Population transfer in the Soviet Union

Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Part of Dekulakization, Forced settlements in the Soviet Union, and World War II
The empty Crimean Tatar village of Üsküt, near Alushta, photo taken in 1945 after the complete deportation of its inhabitants
General routes of deportation during the dekulakization across the Soviet Union in 1930–1931
LocationSoviet Union and occupied territories
Date1930–1952
TargetKulaks (well-off peasants), ethnic minorities, clergy, undesirable citizens of occupied territories
Attack type
Ethnic cleansing, population transfer, forced labor, genocide,[1][2][3][4] classicide
Deaths~800,000[5]–1,500,000[6] in the USSR
Victims6,000,000 Soviet citizens deported to forced settlements in the Soviet Union
PerpetratorsOGPU / NKVD
MotiveRussification,[7] colonialism,[8] cheap labor for forced settlements in the Soviet Union
Part of a series on
Forced population transfer
in the Soviet Union
Policies
Peoples
Operations
WWII POW labor
Massive labor force transfers

From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population (often classified as "enemies of the people"), deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill ethnically cleansed territories. Dekulakization marked the first time that an entire class was deported, whereas the deportation of Soviet Koreans in 1937 marked the precedent of a specific ethnic deportation of an entire nationality.[9]

In most cases, their destinations were underpopulated remote areas (see Forced settlements in the Soviet Union). This includes deportations to the Soviet Union of non-Soviet citizens from countries outside the USSR. It has been estimated that, in their entirety, internal forced migrations affected at least 6 million people.[6][10][11][12] Of this total, 1.8 million kulaks were deported in 1930–31, 1.0 million peasants and ethnic minorities in 1932–39, whereas about 3.5 million ethnic minorities were further resettled during 1940–52.[12]

Soviet archives documented 390,000[13] deaths during kulak forced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of people deported to forced settlements during the 1940s;[14] however, Nicolas Werth places overall deaths closer to some 1 to 1.5 million perishing as a result of the deportations.[6] Contemporary historians classify these deportations as a crime against humanity and ethnic persecution. Two of these cases with the highest mortality rates have been described as genocides–the deportation of the Crimean Tatars was declared as genocide by Ukraine and three other countries, whereas the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush was declared as genocide by the European Parliament, respectively. On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, under its chairman Boris Yeltsin, passed the law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation and genocide."[3]

The Soviet Union also practiced deportations in occupied territories, with over 50,000 perishing from the Baltic States and 300,000 to 360,000 perishing during the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe due to Soviet deportation, massacres, and internment and labour camps.[15]

  1. ^ UNPO: Chechnya: European Parliament recognizes the genocide of the Chechen People in 1944
  2. ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2009). Red Holocaust. Routledge. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5.
  3. ^ a b Perovic, Jeronim (June 2018). Perovic, Jeronim (2018). From Conquest to Deportation: The North Caucasus under Russian Rule. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190934675. OCLC 1083957407. Oxford University Press. p. 320. ISBN 9780190934675.
  4. ^ Burds, Jeffrey (1 April 2007). "The Soviet War against 'Fifth Columnists': The Case of Chechnya, 1942–4". Journal of Contemporary History. 42 (2): 267–314. doi:10.1177/0022009407075545. S2CID 159523593.
  5. ^ Grieb 2014, p. 930.
  6. ^ a b c Werth 2004, p. 73.
  7. ^ Bekus 2010, p. 42.
  8. ^ Casey Michael (9 August 2022). "Russia's Crimes of Colonialism". Wall Street Journal.
  9. ^ Ellman 2002, p. 1158.
  10. ^ Polian 2004, p. 4.
  11. ^ Rosefielde, Steven (2009). Red Holocaust. Routledge. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-415-77757-5.
  12. ^ a b Ellman 2002, p. 1159.
  13. ^ Pohl 1997, p. 58.
  14. ^ Pohl 1997, p. 148.
  15. ^ Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945–1978. Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28 Mai 1974. Archivalien und ausgewälte Erlebenisberichte, Bonn 1989, pp. 40–41, 46–47, 51–53