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World War II -- 60 Years After: For Victims Of Stalin's Deportations, War
Lives On
May 04, 2005
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
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As we mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, RFE/RL is
looking again at some of the factors that determined the course of the
struggle and shaped the new world that emerged from it.
Among the tragic events that unfolded on the sidelines of World War II was
the forced resettlement to Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia of
hundreds of thousands Soviet citizens. Not only did Stalin's decision to
send entire peoples into exile result in innumerable deaths, it also sealed
the fate of entire populations for many years to come. Even today, some of
these peoples continue to suffer the consequences of the 1944 deportations.
Prague, 4 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Klara Baratashvili was not yet born when
World War II ended. But this woman in her fifties still vividly remembers
what her father, Latif Shah, used to tell his four children about what
happened to him and his people on the night of 15 November 1944.
"At 4 a.m., people were aroused from sleep and ordered out in the fields
without a single word of explanation," Baratashvili relates. "They remained
all night on the threshing floor. Later on, several Stuedebaker trucks drove
in and everyone was ordered to board them. People were authorized to take
only the bare minimum with them. Before leaving the house my father had
grabbed a few books and his personal notes. He had such faith in communism
-- he was almost a fanatic -- that he had taken [Josef] Stalin's complete
works with him. That was what he valued most."
Yet it was the Soviet leader who, a few weeks earlier, had sealed Latif Shah
Baratashvili's fate by ordering the deportation to Uzbekistan of Georgia's
entire Meskhetian population.
Except for a brief visit made in 1956, three years after Stalin's death,
Latif Shah never saw his native Georgia again. He died in Soviet Azerbaijan
in 1984.
An estimated 1.5 million people were sent into forced exile after Soviet
troops reasserted control over the areas of the Black and Caspian seas
beginning in 1943.
Stalin's reasons for deporting more than 100,000 Meskhetians remain unclear.
Some historians have suggested he wanted to cleanse southern Georgia of its
Muslim elements in anticipation of war with neighboring Turkey. Others say
the Soviet leader suspected the Meskhetians -- and other ethnic groups he
ordered deported in the preceding months-- of not being subservient enough.
Officially, the Soviet historiography justified the war deportations by
alleging the exiled peoples collaborated with the enemy during the German
occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus in 1941-42.
An estimated 1.5 million people were sent into forced exile after Soviet
troops reasserted control over the areas of the Black and Caspian seas
beginning in 1943. In lighting-strike operations performed by Stalin's NKVD
secret police, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Karachais, Kalmyks,
Balkars, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Hemshin, Meskhetians, and
others were deported to Siberia and Central Asia.
Germans, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and Finns from western and
central Soviet regions were deported at the beginning of the war with Nazi
Germany.
Baratashvili remembers her father's account of his first months of exile in
Uzbekistan.
"The [1944-45] winter was particularly harsh," Baratashvili says. "Many
people died of hunger and cold. Since there were no men to sustain these
people, many newborn children died because their mothers did not have milk."
Because nearly all the Soviet male population was serving in the army, the
majority of the deportees consisted of women, children, and the elderly. The
men were arrested and sent into exile after the demobilization.
Mustafa Cemilev chairs the Qirimtatar Millyi Meclisi, or Crimean Tatar
National Parliament. This veteran dissident, who was deported as a child and
spent 15 years in Soviet jails for defending the cause of his people, tells
RFE/RL that nearly one-half of the Crimean Tatars who were deported in 1944
died, either during their resettlement or in their first two years of exile.
"Some 380,000 Crimean Tatars were deported," Cemilev says. "That does not
include some 50,000 [soldiers] who were sent into exile after they returned
from the front. Many had died at the front and all those who had survived
were deported. But if we take this figure of 380,000 as a basis, we can say
that between 150,000 and 170,000 [Crimean Tatars] died [during the first two
years of exile]."
Following the 1956 de-Stalinization, most deported peoples were authorized
to return to their home regions, only to find out that their property had
been given to representatives of other ethnic groups sent to resettle the
depopulated areas.
The Soviet leadership had also taken advantage of the massive deportations
to redefine the administrative borders of the entire Northern Caucasus
region. Although these changes were partially corrected after Stalin's
death, they paved the way for the ethnic unrest that accompanied the
collapse of the Soviet Union, such at the brief war that pitted Ingush
against Ossetians in 1992.
Among those peoples who suffered lasting discrimination long after Stalin's
death were the Crimean Tatars and the Meskhetians.
The Meskhetians, who endured yet another exile after the ethnic clashes that
rocked Uzbekistan in the late 1980s, are still not allowed to collectively
return to Georgia and remain scattered across seven former Soviet republics.
Only a few hundred individuals, such as Baratashvili, have returned so far.
Although they were exonerated of all alleged crimes in 1967, the Crimean
Tatars were not allowed to return home massively until 1989 -- only to face
a number of new hurdles.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine authorized former collective
farm workers to buy land. But this privilege was denied Crimean Tatars who
had previously worked in collective farms in Central Asia.
Cemilev says access to land is the biggest problem facing the returnees.
"Although 75 percent of Crimean Tatars leave in rural areas, they have
approximately half as much land as the Russian-speaking population," Cemilev
says. "This problem is particularly acute in the south as a result of the
attempts made by the Soviet regime to bar the Crimean Tatars from returning
to these prestigious areas. Before the 1944 deportations, the Crimean Tatars
accounted for 70 percent of the population in these regions. Now, they
account for less than 1 percent. The lands are being distributed or sold at
cut-prices to oligarchs who live either in Kyiv or in Russia. This generates
tensions and permanent conflicts."
Some 150,000 Crimean Tatars still live in Central Asia, primarily in
Uzbekistan. Lack of money, administrative harassment on the part of Uzbek
authorities, and Kyiv's reluctance to issue them Ukrainian passports make it
difficult for Crimean Tatars to return home.
In Ukraine itself, the life of Crimean Tatars has seen no real improvement
in recent years.
Ukrainian lawmakers voted in 2004 to restore social benefits for Crimean
Tatars. But former President Leonid Kuchma vetoed the bill.
Cemilev, who holds a seat in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, the national
parliament, says President Viktor Yushchenko has vowed to reconsider his
predecessor's ban and increase the representation of Crimean Tatars in local
self-governments. But these promises have had no effect so far.
In Georgia, the leaders that succeeded former President Eduard Shevardnadze
are under strong pressure from the Council of Europe to accelerate steps
aimed at paving the way for the Meskhetians' repatriation. But despite
repeated pledges, the new government remains as noncommittal on this issue
as its predecessor.
Arguing that the presence of an estimated 300,000 displaced persons from the
separatist republic of Abkhazia make it difficult for Tbilisi to accept any
newcomers, Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili said in April that
the Meskhetian issue can be settled only "step by step."
