The deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the last year of the Great Patriotic War was a mass eviction of local residents of Crimea to a number of regions of the Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic 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.
So, friends - today there will be a post about quite tragic events - it is exactly 75 years since Stalin’s genocide of the Crimean Tatars in . On May 18, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were deported in freight cars from Crimea to remote areas of the USSR - in particular, to sparsely populated areas of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The deportation was carried out by the punitive authorities of the NKVD, and the deportation order was signed personally.
“But Stalin won the war!” — lovers of the USSR speak in the comments — “If Stalin had not sent people to concentration camps, then Hitler would have done it for him!” - Neo-Stalinists and conspiracy theorists echo them. However, the truth is that there can be no justification for this genocide - just as there is no justification for Stalin’s other crimes - such as deportation and.
So, in today’s post I will tell you about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - something that should not be forgotten today, so that it does not happen again amid cries of “we can do it again!” In general, be sure to go under the cat, write your opinion in the comments, and well add as a friend Do not forget)
Why did the deportation begin?
It was created in 1922, and in the same year Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as the indigenous population of Crimea. During the interwar period, in the 1920-30s, Tatars made up almost a third of the population of Crimea - about 25-30%. In the thirties, after Stalin came to power, mass repressions began against the Tatar population of Crimea - dispossession and eviction of Tatars, repressions, mass "purges" of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.
All this turned many Tatars against the Soviet regime - during the war, several thousand Tatars fought against the USSR with weapons in their hands - in fact, I touched on this issue a little in the post with - how and why people fought against the USSR. In the post-war years, this allegedly became the “official reason” for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - although by the same logic it was possible to deport all Russians from Russia - at least 120-140 thousand of whom fought in Vlasov’s army alone (not counting other formations).
In fact, the Tatars were deported for completely different reasons - the Crimean Tatars were historically strongly associated with Turkey and were also Muslims - and Stalin decided to deport them precisely for this reason - since they did not fit into the picture of the “ideal USSR” in his head and were "superfluous people." This version is also supported by the fact that, along with the Tatars, other Muslim ethnic groups - Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Balkars - were evicted from the areas adjacent to Turkey.
How exactly did the deportation take place?
NKVD soldiers broke into Tatar houses and declared people “enemies of the people” - supposedly because of “treason to the motherland” they would be evicted from Crimea forever. According to official documents, each family could take with them up to 500 kilograms of luggage - however, in reality, people managed to take much less, and most often they went into freight cars simply in what they were wearing - houses and abandoned things were looted by the military and NKVD soldiers.
People were transported by truck to the railway stations - later sending about 70 trains with the doors of freight cars tightly closed and nailed, overcrowded with people, to the east. During the movement of people to the east alone, more than 8,000 people died - most often people died from typhus or thirst. Many, unable to bear the suffering, went crazy.
In the first two years, about half (up to 46%) of all deported people died - unable to adapt to the harsh conditions of the lands to which they were sent. Almost half of these 46% were children under the age of 16 - they had the hardest time. People died from a lack of clean water, from poor hygiene - due to which malaria, dysentery, yellow fever and other diseases spread among the deportees.
Soviet concentration camps and erased memory.
There is one more very important point in this whole tragedy - which Russian sources are silent about. The settlements themselves where people were sent were not some kind of villages or cities. Most of all they looked like real concentration camps- these were special settlements fenced with barbed wire, around which there were checkpoints with armed guards.
The exiled Tatars were used for slave labor in the form of almost free labor - they worked for food on collective farms, state farms and industrial enterprises - the exiled Crimean Tatars were entrusted with the most difficult and dirty work, such as manually harvesting cotton treated with pesticides or the construction of the Farhad hydroelectric station.
