Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union
Encyclopedia
Forced settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag
labor camp
system of penal labor, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression implemented by the Soviet Union. At the same time, involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of remote areas of the Soviet Union
. This role was specifically mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps.
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
that led to the creation of these settlements was performed in a series of operations organized according to social and national criteria of the deported.
Compared to the Gulag camps, the involuntary settlements had the appearance of "normal" settlements: people lived in families, and there was more freedom of movement; however, that was only permitted within a specified area. Since workers of these collective farms in the USSR did not receive cash for their work and ate food only from their own gardens, many 'special settlers' faced starvation. All settlers were under the monitoring of NKVD
(под надзором НКВД): once a month a person had to visit a local law enforcement office at a selsoviet
in rural areas or at a militsiya
department in urban settlements.
. The system of political and administrative exile existed in the Imperial Russia as well. The most notable category of exile settlers in the Soviet Union (ссыльнопоселенцы, ssylnoposelentsy) were the whole nationalities resettled
during Joseph Stalin
's rule (1928–1953). At various times, a number of other terms were used for this category: special settlement (спецпоселение), special resettlement (спецпереселение), administrative exile (административная высылка, a term which refers to an extrajudicial way of deciding the fates of people "by administrative means
").
Exiles were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union: Siberia
, Kazakhstan
, Central Asia
, and the Russian Far East
.
. The Soviet government feared that people of certain nationalities would act as "fifth column
" subversives during the expected war, and took drastic measures to prevent this perceived threat. The deported were sent to prisons, labor camps, exile settlements, and "supervised residence" (residence in usual settlements, but under the monitoring of the NKVD
).
and the recently annexed lands: parts of Poland
and Romania
(about 20,000 people: the men were deported to Siberia, while the women and children to Kazakhstan), and the Baltic States
.
In territories annexed from Poland (the Kresy
territories and the Białystok Voivodeship (1919-1939)), the initial wave of repression of 1939 was in a way a continuation of the Polish operation of the NKVD
and was rationalized as conviction of "social enemies", or "enemies of the people": military, police and administrative personnel, large landowners, industrialists, merchants. They were usually sentenced to 8–20 years of labor camp
s. In addition, the population along Poland's Eastern border, as well as forest-guards and railroad workers were interned. Massive deportations of the Polish population into remote areas of the Soviet Union took place in 1940–1941.
Estimates of the total number of deported Poles vary between 400,000 and 1.6 million people.
On 23 June 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD
, ordered the Murmansk Oblast
to be cleaned of "foreign nationals", both Scandinavians
and all other nationalities. People of Finnish
, Swedish
, and Norwegian
(see also "Kola Norwegians
") ethnicities were moved to Karelo-Finnish SSR
. Germans, Koreans, Chinese, and others were moved to Altay
.
Deportations of "exiled settlers" from Baltic States (Lithuanians
, Latvians
, and Estonians
) and annexed part of Romania (Bessarabia
and Northern Bukovina) were carried out in May–June 1941.
In 1941 a significant number of Poles were amnestied and freed from "special settlement" (but still barred from border territories).
, Italians, and Greeks
. At the end of this period Crimean Tatars
were included in this wave of deportation.
occupants: a number of peoples of North Caucasus
and Crimea
: Chechens
, Ingush
, Balkars
, Karachay
s, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars
, and Crimean Bolgars, as well as Kalmyks
.
occupation lead to the deportation to Siberia of more than 200,000 ethnic Germans of Romania
(around 75,000 Transylvanian Saxons
), Hungary
and Yugoslavia
. Most of them died in prison camps. See Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
for details.
were not particularly differentiated or classified by "NKVD operations". The affected were people from the territories that were under the administration of the Axis Powers
: family members of persons accused of loyalty to the Axis administration and of persons who continued resistance to Soviet power, which was classified as "banditism". A significant number of former Ostarbeiters were "filtered" into exile as well. "Cleansing" of the annexed territories continued until early 1950s. In July 1949, revolts of the Romanian peasants of Bessarabia
and Northern Bukovina were repressed and lead to the deportation of around 95,000 people. (this figure was used in the reports presented to Stalin in 1951)
, or evasion from socially-useful work. Among the first of these was the decree of June 2, 1942 "About the Criminal Answerability for Evasion from Socially Useful Work and for Antisocial Parasitic Way of Life in Agricultural Sector" (Об ответственности за уклонение от общественно полезного труда и за ведение антиобщественного паразитического образа жизни в сельском хозяйстве). It was usually applied to kolkhoz
niks who failed to carry out their work quota (trudodni, "labour-days"). The term of exile was 8 years. During 1948-1952 33,266 special settlers - "ukazniks" have been registered. Unlike other exile settler categories, children of these exiles were not subject to the Decree.
("свидетели иеговы"), Truly Orthodox Christians ("истинно-православные христиане", Innokentians ("иннокентьевцы"), Adventists-Reformists ("адвентисты-реформисты")) were outlawed for violating the Soviet law "On the Separation of Church from the State
and the School from the Church". In particular, members of these groups refused to join the Young Pioneers
, the Komsomol
, or to serve in Soviet Army
. Usually members of these groups and especially influential members were subject to criminal law
and treated on case-by-case basis. However on March 3, 1951, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree, "On Expulsion of Active Participants of the anti-Soviet Illegal Sect of Jehovists and their Family Members" (Постановление Совета Министров СССР о выселении активных участников антисоветской нелегальной секты иеговистов и членов их семей №1290-467 от 3 марта 1951 года). According to this decree, about 9,400 Jehovah's Witnesses, including about 4,000 children , were resettled from the Baltic States
, Moldova
, and western parts of Belarus
and Ukraine
to Siberia
in 1951, an event known as "Operation North
".
Only in September 1965, a decree of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers canceled the "special settlement" restriction for members of these religious groups.
became subject to a "voluntary resettlement" to Azerbaijan.
, with the exception of persons of Armenian
ethnicity, were resettled from the Georgian SSR, a population of some 4,776 persons.
. The main category of "labor settlers" (трудопоселенцы, trudoposelentsy) were kulaks and members of their families deported in 1930s before the Great Purge
. Labor settlements were under the management of Gulag
, but they must not be confused with labor camp
s.
The first official document that decreed wide-scale "dekulakization
" was joint decree of Central Executive Committee
and Sovnarkom by 1 February 1930. Initially families of kulaks were deported into remote areas "for special settlement" without particular care about their occupation. In 1931-1932 the problems of dekulakization and territorial planning of the exile settlement was handled by a special Politburo
commission known as Andreev-Rudzutak Commission (комиссия Андреева-Рудзутака) named after Andrey Andreev
and Yan Rudzutak
. The notions of "labor settlement"/"labor settlers" were introduced in 1934 and were in official use until 1945. Since 1945 the terminology was unified, and exiled kulaks were documented as "special resettlers — kulaks".
. These people were known as free settlers (вольнопоселенцы, volnoposelentsy).
The term was in use earlier, in Imperial Russia, in two meanings: free settlement of peasants or cossack
s (in the sense of being free from serfdom
) and non-confined exile settlement (e.g., after serving a katorga
term).
In the Soviet Union, a decree of Sovnarkom of 1929 about labor camps said, in part:
The "free settlers" of the first category were often required to do the work assigned to the corresponding labor camp or some other obligatory work. Later, people could be assigned for "free settement" in other places as well, even in towns, with obligatory work wherever a workforce was required.
the researchers gained access to the archives of NKVD
. The revealed numbers point rather to lower numbers of the estimate range. In particular, data on January 1, 1953, show "only" 2,753,356 of "deported and special settlers". Also, Dmitri Volkogonov
in his book about Stalin quoted an MVD document that reports 2,572,829 on January 1, 1950.
Olga Shatunovskaya
, a member of a special commission during the 1960s
appointed by Khrushchev, has concluded in her report that "from January 1, 1935 to June 22, 1941, 19,840,000 enemies of the people were arrested. Of these, 7,000,000 were shot in prison, and a majority of the others died in camp." These figures were also found in the papers of Politburo
member Anastas Mikoyan
. Historian Dmitri Volkogonov
, head of a special Russian parliamentary commission, citing KGB
documents available after the fall of the USSR concluded that "from 1929 to 1952, 21.5 million [Soviet] people were repressed. Of these a third (7,166,666) were shot, the rest sentenced to imprisonment, where many also died."
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
system of penal labor, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression implemented by the Soviet Union. At the same time, involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of remote areas of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. This role was specifically mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps.
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
that led to the creation of these settlements was performed in a series of operations organized according to social and national criteria of the deported.
Compared to the Gulag camps, the involuntary settlements had the appearance of "normal" settlements: people lived in families, and there was more freedom of movement; however, that was only permitted within a specified area. Since workers of these collective farms in the USSR did not receive cash for their work and ate food only from their own gardens, many 'special settlers' faced starvation. All settlers were under the monitoring of NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(под надзором НКВД): once a month a person had to visit a local law enforcement office at a selsoviet
Selsoviet
Selsoviet is a shortened name for a rural council. The full names for the term are, in , , . Selsoviets were the lowest level of administrative division in rural areas in the Soviet Union...
in rural areas or at a militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
department in urban settlements.
Exile settlements
Exile settlements (ссыльное поселение, ssylnoye poselenie) were a kind of internal exileInternal Exile
Internal Exile was Fish's second solo album after leaving Marillion in 1988. The album, released 28 October 1991, was inspired by the singer's past, his own personal problems and his troubled experiences with his previous record label EMI.The album's music reflects Fish's indulgence in the vast...
. The system of political and administrative exile existed in the Imperial Russia as well. The most notable category of exile settlers in the Soviet Union (ссыльнопоселенцы, ssylnoposelentsy) were the whole nationalities resettled
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
during Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's rule (1928–1953). At various times, a number of other terms were used for this category
By administrative means
By administrative means was an expression in use in the Soviet Union applied to the cases when some actions that normally required a court decision were left to the decision of executive bodies .With respect to the imprisonment and deportation of individuals this meant extrajudicial punishment.See...
").
Exiles were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union: Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
, and the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
.
The population of the settlements
The major source of the population in exile settlements were victims of what is now called ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
. The Soviet government feared that people of certain nationalities would act as "fifth column
Fifth column
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
" subversives during the expected war, and took drastic measures to prevent this perceived threat. The deported were sent to prisons, labor camps, exile settlements, and "supervised residence" (residence in usual settlements, but under the monitoring of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
).
Deportations from border territories in 1939–1941
Several waves of forced resettlement occurred from the territories on the Western borders. These territories included Murmansk OblastMurmansk Oblast
Murmansk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the northwestern part of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Murmansk.-Geography:...
and the recently annexed lands: parts of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
(about 20,000 people: the men were deported to Siberia, while the women and children to Kazakhstan), and the Baltic States
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
.
In territories annexed from Poland (the Kresy
Kresy
The Polish term Kresy refers to a land considered by Poles as historical eastern provinces of their country. Today, it makes western Ukraine, western Belarus, as well as eastern Lithuania, with such major cities, as Lviv, Vilnius, and Hrodna. This territory belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian...
territories and the Białystok Voivodeship (1919-1939)), the initial wave of repression of 1939 was in a way a continuation of the Polish operation of the NKVD
Polish operation of the NKVD
The Genocide of Poles in the Soviet Union often referred to as, the Polish operation of the NKVD, was a coordinated action of the Soviet NKVD and the Communist Party in 1937–1938 against the entire Polish minority living in the Soviet Union, representing only 0.4 percent of Soviet citizens...
and was rationalized as conviction of "social enemies", or "enemies of the people": military, police and administrative personnel, large landowners, industrialists, merchants. They were usually sentenced to 8–20 years of labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s. In addition, the population along Poland's Eastern border, as well as forest-guards and railroad workers were interned. Massive deportations of the Polish population into remote areas of the Soviet Union took place in 1940–1941.
Estimates of the total number of deported Poles vary between 400,000 and 1.6 million people.
On 23 June 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, ordered the Murmansk Oblast
Murmansk Oblast
Murmansk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the northwestern part of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Murmansk.-Geography:...
to be cleaned of "foreign nationals", both Scandinavians
Scandinavians
Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...
and all other nationalities. People of Finnish
Finnic peoples
The Finnic or Fennic peoples were historic ethnic groups who spoke various languages traditionally classified as Finno-Permic...
, Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
(see also "Kola Norwegians
Kola Norwegians
The Kola Norwegians were Norwegian settlers along the coastline of the Kola Peninsula in Russia.-History:In 1860 the Russian Tsar Alexander II granted permission for Norwegian settlements on the Kola. Around 1870, scores of families from Finnmark in northern Norway departed for the Kola coast,...
") ethnicities were moved to Karelo-Finnish SSR
Karelo-Finnish SSR
The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was a short-lived republic that was a part of the former Soviet Union. The republic existed from 1940 until it was merged back into the Russian SFSR in 1956 ....
. Germans, Koreans, Chinese, and others were moved to Altay
Altay Mountains
The Altai Mountains are a mountain range in East-Central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their sources. The Altai Mountains are known as the original locus of the speakers of Turkic as well as other members of the proposed...
.
Deportations of "exiled settlers" from Baltic States (Lithuanians
Lithuanians
Lithuanians are the Baltic ethnic group native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,765,600 people. Another million or more make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Russia, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their native language...
, Latvians
Latvians
Latvians or Letts are the indigenous Baltic people of Latvia.-History:Latvians occasionally refer to themselves by the ancient name of Latvji, which may have originated from the word Latve which is a name of the river that presumably flowed through what is now eastern Latvia...
, and Estonians
Estonians
Estonians are a Finnic people closely related to the Finns and inhabiting, primarily, the country of Estonia. They speak a Finnic language known as Estonian...
) and annexed part of Romania (Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
and Northern Bukovina) were carried out in May–June 1941.
In 1941 a significant number of Poles were amnestied and freed from "special settlement" (but still barred from border territories).
