The reasons for the deportation of the Tatars in 1944. Deportation of Crimean Tatars
Speaking recently at a forum dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Petro Poroshenko went so far as to compare the Russian government in Crimea (without failing to label it, as usual, “occupation”) with “the actions of Stalin, who dreamed of destroying the Tatar people " Said loudly... And also deceitful and illiterate. In general, very Poroshenko-like. However, in order to fully understand what nonsense the Ukrainian president spouted, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the true essence of the events of the spring of 1944 in Crimea, and, above all, their prerequisites and reasons.
On May 10, 1944, the Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR Joseph Stalin signed the decree “On Crimean Tatars ah,” on the basis of which 190 thousand representatives of this nationality were evicted from the peninsula within literally the next 10 days. The place of deportation was mainly Uzbekistan, however, some of them ended up in Kazakhstan and other republics of the USSR. About one and a half thousand Tatars remained on the territory of Crimea - participants in the anti-Hitler underground, partisans and those who fought in the Red Army, as well as members of their families.
Tragic story? Without a doubt. However, before shedding tears over its participants, declaring them, every single one, “innocent victims of Stalinism,” let us go back even further in time - to 1941. It was then that the foundation was laid for the events that happened three years later - and by none other than the Crimean Tatars themselves. In a memo People's Commissar Internal Affairs of the USSR Lavrentiy Beria, which, in fact, became the basis for the adoption of the above-mentioned decision of the GKO, everything was set out with merciless Beria-like accuracy and directness. No “lyrics” – only numbers and facts.
Do you want to know how many Crimean Tatars deserted from the ranks of the 51st Army, which was retreating from Crimea? 20 thousand. How many of them were drafted into the Red Army? There were exactly 20 thousand... A wonderful example of betrayal, unparalleled, one might say! One hundred percent desertion in itself speaks volumes. But if only, having scattered like cockroaches before the advancing Nazis, the Tatars had stopped there! It wasn't like that at all. Before the invaders had time to enter Crimea, representatives of the Tatars had already rushed to them with expressions of complete devotion and assurances that they were all ready to faithfully serve “Adolf Effendi”, recognizing him as their leader.
Such zeal was favorably received by the Nazi leaders, which was reported in the first days of 1942 at the first meeting of the Tatar Committee, held in captured Simferopol. Heroic Sevastopol was still fighting, bleeding, but not surrendering, and the Crimean mullahs were already howling prayers for the health of the “great Fuhrer”, the “invincible army of the great German people” and the repose of the vile little souls of the murderers from the Wehrmacht. Having prayed, they set to work - security, police and auxiliary units of the Nazis were formed en masse from the Crimean Tatars. They were especially valued in the SD and field gendarmerie.
Many mournful words have been written and spoken about the death camp, which was located during the war on the territory of the Krasny state farm near Simferopol. With its horrors it earned the name “Crimean Dachau”. At least 8 thousand people were shot there alone. However, much less was mentioned about the fact that there were, strictly speaking, two Germans among the executioners in this terrible place - the “doctor” of the camp and its commandant. The rest of the “personnel” consisted of Crimean Tatars who served in the 152nd SD Shuma battalion. This unit, by the way, was formed exclusively on a voluntary basis. The rabble gathered in it showed simply incredible ingenuity in relation to torture and executions. I’ll give just one example - one of these “know-hows” was the extermination of people who were stacked in piles, tied with barbed wire, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Particular luck in this case was to get into the very bottom layer - there was a chance to suffocate before the flame broke out...
The real nightmare of the Crimean partisan detachments were the Tatar guides of the fascist Jagd teams and punitive detachments that hunted for them. Perfectly oriented to the terrain, knowing, as they say, every stone, every path in the mountains, these non-humans over and over again led the Nazis to the places where our soldiers were hiding, their camps and sites. This kind of “specialists” turned out to be so in demand for the Third Reich that in 1944, having abandoned part of their troops in Crimea, the Germans found the opportunity to evacuate them from the peninsula by sea, subsequently forming first the Tatar SS Mountain Jaeger Regiment, and then an entire brigade. A huge honor...
There is still a lot to remember. About the stones that flew at our prisoners when they were driven through Tatar villages... About two hectares of Crimean land, which were given to each of the Tatars who entered the service of the occupiers, and which was taken away from the Russian people. About how desperately the Tatar battalions fought near Bakhchisarai and Islam-Terek in 1944, trying to stop the Red Army going to liberate Crimea. About the zeal with which they searched for and destroyed communists throughout the peninsula, wounded Red Army soldiers whom residents tried to hide, as well as Jews and Gypsies, in whose extermination they took an active part.
Doesn’t it occur to anyone that by deporting the Tatars from Crimea, among whom at least every tenth was not only tainted by collaboration with the invaders, but had their hands covered in blood up to their elbows, Stalin and Beria did not destroy them, but saved them?! The veterans returning from the fields of the Great Patriotic War a year or two later would hardly have limited themselves to “verbal censure” of the traitors...
It is impossible not to mention one more point. The “international human rights organizations” and other liberal riffraff that annually shed streams of tears over the “undeservedly deported” Crimean Tatars, for some reason do not cry over other completely similar stories of the same time. Over the internment of 120 thousand Japanese, as well as thousands of Germans and Italians who were driven behind the “thorn” in 1941 in the USA. Note - not for any specific crimes, and not even “on suspicion”. Simply - for nationality! And there is no groaning over the 600 thousand Germans who perished during their mass eviction from European countries after the end of the Second World War. The infections are silent, like fish on ice...
But the Germans - not Nazis, not Wehrmacht or SS veterans, but simply those who had the misfortune of belonging to this nation - were driven out of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia in the millions in 1945! 500-600 thousand is only the documented number of those killed during deportation.
I do not condemn or justify anyone. It was just such a time - cruel, bloody, terrible... And some things that today cause a shudder with their categoricalness and their scale were completely normal for him, almost universal practice. This is all to say that declaring the deportation of 1944 the pinnacle of world atrocities is incorrect, to say the least.
Regarding the fact that in the spring of 1944 it was entirely “innocent” and “uninvolved” who were arrested and deported... Only enough small arms were confiscated during the eviction operation to arm an infantry division! Okay, ten thousand (!) rifles... And more than 600 machine guns and mortars - fifty? Why were they hiding all this?! Shoot at sparrows? Even before the deportation began, stern comrades in cornflower blue caps from Beria’s department captured more than 5 thousand representatives of the Crimean Tatar population, whose connection with the Nazis was so obvious, and their crimes so bloody, that most of them, without ceremony, had a noose thrown around their necks. Among them, there were many spies, saboteurs and simply “sleeping” agents who were trying to hide, left in the liberated territory with very specific tasks from the fascist masters.
I agree that the whole nation cannot be guilty. Nobody accuses an entire people... Let's not dive into emotions, but turn to dispassionate and dry arithmetic. I will give some figures, and everyone is free to draw the following conclusions themselves.
First of all, no matter what the extremists entrenched in Ukraine and their accomplices are now trying to say, the Tatar Crimea before the Great Patriotic War There was no way. Ukrainian, by the way – even more so! According to the 1939 census, more than half a million Russians, more than 200 thousand Tatars, and a little more than 150 thousand Ukrainians lived on the peninsula. Well, and representatives of other nationalities - Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Bulgarians, in much smaller quantities.
Of these same 200 thousand, according to a careless decision made by the leaders of the Tatar Committee operating under the occupiers, 20 thousand served the Nazis with weapons in their hands. Every tenth... However, according to many historians, the figure is ungodly underestimated - at least 35-40 thousand Crimean Tatars actually collaborated with the fascists (not only in the ranks of the SS, SD and police, but also as guides, informants and servants). Every fifth... During the deportation, out of 191 thousand transported, according to the NKVD report, 191 people died en route. One in a thousand... This is not a comparison. This is just basic arithmetic.
During the Nazi occupation in Crimea, at least 220 thousand of its inhabitants were destroyed and driven into slavery, and 45 thousand Red Army soldiers who were captured died in the fascist dungeons and camps located on its territory. There were no Crimean Tatars among them. On the other hand, punishers, policemen, and guards from Tatar formations who faithfully served the invaders were fully involved in all these crimes. They made their conscious choice and everything that happened later was retribution for it. At the same time, there were no mass executions, no wholesale sending of all Tatars to camps - only expulsion.
Have the people, whose sons flooded the land of Crimea with the blood of those who lived peacefully on it next to them, lost the right to walk on this land? Everyone can find their own answer to this question. Stalin just found his...
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 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 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 mass extermination 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 settlements 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 true reasons for the 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 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 a number of 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, many more people would have to be deported – up to 10 million people. Secondly, Soviet propaganda was blowing with all its might, including on international arena, that the peoples, in fact enslaved by Stalin as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, supposedly 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. Over the next few weeks total number deportations 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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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 the construction of the Nizhne-Bozsu and Farkhad hydroelectric power stations, they worked on the repair of the Tashkent hydroelectric power station railway, at industrial plants, chemical plants. 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 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 Patriotic War escaped deportation. 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.
“My father on the eve of the liberation of Crimea Soviet troops the Germans tried to take him to work in Germany, but he fled, then went into hiding, 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 historian Kurtiev: “According to official documents of the USSR State Defense Committee, material and medical support along the route and in 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 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.
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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 to carry out 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. “The war came to the Crimean peninsula on June 22, 1941 at 3:13 a.m. with the bombing of Sevastopol. German army after 3 months of battles with the Soviet army, she 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 youth 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 cars 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 nationalities 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 internal troops were dispersed throughout settlements 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.
Considering the above, State Committee Defense 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 the mass extermination of Soviet people, it was said in a resolution of the State Defense Committee 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 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.”
tuva.asia
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.
Wikimedia Commons
Taken from the BBC website
Some facts are deliberately exaggerated or distorted
On May 18-20, 1944, in Crimea, NKVD soldiers, on orders from Moscow, rounded up almost the entire Crimean Tatar population into railway cars and sent them to Uzbekistan in 70 trains.
This forced eviction of the Tatars, whom the Soviet government accused of collaborating with the Nazis, was one of the fastest deportations in human history.
The Ukrainian BBC service prepared a report 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 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the indigenization policy.
In the 1920s, the Tatars were allowed to develop their culture. In Crimea there were Crimean Tatar newspapers, magazines, educational institutions, museums, libraries and theaters were open.
The Crimean Tatar language, together with Russian, was official language autonomy. It was used by more than 140 village councils.
In the 1920-1930s, Tatars made up 25-30% of the total population.
However, in the 1930s, Soviet policy towards the Tatars, as towards other nationalities of the USSR, became repressive. First there was dispossession and eviction of the Tatars to the north of Russia and beyond the Urals. Then forced collectivization and the famine of 1932-33. And then came the purges of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.
Image copyright Image caption Crimean Tatar State Ensemble "Haitarma". Moscow, 1935
This turned many Crimean Tatars against Soviet rule.
When did the deportation take place?
The main phase of the forced relocation occurred over the course of less than three days, beginning at dawn on May 18, 1944 and ending at 16:00 on May 20. In total, 238.5 thousand people were deported from Crimea - almost the entire Crimean Tatar population.
For this, the NKVD recruited more than 32 thousand security forces.
What caused the deportation?
The official reason for the forced relocation was the accusation of the entire Crimean Tatar people of high treason, “mass extermination of Soviet people” and collaboration - collaboration 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 relocation. 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, Crimea was a strategic springboard in case of a possible conflict with this country, and Stalin wanted to be safe from possible saboteurs and traitors, whom he considered the Tatars.
This theory is supported by the fact that other Muslim ethnic groups were also resettled from the Caucasian regions adjacent to Turkey: Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Balkars.
Did some Tatars really support the Nazis?
According to various sources, from 9 to 20 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the anti-Soviet combat detachments formed by the German authorities, writes historian J. Otto Pohl. 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 forces because they had been captured by the Nazis and wanted to alleviate the inhumane conditions in prison 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 German units retreated to Germany. Mostly wives and children who remained on the peninsula were deported.
How did the forced relocation take place?
Image copyright HATIRA.RU Image caption Spouses in the Urals, 1953
NKVD employees entered Tatar houses and announced to the owners that because of treason, they were being evicted from Crimea.
They gave us 15-20 minutes to pack our things. 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 trains with tightly closed freight cars, which were overcrowded with people, were sent east.
During the move, about 8 thousand people died, most of whom were children and elderly people. The most common causes of death are thirst and typhus.
Some people, unable to bear the suffering, went crazy.
All the property left in Crimea after the Tatars was appropriated by the state.
Where were the Tatars deported?
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 Kostroma region Russia.
What were the consequences of deportation for the Tatars?
In the first three years after the resettlement, according to various estimates, from 20 to 46% of all deportees died from hunger, exhaustion and disease.
Almost half of those who died in the first year were children under 16 years of age.
Image copyright MEMORY.GOV.UA Image caption Mari ASSR. Crew at the logging site. 1950
Due to a lack of clean water, poor hygiene, and lack of medical care, malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, and other diseases spread among the deportees. The new arrivals had no natural immunity against many local diseases.
What status did they have in Uzbekistan?
The vast majority of Crimean Tatars were transported to so-called special settlements - surrounded by paramilitary guards, checkpoints and areas fenced with barbed wire, more reminiscent of labor camps rather than settlements of civilians.
The newcomers were cheap labor, and they were used to work on 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 Farhad hydroelectric power station.
In 1948, Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as lifelong migrants. Those who left their special settlement without permission from the NKVD, for example, to visit relatives, faced a 20-year sentence. There were such cases.
Even before the deportation, propaganda incited hatred of the Crimean Tatars among local residents, branding them as traitors and enemies of the people.
Image copyright HATIRA.RU 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 aliens. After the deportation, some local residents felt the heads of visitors to check if horns were growing on them.
Later, upon learning that the Crimean Tatars were of the same faith as them, the Uzbeks were surprised.
Children of immigrants could receive education in Russian or Uzbek, but not in Crimean Tatar. Until 1957, any publications in this language were prohibited. An article about the Crimean Tatars was removed from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE). This nationality was also prohibited from being included in the passport.
What has changed in Crimea without the Tatars?
After the eviction of the Tatars, as well as Greeks, Bulgarians and Germans 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 previously predominantly Crimean Tatars lived, are deserted. For example, according to official data, only 2.6 thousand residents remained in the Alushta region, and 2.2 thousand in the Balaklava region. Subsequently, people from Ukraine and Russia began to resettle here.
“Toponymic repressions” were carried out on the peninsula - most 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 government 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 Tatars lasted until the era of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization - the second half of the 1950s. Then the Soviet government softened their living conditions, but did not drop the charges of treason.
During the 1950s and 1960s, 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 achieve expansion of their rights, however, an informal, but no less strict ban on their return to Crimea remained in effect until 1989.
Image copyright HATIRA.RU Image caption Osman Ibrish with his wife Alime. Settlement of Kibray, 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 pressure from persecution. The Russian authorities themselves banned others from entering Crimea, including the leaders of this people, Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov.
Does deportation have signs of genocide?
Some researchers and dissidents believe that the deportation of the Tatars meets the UN definition of genocide. They argue that the Soviet government intended to destroy the Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group and deliberately pursued this goal.
In 2006, the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar people appealed to the Verkhovna Rada with a request to recognize the deportation as genocide.
Despite this, most historical works and diplomatic documents now call the forced resettlement of the Crimean Tatars deportation, not genocide.
In the Soviet Union they used the term "resettlement".
Over the next four years, half of all Crimean Tatars who then lived in the USSR returned to the peninsula - 250 thousand people.
The return of the indigenous population to Crimea was difficult and was accompanied by land conflicts with local residents who managed to get used to the new land. Major confrontations were nevertheless avoided.
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