In 1948, Soviet Moscow declared that this would always be the case - the Tatars were recognized as life prisoners and had no right to leave the territories of the special settlement camps. The Soviet government also constantly incited hatred towards the Crimean Tatars - the locals were told terrible stories that terrible “traitors to the motherland, cyclops and cannibals” were coming to them - from whom they needed to stay away. According to eyewitness accounts, many local Uzbeks then felt the Crimean Tatars to find out if they were growing horns?
In 1957, the USSR began to erase all memory of the Crimean Tatar people. By this year, all publications in the Crimean Tatar language were banned, and from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia about the Crimean Tatars - as if they never existed.
Crimes without statute of limitations. Instead of an epilogue.
All the time that happened from the moment of deportation, the Crimean Tatars fought for their right to return to their homeland - constantly reminding the Soviet authorities that such a people exist, and it will not be possible to erase the memory of them. The Tatars held rallies and fought for their rights - and finally, in 1989, they achieved the restoration of their rights, and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in November 1989 recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars illegal and criminal.
As for me, these crimes of the Soviet government have no statute of limitations and are no different from Hitler’s Holocaust - he also chose an “undesirable people” and tried to destroy them and all the memory of them.
The good thing is that the USSR itself recognized these actions as crimes. The bad thing is that now there has been a reversal - many on the Russian side are now again looking at Stalin’s deeds and shouting “Krymnash!” and “we can repeat it” - apparently, these are the descendants of those who once built concentration camps for the Crimean Tatars and stood at checkpoints with machine guns...
Write in the comments what you think about all this.
Irina Simonenko
Every year on May 18, Crimean Tatars celebrate the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Deportation. Through the efforts of Ukrainian political strategists and their curators, from the original day of grief of the deportation of the Crimean peoples, this day methodically and purposefully turned into the Day of Remembrance of the victims of the exclusively Crimean Tatar, “punished without guilt” people.
The words of Petro Poroshenko are especially cynical: “We are obliged to give the Crimean Tatars the right to self-determination within the framework of a single Ukrainian state. This is what we owe the Crimean Tatars. The Ukrainian authorities should have done this at least 20 years ago. And now the situation would be completely different.”
By the way, no matter how much the “representatives” of the Kyiv Crimean Tatars ask and plead, they will never receive that same definition. For Kyiv, these people have always been a tool for manipulation. And in the entire history of Ukraine, things have not gone beyond promises, only time after time “the need to amend Section 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine is emphasized,” but in reality this will never be allowed.
Ukraine consists of different regions that once belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Turkey, and the Russian Empire. And if the Crimean Tatars receive self-determination, which the Guarantor of the Constitution enthusiastically talks about every May 18, then they are quite capable of wanting the same “autonomy” in Transcarpathia. And there, further along the chain, Square may lose all its lands.
Ukrainian politicians continue to lead the Crimean Tatar people by the nose by promising their land, their government and mountains of gold. But even on paper, they still do not want to formalize such changes in relation to the already lost territory of Crimea, postponing the adoption of the document for another year, two, three. And so on ad infinitum.
Today, the number of historical hoaxes associated with the “Stalinist expulsion of peoples” is only growing and bottom experts are already calling it “planned genocide.”
It will not be superfluous to understand this issue. What were the reasons for the deportation? What actually happened on the territory of Crimea during the war? There are very few living witnesses of those events left who could tell how everything really happened. But what many eyewitnesses tell, and what is recorded in Soviet and German chronicles is enough to understand that resettlement was the only and most correct decision.
I would like to immediately dot the i's - I in no way want to say that all Crimean Tatars are bad. Many Crimean Tatars valiantly defended the common Soviet Motherland in the ranks of the Red Army, in the ranks of the Crimean partisans they turned the life of German and Romanian Nazis in Crimea into hell, thousands were awarded state awards. Their exploits deserve a separate post. Here, I want to understand why what happened happened.
The deportation was justified by the facts of the people's participation in collaborationist formations that acted on the side of Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War.
