Resettlement of the Crimean Tatars in 1944. Deportation of the Crimean Tatars: what is hidden behind the passage of years
The forced eviction of the Crimean Tatar population took place on May 18, 1944. It was on this day that employees of the punitive body of the NKVD came to Crimean Tatar houses and announced to the owners that because of treason they would be evicted from Crimea. By order of Stalin, hundreds of thousands of families were sent in trains to Central Asia. During the period of forced deportation, about half of the displaced people died, a third of them were children under 14 years of age.
Therefore, Ukrinform infographics dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide - the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people from Crimea.
Spring 1944: chronology of events
April 8-13 - operation of Soviet troops to expel the Nazi occupiers from the territory of the Crimean Peninsula;
April 22 - in a memo addressed to Lavrentiy Beria, the Crimean Tatars were accused of mass desertion from the ranks of the Red Army;
May 10 - Beria, in a letter to Stalin, proposed to evict the Crimean Tatar population to Uzbekistan, citing accusations of “treasonous actions” Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people" and "the undesirability of the further residence of the Crimean Tatars on the border outskirts of the Soviet Union";
May 11 - secret resolution of the State Defense Committee No. 5859ss “On the Crimean Tatars” was adopted. It made unfounded claims against the Crimean Tatar population - such as mass betrayal and mass collaboration - which became the justification for the deportation. In fact, there is no evidence of “mass desertion” of the Crimean Tatars.
“Detatarization” of Crimea by the punitive bodies of the NKVD:
32 thousand NKVD officers were involved in the operation;
deportees were given anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour to get ready;
it was allowed to take with you personal belongings, dishes, household equipment and provisions up to 500 kg per family (in fact, 20-30 kg of things and food);
the Crimean Tatar population was sent in trains under escort to places of exile;
the property abandoned was confiscated by the state.
Number of Crimean Tatar population deported from Crimea:
183 thousand people in the general special settlement;
6 thousand to reserve management camps;
6 thousand in the Gulag;
5 thousand special contingent for the Moscow Coal Trust;
only 200 thousand people.
Also among the adult special settlers were 2,882 Russians, Ukrainians, Gypsies, Karaites and representatives of other nationalities.
Geography of settlement of the Kyryml:
More than 2/3 of the evicted Crimean Tatars were sent to the Uzbek SSR. The first 7 trains with deportees arrived in Uzbekistan on June 1, 1944, the next day - 24; June 5 - 44; June 7 - 54 trains. All of them were sent to Tashkent region - 56 thousand 641, Samarkand region - 31 thousand 604, Andijan region - 19 thousand 773, Fergana region - 16 thousand, Namangan region - 13 thousand 431, Kashkadarya region - 10 thousand, Bukhara region - 4 thousand. Human.
In total, 35 thousand 275 families of Crimean Tatars were deported to the Uzbek SSR.
Crimean Tatars also arrived in the Kazakh SSR - 2 thousand 426 people, the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - 284, the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - 93 people, in the Gorky region of Russia - 2 thousand 376 people, as well as Molotov - 10 thousand, Sverdlovsk - 3 thousand 591 people, Ivankovo region - 548, Kostroma region - 6 thousand 338 people.
According to researchers, human losses during the transport of Crimean Tatars by train to the east amounted to 7,889 people. The certificate on the movement of special settlers in Crimea in 1944-1946 noted that in the first period, 44 thousand 887 people died among them, that is, 19.6%.
Consequences of deportation
The deportation led to catastrophic consequences for the Crimean Tatars in places of exile. A significant number of deportees (estimated from 15 to 46%) died of hunger and disease in the first winter of 1944-45.
As a result of the deportation, the following were confiscated from the Crimean Tatars: more than 80 thousand houses, more than 34 thousand personal houses, about 500 thousand heads of livestock, all supplies of food, seeds, seedlings, pet food, building materials, tens of thousands of tons of agricultural products . 112 personal libraries were liquidated, 646 libraries in primary schools and 221 in secondary schools. In villages, 360 reading rooms ceased to operate, in cities and regional centers - more than 9 thousand schools and 263 clubs. Mosques were closed in Yevpatoria, Bakhchisarai, Sevastopol, Feodosia, Chernomorskoye and in many villages.
On May 18, 1944, the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people began.
The deportation operation began in the early morning of May 18, 1944 and ended at 16:00 on May 20. To carry it out, the punitive authorities needed only 60 hours and over 70 trains, each of which had 50 cars. To carry it out, NKVD troops of more than 32 thousand people were involved.
The deportees were given anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour to get ready, after which they were transported by truck to the railway stations. From there, trains with escorts were sent to places of exile. According to eyewitnesses, those who resisted or could not go were often shot on the spot. On the road, the exiles were fed rarely and often with salty food, after which they became thirsty. In some trains, the exiles received food on the first and second last time in the second week of the journey. The dead were hastily buried next to the railroad tracks or not buried at all.
