So, friends - today there will be a post about quite tragic events - it is exactly 75 years since Stalin’s genocide of the Crimean Tatars in . On May 18, 1944, the Crimean Tatars were deported in freight cars from Crimea to remote areas of the USSR - in particular, to sparsely populated areas of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The deportation was carried out by the punitive authorities of the NKVD, and the deportation order was signed personally.

“But Stalin won the war!” — lovers of the USSR speak in the comments — “If Stalin had not sent people to concentration camps, then Hitler would have done it for him!” - Neo-Stalinists and conspiracy theorists echo them. However, the truth is that there can be no justification for this genocide - just as there is no justification for Stalin’s other crimes - such as deportation and.

So, in today’s post I will tell you about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - something that should not be forgotten today, so that it does not happen again amid cries of “we can do it again!” In general, be sure to go under the cat, write your opinion in the comments, and well add as a friend Do not forget)

Why did the deportation begin?

It was created in 1922, and in the same year Moscow recognized the Crimean Tatars as the indigenous population of Crimea. During the interwar period, in the 1920-30s, Tatars made up almost a third of the population of Crimea - about 25-30%. In the thirties, after Stalin came to power, mass repressions began against the Tatar population of Crimea - dispossession and eviction of Tatars, repressions, mass "purges" of the intelligentsia in 1937-38.

All this turned many Tatars against the Soviet regime - during the war, several thousand Tatars fought against the USSR with weapons in their hands - in fact, I touched on this issue a little in the post with - how and why people fought against the USSR. IN post-war years supposedly this was the “official reason” for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars - although according to the same logic it was possible to deport all Russians from Russia - at least 120-140 thousand of whom fought in Vlasov’s army alone (not counting other formations).

In fact, the Tatars were deported for completely different reasons - the Crimean Tatars were historically strongly associated with Turkey and were also Muslims - and Stalin decided to deport them precisely for this reason - since they did not fit into the picture of the “ideal USSR” in his head and were "superfluous people." This version is also supported by the fact that, along with the Tatars, other Muslim ethnic groups - Chechens, Ingush, Karachais and Balkars - were evicted from the areas adjacent to Turkey.

How exactly did the deportation take place?

NKVD soldiers broke into Tatar houses and declared people “enemies of the people” - supposedly because of “treason to the motherland” they would be evicted from Crimea forever. According to official documents, each family could take with them up to 500 kilograms of luggage - however, in reality, people managed to take much less, and most often they went into freight cars simply in what they were wearing - houses and abandoned things were looted by the military and NKVD soldiers.

People were transported by truck to the railway stations - later sending about 70 trains with the doors of freight cars tightly closed and nailed, overcrowded with people, to the east. During the movement of people to the east alone, more than 8,000 people died - most often people died from typhus or thirst. Many, unable to bear the suffering, went crazy.

In the first two years, about half (up to 46%) of all deported people died - unable to adapt to the harsh conditions of the lands to which they were sent. Almost half of these 46% were children under the age of 16 - they had the hardest time. People died from a lack of clean water, from poor hygiene - due to which malaria, dysentery, yellow fever and other diseases spread among the deportees.

Soviet concentration camps and erased memory.

In all this tragedy there is one more very important point— about which Russian sources are silent. The settlements themselves where people were sent were not some kind of villages or cities. Most of all they looked like real concentration camps- these were special settlements fenced with barbed wire, around which there were checkpoints with armed guards.

The exiled Tatars were used for slave labor in the form of almost free labor - they worked for food on collective farms, state farms and industrial enterprises - the exiled Crimean Tatars were entrusted with the most difficult and dirty work, such as manually harvesting cotton treated with pesticides or the construction of the Farhad hydroelectric station.

In 1948, Soviet Moscow declared that this would always be the case - the Tatars were recognized as life prisoners and had no right to leave the territories of the special settlement camps. The Soviet government also constantly incited hatred towards the Crimean Tatars - the locals were told creepy stories, that terrible “traitors to the motherland, cyclops and cannibals” are coming to them - from whom they need to stay away. According to eyewitnesses, many local Uzbeks then felt the Crimean Tatars to find out if they were growing horns?

In 1957, the USSR began to erase all memory of the Crimean Tatar people. By this year, all publications in the Crimean Tatar language were banned, and from the Great Soviet encyclopedia about the Crimean Tatars - as if they never existed.

Crimes without statute of limitations. Instead of an epilogue.

All the time that happened from the moment of deportation, the Crimean Tatars fought for their right to return to their homeland - constantly reminding the Soviet authorities that such a people exist, and it will not be possible to erase the memory of them. The Tatars held rallies and fought for their rights - and finally, in 1989, they achieved the restoration of their rights, and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in November 1989 recognized the deportation of the Crimean Tatars illegal and criminal.

As for me, these crimes of the Soviet government have no statute of limitations and are no different from Hitler’s Holocaust - he also chose an “undesirable people” and tried to destroy them and all the memory of them.

The good thing is that the USSR itself recognized these actions as crimes. The bad thing is that now there has been a reversal - many on the Russian side are now again looking at Stalin’s deeds and shouting “Krymnash!” and “we can repeat it” - apparently, these are the descendants of those who once built concentration camps for the Crimean Tatars and stood at checkpoints with machine guns...

Write in the comments what you think about all this.

Exactly 70 years ago - on May 11, 1944 - the State Committee issued a resolution on the beginning of the Stalinist deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 - the eviction of the indigenous population of the Crimean peninsula to Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan...

Among the reasons for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea, their collaboration during the Second World War was also mentioned.

Only in the late perestroika years was this deportation recognized as criminal and illegal.

The formally stated reason for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was the complicity of the Germans by part of the population of Tatar nationality in the period from 1941 to 1944, during the seizure of Crimea by German troops.

From the Resolution of the State Defense Committee of the USSR dated May 11, 1944, it is said that full list- treason, desertion, defection to the side of the fascist enemy, the creation of punitive detachments and participation in brutal reprisals against partisans, mass extermination of residents, assistance in sending groups of the population into slavery in Germany, as well as other reasons for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, carried out by the Soviet government .

Among the Crimean Tatars, 20 thousand people either belonged to police detachments or were in service in the Wehrmacht.

Those collaborators who were sent to Germany before the end of the war to create the Tatar SS Mountain Jaeger Regiment managed to avoid Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea. Among those Tatars who remained in Crimea, the bulk were identified by NKVD employees and convicted. During the period from April to May 1944, 5,000 accomplices of the German occupiers of various nationalities were arrested and convicted in Crimea.

The part of this people that fought on the side of the USSR was also subjected to Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea. In a number of (not so numerous) cases (as a rule, this affected officers with military awards), Crimean Tatars were not expelled, but a ban was imposed on them from living in the territory of Crimea.

Over two years (from 1945 to 1946), 8,995 war veterans belonging to the Tatar people were deported. Even that part of the Tatar population that was evacuated from Crimea to the Soviet rear (and, of course, for which it was impossible to find a single reason for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944) and could not be involved in collaborationist activities, was deported. The Crimean Tatars, who held leading positions in the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and the Council of People's Commissars of the KASSR, were no exception. As a reason, the thesis was put forward about the need to replenish the leadership of government bodies in new places.

The Stalinist deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea, based on national criteria, was characteristic of political totalitarian regimes. The number of deportations, when only nationality was taken as a basis, in the USSR during the reign of Stalin, according to some estimates, is close to 53.

The operation to deport the Crimean Tatars was planned and organized by the NKVD troops - a total of 32 thousand employees. By May 11, 1944, all clarifications and adjustments were made in the lists of the Crimean Tatar population, and their residential addresses were checked. The secrecy of the operation was the highest. After the preparatory operations, the deportation procedure itself began. It lasted from May 18 to May 20, 1944.

Three people - an officer and soldiers - entered houses early in the morning, read out the reasons for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944, gave a maximum of half an hour to get ready, then the people who were literally thrown out onto the street were collected into groups and sent to railway stations.

Those who resisted were shot right next to their houses. At the stations, about 170 people were placed in each heated carriage, and the trains were sent to Central Asia. The road, exhausting and difficult, lasted about two weeks.

Those who managed to take food from home could barely survive; the rest died from hunger and diseases caused by the transportation conditions. First of all, the elderly and children suffered and died. Those who could not bear the crossing were thrown off the train or hastily buried near the railway.

From the memories of eyewitnesses:

Official data sent to Stalin for reporting confirmed that 183,155 Crimean Tatars were deported. Crimean Tatars who fought were sent to the labor armies, and those demobilized after the war were also deported.

During the deportation period from 1944 to 1945, 46.2% of Crimean Tatars died. According to official reports from Soviet authorities, the death toll reaches 25%, and according to some sources - 15%. Data from the OSP of the Ukrainian SSR indicate that in the six months since the arrival of the trains, 16,052 displaced persons died.

The main destinations of the trains with deportees were Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Also, some were sent to the Urals, the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the Kostroma region. The deportees had to live in barracks that were practically not intended for living. Food and water were limited and conditions were almost unbearable, causing many deaths and illnesses among those who survived the move from Crimea.

Until 1957, the deportees were subject to a special settlement regime, when it was prohibited to move further than 7 km from home, and each settler was obliged to report monthly to the commandant settlement. Violations were punished extremely strictly, including long terms in camps, even for unauthorized absence to a neighboring settlement where relatives lived.

The death of Stalin did little to change the situation of the deported Crimean Tatar population. All those repressed on ethnic grounds were conditionally divided into those who were allowed to return to the autonomy, and those who were deprived of the right to return to their places of original residence. The so-called policy of “rooting” exiles in places of forced settlement was carried out. The second group included the Crimean Tatars.

The authorities continued the line of accusing all Crimean Tatars of aiding the German occupiers, which provided a formal basis for banning the return of settlers to Crimea. Until 1974, formally and until 1989 – in fact – Crimean Tatars could not leave their places of exile. As a result, in the 1960s, a broad mass movement arose for the return of rights and the possibility of returning the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland. Only during the process of “perestroika” did this return become possible for the majority of deportees.

Stalin's deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea affected both the mood and the demographic situation of Crimea. For a long time, the population of Crimea lived in fear of possible deportation. They added panic expectations and evictions of Bulgarians, Armenians and Greeks living in Crimea. Those areas that were inhabited by Crimean Tatars before the deportation remained empty. After returning, most of the Crimean Tatars were resettled not to their previous places of residence, but to the steppe regions of Crimea, whereas previously their homes were in the mountains and on the southern coast of the peninsula.

Illustration copyright Getty Image caption Every May, Tatars celebrate the anniversary of the deportation. This year, Russian authorities banned the rally in Simferopol

On May 18-20, 1944, NKVD soldiers, on orders from Moscow, herded almost the entire Tatar population of Crimea to railway cars and sent them towards Uzbekistan in 70 trains.

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.

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.

Illustration copyright hatira.ru Image caption Crimean Tatar State Ensemble "Haitarma". Moscow, 1935

First, the dispossession and eviction of the Tatars to the north of Russia and beyond the Urals began. Then came forced collectivization, the Holodomor of 1932-33, and the purges of the intelligentsia in 1937-1938.

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 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.

Illustration copyright hatira.ru Image caption Spouses in the Urals, 1953

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.

Illustration copyright memory.gov.ua Image caption Mari ASSR. Crew at the logging site. 1950

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.

Illustration copyright hatira.ru Image caption Alime Ilyasova (right) with a friend whose name is unknown. Early 1940s

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 1950s and 1960s, Tatars fought for their right to return to their historical homeland, including through demonstrations in Uzbek cities.

Illustration copyright hatira.ru Image caption Osman Ibrish with his wife Alime. Settlement of Kibray, Uzbekistan, 1971

In 1968, the occasion of 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 was 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 the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014. Some of them left the peninsula due to persecution.

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 claim that the Soviet government intended to destroy the Crimean Tatars as ethnic group and purposefully walked towards 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".

In chapter

On the eve of the anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, distributed hundreds of keys to new apartments to the descendants of the exiles, as if once again compensating them for the moral costs of the hardships and suffering they had suffered. But how much can you “pay and repent” if you still Soviet times Did the country's authorities pay for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars at least three times?

That’s right: the Soviet Union three times compensated the deported Crimean Tatars for their material costs incurred as a result of resettlement to the republics Central Asia, as well as to Moscow (!), Samara, Guryev and Rybinsk. Only at the disposal of the Moskvougol trust, as follows from a telegram addressed to People’s Commissar Lavrentiy Beria dated May 20, 1944, 5 thousand “limiters” of Crimean Tatar nationality were sent. Resolution of the State Defense Committee No. 5859 dated May 11, 1944 stipulated that resettlers in the new place would be compensated “according to exchange receipts” for real estate, livestock, poultry and agricultural products received from them in Crimea. All compensation was paid before March 1, 1946. At the same time, at the new place of residence, each displaced family was provided with housing - an apartment in the city or a house in rural areas. In other words, the deportees were given money for the housing left behind in Crimea and were immediately provided with new houses and apartments free of charge. But that's not all. In 1989, by resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, as well as the Councils of Ministers of Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, migrants were compensated for their material costs for the third time. For settlers arriving in Uzbekistan (the Crimean Tatars were not deported to Tajikistan; they moved there later and solely of their own free will), the Agricultural Bank provided interest-free loans for economic establishments - 50 thousand rubles per family with installments up to 7 years. Also, each settler was given 8 kilos of flour, 8 kilos of vegetables and 2 kilos of cereals free of charge every month. Let us remember: it was the summer of 1944, the war was still going on, and in many parts of the country there was hunger.

The cruelty of the Crimean Tatars surprised even the SS men

Scientists are still arguing about exactly how many Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea, although there seems to be nothing to argue about - just study the archival documents. In a telegram sent on May 20, 1944 to People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria by his deputy Bogdan Kobulov, these figures are given: 191,044 people were evicted. By the way, this document also contains other very interesting figures. Today there is a lot of talk about the repressions to which the Crimean Tatars were subjected en masse, although it is hardly possible to talk about massacres. For the whole Crimean operation In 1944, 5,989 “anti-Soviet elements of Crimean Tatar nationality” were arrested. How much is this, considering that in just the first two months of the occupation, 20 thousand Crimean Tatars took the oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer? Moreover, during the deportation, 10 mortars, 173 light machine guns, 2650 rifles, 192 machine guns and more than 46 thousand units of ammunition were confiscated from those evicted! In total, after the liberation of Crimea, 9,888 rifles, 724 machine guns, 622 machine guns and 49 mortars were confiscated from the Tatars.

The Germans even issued a special circular prohibiting Crimean Tatars serving in the SS from conducting interrogations on their own.

“In January 1942, Hitler issued an order to form Crimean Tatar SS units under the leadership of Obergruppenführer Ohlendorf,” recalled the leader of the Crimean partisan movement, writer Georgy Seversky. - Some of the volunteers - 10 thousand fighters - were enrolled in the Wehrmacht, another 5 thousand were accepted into the so-called reserve to replenish the formed combat units. In addition, village elders gathered another 4 thousand people into “anti-partisan detachments.” For comparison: about 10 thousand Crimean Tatars went to serve in the Red Army, but most of them deserted from the 51st Army during the retreat from Crimea.” And either 391 or 598 Crimean Tatars were partisans in Crimea - in fairness, it should be noted that 12 of them were nominated for the title of Hero Soviet Union.

The Crimean Tatars served Hitler, as they say, conscientiously. The tragedy of the “Crimean Khatyn” - the Greek village of Laki - is well known. On March 23, 1942, Crimean Tatar punitive forces burned alive several hundred inhabitants of this village, mostly Greeks and Armenians, most of whom were women, children and old people. “The partisans who managed to escape from captivity said that the Crimean Tatars, their guards, were distinguished by unheard-of cruelty,” Seversky recalled. “The Germans even issued a special circular prohibiting the Crimean Tatars serving in the SS from conducting interrogations on their own - they were so cruel and sophisticated in their ability to torture.” Meanwhile, Mustafa Dzhemilev, who fled to Kyiv, insists: “There have never been traitors among the Crimean Tatars! We have nothing to repent of!” Who to believe?

Why did the Crimean Tatars move to Tajikistan and not to Crimea?

It is generally accepted that Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the Tatars to return to Crimea - on November 14, 1989, the Supreme Council of the USSR adopted a declaration on restoring the rights of deported peoples. For this, Gorbachev, who authorized this mass repatriation, is idolized by the Crimean Tatars. In fact, it was not the instigator of “perestroika” who allowed the repatriates to return. Back in 1956, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was prepared on the restoration of the national autonomies of the Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks and Karachais - in fact, these peoples were thereby rehabilitated. It was expected that the Crimean Tatars would also be pardoned, but the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev initially personally deleted the mention of them from the draft decree.

Two people worked for the Crimean Tatars - Anastas Mikoyan and Leonid Brezhnev. And they eventually persuaded the Secretary General. So, at the end of April 1956, a decree was issued “On the lifting of restrictions on special settlements from the Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Turks - citizens of the USSR, Kurds, Hemshils and members of their families evicted during the Great Patriotic War" From that moment on, Crimean Tatars were not forbidden to settle anywhere on the territory of the USSR - including in Crimea. But for some reason the migrants rushed to Tajikistan, and not to their small homeland. The reason for this was that the leadership of the republic especially favored the Crimean Tatars, providing migrants with a lot of special opportunities. This, by the way, explains the fact that today in Crimea more than a third of doctors are Crimean Tatars by nationality. The fact is that in Soviet times, there was an unspoken agreement between the Crimean Tatar diaspora and the leadership of Tajikistan that the quota of Crimean Tatars in the republican medical institute would be 90%, while in the Ukrainian Soviet Crimea no one promised such preferences to the Crimean Tatars.

In general, the deportees clearly did not intend to move to Crimea en masse, and the leadership of the USSR decided to encourage them to do so. In August 1965, a large group of Crimean Tatars - mostly communists and war veterans - were invited to the Kremlin. They were received by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Anastas Mikoyan, formally the second person in the state after Brezhnev. “Why don’t you return to Crimea?” – asked the Soviet leader. “We’ll return as soon as Moscow declares Crimea a Crimean Tatar national autonomy,” the head of the delegation, Riza Asanov, answered Mikoyan. In general, I found a scythe on a stone: turn the peninsula into national autonomy it was funny, considering that the Crimean Tatars would not have made up even a tenth of its inhabitants. But the Tatar leaders were stubborn: if there is no autonomy, there will be no mass return to Crimea. The result is known to everyone: repatriation was postponed until the end of the 80s.

Sergey MARKOV, political scientist, member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation:

– We have already recognized – at the highest state level – that the expulsion of the Crimean Tatar people was cruel and unfair. The country's leadership expressed its sympathy to all the innocent victims of this expulsion. However, we must also recognize the obvious fact that the reason for the expulsion was compelling. Crimean Tatar SS units committed monstrous atrocities. They killed old people, children, and women. They killed so brutally that the Germans complained about their atrocities to Berlin. Were the conditions of deportation more cruel than the actions of the Crimean Tatar punitive forces?

Deportation of Crimean Tatars to Last year The Great Patriotic War was a mass eviction of local residents of Crimea to a number of regions of the Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Mari ASSR and other republics of the Soviet Union.

This happened immediately after the liberation of the peninsula from the Nazi invaders. The official reason for the action was the criminal assistance of many thousands of Tatars to the invaders.

Collaborators of Crimea

The eviction was carried out under the control of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in May 1944. The order for the deportation of the Tatars, who were allegedly part of collaborationist groups during the occupation of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, was signed by Stalin shortly before, on May 11th. Beria justified the reasons:

Desertion of 20 thousand Tatars from the army during the period 1941-1944;
- unreliability of the Crimean population, especially pronounced in the border areas;
- a threat to the security of the Soviet Union due to the collaborationist actions and anti-Soviet sentiments of the Crimean Tatars;
- the abduction of 50 thousand civilians to Germany with the assistance of the Crimean Tatar committees.

In May 1944, the government of the Soviet Union did not yet have all the figures regarding the real situation in Crimea. After the defeat of Hitler and the counting of losses, it became known that 85.5 thousand newly-made “slaves” of the Third Reich were actually driven to Germany from among the civilian population of Crimea alone.

Almost 72 thousand were executed with the direct participation of the so-called “Noise”. Schuma are auxiliary police, and in fact - punitive Crimean Tatar battalions subordinate to the fascists. Of these 72 thousand, 15 thousand communists were brutally tortured in the largest concentration camp in Crimea, the former collective farm "Krasny".

Main charges

After the retreat, the Nazis took some of the collaborators with them to Germany. Subsequently, a special SS regiment was formed from their number. Another part (5,381 people) were arrested by security officers after the liberation of the peninsula. During the arrests, many weapons were seized. The government feared an armed revolt of the Tatars because of their proximity to Turkey (Hitler hoped to drag the latter into a war with the communists).

According to the research of the Russian scientist, history professor Oleg Romanko, during the war, 35 thousand Crimean Tatars helped the fascists in one way or another: they served in the German police, participated in executions, betrayed communists, etc. For this, even distant relatives of traitors were entitled to exile and confiscation of property.

The main argument in favor of the rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar population and their return to their historical homeland was that the deportation was actually carried out not on the basis of the actual actions of specific people, but on a national basis.

Even those who did not contribute to the Nazis in any way were sent into exile. At the same time, 15% of Tatar men fought along with other Soviet citizens in the Red Army. In the partisan detachments, 16% were Tatars. Their families were also deported. This mass participation precisely reflected Stalin’s fears that the Crimean Tatars might succumb to pro-Turkish sentiments, rebel and find themselves on the side of the enemy.

The government wanted to eliminate the threat from the south as quickly as possible. Evictions were carried out urgently, in freight cars. Many died on the road due to overcrowding, lack of food and drinking water. In total, about 190 thousand Tatars were expelled from Crimea during the war. 191 Tatars died during transportation. Another 16 thousand died in their new places of residence from mass starvation in 1946-1947.