Of the 200,000 total Crimean Tatar population, 20,000 became fighters in the Wehrmacht, punitive detachments, and in other ways went into the service of the German occupiers, that is, almost all men of military age, as evidenced by the reports of the German command. How would they get along with the Red Army soldiers returning from the front, what would the war veterans do with them if they learned about what the Tatar punitive forces did in the Crimea during the German occupation? A massacre would begin, and resettlement was the only way out of this situation. But there was something to take revenge on the Red Army soldiers for, and this is not Soviet propaganda; there are plenty of facts about their atrocities from both the Soviet and German sides.
Thus, in the Sudak region in 1942, a group of Tatar self-defenses liquidated a reconnaissance landing of the Red Army, while the self-defenses caught and burned alive 12 Soviet paratroopers.
On February 4, 1943, Crimean Tatar volunteers from the villages of Beshui and Koush captured four partisans from S.A. Mukovnin’s detachment.
Partisans L.S. Chernov, V.F. Gordienko, G.K. Sannikov and Kh.K. Kiyamov were brutally killed: stabbed with bayonets, laid on fires and burned. Particularly disfigured was the corpse of the Kazan Tatar Kh.K. Kiyamov, whom the punishers apparently mistook for their fellow countryman.
The Crimean Tatar detachments dealt equally brutally with the civilian population. It got to the point that, fleeing the massacre, the Russian-speaking population turned to the German authorities for help.
Beginning in the spring of 1942, a concentration camp operated on the territory of the Krasny state farm, in which at least 8 thousand residents of Crimea were tortured and shot during the occupation.
The concentration camp was the largest fascist concentration camp during the Great Patriotic War on the territory of Crimea, in which about 8 thousand Soviet citizens were tortured during the years of occupation.
The German administration was represented by a commandant and a doctor.
All other functions were carried out by soldiers of the 152nd Tatar volunteer battalion, whom the head of the camp, SS Oberscharführer Speckmann, recruited to perform “the dirtiest work.”
With particular pleasure, the future “innocent victims of Stalin’s repressions” mocked the ideologically incorrect prisoners. With their cruelty, they were reminiscent of the Tatar horde of the distant past, and were distinguished by a particularly “creative” approach to the issue of exterminating prisoners. In particular, mothers and children were repeatedly drowned in pits with feces dug under camp toilets.
Mass burning was also practiced: living people tied with barbed wire were stacked in several tiers, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Eyewitnesses claim that “those who lay below were the luckiest” - they were suffocating under the weight of human bodies even before the execution.
For their service to the Germans, many hundreds of punishers from among the Crimean Tatars were awarded special insignia approved by Hitler - “For courage and special merits shown by the population of the liberated regions who participated in the fight against Bolshevism under the leadership of the German command.”
Thus, according to the report of the Simferopol Muslim Committee, for 12/01/1943 - 01/31/1944:
“For services to the Tatar people, the German command was awarded: a badge with swords of the 2nd degree, issued for the liberated eastern regions, the chairman of the Simferopol Tatar Committee Dzhemil Abdureshid, a badge of the 2nd degree, the Chairman of the Department of Religion Abdul-Aziz Gafar, an employee of the Department of Religion Fazil Sadyk and the Chairman of the Tatar Table Tahsin Cemil."
Dzhemil Abdureshid took an active part in the creation of the Simferopol Committee at the end of 1941 and, as the first chairman of the committee, was active in attracting volunteers into the ranks of the German army.
In a response speech, the chairman of the Tatar committee, Cemil Abdureshid, said the following:
“I speak on behalf of the committee and on behalf of all Tatars, confident that I express their thoughts. One conscription of the German army is enough and every last one of the Tatars will come out to fight against the common enemy. We are honored to have the opportunity to fight under the leadership of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, the greatest son of the German people. The faith that lies within us gives us the strength to trust the leadership of the German army without hesitation. Our names will later be honored along with the names of those who spoke out for the liberation of oppressed peoples.”
