deport a migrant	The decision is made at the Regional Directorate of the Migration Department, in the territory under whose jurisdiction the immigrant resides. Papers confirming the validity of the deportation are sent to the judge.
Judgment by the court	Based on the documents submitted by the plaintiff and the defendant, the judge makes a decision on deportation. Most often, at the same time, a ban on further entry into the state is stipulated.
Departure of a migrant outside the borders of the country	If a migrant is sentenced to deportation for the first time, then entry into the country is closed for him for up to 5 years. But if the expulsion is made for the third time, then this period may be extended to 10 years. The court may also impose significant fines.

The head of the structural unit begins to collect materials for the court case, then the head of the department gets acquainted with them and sends them to the court. From this moment, the foreigner must be placed to live in a special institution, which is under the jurisdiction of the migration service. There, he will be provided with medical assistance if necessary, as well as food.

If the deportation is approved, a note will be placed on the foreigner's migration card that he is prohibited from entering the country. At the same time, it is necessary to pass the fingerprint registration procedure so that it can always be identified by fingerprints. At the same time, a special accounting file is being established, which is stored in the FMS department for ten years.

When the court makes a decision to expel a person, this information is also sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as to the organization that issued the invitation for a foreign citizen - it can be either a private individual or an organization, consulate or embassy.

In order for the deportation procedure to be paid, it is necessary to establish the inviting party. If it is a legal or natural person, the burden of payment falls on them. If a person came on his own initiative, he pays for the deportation himself. In other cases, the costs are borne by the consulate or embassy of the country whose citizenship the person has.

If it is impossible to establish exactly who should pay for the visa, travel documents and ticket, then the money is taken from the federal budget by the territorial division of the migration service.

Video - All about deportation

In most countries, this method of dealing with illegal or unscrupulous migrants is practiced. Therefore, when entering anywhere outside your home country, you need to have a general understanding of the immigration policy of the state and comply with its laws. And before entering, you should go to the website of the country's migration service and make sure that a person has the right to and stay on the territory of the state. You can also send a written request to this institution.

November 14, 2009 marked the 20th anniversary of the day when the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the Declaration on Recognizing as Illegal and Criminal Repressive Acts against Peoples Subjected to Forcible Resettlement.

Deportation (from lat. deportatio) - exile, exile. In a broad sense, deportation refers to the forced expulsion of a person or category of persons to another state or other locality, usually under escort.

Historian Pavel Polyan, in his work “Not of one’s own free will ... The history and geography of forced migrations in the USSR” points out: “cases when not part of a group (class, ethnic group, confession, etc.), but almost all of it completely, is subjected to deportation, called total deportation.

According to the historian, ten peoples were subjected to total deportation in the USSR: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks. Of these, seven - Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Ingush, Chechens, Balkars and Crimean Tatars - lost their national autonomies.

To one degree or another, many other ethnic, ethno-confessional and social categories of Soviet citizens were also 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, Khemshins, "Dashnaks" Armenians, 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 - Frunzen (now Chui) and Osh regions. Hundreds of special settlers who worked at home in the oil industry were sent to the fields in the Guryev (now Atyrau) region of Kazakhstan.

On February 26, 1944, Beria issued an order to the NKVD “On measures to evict from the Design Bureau of the ASSR Balkar population". On March 5, the State Defense Committee issued a resolution on eviction from the Design Bureau of the ASSR. March 10 was set as the day the operation began, but it was carried out earlier - on March 8 and 9. On April 8, 1944, the Decree of the PVS was issued on the renaming of the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into the Kabardian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

The total number of people deported to places of resettlement was 37,044 people sent to Kyrgyzstan (about 60%) and Kazakhstan.

In May-June 1944, forced resettlement affected Kabardians. On June 20, 1944, about 2,500 family members of “active German henchmen, 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 the Crimea, the NKVD and the NKGB began to "cleanse" its territory from anti-Soviet elements.

May 10, 1944 - "in view of the treacherous actions Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people and proceeding from the undesirability of the further residence of the Crimean Tatars on the border outskirts of the Soviet Union ”- Beria turned to Stalin with a written proposal for deportation. The GKO resolutions on the eviction of the Crimean Tatar population from the territory of Crimea were adopted on April 2, 11 and May 21, 1944. A similar resolution on the eviction of the Crimean Tatars (and Greeks) from the territory of the Krasnodar Territory and the Rostov Region was dated May 29, 1944.

According to the historian Pavel Polyan, citing Professor Nikolai Bugay, the main operation began at dawn on May 18. By 4 p.m. on May 20, 180,014 people had been evicted. According to the final data, 191,014 Crimean Tatars (over 47,000 families) were deported from Crimea.

About 37 thousand families (151,083 people) of the Crimean Tatars were taken to Uzbekistan: the most numerous "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 the Crimea and the Caucasus, including 41,854 people from the 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 foreign nationals with expired passports, including 3350 Greeks, 105 Turks and 16 Iranians (they were sent to the Fergana region of Uzbekistan), from the Krasnodar Territory - 8300 people (only Greeks), from the Transcaucasian republics - 16 375 people (only Greeks).

On June 30, 1945, by the Decree of the PVS, the Crimean ASSR was transformed into the Crimean Oblast within the RSFSR.

In the spring of 1944, forced resettlements were carried out in Georgia.

According to Professor Nikolai Bugai, in March 1944 more than 600 Kurdish and Azerbaijani families(a total of 3240 people) - residents of Tbilisi were resettled within Georgia itself, to the Tsalkinsky, Borchalinsky and Karayazsky regions, then the "Muslim peoples" of Georgia, who lived near the Soviet-Turkish border, were resettled.

In the certificate sent by Lavrenty Beria to Stalin on November 28, 1944, it was stated that the population of Meskheti, connected “... with the inhabitants of Turkey by family relations, was engaged in smuggling, showed emigration moods and served for Turkish intelligence agencies as sources of recruiting spy elements and planting bandit groups ". On July 24, 1944, in a letter to Stalin, Beria proposed to relocate 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 were understood Meskhetian Turks, residents of the Georgian historical region of Meskhet-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 on the removal of restrictions on the legal status of deported special settlers followed.

On July 5, 1954, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the Decree "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 deregistration of certain categories of special settlers" (November 24).

On September 17, 1955, the Decree of the PVS "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 from 1955: it was the Decree of the PVS of December 13, 1955 “On the removal of restrictions on the legal status of Germans and members of their families located in a special settlement.”

On January 17, 1956, the PVS issued a Decree on lifting restrictions on the 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 Karachays (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 were returned to their autonomy, but two - the Germans and the Crimean Tatars - were not (this did not happen today either).

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources