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 made, 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 Stalinism,” let’s 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 State Defense Committee, 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,” “ invincible army the great German people" and put to rest 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 destruction of people who were stacked in piles, tied up 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. Great 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 reprimand” 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 rifle 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 caught 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...
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 destruction 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 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?
By different sources, in the anti-Soviet combat units formed by the German authorities, from 9 to 20 thousand Crimean Tatars served, writes historian J. Otto Pohl. Some of them sought to protect their villages from Soviet partisans, which, according to the Tatars themselves, often persecuted them based on their nationality.
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 to their homeland 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, they died from hunger, exhaustion and disease, according to different estimates, from 20 to 46% of all deportees.
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 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. From Bolshaya Soviet encyclopedia(TSB) withdrew an article about the Crimean Tatars. 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 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, the Tatars fought for their right to return to 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. To others Russian authorities They themselves banned entry into 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.
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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 for free and building materials in Crimea, 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 illness 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, most of the junior officers. 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 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 an outstanding military pilot, twice Hero 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 being expelled. 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 swung open - and soviet soldiers with machine guns in their hands, they 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 food shortages, drinking water, 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 over time German occupation to executions and exterminations, 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.
Soldier of the 222nd separate rifle battalion of the 25th rifle brigade NKVD troops Alexei Vesnin, 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 gather 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, two hours were still given for preparations, 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 the doors and let in uninvited guests to home. 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 implementing evictions late in the evening of May 17 and “worked” diligently all night. Allegedly, in Simferopol, the first locations of the operation were Grazhdanskaya Street and the nearby Krasnaya Gorka streets. Then it was the turn of the residents of Simeiz. One of the sources gives a story about the deportation in the village of Ak-Bash, where NKVD and NKGB officers arrived in five trucks.
“Some fry meat, some potatoes, some pasties. And the soldiers are so happy; during the three years of war, each of them missed home-cooked food,” recalled local resident Sabe Useinova.
At 7 o’clock in the evening, well-fed Red Army soldiers “scattered” throughout the village, driving people out into the street with rifle butts, while Sabé’s husband stood with his hands raised. Then everyone was herded to the village square, loaded into cars and not allowed to leave until dawn on May 18th. Well, then everything went as usual.
In the fall of 1917, Crimean Tatar nationalists united in the Milli Firka party fiercely fought against the Red Guard detachments that were trying to establish Soviet power in Crimea. Perhaps the reasons for antagonism should be sought in revolutionary events too. 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 complete liberation 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. The German army, after 3 months of battles with the Soviet army, approached Perekop. Soon Crimea was occupied (10/18/1941-05/14/1944), the researcher wrote in his book “Deportation. How it was." — During this period, the Crimean Tatar people fully experienced all the horrors of war: 40 thousand went to the front, the Nazis burned more than 80 Crimean Tatar villages, 20 thousand young people were driven to Germany (of which 2,300 people were in German camps). By the time of the liberation of Crimea, 598 Crimean Tatar partisans were fighting the fascist invaders in the forests.”
“The deportations caused noticeable damage to the country’s economy: the work of many enterprises was suspended, entire agricultural areas fell into disrepair, the traditions of transhumance livestock farming, terrace farming, etc. were lost. The psychology of the deported peoples, their attitude to the socialist system, underwent a radical change, and international ties collapsed,” - noted historian Nikolai Bugai in his book “Joseph Stalin to Lavrentiy Beria: “They must be deported.”
After the Great Patriotic War, in March 1949, the security forces of the USSR began implementing Operation Surf to deport residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who were found to have connections with the nationalist underground. Almost 100 thousand anti-Soviet citizens of the Baltic states were forcibly evicted from their usual places to Siberia.
Gazeta.Ru wrote about these events in.
Said Tsarnaev/RIA Novosti
At the end of December last year, 75 years have passed since the forced deportation of Kalmyks, whom the Soviet authorities cruelly punished for collaboration. individual representatives people during the German occupation. More than 90 thousand people were put into railway carriages for transporting livestock in a few hours and sent from Kalmykia to Siberia and Central Asia. By the summer of 1944, the total number of those evicted had grown to 120 thousand due to Kalmyks from other regions and the military.
tuva.asia
Security officers began expelling Crimean Tatars from their homes at dawn on May 18. Well, while we are at night, we remember other nations who shared the same fate a little earlier.
In the later stages of the Great Patriotic War, in 1943-1944, forced deportations of entire peoples to remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred one after another. Earlier, Gazeta.Ru reported that the Karachais were expelled from their original habitats in the North Caucasus on charges of collaboration.
The official view of the events of 75 years ago is currently undergoing serious adjustments. Thus, at the beginning of May it was announced that a section on the collaboration of the Crimean Tatars during the years of Nazi occupation would be cut out of the textbook on the history of Crimea for the 10th grade. The republican Ministry of Education and Science explained that the corresponding decision was made “in order to relieve social tension.” Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria, Matvey Shkiryatov (in the first row from right to left), Georgy Malenkov and Andrei Zhdanov (in the second row from right to left) at a joint meeting of the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities 1st session USSR Armed Forces of the 1st convocation, 1938
RIA NovostiOn 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 the places of embarkation in trains. Parts internal troops dispersed throughout populated areas to organize the dispatch of people and subsequent clearing of the territory. In the mountainous forest area, SMERSH operatives were completing their final searches. According to Djilas, in 1943 or 1944, Stalin complained to Tito that US President Franklin Roosevelt was demanding that he create a kind of enclave of the Jewish diaspora in Crimea in exchange for Lend-Lease supplies. Allegedly, without the appropriate guarantees from Stalin on this issue, the Americans even refused to open a second front. In general, the leader of the Soviet state had no choice but to liberate Crimea for the Jews, which required evicting the Tatars. It is alleged that the leaders of the USA and the USSR seriously discussed the candidacy of the head of the future territorial entity. Allegedly, Roosevelt insisted on Solomon Mikhoels, while Stalin proposed his longtime and faithful ally Lazar Kaganovich.
Taking into account the above, the State Defense Committee decided:
“All Tatars should be evicted from the territory of Crimea and settled permanently as special settlers in the regions of the Uzbek SSR. Entrust the eviction to the NKVD of the USSR. Oblige the NKVD of the USSR (comrade Beria) to complete the eviction of the Crimean Tatars by June 1, 1944.”
It sounded like a sentence!
“During the Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars betrayed their Motherland, deserted from the Red Army units defending Crimea, went over to the enemy’s side, joined volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans that fought against the Red Army; During the occupation of Crimea by fascist German troops, participating in German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars were especially distinguished by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German occupiers in organizing the forcible abduction of Soviet citizens into German slavery and the mass extermination of Soviet people, it was said in a resolution of the State Defense Committee signed by its chairman Joseph Stalin. — Crimean Tatars actively collaborated with the German occupation authorities, participating in organized German intelligence the so-called “Tatar national committees” and were widely used by the Germans for the purpose of sending spies and saboteurs to the rear of the Red Army. "Tatar national committees", in which main role played by White Guard-Tatar emigrants, with the support of the Crimean Tatars, directed their activities towards the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and worked to prepare the violent separation of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of German armed forces.”
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 Stalin era in historical online.
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This forced removal of the Tatars, whom the Soviet government accused of collaborating with the Nazis, was one of the fastest deportations carried out in world history.
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. Crimean Tatar newspapers, magazines were published in Crimea, educational institutions, museums, libraries and theaters operated.
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 of Crimea.
However, in the 1930s, Soviet policy towards the Tatars, as well as other nationalities of the USSR, became repressive.
First, dispossession and eviction of the Tatars began to the north of Russia and beyond the Urals. Then came forced collectivization, the Holodomor of 1932-33, and the purges of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.
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, starting 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 fighters.
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 deportation, which appeared a week before the start of the evictions.
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 USSR's plans, Crimea was a strategic springboard in the event of a possible conflict with Turkey, 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 the Tatars support the Nazis?
Between nine and 20 thousand Crimean Tatars served in the anti-Soviet combat units formed by the German authorities, writes historian Jonathan 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 harsh 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?
NKVD employees entered Tatar homes and announced to the owners that they were being evicted from Crimea due to treason to their homeland.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, overcrowded with people, were sent east.
About eight thousand people died during the move, 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.
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 - areas surrounded by armed guards, checkpoints and barbed wire that were more reminiscent of labor camps than civilian settlements.The newcomers were cheap labor; they were used to work on collective farms, state farms and industrial enterprises.
In Uzbekistan, they cultivated cotton fields, worked in mines, construction sites, plants and factories. Among the hard work 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, were in danger of 20 years in prison. 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.
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 that they were not growing horns.
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.
By 1957, any publications in Crimean Tatar were prohibited. An article about the Crimean Tatars was removed from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
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 2,600 residents remained in the Alushta region, and 2,200 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.In the 1950-1960s, 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 dispersed the meeting.
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.
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.
A new challenge for the Crimean Tatars was Russia’s decision to annex Crimea in March 2014. Some of them left the peninsula due to persecution.
The Russian authorities themselves banned others from entering Crimea, including Crimean Tatar leaders 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 addressed 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".
There is no need to believe the current propaganda about the innocence of the Crimean Tatars. Their guilt is obvious and documented by many sources. There is no need to believe the wild numbers of victims from deportation. Wild because they call from 25 to 50% of the dead. This is complete nonsense. Remember the main thing is that when our grandfathers and fathers died for their Motherland, the grandfathers and fathers of the current Crimean Tatars completely deserted and went into the service of the Germans. And now the facts:
According to recently declassified data from the Special Folder of the State Defense Committee (according to a message dated May 1 under number No. 387/B), during the German occupation of Crimea, Muslim committees were organized there, which “carried out, on instructions from German intelligence agencies, the recruitment of Tatar youth into volunteer detachments to fight the partisans and the Red Army, selected appropriate personnel to send them to the rear of the Red Army and conducted active pro-fascist agitation among the Tatar population in Crimea.”
In Crimea, the “Tatar National Committee” was created, which was headed by the Turkish emigrant Abdureshid Cemil. The committee had branches in all areas of Tatar residence in Crimea and actively collaborated with the Germans.
In 1943, the Turkish emissary Amil Pasha came to Feodosia, who also called on the Tatar population to support the activities of the German command.
Among the specific and particularly challenging data is the collection of funds to help German army"after the defeat of the 6th German Army of Paulus at Stalingrad." Thus, the Feodosia Muslim Committee collected “one million rubles” among the Tatars.
From Beria’s report to the State Defense Committee No. 366/B dated April 25, 1944 (from the same Special Folder):
“Activities of Tatarsky national committee” was supported by broad sections of the Tatar population, to whom the German occupation authorities provided every possible support: they did not send them to work in Germany (except for 5,000 volunteers), did not send them to forced labor, provided tax benefits, etc. Not a single settlement with a Tatar population was destroyed.”
A special Tatar division was formed from the deserted Crimean Tatars, which took part in the battles in the Sevastopol region on the side of the Germans.
The Crimean Tatars, who collaborated with the occupiers, actively participated in punitive actions.
One example. “In the Dzhankoy region, a group of three Tatars was arrested, who, on instructions from German intelligence, poisoned 200 gypsies in a gas chamber in March 1942,” “in Sudak, 19 Tatars were arrested—punishers who brutally dealt with captured Red Army soldiers. Of the arrested Settars, Osman personally shot 37 Red Army soldiers, Abdureshitov Osman - 38 Red Army soldiers” (Special folder. Message number 465/B dated May 16, 1944).
In November 1941, all “local police auxiliary forces” in the territory of the Reichskommissariats were organized into units of “auxiliary order police” (Schutzmannschaft der Ordnungspolizei or “Schuma”). Actually, the Schuma police consisted of the following categories:
- order police in cities and rural areas - Schutzmannschaft-Einseldienst;
- self-defense units - Selbst-Schutz;
- police battalions for fighting partisans - Schutzmannschaft-Bataillone;
- auxiliary fire police - Feuerschutzmannschaft;
- reserve auxiliary police for guarding prisoner-of-war camps and performing labor duties - Hilfsschutzmannschaft.
City and rural police departments were created immediately after the Germans occupied the cities and large settlements of Crimea. The main duties of its employees were maintaining order in locality and monitoring the implementation of the passport regime.
Personnel The police consisted mainly of three national groups: Tatars, Ukrainians and Russians. Moreover, the national composition varied depending on the region. Thus, Tatars predominated in the police of Alushta (chief - Chermen Seit Memet), Yalta, Sevastopol (chief - Yagya Aliyev), Karasubazar and Zuya (chief - senior policeman Aliyev), there were significantly fewer of them in the police of Evpatoria and Feodosia.
However, neither the city nor the rural police could independently fight the partisans, much less destroy them. Therefore, the occupation authorities did everything to create larger armed formations that could ensure relative order, at least within their area.
One of the principles of German occupation policy on the territory of the USSR was the creation volunteer formations, in particular, there was a contrast between non-Russian peoples and national minorities and the Russian people. In Crimea, this principle was reflected in the flirting of the German authorities with the Crimean Tatar population and in the creation of volunteer formations from its representatives in the form of self-defense units and “Schuma” battalions for use on the territory of the peninsula.”
This official document should be supplemented.
Soon after the return of Crimea to the native bosom of Russia, President V. Putin received in the Kremlin representatives of the Crimean Tatars, who became our fellow citizens. Very gratifying. Presumably, there was something to talk about, find out something, help, take note of, etc. And shortly before this, a Decree on the rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars was signed. There is also something to think about here.
Firstly, only someone who has been convicted can be rehabilitated. But there is not a single country in the world under whose legislation it would be possible to condemn an entire people. There could not be such a code in the USSR. And the Crimean Tatar people were not and could not be condemned. What happened?
The Great Patriotic War began just 23 years after October Revolution, which in one way or another, and sometimes quite unfairly, hurt many. And these people were still far from old, quite active, often even at soldier’s age. It is understandable that they want to take advantage of the outbreak of war to their advantage, to avenge the loss of loved ones, property, or position. So thousands of yesterday's Soviet citizens ended up even in the ranks of the occupiers. And the surprise is not that traitors were found among the 195 million people, but that there were so few of them.
Here is a very valuable testimony of Natalya Vladimirovna Malysheva, intelligence officer, major of the Red Army, and much later Mother Adriana, whose beautiful portrait in her old age I saw in the studio of Alexander Shilov: “After all, I could have gone into evacuation with my Aviation Institute(MAI) in Alma-Ata. There's sunshine and fruit. But how can you leave when you understand: here the Germans will be walking the streets of Moscow... I decided: I will not go into evacuation, I will defend Moscow!.. I still ask myself: how was this possible? After all, there are so many repressed, so many churches destroyed. And yet, my militia division is 11 thousand volunteers who were in no way subject to conscription. We formed it in a week! We had children of both repressed people and priests. I knew two volunteers whose fathers were shot. But no one harbored a grudge. And so these children rose above their grievances, abandoned everything and went to defend Moscow, many of whom it had offended" ( Russian newspaper. December 24, 2009).
But, of course, there were traitors. These were people different nationalities of our multinational country, starting with the Russians. General Vlasov created an army, although from only two combat divisions, the Germans had Ukrainian units, and Central Asian units, and the Kalmyk Cavalry Corps (KKK)... Not to mention the Balts, who lived under Soviet rule for only a year before the war. The Germans treated all these national units with contempt and distrust. Hitler did not even want to see General Vlasov, the most famous traitor. Himmler dealt with him. And the Vlasov army was armed only in November 1944, when we entered German soil, and things became really bad for the Germans.
The Crimean Tatars could not be an exception here. Nationality, national mentality, national memory are not an invention of Stalinist propaganda, but the reality of life... A curious and very characteristic episode once flashed on television. There are now, it seems, seven thousand Germans living in Crimea; they have some kind of unifying organization. And in the recent days of the reunification of Crimea with Russia, one journalist came to talk to the head of this organization. The conversation was friendly, benevolent, the German said that they would all vote for Russia... But what did we see on TV on the wall of his office? Portrait of Angela Merkel!.. What good did he see from her? Nothing. What did she give him? Nothing. And after all, most likely, his ancestors ended up in Russia under Peter or Catherine; he was a long-time Russian German, but here you have a portrait of the angelic Angela. There is only one national feeling and nothing more. Portraits of Hitler could not hang in the houses of Volga Germans, but still, still, still...
So, when thinking about the Crimean Tatars, we must not forget that there was a more powerful Crimean Khanate. For centuries it carried out devastating raids on Russian lands. Just look at the raid of Khan Devlet-Girey in May 1571. Taking advantage of the fact that Russian troops were busy in the Livonian War, he then, together with the Turks, reached Moscow, burned it all except the Kremlin, thousands of Muscovites were killed, thousands were driven into slavery. Khan wanted to conquer the Muscovite kingdom. Ivan the Terrible was ready to give him Astrakhan, but this was not enough for him, the war continued, and only in August of the following year, near the village of Molodi, 60 versts south of Moscow, the Russians under the command of Prince M.I. Vorotynsky completely defeated the army of the Khan and the Turks. And in 1687, 1689 there were ours unsuccessful trips to Crimea, which became a Turkish vassal, and only after the victory over Turkey, only in 1783 was Crimea annexed to Russia. All these complex, difficult, bloody historical vicissitudes, which ended in their defeat, could not help but leave a mark in the memory of the Crimean Tatars. The history of the conquest of the Caucasus was even fresher in the memory of the Ingush and Chechens...
And the war began... On November 1, 1941, the Germans captured Simferopol, and on November 8, Yalta. I will give several excerpts from German documents of that time.
“From the diary of military operations of the 11th Army in Crimea. Intelligence Department.
Already during the occupation of Crimea by troops, the Tatars showed their friendliness towards the Germans. They thought German troops liberators from the yoke, offered their help... They have vivid memories of brotherhood in arms in 1917-1918...
They increasingly offered us their help in the fight against the partisans and the Red Army. In Simferopol, Bakhchisaray, Karasubazar, etc. they prayed for the victory of German weapons, for the Fuhrer, sent letters of gratitude to the Fuhrer, asked to be allowed to take part in the fight against the Bolsheviks...
On January 20, 1942, a meeting was held in the army intelligence department, where it was announced that the Fuhrer had authorized the admission of volunteers from the Crimean Tatars, as well as the creation of Tatar self-defense companies to fight the partisans. Einsatzgruppe D creates such companies. Tatars are considered employees of the Wehrmacht and receive the same food and pay as low-ranking Germans. They are proud to wear German uniform and try to learn German and are very proud when they can speak German.
On January 3, 1942, at 10.00, the first official meeting of the Tatar Committee began in Simferopol, dedicated to the recruitment of Tatars for the common fight against Bolshevism. The meeting was held under the leadership of the chief of the Einsatzgruppe.” The meeting was opened greetings SS-Oberführer Ohlendorf. He said that he was glad to inform the committee that his request to defend his homeland in this sacred struggle with the Germans against Bolshevism was granted.
The Tatars present received these words with delight and loudly applauded. The Mullah of the Muslim Association of Simferopol stated that his religion requires him to take part in this sacred struggle along with the Germans. The oldest of the Tatars, Ennan Setulla, said that he himself was ready to come out with weapons, although he was sixty years old. Chairman of the Tatar Committee Abdureshidov: “I know that the Tatars as a people (!) are all ready to oppose the common enemy. We are honored to be allowed to fight under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the greatest figure of the German people. We are all (!) ready to march under the leadership of the German army.” The second chairman of the Tatar Committee, youth representative Kermenchikli said: “Every (!) young Tatar goes into battle with the consciousness that this is a battle against the worst enemy of the German and our people.”
After everything was agreed upon, the Tatars asked this solemn meeting and the beginning of the struggle against the infidels to end with a prayer service. The Tatars, following the mullah, repeated three prayers. The first is for achieving a quick victory for common goals and for the long life of Adolf Hitler. The second is for the German people and their valiant army. The third is for the dead German soldiers"(VIZH No. 3’1991. P. 91-93).
But what about some unknown Oberführer Ohlendorf! This is what the famous Field Marshal General E. Manstein, whose army broke into Crimea in September 1941, wrote in his memoirs: “The majority (!) of the Tatar population of Crimea was very friendly towards us. We even managed to form armed companies from the Tatars for self-defense... The Tatars immediately took our side. They saw in us their liberators from the Bolshevik yoke... A Tatar deputation came to me, bringing fruits and beautiful handmade fabrics for the liberator Adolf Effendi.”
Soon the newspaper “Azat Krym” (“Liberated Crimea”) began to be published. For example, it read:
At a meeting organized by the Muslim Committee, Muslims expressed gratitude To the Great Fuhrer Adolf Hitler Effendi for free life. Then they arranged service for the health of Hitler Effendi».
Or: " To the great Hitler - liberator of all peoples and religions! Two thousand Tatars from the village of Kokkozy and the surrounding area gathered for a prayer service in honor of the German soldiers. The entire Tatar people prays every day and asks Allah to grant the Germans victory over the whole world. Oh Great Leader, we speak from the bottom of our hearts, believe us! We give our word to fight the herd of Jews and Bolsheviks together with German soldiers. God bless you, our great master Hitler,” etc. etc.
And there is nothing surprising or exceptional in this whole picture, including such a newspaper. There were like-minded people among the named Tatars among the Russians. They wrote approximately the same thing in the Vlasov newspapers. And long before the war, the Athonite elder Aristokle prophesied: “Wait until the Germans take up arms, for they have been chosen not only by God as an instrument of punishment for Russia, but also as an instrument of deliverance. When you hear that the Germans are taking up arms, then the time is close” (The Great Civil War of 1941-1945. M. 2002. P.498).
But then the Germans took up arms. Journalist D. Zhukov writes in the same book: “In emigration, the overwhelming majority of priests and parishioners welcomed the beginning of the war, even greeted it enthusiastically” (p. 499, 501). Thus, Metropolitan Seraphim (Lukyanov) stated: “May the Almighty bless the great Leader of the German people, who raised the sword against the enemies of God himself.” He was echoed by the very liberal Archimandrite John (Shakhovskoy) in the article “The Hour is Near”: “Until what days are desired by both the sub-Soviet and foreign Russia happened to live... The bloody operation of overthrowing the Third International is entrusted to a skilled German surgeon, experienced in his science” (p. 501). (The aforementioned Zhukov, the parent of the most colorless deputy prime minister of all democratic governments since the Yeltsin era, the same truth teller who wrote in Litgazeta that Stalin flew to the Tehran conference with a cash cow, tried, with the help of dirty slander, to attach himself to this horde of haters The Soviet Union and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the future patriarch, whose name this Zhukov does not even know how to spell correctly. He, he says, “in his sermon in the Patriarchal Cathedral in Moscow indirectly supported the beginning of the war” (p. 499). they say, Germans. For such fabrications, even the parents of deputy prime ministers are hit on the head with a candelabra).
But it was not only the churchmen who rejoiced at Hitler’s attack. Lived in German-occupied France Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, seemingly a classic of Russian literature, wrote in his diary in the first days of the war on July 2, 1941 with obvious gloating: “It’s true that Stalin’s reign will soon end. Kyiv will probably be taken in a week or two.” The classic was in a hurry; in fact, Kyiv was captured almost three months later. True, later the classic came to his senses somewhat and was even glad when we liberated Odessa. I'm not even talking about General Krasnov, who fought twice with the Germans against Soviet Russia and deservedly received the gallows in 1946. And General Denikin, who then also lived in France, and after the war went overseas, hated him until the end of his days Soviet Russia and even in 1947, shortly before his death, he sent American President a detailed note on how to more deftly defeat the Soviet Union using experience Civil War and the Great Patriotic War.
As for Russian churchmen, even at the present time there are still ardent admirers of Hitler among them. Here is what you can read in the magazine “Russian Orthodoxy” No. 4 for 2000: “The Catacomb Church has always confessed and now confesses that Hitler for True Orthodox Christians (IOC) was God’s chosen anointed leader not only in the political, but also in the spiritual and mystical sense, the good fruits of which are still felt today. Therefore, the IPH honors him... As during the life of the German Fuhrer, St. The Church offered prayers for his health and for the granting of victory over his adversaries, and after his death she prays for his immortal soul” (Ibid., p. 500). Having quoted these lines, Zhukov did not express his attitude towards them: “We leave it to the readers to decide for themselves on this issue.” And, for example, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov, who regularly organizes anniversary memorial services for General Krasnov, Vlasov, and Solzhenitsyn, can help decide. Moreover, he curses the famous general A.A. Brusilov, who after the revolution took the side of the people and their Red Army, but praises Kolchak, Yudenich and Yeltsin (Tragedy of Russia. M. 2009). As we see, these saints, in their servility and servility to the fascists and other enemies of Russia, perhaps even leave behind the mentioned Simferopol mullah and his Crimean Tatar associates during the war.
Meanwhile, in the above document from the intelligence department of the 11th German Army there is also the following evidence: “In the villages of the Bakhchisarai region, before January 22, 1942, 565 Tatars voluntarily declared their service with us, but during the conscription, frequent refusals were noted. As of January 30, due to illness and other reasons, there were 176 such people, of which 48 people simply did not show up at the recruiting stations. As a result, out of 565 volunteers, 389 people remained” (Cit. cit., p. 94). This is a very important testimony. Yes, of course, not all Tatars went to serve the Germans. Moreover, the Tatars were also among the partisans. Thus, according to archival data of the Crimean Regional Party Committee, in April 1944, on the eve of the liberation of Crimea, in the partisan detachments there were 2075 Russians, 391 Tatars, 356 Ukrainians, 71 Belarusians (Quoted by I. Pykhalov. The Time of Stalin. M. 2001 . P.76) . It’s also worth mentioning here that during the war years, 161 Tatars (I don’t know how many of them were Crimean) became Heroes of the Soviet Union.
But, presumably, the proportion of Tatars who served with the Germans was still quite high. Thus, in a memo from the Deputy People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR B.Z. Kobulov and the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR I.A. Serov dated April 22, 1944 to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria it was said that in 1941 about 20 thousand Tatars and all of them deserted during the retreat of our 51st army from Crimea and ended up in the ranks of the Germans. This is almost the entire Crimean Tatar population of military age” (Ibid., p. 75).
Much can be judged from the memorandum of Beria, who, as People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, led the eviction operation. He reported to Stalin on May 10, 1944. There is also the following data: “The NKVD and NKGB bodies are carrying out in Crimea the identification and seizure of enemy agents, traitors to the homeland. On May 7 this year. 5,381 such persons were arrested, weapons were seized - 5,995 rifles, 337 machine guns, 250 machine guns, 31 mortars, large number grenades and cartridges."
On July 5, 1944, Beria, summing up the results, reported: “... 15,990 weapons illegally stored among the population were seized, including 724 machine guns, 716 machine guns, 5 million pieces of ammunition” (Ibid., p. 84). Machine guns, as you know, are not used for quail hunting... 716 machine guns are a lot of power in those conditions. And Beria had no reason to exaggerate these figures in his note to Stalin.
Yes, of course, not all Tatars collaborated with the Germans. Not everyone was evicted. For example, they did not touch those Tatars who themselves participated in partisan detachments and their families. Here we can name the family of S.S. Useinov, a partisan shot by the Germans. Families in which the wife is Tatar and the husband is Russian were not evicted. The Tatars who were at the front, like the pilot E.U. Chalbash and others, managed to defend their families (Ibid.).
In assessing this entire dramatic story, a number of important circumstances must be taken into account.
Firstly, eviction based on nationality in wartime is not Soviet invention. A very knowledgeable and conscientious political scientist, Professor S.G. Kara-Murza writes: “In 1915-1916. The tsarist government carried out the forced eviction of Germans from the front line and even from the Azov region. In the same 1915, by order Supreme Commander-in-Chief The Russian army evicted over 100 thousand people from the Baltic states to Altai. On February 19, 1942, the most liberal President Roosevelt gave the order not even to deport, but to imprison concentration camps US citizens of Japanese descent. In these camps they were forced to do hard work in the mines. But there was no threat of a Japanese invasion” (Soviet civilization. Book one, M. 2002. P. 608). And there were about 130 thousand people behind barbed wire. And one cannot help but compare: Japan was overseas from the United States, and Crimea was then the rear of the fighting Red Army.
Secondly, in all the episodes mentioned above, neither the Germans, nor the Balts, nor the Japanese showed dangerous hostility towards their country or sympathy for its enemy, much less any assistance to him. They were expelled in advance, in order, so to speak, of a preventive military quarantine. Another thing is the Crimean Tatars. They were expelled after the liberation of Crimea, when numerous facts of their active cooperation with the occupiers became reliably known.
Thirdly, because the Germans had not yet been expelled from our land, no one could say when the war would end and what other possible turns in its course. And so, having liberated Crimea, in such conditions, leave hostile armed detachments in the rear of our army, who have more than 700 machine guns alone? This would be extremely irresponsible and dangerous. What if the Germans returned to Crimea? This could not be ruled out then.
Fourthly, Crimea is not just a territory, but a strategically extremely important border outskirts of the country, a bridgehead that should be an absolutely reliable rear of the Red Army.
Fifthly, in war conditions it was simply not possible to deal with each individual suspect, with each specific fact.
