What peoples in the USSR were subjected to deportation, for what and why they were exiled to Kazakhstan

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the USSR, undeveloped territories preferred to rise quickly. This required only labor, and the voluntary consent of the workers was the tenth thing. In the 20th century, Kazakhstan turned into a haven for exiled peoples of all kinds of nationalities. Koreans, Poles, Germans, Caucasian ethnic groups, Kalmyks and Tatars were forcibly deported here. Most of the citizens worked hard, hoping that they deserved to ease the regime and return to their homelands. But this became possible only after the death of Stalin, with a significant delay.

From good Stolypin intentions to brutal Stalinist deportations

Historians testify that the first ideas of settling uninhabited lands belonged to Pyotr Stolypin. His policy was aimed at gently encouraging migrant peasants to populate the empty Russian expanses as part of the agrarian reform. Then more than 3 million people moved to Siberia, putting into circulation about 3, 5 dessiatines of land.

At that time, special wagons were created to move voluntary migrants, later called Stolypin cars. They were wider than ordinary railroad ones, and a separate part of the carriage was allocated for cattle and peasant implements. Later, already under the rule of the Soviets, the carriages were supplemented with bars and began to be used for the forced transportation of exiles and prisoners. It was then that the Stolypin wagons became infamous. Stalin's deportations of the 1920s, to put it mildly, differed from Stolypin's initiatives. Undesirable peoples were sent to Kazakhstan, as if into exile.

Black days of Kazakhstan and the first inhabitants of the GULAG branches

1921 brought a terrible famine to Kazakhstan, which was the result of drought and general confiscations of livestock. A decade later, there was a new famine and new seizures. The Kazakh nation lost many people, and the government of the USSR decided to populate the deserted territory with "unreliable" ones.

There is an opinion that Kazakhstan was chosen for general links not by chance. The future influential People's Commissar Nikolai Yezhov began his activities there. By the middle of 1925, after the removal of the 1st secretary of the Kazkraykom and the approval of a new one, at the request of Yezhov, the latter actually began to lead the republic. By that time, he had already managed to remove many Kazakhs from responsible posts. Under him, the persecution and deportation of wealthy locals began. Yezhov's Kazakhstani career provided him with a good Moscow post, but the Kazakh issue did not fall out of his sphere of interest.

Under Yezhov, the creation of a network of GULAG camps began on the territory of modern Kazakhstan. The remoteness from the European part of Russia and the poorly populated lands of Kazakhstan made it a suitable place for these purposes. It was easier to guard the camps, outsiders did not get there, and the deported were deprived of the right to leave the settlements assigned to them. The largest known camps were located in the republic: Steplag, Karlag and ALZHIR (a special camp for the wives of traitors to the homeland), where tens of thousands of wives of Moscow party members and Kazakhstani ex-employees of Yezhov were kept in terrible conditions.

Koreans in boxcars and the Japanese threat

Historians name several reasons for the deportation of Koreans to Kazakhstan, starting with a banal act of inhumanity and ending with the existing real threat to state security. The Koreans found themselves on the territory of Russia "thanks" to the annexation of Korea by Japan, which seemed to run counter to their possible complicity with the invaders. However, the intelligence services saw a serious threat in the event of a war with Japan or China. History of previous years has documented an extensive intelligence network of Japanese spies disguised as Koreans, including recruited Koreans. And since the Koreans of Primorye made up about a third of the population, they urgently needed to be resettled away from the Korean lands occupied by the Japanese.

In addition, rice cultivation was initiated in Kazakhstan, which required experienced specialists. The 1937 decree of the Council of People's Commissars insisted on the total movement of representatives of this people even from the non-border regions of central Russia. The Koreans resettled to the Kazakh lands were taken out in freight cars, because of which some of the people died in the process of many days' journey. After arriving in Kazakhstan, the Koreans settled in the northern part of the republic, and only the most daring, neglecting the supervision of the NKVD, moved to the south.

The Korean people, unique in their culture, have made a significant contribution to the Kazakh society.

At first, the position of Koreans in Kazakhstan was more advantageous compared to other repressed ones. And although they were denied the opportunity to be drafted into the army, which was replaced by service in the "labor army", Koreans were allowed to study in universities and hold prestigious positions. And only in 1945, shortly before the declaration of war on Japan, Beria ordered to take all Koreans on a special account, in fact giving them the status of exiles.

Links of Caucasians as the leader's revenge for desertion

Caucasians came to Kazakhstan due to the fact that the authorities were suspected of having links with the fascist regime and going over to the side of the Nazis. In 1942, the Chechens formed an underground party, suggesting the creation of a federation under an enemy German mandate. For several war years, the NKVD was engaged in the pursuit and elimination of the Vainakh gangs, which resulted in the decision to liquidate Checheno-Ingushetia. The operation to deport the Vainakhs was personally carried out by Beria, for which more than 100 thousand soldiers were involved from all over the Union. The population showed active resistance, fleeing to the mountains. Hundreds of thousands of representatives of mountain peoples were brought to Kazakhstan, and in the late 50s they were allowed to return back.

Potential Polish-German traitors

The Poles, as a nation from the risk zone, were massively deported to Kazakhstan by the first wave in 1936 from the regions bordering on Poland, and then already in 1940 from the Ukrainian-Belarusian regions occupied by the Soviet army. They, like the rest of the forcibly resettled peoples, raised industry in the republic. In Kazakhstan, in 1939 alone, about 4,000 houses for exiled peoples were urgently erected, but the echelons did not decrease.

A few months after the declaration of war with Hitler, a decree was issued on the resettlement of the Volga Germans to Kazakhstan, which was explained by the sabotage activities established by the military authorities among the representatives of this people. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were forcibly taken out of Ukraine, the Transcaucasian territories and even the neighboring Central Asian republics.

The settlers were mobilized into the labor army, in fact, condemning them to forced labor in concentration camps. More than 350 thousand Soviet Germans ended up in the zone of fascist occupation and were taken to Poland and Germany. But after the victory of the Soviet Army, about 200 thousand people were "repatriated" in 1945 and sent to a special settlement within Kazakhstan. And only in the late 50s, the special regime with obligatory attendance at the commandant's office was canceled for the Germans, and in the 70s they were even allowed to freely determine their place of residence.

Their descendants still live in Russia and parts of the CIS countries. They have preserved their distinctive culture and language, are still quite different from the local population.