Officially, the grounds for deportation were declared to be the mass desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army in 1941 (the number was said to be about 20 thousand people), the good reception of German troops and the active participation of the Crimean Tatars in the formations of the German army, SD, police, gendarmerie, apparatus prisons and camps. At the same time, deportation didn't touch most Crimean Tatar collaborators, since the bulk of them were evacuated by the Germans to Germany. Those who remained in Crimea were identified by the NKVD during the “cleansing operations” in April-May 1944 and condemned as traitors to the homeland. For those who say that all Crimean Tatars were traitors and collaborators of the fascists, I will give some numbers.
Crimean Tatars who fought in the Red Army were also subject to deportation after demobilization. In total, in 1945-1946, 8,995 Crimean Tatar war veterans were sent to deportation sites, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants. In 1952 (after the famine of 1945 that claimed many lives), in Uzbekistan alone, according to the NKVD, there were 6,057 war participants, many of whom had high government awards.
From the memories of survivors of deportation:
“In the morning, instead of a greeting, a choice curse and a question: are there any corpses? People cling to the dead, cry, and do not give up. The soldiers throw the bodies of adults out of doors, children - out of windows... "
“There was no medical care. The dead were taken out of the carriage and left at the station, not allowed to be buried.”
“There was no question of medical care. People drank water from reservoirs and stocked up from there for future use. There was no way to boil water. People began to suffer from dysentery, typhoid fever, malaria, scabies, and lice overwhelmed everyone. It was hot and I was constantly thirsty. The dead were left on the road, no one buried them.”
“After several days of travel, the dead were taken out of our carriage: an old woman and a little boy. The train stopped at small stops to leave the dead. ... They didn’t let me bury him.”
“My grandmother, brothers and sisters died in the first months of deportation, before the end of 1944. Mom lay unconscious in such heat with her dead brother for three days. Until the adults saw her.”
A significant number of migrants, exhausted after three years of living in German-occupied Crimea, died in places of deportation from hunger and disease in 1944-45 due to the lack of normal living conditions (in the first years people lived in barracks and dugouts, did not have sufficient food and access to health care). Estimates of the death toll during this period vary widely, from 15-25% according to estimates by various Soviet official bodies to 46% according to estimates by activists of the Crimean Tatar movement who collected information about the dead in the 1960s. Thus, according to the OSP of the UzSSR, only “in 6 months of 1944, that is, from the moment of arrival in the UzSSR until the end of the year, 16,052 people died. (10.6%)."
For 12 years until 1956, the Crimean Tatars had the status of special settlers, which implied various restrictions on their rights, in particular a ban on unauthorized (without written permission from the special commandant’s office) crossing the border of a special settlement and criminal punishment for its violation. There are numerous cases where people were sentenced to many years (up to 25 years) in camps for visiting relatives in neighboring villages, the territory of which belonged to another special settlement.
The Crimean Tatars were not just evicted. They were subjected to the deliberate creation of such living conditions for them that were calculated for the complete or partial physical and moral destruction of the people so that the world would forget about them, and they themselves would forget which clan-tribe they belonged to and in no way thought about returning to their native lands.
The total deportation of the Crimean Tatars was the greatest betrayal on the part of the Soviet government, since the bulk of the male population of the Crimean Tatars, drafted into the army, continued to fight on the fronts at that time for the same Soviet power. About 60 thousand Crimean Tatars were called to the front in 1941, 36 thousand died defending the USSR. In addition, 17 thousand Crimean Tatar boys and girls became activists partisan movement, 7 thousand - participated in underground work.
The Nazis burned 127 Crimean Tatar villages because their residents assisted the partisans, 12 thousand Crimean Tatars were killed for resisting the occupation regime, and more than 20 thousand were forcibly taken to Germany.
Crimean Tatars who fought in Red Army units were also subject to deportation after demobilization and returning home to Crimea from the front. Crimean Tatars who did not live in Crimea during the occupation and who managed to return to Crimea by May 18, 1944 were also deported. In 1949, there were 8,995 Crimean Tatars who participated in the war in the places of deportation, including 524 officers and 1,392 sergeants.
According to final data, 193,865 Crimean Tatars (more than 47 thousand families) were deported from Crimea.
After the deportations in Crimea, two decrees of 1945 and 1948 renamed settlements whose names were of Crimean Tatar, German, Greek, Armenian origin (in total, more than 90% of the settlements of the peninsula). The Crimean ASSR was transformed into the Crimean region. The autonomous status of Crimea was restored only in 1991.
Unlike many other deported peoples who returned to their homeland in the late 1950s, the Crimean Tatars were formally deprived of this right until 1974, and in fact - until 1989. The mass return of people to Crimea began only at the end of Perestroika.
GENERAL RESULTS OF DEPORTATION:
The Crimean Tatar people lost:
- native land, in which the ancestors, developing the land, formed as a nationality from the 13th century, calling their region in their native language Crimea, and themselves Crimean Tatars;
- monuments material culture, created by the hands of talented representatives of the people over many centuries.
The following were liquidated from the Crimean Tatar people:
- primary and secondary schools teaching in their native language;
- higher and intermediate educational establishments, special and vocational, technical schools with teaching in their native language;
- national ensembles, theaters and studios;
- newspapers, publishing houses, radio broadcasting and other national bodies and institutions (Unions of Writers, Journalists, Artists);
- research institutes and institutions for the study of the Crimean Tatar language, literature, art and folk art.