Finally, if the Tatars had remained in Crimea after its liberation, this could have caused many acute, including bloody, conflicts between them and the rest of the population. Lyudmila Zhukova writes in Literaturnaya Gazeta: “Today, due to political correctness, it is not customary for us to explain the reason for the deportation of an entire people. I remember the meeting in Alushta in the late 70s with the front-line soldiers who liberated Crimea. They said: “The deportation of the entire people saved them from the retribution of the front-line soldiers, who were not afraid of anything then” (LG. May 21, 14). Yes, deportation saved the Tatars from the wrath of the people.
How and under what conditions did the resettlement take place? According to the decree of the State Defense Committee of May 11, 1944, signed by Stalin, each family was allowed to take with them up to 500 kg of things - equipment, dishes, food, etc. Exchange receipts were issued for abandoned livestock, grain, and vegetables in order to return for them everything accepted at the place of settlement in Uzbekistan. To organize the reception, the four named heads of the People's Commissariats were instructed to send the required number of workers to Crimea. And to exchange at the place of settlement everything handed over to Uzbekistan, a special commission of the Council was sent people's commissars USSR out of six also named responsible officials a number of people's commissariats headed by Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Gritsenko. People's Commissar of Health Miterev was instructed to allocate a doctor and two nurses for each echelon “with an appropriate supply of medicines and provide medical and sanitary services to the special settlers along the way.” And one more thing: “The People's Commissariat of Trade of the USSR (Comrade Lyubimov) should provide all echelons with daily hot meals. For this purpose, the People’s Commissariat of Trade will allocate products.”
The Tatars were not thrown out somewhere in a bare field. “The resettlement of special settlers,” said the GKO resolution, “should be carried out in state farm settlements, collective farms, in subsidiary rural farms of enterprises and factory settlements for use in agriculture and industry." Besides, local authorities it was necessary to “provide special settlers with personal plots and assist in the construction of houses,” for which each family was given a loan of 5,000 rubles for seven years. Other measures to help the Tatars were also provided, and 30 million rubles were allocated for all activities. I wonder how much it cost the Americans to keep the Japanese behind barbed wire...
S. Kara-Murza believes that the deportation of peoples from Crimea and the Caucasus was a punishment based on the principle of mutual responsibility, when one is responsible for everyone, and everyone is responsible for one. But it was a very strange punishment. Kara-Murza himself testifies that in the places of the new settlement party and Komsomol organizations were preserved, people studied at native language, received an education, a specialty, and later did not know any discrimination when receiving higher education. And in the end, this is also very characteristic. Another of our famous researchers, Vadim Kozhinov, responding in 1993 to a certain G. Vachnadze, who stated that 50% of Chechens died during the deportation, wrote: “According to reliable census data, in 1944 there were 459 thousand Chechens and Ingush people, and in 1959- m, when they returned to their native land - 525 thousand, i.e. 14.2% more. If half the people had really perished, then their numbers could have recovered in no less than half a century. So, in 1941-1944, not 50, but “only” 22% of the population of Belarus (2 million out of 9) died, and the pre-war number was able to recover only 25 years later - by 1970” (Fate of Russia. M. 1997 . P.168). That is, as Kara-Murza writes, “they returned to the Caucasus as a grown and strengthened people” (Cit. cit. p. 609). There is no reason to believe that things were different among the Tatars or Kalmyks.
So was the Rehabilitation Decree necessary? I think that instead of the Decree, it would be necessary, on behalf of the state, to apologize to the Tatars for the fact that in wartime conditions it was not possible to comply with all legal norms and formalities and to gratefully remember all the Tatars, living and dead, who fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Let me remind you again: 161 Tatars, including the poet Musa Jalil, received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their exploits during the war. Here they are only fourth after much more numerous peoples...
I have known many Tatars in my life. As a child, I was friends with two Tatar brothers, whose surname and names I forgot due to the passage of time; at the front, in the same company with me were the Tatars Ziyatdinov and Khabibullin; after the war I knew the wonderful poet Mikhail Lvov, who wrote in Russian; I have been friends with playwright Azat Abdullin for many years. Who else? The wife's friends are Chulpan Malysheva, daughter of Musa Jalil, Galiya Alimova. And I can’t say a single unkind word about any of them... This is what we should write a song about for Jamala so that she can sing it in Sweden for all of Europe.
V.S. Bushin
Original taken from
