The number of deported Crimean Tatars in 1944. Deportation of the Crimean Tatars. how it was. Did some Tatars really support the Nazis?
Taken from the BBC website
Some facts are deliberately exaggerated or distorted.
On May 18-20, 1944, in the Crimea, NKVD fighters, on orders from Moscow, herded almost the entire Crimean Tatar population into railway cars and sent them to Uzbekistan in 70 echelons.
This forced eviction of the Tatars, whom the Soviet authorities accused of collaborating with the Nazis, was one of the most rapidly carried out deportations in the history of mankind.
The BBC Ukrainian service prepared a certificate on how the deportation took place and how the Crimean Tatars lived after it.
How did the Tatars live in Crimea before the deportation?
After the creation of the USSR in 1922, Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as the indigenous population of the Crimean ASSR as part of the indigenization policy.
In the 1920s, the Tatars were allowed to develop their culture. There were Crimean Tatar newspapers, magazines, educational institutions, museums, libraries and theaters in Crimea.
The Crimean Tatar language, together with Russian, was the official language of the autonomy. More than 140 village councils used it.
In the 1920s-1930s, Tatars made up 25-30% of the total population.
However, in the 1930s, Soviet policy towards the Tatars, as well as towards other nationalities of the USSR, became repressive. First there was the dispossession and eviction of the Tatars to the north of Russia and beyond the Urals. Then forced collectivization and famine of 1932-33. And then - purges of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.
Image copyright Image caption Crimean Tatar State Ensemble "Khaitarma". Moscow, 1935
This turned many Crimean Tatars against the Soviet regime.
When did the deportation take place?
The main phase of the forced resettlement took place over less than three days, starting at dawn on May 18, 1944 and ending at 4:00 pm on May 20. In total, 238.5 thousand people were deported from Crimea - almost the entire Crimean Tatar population.
For this, the NKVD attracted more than 32 thousand security officials.
What caused the deportation?
The official reason for the forced resettlement was the accusation of the entire Crimean Tatar people of high treason, "mass extermination of Soviet people" and collaborationism - cooperation with the Nazi occupiers.
Such arguments were contained in the decision of the State Defense Committee on the deportation, which appeared a week before it began.
However, historians name other, unofficial reasons for the resettlement. Among them is the fact that the Crimean Tatars historically had close ties with Turkey, which the USSR at the time viewed as a potential rival. In the plans of the Union, the Crimea was a strategic springboard in case of a possible conflict with this country, and Stalin wanted to play it safe from possible saboteurs and traitors, whom he considered the Tatars.
This theory is supported by the fact that other Muslim ethnic groups were resettled from the Caucasian regions adjacent to Turkey: Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars.
Did some Tatars really support the Nazis?
According to various sources, between 9,000 and 20,000 Crimean Tatars served in the anti-Soviet combat units formed by the German authorities, writes historian J. Otto Paul. Some of them sought to protect their villages from Soviet partisans, who, according to the Tatars themselves, often persecuted them on ethnic grounds.
Other Tatars joined the German detachments because they were captured by the Nazis and wanted to alleviate the inhuman conditions of their stay in the prisoner of war camps in Simferopol and Nikolaev.
At the same time, 15% of the adult male Crimean Tatar population fought on the side of the Red Army. During the deportation, they were demobilized and sent to labor camps in Siberia and the Urals.
In May 1944, most of those who served in the German detachments retreated to Germany. Mostly wives and children who remained on the peninsula were deported.
How did the forced resettlement take place?
Image copyright Image caption Spouses in the Urals, 1953
Employees of the NKVD entered the Tatar houses and announced to the owners that they were being evicted from the Crimea because of treason.
To collect things, gave 15-20 minutes. Officially, each family had the right to take up to 500 kg of luggage with them, but in reality they were allowed to take much less, and sometimes nothing at all.
People were transported by trucks to railway stations. From there, almost 70 echelons were sent east with tightly closed freight cars, which were crowded with people.
About 8,000 people died during the move, most of them children and the elderly. The most common causes of death are thirst and typhus.
Some people, unable to endure suffering, went crazy.
All the property left in the Crimea after the Tatars, the state appropriated to itself.
Where were the Tatars deported to?
Most of the Tatars were sent to Uzbekistan and neighboring regions of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
Small groups of people ended up in the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Urals and the Kostroma region of Russia.
What were the consequences of the deportation for the Tatars?
During the first three years after the resettlement, from starvation, exhaustion and disease, according to various estimates, from 20 to 46% of all deportees died.
Almost half of those who died in the first year were children under 16.
Image copyright MEMORY.GOV.UA Image caption Mari ASSR. Team at the logging site. 1950
Due to the lack of clean water, poor hygiene and lack of medical care, malaria, yellow fever, dysentery and other diseases spread among the deportees. The newcomers had no natural immunity against many local ailments.
What status did they have in Uzbekistan?
The vast majority of the Crimean Tatars were moved to the so-called special settlements - surrounded by paramilitary guards, roadblocks and fenced with barbed wire, territories that looked more like labor camps than civilian settlements.
Newcomers were a cheap labor force, and they were used to work in collective farms, state farms and industrial enterprises. In Uzbekistan, they cultivated cotton fields, worked in mines, construction, plants and factories. Among the most difficult works was the construction of the Farkhad hydroelectric power station.
In 1948, Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as lifelong migrants. Those who, without the permission of the NKVD, went outside their special settlement, for example, to visit relatives, were threatened with 20 years in prison. There have been such cases.
Even before the deportation, propaganda incited hatred for the Crimean Tatars among local residents, stigmatizing them as traitors and enemies of the people.
Image copyright Image caption
As historian Greta Lynn Ugling writes, the Uzbeks were told that "cyclops" and "cannibals" were coming to them and were advised to stay away from the newcomers. After the deportation, some local residents felt the heads of visitors to check if horns were growing on them.
Later, when they learned that the Crimean Tatars were of the same faith, the Uzbeks were surprised.
The children of immigrants could receive education in Russian or Uzbek, but not in Crimean Tatar. Until 1957, any publication in this language was banned. An article about the Crimean Tatars was removed from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE). This nationality was also forbidden to enter in the passport.
What has changed in Crimea without the Tatars?
After the Tatars, as well as the Greeks, Bulgarians and Germans, were evicted from the peninsula in June 1945, Crimea ceased to be an autonomous republic and became a region within the RSFSR.
The southern regions of Crimea, where the Crimean Tatars used to live, were deserted. For example, according to official data, only 2.6 thousand inhabitants remained in the Alushta region, and 2.2 thousand in the Balaklava region. Subsequently, people from Ukraine and Russia began to move here.
"Toponymic repressions" were carried out on the peninsula - most of the cities, villages, mountains and rivers that had Crimean Tatar, Greek or German names received new, Russian names. Among the exceptions are Bakhchisaray, Dzhankoy, Ishun, Saki and Sudak.
The Soviet authorities destroyed Tatar monuments, burned manuscripts and books, including volumes of Lenin and Marx, translated into Crimean Tatar. Cinemas and shops were opened in mosques.
When were the Tatars allowed to return to Crimea?
The regime of special settlements for the Tatars lasted until the era of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization - the second half of the 1950s. Then the Soviet government softened the living conditions for them, but did not remove the charges of high treason.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Tatars fought for their right to return to their historical homeland, including through demonstrations in Uzbek cities. In 1968, the occasion for one of these actions was Lenin's birthday. The authorities responded with force and dispersed the rally.
Gradually, the Crimean Tatars managed to expand their rights, but an informal, but no less strict ban on their return to Crimea was in effect until 1989.
Image copyright Image caption Osman Ibrish with his wife Alime. Kibray settlement, Uzbekistan, 1971
A new challenge for the Crimean Tatars was the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014. Some of them left the peninsula under the pressure of persecution. Other Russian authorities have themselves banned entry to Crimea, including the leaders of this people, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov.
Does the deportation have signs of genocide?
Some researchers and dissidents believe that the deportation of the Tatars is consistent with the UN definition of genocide. They argue that the Soviet government intended to destroy the Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group and deliberately went to this goal.
In 2006, the kurultai of the Crimean Tatar people turned to the Verkhovna Rada with a request to recognize the deportation as genocide.
Despite this, in most historical writings and diplomatic documents, the forced resettlement of Crimean Tatars is now called deportation, not genocide.
In the Soviet Union, the term "resettlement" was used.
Over the next four years, half of all Crimean Tatars who lived in the USSR then returned to the peninsula - 250 thousand people.
The return of the indigenous population to the Crimea was difficult and was accompanied by land conflicts with local residents who managed to get used to the new land. However, major confrontations were avoided.
Publicist Anatoly Vasserman commented on the decision of the Latvian parliamentarians to recognize the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 as “genocide”.
The Saeima of Latvia released a statement claiming that the decision of the Soviet authorities to deport the Crimean Tatars was " genocide of the Crimean Tatar people“It is also alleged that Russia, after joining the Crimean peninsula, allegedly continues to oppress this people.
Commenting on the decision of the Latvian parliamentarians, Anatoly Wasserman joked that they could just as well admit that twice two equals five.
He recalled that the Crimean Tatars during the war had done enough that, according to the laws of war, should be punishable by death, but they decided to deport them in order to save the people themselves -
« The deportation of the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia formally became the smearing of the death penalty on the entire nation, which they did not want to destroy. If then all those deserving the death penalty were executed - and this is most of the men of this people, then women would have to marry representatives of other peoples, and thus this people would disappear in one generation»,- said Anatoly Wasserman.
According to him, the war was in the mode of competition between economies:
« It was vital for us to ensure the extraction and transportation of oil. And some of the peoples that participated in the German crimes, nevertheless, were able to reformat their own leadership so that one could hope for the safety of those oil pipelines that passed in close proximity to the places of residence of these peoples. And they were spared. They were not touched, they were not evicted anywhere. And this decision paid off.- Wasserman explained.And those who had too strong family ties to the detriment of social behavior were removed from sin. In fact, it was not even a punishment. These were security measures in wartime. In exactly the same way, in the United States in the first days of the war, all the Japanese who lived there were arrested and taken away. True, at the end of hostilities they were officially apologized, but apologies do not replace the lost years of life. That is, not only we were engaged in deportation during the war, it was a necessary measure
»,
The expert recalled that it is now fashionable to say that the deportation took place in barbaric conditions, that almost half of the people died on the way, but this is not true:
« This is a complete and blatant lie. It was allowed to take with you up to 500 kg of cargo per family. Everything left was taken according to the official inventory and in return, at the new place of residence, people were given something equivalent.- Wasserman remarked.Throughout its history, our country has experienced an acute shortage of labor resources, therefore, in all cases where there is a choice, the country's leadership chooses the option with minimal loss of labor resources. And in the event of deportation, citizens were provided with work, and therefore with earnings, in a new place.
Plus, the health of the migrants was monitored very carefully on the way. Relevant internal reporting documents have been preserved. At stops, not only food was brought into the cars, but also medicines. The medical staff made sure that there was no spread of diseases. And the escorts were interested in people being alive and well, because each deceased had to be accounted for, proving that he did not run away on the way
»,
He expressed regret that the practice of meaningless statements by parliamentarians is spreading all over the world.
« And it's good if these are just statements. And if they develop into laws, then this is already scary. Russian Federation from the statement of the Latvian Seimas is neither cold nor hot, because we already know that they do not like us with foam at the mouth. But for Latvia itself, this means that its top leadership is obliged to act not in the interests of the country and the people, but in the interests of political fantasies. And I sympathize with the ordinary citizens of Latvia, whose government is making things worse for itself. But, as they say in my small homeland, they saw the eyes that they were buying, and now eat, at least get out»- concluded the publicist.
So, friends - today there will be a post about rather tragic events - exactly 75 years have passed since the Stalinist genocide of the Crimean Tatars in. On May 18, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were deported in freight cars from Crimea to remote regions of the USSR - in particular, to sparsely populated regions of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The deportation was carried out by the punitive organs of the NKVD, and the deportation order was personally signed.
"But Stalin won the war!" - fans of the USSR speak in the comments - "If Stalin had not sent people to concentration camps, then Hitler would have done it for him!" neo-Stalinists and conspiracy theorists echo them. However, the truth is that there can be no justification for this genocide - just as there is no justification for Stalin's other crimes - such as deportation and.
So, in today's post I will tell you about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - which should not be forgotten today, so that it does not happen again under the cries of "we can do it again!" In general, be sure to go under the cut, write your opinion in the comments, well, add to friends Do not forget)
Why did the deportation begin?
It was established in 1922, and in the same year Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as the indigenous population of Crimea. In the interwar period, in the 1920s and 30s, Tatars made up almost a third of the population of Crimea - about 25-30%. In the thirties, after Stalin came to power, mass repressions began against the Tatar population of Crimea - dispossession and dekulakization of the Tatars, repressions, mass "purges" of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.
All this turned many Tatars against the Soviet regime - during the war, several thousand Tatars fought against the USSR with weapons in their hands - in fact, I touched on this issue a little in a post with - how and why people fought against the USSR. In the post-war years, this allegedly became the "official reason" for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - although by the same logic it was possible to deport all Russians from Russia - at least 120-140 thousand people fought in Vlasov's army alone (not counting other formations).
In fact, the Tatars were deported for completely different reasons - the Crimean Tatars were historically strongly associated with Turkey and were also Muslims - and Stalin decided to deport them precisely for this reason - since they did not fit into his head in the picture of the "ideal USSR" and were "surplus people". This version is also supported by the fact that, along with the Tatars, other Muslim ethnic groups were evicted from the areas adjacent to Turkey - Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars.
How exactly did the deportation take place?
NKVD soldiers broke into Tatar houses and declared people "enemies of the people" - allegedly because of "treason" they were permanently evicted from Crimea. According to official documents - each family could take up to 500 kilograms of luggage with them - however, in reality, people managed to take much less, and most often they went to the freight cars just in what they were wearing - the houses and the things left were looted by the military and soldiers of the NKVD.
People were transported by trucks to railway stations - later sent to the east by about 70 echelons with tightly closed and nailed doors of freight cars overflowing with people. During the very movement of people to the east, more than 8,000 people died - most often people died of typhus or thirst. Many, unable to endure suffering, went mad.
In the first two years, about half (up to 46%) of all deported people died - unable to adapt to the harsh conditions of the lands where they were sent. Nearly half of those 46% were children under the age of 16, who had the hardest time. People died from lack of clean water, from poor hygiene - because of which malaria, dysentery, yellow fever and other diseases spread among the deportees.
Soviet concentration camps and erased memory.
In all this tragedy, there is another very important point - which Russian sources are silent about. The settlements themselves, where the people were sent, were not any villages or cities. Most of all they looked like real concentration camps- these were special settlements fenced with barbed wire, around which there were checkpoints with armed guards.
The exiled Tatars were used in slave labor in the form of almost free labor - they worked for food on collective farms, state farms and at industrial enterprises - the exiled Crimean Tatars were assigned the hardest and dirtiest work, such as manually harvesting cotton treated with pesticides or building the Farkhad hydroelectric power station.
In 1948, Soviet Moscow declared that this would always be the case - the Tatars were recognized as life prisoners and had no right to leave the territory of special settlement camps. Even the Soviet authorities constantly incited hatred for the Crimean Tatars - the locals were told terrible stories that terrible "traitors to the motherland, cyclops and cannibals" were coming to them - from whom they should stay away. According to eyewitnesses, many local Uzbeks then felt the Crimean Tatars to find out if their horns grow?
In 1957, the USSR began to erase all memory of the Crimean Tatar people. By this year, all publications in the Crimean Tatar language were banned, and from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia about the Crimean Tatars - like they never existed.
Crimes without a statute of limitations. instead of an epilogue.
All the time that has happened since the deportation - the Crimean Tatars fought for their right to return to their homeland - constantly reminding the Soviet authorities that such a people exist, and it will not be possible to erase the memory of them. The Tatars held rallies and fought for their rights - and finally, in 1989, they achieved the restoration of their rights, and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in November 1989 recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars illegal and criminal.
As for me, these crimes of the Soviet government do not have a statute of limitations and are no different from the Nazi Holocaust - he also chose an "objectionable people" for himself and tried to destroy both him and all memory of him.
The good thing is that the USSR itself recognized these actions as crimes. The bad thing is that now there has been a turn back - many from Russia are now again looking at Stalin's deeds and shouting "Crimea is ours!" and "we can repeat" - apparently, these are the descendants of those who once built concentration camps for the Crimean Tatars and stood at checkpoints with machine guns ...
Write in the comments what you think about all this.
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The mass return of the Crimean Tatars began with the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 666 of July 11, 1990. According to it, Crimean Tatars could receive land plots and building materials in Crimea free of charge, but at the same time they could sell previously received land plots with houses in Uzbekistan, so migration in the period before the collapse of the USSR brought Crimean Tatars great economic benefits.
Finally, in November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as "illegal and criminal."
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in its Decree No. 493 of September 5, 1967 “On citizens of Tatar nationality living in Crimea” recognized that “after the liberation of Crimea from Nazi occupation in 1944, the facts of active cooperation with the German invaders of a certain part of the Tatars living in Crimea were unreasonably attributed to the entire Tatar population of Crimea.
Only on April 28, 1956, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Crimean Tatars were released from administrative supervision and the special settlement regime, but without the right to return property and return to Crimea.
The bulk of able-bodied migrants were sent to work both in agriculture and in industry and construction. The shortage of labor during the war was felt almost everywhere, especially in the collection and processing of cotton. The work that the special settlers received, as a rule, was hard, and often dangerous to life and health. More than a thousand of them, for example, worked at the ozocerite mine in the village of Shorsu, Fergana region. Crimean Tatars were sent to build the Nizhne-Bozsu and Farkhad hydroelectric power stations, they worked on the repair of the Tashkent railway, at industrial plants, and chemical enterprises. Living conditions in many areas were unsatisfactory. People were housed in stables, sheds, basements and other unequipped premises. Unaccustomed climate, constant malnutrition led to the spread of malaria and gastrointestinal diseases. Only from June to December 1944, 10.1 thousand special settlers from the Crimea died from illness and exhaustion in Uzbekistan, that is, about 7% of the number of arrivals.
“It is interesting that initially Uzbekistan agreed to accept only 70 thousand Crimean Tatars, but later it had to “reconsider” its plans and agree with the figure of 180 thousand people, for which purpose a department of special settlements was organized in the republican NKVD, which was supposed to prepare 359 special settlements and 97 commandant's offices. And although the time of the resettlement of the Crimean Tatars, in comparison with other peoples, was relatively comfortable, however, the data on morbidity and high mortality speak quite expressively about what they had to do in a new place: about 16 thousand back in 1944 and about 13 thousand in 1945,” says Pavel Polyan’s book “Not of my own free will…”
The transfer of 71 trains to the east took about 20 days. In a telegram dated June 8, 1944, addressed to Lavrentiy Beria, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Uzbek SSR Yuldash Babadzhanov reported: “I report on the completion of the reception of echelons and the resettlement of special settlers of the Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek SSR ... In total, special settlers of families were accepted and settled in Uzbekistan - 33,775, people - 151,529, including men - 27,558, women - 55,684, children - 68,287. 191 people died on the way in all echelons. Settled by regions: Tashkent - 56,362 people. Samarkand - 31,540, Andijan - 19,630, Fergana - 19,630, Namangan - 13,804, Kashka-Darya - 10,171, Bukhara - 3983 people. The resettlement was mainly carried out in state farms, collective farms and industrial enterprises, in empty premises and due to the compaction of local residents ... The unloading of the trains and the resettlement of the special settlers took place in an organized manner. There were no incidents."
A group of Crimean Tatars who arbitrarily seized land on the collective farm "Ukraine" in the Bakhchisarai region, 1989
Valery Shustov/RIA NovostiAfter the eviction of the Crimean Tatars, according to the commission of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, there remained: 25561 houses, 18736 household plots, 15000 outbuildings, cattle and birds: 10700 cows, 886 young animals, 4,139 calves, 44,000 sheep and goats, 4,450 horses. 43 207 pcs. Total dishes and other various products 420,000.
As indicated in the book by Natalia Kiseleva and Andrey Malgin "Ethno-political processes in the Crimea: historical experience, modern problems and prospects for their solution", special orders were issued along the fronts for the dismissal of the Crimean Tatars from the Red Army, who were also sent to a special settlement. The rank and file and sergeants, most of the junior officers, underwent this fate. Only senior officers, as a rule, did not leave the army and continued to be at the front until the end of the war.
Taking into account the former military personnel, the total number of migrants - the Crimean Tatars - was over 200 thousand people.
Following the Tatars, on the basis of GKO resolution No. 5984ss of June 2, 1944, 15,040 Greeks, 12,422 Bulgarians, 9,621 Armenians, 1,119 Germans, Italians and Romanians, 105 Turks, 16 Iranians, etc. were evicted from the Crimea to the republics of Central Asia and regions of the RSFSR. (total 41,854 people). In total, by the end of 1945, according to the NKVD of the USSR, there were 967,085 families in the special settlement in the amount of 2,342,506 people.
“In addition, the Crimean military commissariats mobilized 6,000 Tatars of draft age, who are sent to Guryev, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev according to the orders of the Red Army Head Office of Provisions. Of the 8,000 special settlers sent on your instructions to the Moskvugol trust, 5,000 are also Tatars. In total, 191,044 persons of Tatar nationality were taken out of the Crimean ASSR,- also noted in the report of Kobulov and Serov.
As the leaders of the operation noted in their report, during the eviction, 1,137 "anti-Soviet elements" were arrested, for a total of 5,989 people. 10 mortars, 173 machine guns, 192 machine guns, 2,650 rifles, 46,603 kg of ammunition were seized.
On May 20, State Security Commissars Kobulov and Serov reported to Beria: “The operation to evict the Crimean Tatars, which began on May 18 on your instructions, ended today at 4 p.m. 180,014 people were evicted, loaded into 67 echelons, of which 63 echelons of 173,287 people were sent to their destination, the remaining 4 echelons will be sent today.”
As in the case of the eviction of the Kalmyks, when the measures taken against the people did not affect some high-ranking representatives, for example, General Oka Gorodovikov, a number of Crimean Tatars, who managed to become famous on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, escaped deportation. First of all, we are talking, of course, about the outstanding military pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1943, 1945) Ahmet Khan Sultan and his classmate Emir Usein Chalbash.
“On the eve of the liberation of Crimea by the Soviet troops, the Germans tried to steal my father to work in Germany, but he fled, then hid, and on May 18, 1944, the NKVD troops expelled him,” TASS quoted Crimean Tatar Rustem Emirov as saying. “They didn’t explain anything to anyone, for what and why they were being expelled. From the mother’s side and from the father’s side during the Great Patriotic War, she and my uncles went missing, where they are buried is still unknown.”
From the book of the historian Kurtiev: “According to the official documents of the State Defense Committee of the USSR, the material and medical support along the route and in the places of special settlements was sufficient. However, in reality, according to the recollections of the deported Crimean Tatars themselves, living conditions, food, clothing, medical care, etc. were horrendous, which caused mass deaths of people in special settlements.
It was so crowded that people could not stretch their legs. Fires were lit at stops, and water was sought. The trains left without notice. Someone, having taken water, managed to return, run to the car, someone did not and disappeared without a trace. Those who died on the road were thrown out along the train, not allowing them to be buried.
In turn, Beria sent a telegram to Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in which he reported on the progress of the deportation. Here is what followed from the text: “The NKVD reports that today, May 18, an operation has begun to evict the Crimean Tatars. 90,000 people have already been brought to the railway loading stations, 48,400 people have been loaded and sent to the places of new resettlement, and 25 echelons are being loaded. There were no incidents during the operation. The operation continues."
Bogdan Kobulov and Ivan Serov telegraphed their boss Lavrenty Beria about the progress of the operation.
“In pursuance of your instruction, today, on May 18 of this year, at dawn, an operation was launched to evict the Crimean Tatars. As of 20:00, 90,000 people were brought to the loading stations, of which 17 echelons were loaded and 48,000 people were sent to their destinations. There are 25 echelons under loading. There were no incidents during the operation. The operation continues,” the security officers wrote.
“During the eviction, our train stood for a long time at the Seitler station,” recalled Dzhafer Kurtseitov. - Apparently, he was one of the last, so he was slaughtered by people who were caught in different places. War invalids were thrown into it, who were drawn to their native villages after the liberation of Crimea, like our uncle Benseit Yagyaev, who served in the aviation, who arrived from the hospital on May 17, and on May 18, together with everyone else, was thrown into the cattle car of our train.
As Osmanova recalled, the soldiers explained to some that they were not being taken to be shot, but would be evicted. But their family was evicted so cruelly that they were not even allowed to take anything with them, except for one bag of wheat. All the way they ate this wheat.
“On May 18, 1944, at dawn, a strong knock woke up the whole family, this is the Crimean Tatar Ninel Osmanova. - Mom did not have time to jump out of bed, as the doors swung open - and Soviet soldiers with machine guns in their hands ordered to go out into the yard. Mom began to collect crying children, and soldiers with rifles began to push us out of the house. Mom thought we were being shot. When we went out into the yard, there was a cart, we were seated and taken outside the village to a hollow. Our fellow villagers with their families were already sitting there.”
“In conditions of extreme insufficiency of food, drinking water, lack of sanitary conditions, people fell ill, died of hunger and mass infectious diseases. In the first year, my younger sister Shekure Ibragimova died of starvation and inhuman conditions, she was 6 years old. In September 1944, I fell ill with malaria,” Urie Borsaitova shared her experience.
“People died of starvation, illness, lack of medical care along the way, suffered moral suffering,” recalled Crimean Tatar Urie Borsaitova, quoted by krymr.com, in 2009. She and her numerous relatives were taken away from the station in Evpatoria. — The walls and floors of the cattle cars were dirty and smelled of manure. Up to 45-50 people or 8-10 families of Crimean Tatars were placed in one car. The echelon after 19 days of travel arrived at the Hungry Steppe station. We were sent to the place of settlement - the collective farm of Kirov, Mirzachul district, Tashkent region, UzSSR. Our family was settled in an old dugout without windows and doors, the roof was made of reeds.”
“Our eviction was carefully prepared in advance so that even neighbors and relatives would not end up in the same destination. So, already when boarding trucks and at the railway station in the cars, everyone was thoroughly mixed with different villages. Even our own grandmother was placed in another car, saying that they would meet on the spot, ”witnesses said.
Son of World War I veteran Jafer Kurtseitov, who was a teenager at the time of deportation: “Accustomed to executions and destruction during the German occupation, people thought of the worst. They took the Koran with them and prayed. After all, yesterday everyone was happy to meet the soldiers of the liberators, treated them to what they had.
Let us again turn to the work of local historian Kurtiev “Deportation. How it was”: “Old men, women and children, pushed with butts, were herded into dirty freight cars, the windows of which were shrouded in barbed wire. Inside the wagons were equipped with 2-tiered wooden bunks. There were no toilets or water."
In case of disobedience, people are beaten without ceremony. Armed resistance, as in other similar operations, ended with the liquidation of the "rebel" on the spot.
A fighter of the 222nd separate rifle battalion of the 25th rifle brigade of the NKVD troops, Alexei Vesnin, who was 19 years old at the time of the operation, subsequently wrote his memoirs about the events, published under the title "Following the order."
“At four in the morning, they started the operation. We went into the houses, raised the hosts from the bed and announced: “In the name of Soviet power! For treason, you are deported to other regions of the Soviet Union. People perceived this team with humble humility, ”said Vesnin.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
The first batches of people are collected outside the villages, where trucks have already been brought. Women, old people and children, who barely had time to get dressed and hastily collect the most necessary things, are put in a truck and taken to the nearest railway stations. Trains are waiting there, surrounded by armed fighters.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
It should be noted that officially - according to the GKO decree of May 11, special settlers were allowed to take with them personal belongings, clothes, household equipment, dishes and food in the amount of up to 500 kg per family. Who is deliberately distorting the facts here? Most likely, as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Those who survived the deportation often said that in reality the authorities did not always follow their own decrees ...
However, the former NKVD officer Vesnin cited somewhat different information. According to him, they still had two hours for the training, and each family was allowed to take 200 kg of cargo with them.
Crimean Tatars are subject to even harsher conditions than other deported peoples. So, no more than 10-15 minutes are allotted for the fees. It is allowed to take bundles weighing no more than 10-15 kg with you.
Sleepy citizens are forced to open doors and let intruders into their homes. Officers cross the threshold, accompanied by soldiers.
"In the name of the Soviet government, for treason to the Motherland, you are being evicted to other regions of the Soviet Union,"- with such a phrase, according to the historian Kurtiev, the head of each group invariably "welcomed" the astonished owners of the dwelling.
This is how Alexei Vesnin, a fighter of the 222nd separate rifle battalion of the 25th rifle brigade of the NKVD troops, recalled the beginning of the operation, whom in his work “Deportation. How it was,” historian Kurtiev quoted: “We walked for several hours and early in the morning on May 18 we reached the village of Oisul in the steppe. Around the village put up 6 light machine guns.
The operation to expel Crimean Tatars from Crimea has begun! Groups of NKVD officers and soldiers that have accumulated in settlements go home and hit the doors and windows with rifle butts to wake people up.
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The word to the Crimean Tatar historian Refat Kurtiev: “19 thousand people assisting the NKVD, 30 thousand employees of the NKVD and the NKGB were involved in the action. The operatives were assisted by about 100 thousand servicemen of the Soviet army. For the mobile execution of the order, troikas were formed from the attracted military resources: three servicemen were assigned to one operative. Thus, for one Crimean Tatar, whether he was an old man or a baby, there were more than one punisher.
public domain
Some researchers assure that in some settlements the Chekists and soldiers began to implement the eviction late in the evening of May 17 and diligently "worked" all night. Allegedly, in Simferopol, the first places of the operation were Grazhdanskaya Street and the nearby streets of Krasnaya Gorka. Then came the turn of the inhabitants of Simeiz. One of the sources gives a story about the deportation in the village of Ak-Bash, where the NKVD and NKGB officers arrived in five trucks.
“Who fries meat, who fries potatoes, who pasties. And the soldiers are so happy, during the three years of the war, each of them missed home-cooked food, ”sabe Useinova, a local resident, recalled.
At 7 pm, well-fed Red Army soldiers "scattered" around the village, driving people out into the street with butts, and Sabe's husband stood with his hands up. Then they drove everyone to the village square, loaded them into cars, and until dawn on May 18 they were not allowed to leave them. Well, then everything went on, as everywhere else.
In the autumn of 1917, the Crimean Tatar nationalists united in the Milli Firka party fiercely fought against the Red Guard detachments trying to establish Soviet power in the Crimea. Perhaps the reasons for antagonism should be sought in the revolutionary events too. You can read about how the power of the Soviets was proclaimed on the peninsula in Gazety.Ru.
Kurtiev: “When thousands of sons of the Crimean Tatar people fought and died on the fronts of the Patriotic War and in the occupation, Crimea still smelled of the burning of burned villages, the tears of mothers did not dry for the dead, tortured, shot, burned and driven away children to Germany, when there were still battles for the complete liberation of the Crimea from the Nazis, the Soviet punishers were preparing the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
The Crimean Tatar local historian Refat Kurtiev, who devoted many years to studying the problem, noted that a significant part of the population actually fought the Germans in the same way as other peoples of the USSR. “The war came to the Crimean peninsula on June 22, 1941 at 03:13 with the bombing of Sevastopol. The German army, after 3 months of battles with the Soviet army, approached Perekop. Soon the Crimea was occupied (October 18, 1941-May 14, 1944), the researcher wrote in his book Deportation. How it was". “During this period, the Crimean Tatar people fully experienced all the horrors of the war: 40,000 went to the front, the Nazis burned more than 80 Crimean Tatar villages, 20,000 young people were driven to Germany (2,300 of them were in German camps). By the time of the liberation of Crimea, 598 partisans of the Crimean Tatars were fighting the fascist invaders in the forests.
“The deportations caused significant damage to the country’s economy: the work of many enterprises was suspended, entire agricultural regions fell into disrepair, the traditions of transhumance, terraced farming, etc. were lost. The psychology of the deported peoples, their attitude to the socialist system, underwent a radical change, international ties collapsed,” - noted the historian Nikolai Bugay in his book "Joseph Stalin - Lavrenty Beria:" They must be deported.
Already after the Great Patriotic War, in March 1949, the power structures of the USSR began to implement Operation Surf to deport residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who were found to have links with the nationalist underground. Nearly 100,000 anti-Soviet citizens of the Baltic states were forcibly evicted from their usual places to Siberia.
Gazeta.Ru wrote about these events in.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
At the end of December last year, 75 years have passed since the forced deportation of the Kalmyks, who were severely punished by the Soviet authorities for the collaborationism of individual representatives of the people during the German occupation. Over 90,000 people were put into railway cattle cars in a few hours and sent from Kalmykia to Siberia and Central Asia. By the summer of 1944, the total number of evicted people had grown to 120,000 due to Kalmyks from other regions and the military.
tuva.asia
The security services began to expel the Crimean Tatars from their homes at dawn on May 18. In the meantime, we have a night, we remember other peoples who shared the same fate a little earlier.
In the late stages of the Great Patriotic War, in 1943-1944, forced deportations of entire peoples to remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred one after another. Previously, Gazeta.Ru, as Karachays were expelled from their original habitats in the North Caucasus on charges of collaborationism.
The official view of the events of 75 years ago is currently undergoing serious adjustments. So, in early May, it was announced that a section on the collaborationism of the Crimean Tatars during the Nazi occupation would be cut out of the textbook on the history of Crimea for grade 10. The Republican Ministry of Education and Science explained that the corresponding decision was made "in order to relieve social tension." Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrenty Beria, Matvey Shkiryatov (front row from right to left), Georgy Malenkov and Andrei Zhdanov (second row from right to left) at a joint meeting of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities of the 1st session of the USSR Supreme Council of the 1st convocation, 1938
RIA News"On May 13, a commission of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR arrived in Crimea to organize the reception of household property, livestock, and agricultural products from special settlers. To help the members of the commission, local authorities allocated up to 20 thousand people from among the party and economic activists of cities and regions for practical work on accounting and protecting the property left behind. The commission developed an instruction containing a list and the number of essential items that a special settler could take with him, although in practice the requirements of the instruction were often not followed. Dozens of freight trains were formed at railway stations. Convoys were drawn to areas densely populated by Crimean Tatars for the subsequent transportation of the evicted to the places of landing in trains. Parts of the internal troops were dispersed in settlements to organize the dispatch of people and the subsequent cleansing of the territory. In the mountainous forest area, SMERSH operatives completed the last searches. According to Djilas, in 1943 or 1944, Stalin complained to Tito that US President Franklin Roosevelt was demanding that he create a kind of enclave of the Jewish diaspora in Crimea in exchange for Lend-Lease supplies. Allegedly, without appropriate guarantees from Stalin on this issue, the Americans even refused to open a second front. In general, the head of the Soviet state had no choice but to liberate the Crimea for the Jews, for which it was necessary to evict the Tatars. It is alleged that the leaders of the United States and the USSR seriously discussed the candidacy of the head of the future territorial entity. Allegedly, Roosevelt insisted on Solomon Mikhoels, while Stalin offered his longtime and faithful ally Lazar Kaganovich for this role.
Considering the foregoing, the State Defense Committee decided:
“All Tatars should be evicted from the territory of Crimea and settled permanently as special settlers in the regions of the Uzbek SSR. The eviction is to be assigned to the NKVD of the USSR. Oblige the NKVD of the USSR (comrade Beria) to complete the eviction of the Crimean Tatars by June 1, 1944.
It sounded like a sentence!