The following were destroyed among the Crimean Tatar people:
- cemeteries and ancestral graves with gravestones and inscriptions;
- monuments and mausoleums historical figures people.
The following were taken away from the Crimean Tatar people:
- national museums and libraries with tens of thousands of volumes in the native language;
- clubs, reading rooms, houses of worship - mosques and madrassas.
The history of the formation of the Crimean Tatar people as a nationality was falsified and the original toponymy was destroyed:
- the names of cities and villages, streets and neighborhoods have been renamed, geographical names localities, etc.;
- folk legends and other types of folk art created over centuries by the ancestors of the Crimean Tatars have been altered and appropriated.
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The mass return of the Crimean Tatars began with the resolution 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 for free, but at the same time they could sell previously received plots with houses in Uzbekistan, so migration in the period before the collapse of the USSR brought great economic benefits to the Crimean Tatars.
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, 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 special settlers received was, as a rule, difficult, and often dangerous to life and health. More than a thousand of them, for example, worked at an ozokerite mine in the village of Shorsu, Fergana region. The 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, barns, basements and other unequipped premises. The unusual climate and constant malnutrition led to the spread of malaria and gastrointestinal diseases. From June to December 1944 alone, 10.1 thousand special settlers from Crimea died from disease and exhaustion in Uzbekistan, that is, about 7% of those who arrived.
“It is interesting that initially Uzbekistan agreed to host 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 special settlements department was organized in the republican NKVD, which was to prepare 359 special settlements and 97 commandant's offices. And although the time of resettlement of the Crimean Tatars, in comparison with other peoples, was relatively comfortable, the data on morbidity and high mortality speak quite clearly about what it was like for them in the new place: about 16 thousand back in 1944 and about 13 thousand. in 1945,” notes Pavel Polyan’s book “Not of my own free will...”
The transfer of 71 echelons to the east took about 20 days. In a telegram dated June 8, 1944 addressed to Lavrentia Beria, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Uzbek SSR Yuldash Babajanov reported: “I am reporting on the completion of the reception of trains and the resettlement of special settlers of the Crimean Tatars in the Uzbek SSR... In total, special settlers of families were accepted and resettled in Uzbekistan - 33,775 people - 151,529, including men - 27,558, women - 55,684, children - 68,287. 191 people died en route in all echelons. Distributed by region: Tashkent - 56,362 people. Samarkand - 31,540, Andijan - 19,630, Fergana - 19,630, Namangan - 13,804, Kashka-Darya - 10,171, Bukhara - 3,983 people. The resettlement was mainly carried out on 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 special settlers took place in an orderly 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: 25,561 houses, 18,736 personal plots, 15,000 outbuildings, cattle and poultry: 10,700 cows, 886 young animals, 4,139 calves, 44,000 sheep and goats, 4,450 horses. 43,207 pcs. The total number of dishes and other various products is 420,000.
As indicated in the book by Natalya Kiseleva and Andrey Malgin “Ethnopolitical processes in Crimea: historical experience, modern problems and the prospects for their solution,” special orders were issued on the fronts for the dismissal of Crimean Tatars from the ranks of the Red Army, who were also sent to a special settlement. Private and non-commissioned officers, and most junior officers, suffered 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 former military personnel, the total number of displaced Crimean Tatars amounted to 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 the region 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, numbering 2,342,506 people.
“In addition, the regional military registration and enlistment offices of Crimea mobilized 6,000 Tatars of military age, who, according to the orders of the Head of the Red Army, are sent to Guryev, Rybinsk, Kuibyshev. Of the 8,000 special settlers sent on your instructions to the Moskvugol trust, 5,000 people are also Tatars. In total, 191,044 persons of Tatar nationality were taken out of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,”- 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, and a total of 5,989 people. 10 mortars, 173 machine guns, 192 machine guns, 2,650 rifles, and 46,603 kg of ammunition were seized.
On May 20, state security commissioners Kobulov and Serov reported to Beria: “The operation to evict the Crimean Tatars, which began with your instructions on May 18, ended today at 16:00. 180,014 people were evicted, loaded into 67 trains, of which 63 trains, numbering 173,287 people, were sent to their destination, the remaining 4 trains 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 Oku Gorodovikov, a number of Crimean Tatars who managed to become famous on the fronts of the Great War escaped deportation. Patriotic War. First of all, we are, of course, talking about the outstanding military pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1943, 1945) Akhmet Khan Sultan and his classmate Emir Usein Chalbash.
“On the eve of the liberation of Crimea by Soviet troops, the Germans tried to take my father to work in Germany, but he fled, then hid, and on May 18, 1944, the NKVD troops deported him,” TASS quotes Crimean Tatar Rustem Emirov as saying. “They didn’t explain anything to anyone about why or why they were expelling us.” On my mother’s side and on my father’s side, during the Great Patriotic War, her and my uncles went missing; where they are buried is still unknown.”
From the book of the historian Kurtiev: “According to official documents of the State Defense Committee of the USSR, material medical support along the route and in places of special settlements were sufficient. However, in reality, according to the recollections of the deported Crimean Tatars themselves, living conditions, food, clothing, medical care, etc. were horrific, which caused mass deaths of people in special settlements.”
It was so crowded that people could not stretch their legs. At stops they lit fires and looked for water. Trains left without announcement. Some people, having collected water, managed to return and run to the carriage, others did not and disappeared without a trace. Those who died on the road were thrown out along the train, without being allowed to bury.
In turn, Beria sent a telegram to Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in which he reported on the progress of the deportation. This is what followed from the text: “The NKVD reports that today, May 18, an operation to evict the Crimean Tatars has begun. 90,000 people have already been transported to the railway loading stations, 48,400 people have been loaded and sent to places of new settlement, and 25 trains are under loading. There were no incidents during the operation. The operation is ongoing."
Bogdan Kobulov and Ivan Serov telegraphed their boss Lavrentiy Beria about how the operation was progressing.
“In pursuance of your instructions, today, May 18 of this year, at dawn, an operation to evict the Crimean Tatars was launched. As of 20:00, 90,000 people were transported to the loading stations, of which 17 trains were loaded and 48,000 people were sent to their destinations. 25 trains are 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 Seitler station,” recalled Jafer Kurtseitov. - Apparently, he was one of the last, so he was slaughtered by people who were caught in different places. They threw war invalids into it, who were drawn to their native villages after the liberation of Crimea, like our uncle Benseit Yagyaev, who served in the aviation, arrived from the hospital on May 17, and on May 18, along with everyone else, was thrown into a 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 one bag of wheat. They ate this wheat all the way.
“On May 18, 1944, at dawn, a strong knock woke up the whole family - this is the Crimean Tatar Ninel Osmanova. “Mom didn’t have time to jump out of bed when the doors opened and Soviet soldiers with machine guns in their hands ordered us to go out into the yard. Mom began to gather the crying children, and soldiers with rifles began to push us out of the house. Mom thought they were going to shoot us. When we went out into the yard, there was a cart there, they put us in and took us out of the village into a ravine. Our fellow villagers and their families were already sitting there.”
“In conditions of extreme insufficiency of food, drinking water, and lack of sanitary conditions, people got sick, died of hunger and widespread infectious diseases. In the first year, my younger sister Shekure Ibragimova died from hunger and inhuman conditions; she was 6 years old. In September 1944, I fell ill with malaria,” Urie Borsaitova shared her experience.
“On the train’s route, people died from hunger, disease, lack of medical care, and experienced 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 Yevpatoria. — In the freight cars for transporting livestock, the walls and floors were dirty, and there was a smell of manure. Up to 45-50 people or 8-10 families of Crimean Tatars were placed in one carriage. After 19 days of travel, the train arrived at the Golodnaya Steppe station. We were sent to the place of settlement - the Kirov collective farm, Mirzachul district, Tashkent region, Uzbekistan. Our family was settled in an old dugout without windows or doors, the roof was made of reeds.”
“Our eviction was carefully prepared in advance in such a way that even neighbors and relatives did not end up at the same destination. So, already when boarding the trucks and at the railway station, everyone was carefully mixed with different villages. They even placed our own grandmother in another carriage, saying that they would meet us there,” eyewitnesses said.
The 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 about the worst. They took the Koran with them and prayed. After all, just yesterday everyone happily greeted the soldiers of the liberators and treated them to what they had.”
And again let us turn to the work of local historian Kurtiev “Deportation. How it happened”: “Elderly people, women and children, pushed with rifle butts, were driven into dirty freight cars, the windows of which were shrouded in barbed wire. Inside, the cars were equipped with 2-tier wooden bunks. There were no toilets or water.”
In case of disobedience, people are unceremoniously beaten. Armed resistance, as in other similar operations, ended with the liquidation of the “rebel” on the spot.
Aleksey Vesnin, a fighter of the 222nd separate rifle battalion of the 25th rifle brigade of the NKVD troops, who was 19 years old during the operation, subsequently wrote his memoirs about the events, published under the title “Fulfilling the order.”
“At four in the morning we started the operation. We entered houses, lifted the owners out of bed and announced: “In the name of Soviet power! For treason against the Motherland, you are deported to other regions of the Soviet Union.” People perceived this team with humble submission,” said Vesnin.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
The first batches of people are collected outside the villages, where trucks have already arrived. Having barely had time to dress and hastily collect the essentials, women, old people and children are put into the back and taken to the nearest railway stations. The trains are waiting there, surrounded by armed fighters.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
Let us note that officially, according to the State Defense Committee decree of May 11, special settlers were allowed to take with them personal belongings, clothing, household equipment, dishes and food in quantities 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, former NKVD employee Vesnin provided slightly different information. According to him, they were still given two hours to get ready, and each family was allowed to take 200 kg of cargo with them.
The Crimean Tatars are subject to even harsher conditions than other deported peoples. So, no more than 10-15 minutes are allotted for getting ready. You are allowed to take bundles weighing no more than 10-15 kg.
Sleepy citizens are forced to open doors and let uninvited guests into their homes. Officers cross the threshold accompanied by soldiers.
“In the name of Soviet power, for treason against the Motherland, you are being deported to other regions of the Soviet Union,”- with such a phrase, according to the historian Kurtiev, the elder of each group invariably “greeted” the amazed owners of the home.