April 10, 1942. From a message to Adolf Hitler, received at a prayer service by more than 500 Muslims in Karasu Bazar:
"Our liberator! It is only thanks to you, your help and thanks to the courage and dedication of your troops that we were able to open our houses of worship and perform prayer services in them. Now there is not and cannot be such a force that would separate us from the German people and from you. The Tatar people swore and gave their word, having signed up as volunteers in the ranks of the German troops, hand in hand with your troops to fight against the enemy to the last drop of blood. Your victory is a victory for the entire Muslim world. We pray to God for the health of your troops and ask God to give you, the great liberator of nations, long life. You are now a liberator, the leader of the Muslim world - gases Adolf Hitler.
Our ancestors came from the East, and until now we were waiting for liberation from there, but today we are witnesses that liberation is coming to us from the West. Perhaps for the first and only time in history it happened that the sun of freedom rose in the West. This sun is you, our great friend and leader, with your mighty German people, and you, relying on the inviolability of the great German state, on the unity and power of the German people, bring us, the oppressed Muslims, freedom. We swore an oath of allegiance to you to die for you with honor and weapons in our hands and only in the fight against a common enemy.
We are confident that together with you we will achieve the complete liberation of our peoples from the yoke of Bolshevism.
On the day of your glorious anniversary, we send you our heartfelt greetings and wishes, we wish you many years of fruitful life for the joy of your people, us, the Crimean Muslims and the Muslims of the East."
Abdul-Aziz Gafar and Fazil Sadyk, despite their advanced years, worked among volunteers and did significant work to establish religious affairs in the Simferopol region.
Tahsin Cemil organized the Tatar Table in 1942 and, working as its chairman until the end of 1943, provided systematic assistance to “needy Tatars and families of volunteers.”
In addition, the personnel of the Crimean Tatar formations were provided with all sorts of material benefits and privileges. According to one of the resolutions of the Wehrmacht High Command, “any person who actively fought or is fighting against the partisans and Bolsheviks” could submit a petition for “allotment of land or payment of a monetary reward of up to 1000 rubles.”
At the same time, his family had to receive a monthly subsidy from the social security departments of the city or district administration in the amount of 75 to 250 rubles.
After the publication of the “Law on the New Agrarian Order” by the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Regions on February 15, 1942, all Tatars who joined volunteer formations and their families were given full ownership of 2 hectares of land. The Germans provided them with the best plots, taking land from peasants who did not join these formations.
As noted in the already quoted memorandum of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, State Security Major Karanadze, to the NKVD of the USSR “On the political and moral state of the population of Crimea”:
“Persons who are members of volunteer groups are in a particularly privileged position. All of them receive wages, food, are exempt from taxes, received the best plots of fruit and grape gardens, tobacco plantations, taken away from the rest of the non-Tatar population.
Volunteers are given items looted from the Jewish population.”
All these horrors are not the invention of Soviet political instructors, but the bitter truth. You can give many more examples of the “innocence of the Crimean Tatars,” but this article is not about that.
The whole problem is that modern Tatars are not obliged to bear the stigma of traitors until the end of their days, because they were not even born then. Likewise, modern Russians have nothing to do with the deportation of the Tatars. We all need to move on, live in peace and harmony. And to do this, we need to stop crying about our long-suffering past, and think about our common future. Russian Tatars and Ukrainians must develop the economy of Crimea together, stop taking skeletons out of closets, blaming each other for what their neighbor’s great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather did.
In the meantime, every May 18th, the Crimean Tatars provide an excellent occasion for all sorts of speculation on the part of the Ukrainian Mejlis and their curators in Ukraine and further to the west, and thanks to their position as “offended and oppressed,” they are used as a bargaining chip to create instability in the region.
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 “treacherous actions of the Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people” and “the undesirability of 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.
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.
The Crimean Tatar language, together with Russian, was the official language of the 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 the Kostroma region of 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 had managed to settle in the new land. Major confrontations were nevertheless avoided.