“During the Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars betrayed their homeland, deserted from the Red Army units defending the Crimea, and went over to the side of the enemy, joined the volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans, who fought against the Red Army; during the occupation of the Crimea by the Nazi troops, participating in the German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars were especially distinguished by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German invaders in organizing the forcible deportation of Soviet citizens into German slavery and the mass extermination of Soviet people, - it was said in the GKO resolution signed by its chairman Joseph Stalin. - The Crimean Tatars actively cooperated with the German occupation authorities, participating in the so-called "Tatar national committees" organized by German intelligence and were widely used by the Germans to send spies and saboteurs to the rear of the Red Army. The “Tatar National Committees”, in which the White Guard-Tatar emigrants played the main role, with the support of the Crimean Tatars, directed their activities to the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and carried out work to prepare for the forcible secession of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of the German armed forces.
tuva.asia
As indicated in the collection of the Russian historian, the largest specialist in deportations in the USSR Nikolai Bugay "Joseph Stalin - Lavrentiy Beria:" They must be deported", events in the Crimean ASSR developed in a difficult environment. “The active actions of nationalist elements contributed to the fact that during the war years many of the Crimean Tatars were in the service of the enemy, supported him, although a significant part of the Tatar population was loyal to the Soviet government,” the book notes. - Measures aimed at preventing hostile actions of nationalists, according to government services, were not enough, and on May 11, 1944, the State Defense Committee adopted resolution No. 5859ss on the eviction of the Crimean Tatars. The commissioners of state security Bogdan Kobulov and Ivan Serov were appointed the leaders of the operation.
According to the NKVD, sent to the head of the Soviet state, Joseph Stalin, 183,155 people were evicted. Some Crimean Tatar organizations give a fundamentally different figure - 423,100 inhabitants, of which 377,300 were women and children. According to various estimates, as a result of the deportation, from 34 to almost 200 thousand people died. After the deportation of the Crimean Tatars as a result of the abolition of the Crimean ASSR on June 30, 1945, the Crimean region was formed.
On May 18, 1944, the forced expulsion of the Crimean Tatar population of the Crimean ASSR to Central Asia and remote regions of the RSFSR began by the NKVD and the NKGB. As in the case of the deportation of other peoples accused of collaborating with the German occupiers and collaborating during the Great Patriotic War, the operation was developed and personally supervised by one of the leaders of the Soviet special services, Lavrenty Beria. Gazeta.Ru reproduces the tragic page of the Stalin era in historical online.
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The deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the last year of the Great Patriotic War was a mass eviction of local residents of Crimea to a number of regions of the Uzbek SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Mari ASSR and other republics of the Soviet Union.
This happened immediately after the liberation of the peninsula from the Nazi invaders. The official reason for the action was the criminal assistance of many thousands of Tatars to the occupiers.
Crimean collaborators
The eviction was carried out under the control of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in May 1944. The order to deport the Tatars, allegedly members of the collaborationist groups during the occupation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was signed by Stalin shortly before that, on May 11th. Beria substantiated the reasons:
Desertion of 20 thousand Tatars from the army during the period 1941-1944;
- the unreliability of the Crimean population, especially pronounced in the border areas;
- a threat to the security of the Soviet Union due to collaborationist actions and anti-Soviet sentiments of the Crimean Tatars;
- the deportation of 50 thousand civilians to Germany with the assistance of the Crimean Tatar committees.
In May 1944, the government of the Soviet Union did not yet have all the figures regarding the real situation in the Crimea. After the defeat of Hitler and the calculation of losses, it became known that 85.5 thousand newly minted "slaves" of the Third Reich were actually stolen to Germany only from among the civilian population of Crimea.
Almost 72 thousand were executed with the direct participation of the so-called "Noise". Schuma is an auxiliary police, but in fact - punitive Crimean Tatar battalions subordinate to the Nazis. Of these 72,000, 15,000 communists were brutally tortured in the largest concentration camp in Crimea, the former Krasnoy collective farm.
Main allegations
After the retreat, the Nazis took part of the collaborators with them to Germany. Subsequently, a special SS regiment was formed from among them. The other part (5,381 people) were arrested by the security officers after the liberation of the peninsula. Many weapons were seized during the arrests. The government was afraid of an armed rebellion of the Tatars because of their proximity to Turkey (the latter Hitler hoped to draw into the war with the communists).
According to the research of the Russian scientist, professor of history Oleg Romanko, during the war years, 35,000 Crimean Tatars helped the Nazis in one way or another: they served in the German police, participated in executions, handed over communists, etc. For this, even distant relatives of traitors were supposed to be exiled and confiscate property.
The main argument in favor of the rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar population and its return to their historical homeland was that the deportation was actually carried out not on the basis of the real deeds of specific people, but on a national basis.
Even those who did not contribute to the Nazis were sent into exile. At the same time, 15% of Tatar men fought alongside other Soviet citizens in the Red Army. In the partisan detachments, 16% were Tatars. Their families were also deported. Stalin's fears that the Crimean Tatars might succumb to pro-Turkish sentiments, revolt and end up on the side of the enemy were reflected in this mass character.
The government wanted to eliminate the threat from the south as quickly as possible. The eviction was carried out urgently, in freight cars. On the way, many died due to crowding, lack of food and drinking water. In total, about 190 thousand Tatars were deported from Crimea during the war. 191 Tatars died during transportation. Another 16 thousand died in new places of residence from mass starvation in 1946-1947.