This is how Aleksey Vesnin, a soldier of the 222nd separate rifle battalion of the 25th rifle brigade of the NKVD troops, recalled the beginning of the operation in his work “Deportation. How it happened,” historian Kurtiev quoted: “We walked for several hours and early in the morning of May 18th we reached the village of Oysul in the steppe. 6 light machine guns were placed around the village.”
The operation to expel Crimean Tatars from Crimea has begun! Groups of NKVD officers and soldiers, accumulated in populated areas, go home and hit people with rifle butts on doors and windows.
Wikimedia Commons
A word from the Crimean Tatar historian Refat Kurtiev: “The following were involved in the action: 19 thousand people assisting the NKVD, 30 thousand workers of the NKVD and NKGB. The operatives were assisted by about 100 thousand military personnel of the Soviet army. To carry out the order mobilely, troikas were formed from the military resources involved: three military personnel were assigned to one operative. Thus, for every Crimean Tatar, be he an old man or a baby, there was more than one punisher.”
Public domain
Some researchers claim that in some settlements security officers and soldiers began implementing evictions late in the evening of May 17 and “worked” diligently all night. Allegedly, in Simferopol, the first locations of the operation were Grazhdanskaya Street and the nearby Krasnaya Gorka streets. Then it was the turn of the residents of Simeiz. One of the sources gives a story about the deportation in the village of Ak-Bash, where NKVD and NKGB officers arrived in five trucks.
“Some fry meat, some potatoes, some pasties. And the soldiers are so happy; during the three years of war, each of them missed home-cooked food,” recalled local resident Sabe Useinova.
At 7 o’clock in the evening, well-fed Red Army soldiers “scattered” throughout the village, driving people out into the street with rifle butts, while Sabé’s husband stood with his hands raised. Then everyone was herded to the village square, loaded into cars and not allowed to leave until dawn on May 18th. Well, then everything went as usual.
In the fall of 1917, Crimean Tatar nationalists united in the Milli Firka party fiercely fought against the Red Guard detachments that were trying to establish Soviet power in Crimea. Perhaps the reasons for the antagonism should also be sought in revolutionary events Same. You can read about how Soviet power was proclaimed on the peninsula in Gazeta.Ru.
Kurtiev: “When thousands of sons of the Crimean Tatar people fought and died on the fronts of the Patriotic War and during the occupation, the smoke of burned villages still smelled in Crimea, the tears of mothers did not dry up for the dead, tortured, shot, burned and driven away to Germany, when the battles were still going on for the complete liberation of Crimea from the Nazis, Soviet punitive forces were preparing the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.”
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. “War came to the Crimean peninsula on June 22, 1941 at 3:13 a.m. with the bombing of Sevastopol. The German army after 3 months of battles with Soviet army approached Perekop. Soon Crimea was occupied (10/18/1941-05/14/1944), the researcher wrote in his book “Deportation. How it was". — During this period, the Crimean Tatar people fully experienced all the horrors of war: 40 thousand went to the front, the Nazis burned more than 80 Crimean Tatar villages, 20 thousand young people were driven to Germany (of which 2,300 people were in German camps). By the time of the liberation of Crimea, 598 Crimean Tatar partisans were fighting the fascist invaders in the forests.”
“The deportations caused noticeable damage to the country’s economy: the work of many enterprises was suspended, entire agricultural areas fell into disrepair, the traditions of transhumance livestock farming, terrace farming, etc. were lost. The psychology of the deported peoples, their attitude to the socialist system, underwent a radical change, and international ties collapsed,” - noted historian Nikolai Bugai in his book “Joseph Stalin to Lavrentiy Beria: “They must be deported.”
After the Great Patriotic War, in March 1949, the security forces of the USSR began implementing Operation Surf to deport residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who were found to have connections with the nationalist underground. Almost 100 thousand 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 Kalmyks, whom the Soviet authorities cruelly punished for collaborating with individual representatives of the people during the German occupation. More than 90 thousand people were put into railway carriages for transporting livestock in a few hours and sent from Kalmykia to Siberia and Central Asia. By the summer of 1944, the total number of those evicted had grown to 120 thousand due to Kalmyks from other regions and the military.
tuva.asia
Security officers began expelling Crimean Tatars from their homes at dawn on May 18. Well, while we are at night, we remember other nations who shared the same fate a little earlier.
In the later 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. Earlier, Gazeta.Ru reported that the Karachais were expelled from their original habitats in the North Caucasus on charges of collaboration.
The official view of the events of 75 years ago is currently undergoing serious adjustments. Thus, at the beginning of May it was announced that a section on the collaboration of the Crimean Tatars during the years of Nazi occupation would be cut out of the textbook on the history of Crimea for the 10th grade. The republican Ministry of Education and Science explained that the corresponding decision was made “in order to relieve social tension.” Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria, Matvey Shkiryatov (in the first row from right to left), Georgy Malenkov and Andrei Zhdanov (in the 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 members of the commission, local authorities allocated up to 20 thousand people from among the party and economic assets of cities and districts for practical work for accounting and protection of abandoned property. The commission developed instructions containing a list and quantity of essential items that a special settler could take with him, although in practice the requirements of the instructions were often not followed. Dozens of freight trains were formed at railway stations. Convoys were drawn to areas where Crimean Tatars were densely populated for the subsequent transportation of those evicted to their landing sites in trains. Units of the internal troops were dispersed throughout populated areas to organize the dispatch of people and subsequent clearing of the territory. In the mountainous forest area, SMERSH operatives were completing their final 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 the appropriate guarantees from Stalin on this issue, the Americans even refused to open a second front. In general, the leader of the Soviet state had no choice but to liberate Crimea for the Jews, which required evicting the Tatars. It is alleged that the leaders of the USA and the USSR seriously discussed the candidacy of the head of the future territorial entity. Allegedly, Roosevelt insisted on Solomon Mikhoels, while Stalin proposed his longtime and faithful ally Lazar Kaganovich for this role.
Taking into account the above, 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. Entrust the eviction 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 Motherland, deserted from the Red Army units defending Crimea, went over to the enemy’s side, joined volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans that fought against the Red Army; During the occupation of Crimea by fascist German troops, participating in German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars were especially distinguished by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German occupiers in organizing the forcible abduction of Soviet citizens into German slavery and mass extermination Soviet people, - said the GKO resolution signed by its chairman Joseph Stalin. — The Crimean Tatars actively collaborated with the German occupation authorities, participating in the so-called “Tatar national committees” organized by German intelligence and were widely used by the Germans for the purpose of sending spies and saboteurs to the rear of the Red Army. "Tatar national committees", in which main role played by White Guard-Tatar emigrants, with the support of the Crimean Tatars, they directed their activities towards the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and worked to prepare the violent separation of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of German armed forces.”
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As indicated in the collection of the Russian historian, the largest specialist on deportations in the USSR Nikolai Bugai, “Joseph Stalin to Lavrentiy Beria: “They must be deported,” events in the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic developed in a difficult situation. “The active actions of nationalist elements contributed to the fact that during the war years many of the Crimean Tatars found themselves in the service of the enemy and spoke out in his support, 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. State Security Commissioners Bogdan Kobulov and Ivan Serov were appointed heads of the operation.”
According to NKVD data 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 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the Crimean region was formed on June 30, 1945.
On May 18, 1944, the forced deportation of the Crimean Tatar population of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to Central Asia and remote areas of the RSFSR began by the NKVD and NKGB. As in the case of the deportation of other peoples accused of collaboration with the German occupiers and collaborationism during the Great Patriotic War, the operation was developed and personally supervised by one of the heads of the Soviet special services, Lavrentiy Beria. Gazeta.Ru reproduces the tragic page of the Stalin era in historical online.
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Deportation of Crimean Tatars to Last year The Great Patriotic War was a mass eviction of local residents of Crimea to a number of regions of the Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, 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 invaders.
Collaborators of Crimea
The eviction was carried out under the control of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in May 1944. The order for the deportation of the Tatars, who were allegedly part of collaborationist groups during the occupation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was signed by Stalin shortly before, on May 11th. Beria justified the reasons:
Desertion of 20 thousand Tatars from the army during the period 1941-1944; - unreliability of the Crimean population, especially pronounced in the border areas; - a threat to the security of the Soviet Union due to the collaborationist actions and anti-Soviet sentiments of the Crimean Tatars; - the abduction 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 Crimea. After the defeat of Hitler and the counting of losses, it became known that 85.5 thousand newly-made “slaves” of the Third Reich were actually driven to Germany from among the civilian population of Crimea alone.
Almost 72 thousand were executed with the direct participation of the so-called “Noise”. Schuma are auxiliary police, and in fact - punitive Crimean Tatar battalions subordinate to the fascists. Of these 72 thousand, 15 thousand communists were brutally tortured in the largest concentration camp in Crimea, the former collective farm "Krasny".
Main charges
After the retreat, the Nazis took some of the collaborators with them to Germany. Subsequently, a special SS regiment was formed from their number. Another part (5,381 people) were arrested by security officers after the liberation of the peninsula. During the arrests, many weapons were seized. The government feared an armed revolt of the Tatars because of their proximity to Turkey (Hitler hoped to drag the latter into a war with the communists).
According to the research of the Russian scientist, history professor Oleg Romanko, during the war, 35 thousand Crimean Tatars helped the fascists in one way or another: they served in the German police, participated in executions, betrayed communists, etc. For this, even distant relatives of traitors were entitled to exile and confiscation of property.
The main argument in favor of the rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar population and their return to their historical homeland was that the deportation was actually carried out not on the basis of the actual actions of specific people, but on a national basis.
Even those who did not contribute to the Nazis in any way were sent into exile. At the same time, 15% of Tatar men fought along with other Soviet citizens in the Red Army. In the partisan detachments, 16% were Tatars. Their families were also deported. This mass participation precisely reflected Stalin’s fears that the Crimean Tatars might succumb to pro-Turkish sentiments, rebel and find themselves on the side of the enemy.
The government wanted to eliminate the threat from the south as quickly as possible. Evictions were carried out urgently, in freight cars. On the way, many died due to overcrowding, lack of food and drinking water. In total, about 190 thousand Tatars were expelled from Crimea during the war. 191 Tatars died during transportation. Another 16 thousand died in their new places of residence from mass starvation in 1946-1947.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which these days marks 75 years, originates in the resolution of the State Defense Committee of the USSR dated May 11, 1944, which stated: “During the Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars betrayed their Motherland, deserted from the Red Army units defending Crimea, and went over to the enemy’s side, joined the volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans that fought against the Red Army; During the occupation of Crimea by Nazi troops, participating in German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars were especially distinguished by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German occupiers in organizing the forced abduction of Soviet citizens into German slavery and the mass extermination of Soviet people.
The Crimean Tatars actively collaborated 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. “Tatar national committees”, in which the main role was played by White Guard-Tatar emigrants, with the support of the Crimean Tatars, directed their activities towards the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and worked to prepare the violent annexation of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of German armed forces.”
Taking this into account, the State Defense Committee ordered that all Crimean Tatars be sent to the Uzbek SSR as special settlers by June 1. Those deported were allowed to take with them personal belongings, clothing, household equipment, dishes and food, but not more than 500 kg per family. The rest of the property, including agricultural implements, buildings, outbuildings, furniture and personal lands, as well as all livestock and draft animals remained in Crimea. Since the vast majority of Crimean Tatars were rural residents (according to the 1939 census, 72.7%), it was completely unclear how they would settle in a new place without livestock and agricultural tools. True, the mentioned resolution ordered the NKVD of the USSR, the People's Commissariat for Agriculture, the People's Commissariat of Meat and Milk Industry, the People's Commissariat of State Farms and the People's Commissariat for Transport of the USSR by July 1 to submit to the Council of People's Commissars "proposals on the procedure for returning the livestock, poultry and agricultural products received from them to special settlers using exchange receipts." But providing an offer does not mean immediately returning everything listed to the special settlers. After all, no one was going to transport what was left in Crimea to Uzbekistan. The Tatars were going to be settled “in state farm settlements, existing collective farms, subsidiary agricultural farms of enterprises and factory villages for use in agriculture and industry.” But the villages were already overcrowded with residents of the occupied and front-line territories evacuated to Uzbekistan. The decree obliged each family to issue 5 thousand rubles on credit in installments for 7 years for the construction of houses and outbuildings, but nothing could be built with such a meager amount, especially in Uzbekistan, where all building materials were in great short supply. In practice, a significant part of the deportees were doomed to live in tents and dugouts.
Historians are still debating how widespread collaborationism was among the Crimean Tatar population, and what were the real reasons deportation. On the eve of the GKO resolution, on May 10, the head of the NKVD, Beria, sent a report to Stalin, where he stated that 5,381 enemy agents, “traitors to the Motherland, accomplices of the Nazi occupiers and other anti-Soviet elements,” had been arrested in Crimea. Also seized were 5,395 rifles, 337 machine guns, 250 machine guns, 31 mortars and many grenades and rifle cartridges. At the same time, it was by no means asserted that all or at least the majority of those arrested were Crimean Tatars and that it was from them that the specified weapons were confiscated. However, Beria reported: “Through investigative and intelligence means, as well as statements from local residents, it was established that a significant part of the Tatar population of Crimea actively collaborated with the Nazi occupiers and fought against Soviet power. More than 20 thousand Tatars deserted from the Red Army units in 1941, betrayed their Motherland, went into the service of the Germans and fought against the Red Army with arms in hand.”
This point sounded menacing, but, if you look at it, it didn’t contain anything particularly seditious. When Manstein's 11th German-Romanian Army broke into Crimea at the end of October 1941, the 51st Separate Army defending it was surrounded and almost completely destroyed. Only a few were able to cross the Kerch Strait to Kuban. Most of the soldiers and commanders of the 51st Army were mobilized in Crimea. A significant part of them simply went home after the collapse of the Soviet defense. And many local natives, having been captured, were soon released, giving an undertaking to no longer fight against Germany and its allies. This is how 20 thousand “deserters” appeared from among the Crimean Tatars. But there were several times more of the same “deserters” from among Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians and representatives of other nationalities in Crimea. Yes, in the Soviet partisan detachments A much smaller proportion of Tatars went to Crimea than, for example, Russians and Ukrainians. But the same collaborationist self-defense units and police battalions were created not only in Tatar, but also in other villages of Crimea.
However, Beria, having listed all the sins of the Crimean Tatars that were repeated in the GKO resolution, proposed to send them to Uzbekistan. But it would be naive to think that Stalin made the decision to deport the Crimean Tatar population because he received a corresponding report from Beria. In fact, the sequence was the opposite. First, Stalin decided to deport the Crimean Tatars, and then Beria, on his orders, drew up a report on their collaboration and the need to deport them to Uzbekistan, so that the State Defense Committee’s deportation resolution would look like a reaction to the report of the head of the NKVD.
The paradox was that the bulk of those Tatars who served in collaborationist formations and most actively collaborated with the German and Romanian occupiers had by that time been evacuated to Romania. Later, already in Germany, the Tatar Mountain Jaeger Brigade of the SS No. 1 was formed, in which there were about 2,400 Crimean Tatars. In addition, 831 Crimean Tatars were sent as “hiwis” (unarmed “volunteer assistants”) to the 35th SS Police-Grenadier Division. Therefore, those who were subject to deportation were mainly those who remained neutral during the occupation or even helped the Soviet partisans. Also subject to deportation were those Crimean Tatars who, at the time the resolution was issued, were serving in the Red Army.
In general, the level of collaboration among the Crimean Tatars was no higher than that of a number of other peoples of the USSR. Latvia contributed two full-blooded and fully combat-ready SS divisions to the SS, and Estonia contributed one such division. Also in Western Ukraine, the SS division “Galicia” was formed, the majority of whose personnel, however, quite soon went over to the UPA partisans. In addition, the scope of the anti-Soviet partisan movement in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Western Ukraine, it would seem, gave Stalin a reason for the same complete purge of rebellious peoples, as happened with the Tatars in the Crimea, and even earlier - with the Chechens, Ingush and others other peoples of the North Caucasus. However, Stalin did not clean up the newly annexed western territories so thoroughly. There were probably two factors stopping him. Firstly, we would have to deport an order of magnitude more people– up to 10 million people. Secondly, Soviet propaganda trumpeted with all its might, including in the international arena, that the peoples actually enslaved by Stalin as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact allegedly voluntarily became part of the Soviet Union. If they had to be completely deported, this would seriously worsen the foreign policy position of the USSR.
Regarding the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the opinion is sometimes expressed that this was done in order to create “California in Crimea” - Crimean autonomy for Soviet Jews. This assumption does not seem reasonable. "California in Crimea" was a purely propaganda project aimed at extorting money from wealthy American Jews, supposedly to finance future Jewish colonization in Crimea. In fact, already in 1943, a struggle began in the USSR with cosmopolitans and, above all, with Jews, whom they tried to no longer promote to leadership positions. In such conditions there could be no talk of Jewish autonomy in Crimea. And the corresponding project was submitted to the government by Solomon Mikhoels and the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee after the deportation of the Tatars was carried out.
Some Russian historians argue that Stalin seriously feared that Turkey might enter the war on the side of Germany, and therefore hastened to clear Crimea of pro-Turkish Tatars. I note that only a madman could think that in May 1944 Turkey would become Hitler’s ally. On the contrary, in the spring and summer of 1942, Stalin was seriously planning to attack Turkey. Corresponding plans were developed at the headquarters of the Transcaucasian Military District, and the transfer of troops began. However, the defeat of the Red Army in the Crimea and near Kharkov and the subsequent German offensive in the North Caucasus then saved Turkey from the Soviet invasion. However, the “Turkish trace” in the Crimean Tatar deportation seems the most promising, but only in connection with Stalin’s plans to include Turkey in his sphere of influence, without stopping at war with it. As is known, Stalin tried to implement this plan in 1945-1946, but was forced to retreat due to the firm position of the USA and England. In light of the upcoming war with Turkey, Crimea, which in this war would play the role of an “unsinkable Soviet aircraft carrier,” really made sense to clear the Tatars loyal to Turkey.
On the morning of May 18, the deportation began, and on May 20, by 16.00, it was already over. More than 32 thousand soldiers of the NKVD troops took part in it. The deportees were given up to half an hour to get ready, after which they were transported by truck to the railway stations. The NKVD telegram addressed to Stalin indicated that 183,155 people were deported over three days. In the next few weeks, the total number of deportees exceeded 210 thousand people due to those recalled from the Red Army and deported from territories outside of Crimea. According to official data, 191 people died during transportation. In November 1944, there were 193,865 Crimean Tatars in places of eviction, of which 151,136 were in Uzbekistan, 8,597 in the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and 4,286 in the Kazakh SSR. The rest were distributed “for use at work,” the rest were distributed “for use at work" in Molotov (10,555), Kemerovo (6,743), Gorky (5,095), Sverdlovsk (3,594), Ivanovo (2,800), Yaroslavl (1,059) regions of Russia. In Uzbekistan alone, 16,052 Crimean Tatars died in the first 6 months of their stay. About 16 thousand more Tatars died during the famine of 1946-1947. The Crimean Tatar community accounts for a significantly larger number of deportees. According to the National Movement of Crimean Tatars, a total of 112,078 families or 423,100 people were expelled from Crimea, which is double the NKVD data. However, this contradicts the 1939 census data, according to which 218,879 Crimean Tatars lived in Crimea. Even if we accept a possible 4% undercount of the population by this census and a population growth of approximately 4.5% in 1939-1941, the number of Crimean Tatars, excluding losses in the war, hardly exceeded 238 thousand people by the end of 1941. At least 3.3 thousand Crimean Tatars were evacuated with the Germans. Taking into account those who died in the ranks of the Red Army, as well as during the fight against partisans in Crimea (on both sides), the number of 210 thousand deportees seems quite realistic.
Although the Crimean Tatars were partially rehabilitated in 1967, their return to Crimea began only in 1989, when a resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued condemning the deportations of the Crimean Tatar and other peoples. In fact, the Crimean Tatars spent almost all their time within the USSR in the position of “unreliable people.” And in today’s Russia they don’t really believe in their loyalty.
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