"Preventive" deportations of nationalities in 1941–1942
These deportations concerned Soviet citizens of "enemy nationality". The affected were Volga Germans, Finns, RomaniansRomanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, Italians, and Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
. At the end of this period Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
were included in this wave of deportation.
"Punitive" deportations of nationalities in 1943–1944
These deportations concerned ethnicities declared guilty of cooperation with NaziNazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
occupants: a number of peoples of North Caucasus
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....
and Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
: Chechens
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, Ingush
Ingushetia
The Republic of Ingushetia is a federal subject of Russia , located in the North Caucasus region with its capital at Magas. In terms of area, the republic is the smallest of Russia's federal subjects except for the two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg...
, Balkars
Balkars
The Balkars are a Turkic people of the Caucasus region, one of the titular populations of Kabardino-Balkaria. They are possibly Bulgars or are descended from them...
, Karachay
Karachay-Cherkessia
The Karachay-Cherkess Republic , or Karachay-Cherkessia is a federal subject of Russia . Population: -Geography:*Area: *Borders:**internal: Krasnodar Krai , Kabardino-Balkar Republic , Stavropol Krai ....
s, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group that originally resided in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
, and Crimean Bolgars, as well as Kalmyks
Kalmykia
The Republic of Kalmykia is a federal subject of Russia . Population: It is the only Buddhist region in Europe. It has also become well-known as an international chess mecca because its former President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is the head of the International Chess Federation .-Geography:*Area:...
.
Deportations of Germans from the occupied territories in 1944–1945
The Red ArmyRed Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
occupation lead to the deportation to Siberia of more than 200,000 ethnic Germans of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
(around 75,000 Transylvanian Saxons
Transylvanian Saxons
The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of German ethnicity who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards.The colonization of Transylvania by Germans was begun by King Géza II of Hungary . For decades, the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the...
), Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. Most of them died in prison camps. See Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers...
for details.
Post-war deportations
Deportations after the end of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
were not particularly differentiated or classified by "NKVD operations". The affected were people from the territories that were under the administration of the Axis Powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
: family members of persons accused of loyalty to the Axis administration and of persons who continued resistance to Soviet power, which was classified as "banditism". A significant number of former Ostarbeiters were "filtered" into exile as well. "Cleansing" of the annexed territories continued until early 1950s. In July 1949, revolts of the Romanian peasants of Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
and Northern Bukovina were repressed and lead to the deportation of around 95,000 people. (this figure was used in the reports presented to Stalin in 1951)
Ukazniks
The term ukaznik derives from the Russian term "ukaz" that means "decree". It applies to those convicted according to various Soviet ukazes, but the most common usage refers to a series of decrees related to what later formalized in the Soviet law as parasitismParasitism (social offense)
Social parasitism is a charge that is leveled against a group or class in society which is considered to be detrimental to the whole by analogy with biologic parasitism .-General concept:...
, or evasion from socially-useful work. Among the first of these was the decree of June 2, 1942 "About the Criminal Answerability for Evasion from Socially Useful Work and for Antisocial Parasitic Way of Life in Agricultural Sector" (Об ответственности за уклонение от общественно полезного труда и за ведение антиобщественного паразитического образа жизни в сельском хозяйстве). It was usually applied to kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
niks who failed to carry out their work quota (trudodni, "labour-days"). The term of exile was 8 years. During 1948-1952 33,266 special settlers - "ukazniks" have been registered. Unlike other exile settler categories, children of these exiles were not subject to the Decree.
Religious persecution
A number of religious groups (such as Jehovah's WitnessesJehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
("свидетели иеговы"), Truly Orthodox Christians ("истинно-православные христиане", Innokentians ("иннокентьевцы"), Adventists-Reformists ("адвентисты-реформисты")) were outlawed for violating the Soviet law "On the Separation of Church from the State
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
and the School from the Church". In particular, members of these groups refused to join the Young Pioneers
Young Pioneers
- Organizations :*Pioneer movement various communist youth movements*Young Pioneers Charity A charity run by young people for young people.- Fiction :*Young Pioneers - a 1932 book by Rose Wilder Lane, also known as "Let the Hurricane Roar"...
, the Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, or to serve in Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
. Usually members of these groups and especially influential members were subject to criminal law
Criminal law
Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...
and treated on case-by-case basis. However on March 3, 1951, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree, "On Expulsion of Active Participants of the anti-Soviet Illegal Sect of Jehovists and their Family Members" (Постановление Совета Министров СССР о выселении активных участников антисоветской нелегальной секты иеговистов и членов их семей №1290-467 от 3 марта 1951 года). According to this decree, about 9,400 Jehovah's Witnesses, including about 4,000 children , were resettled from the Baltic States
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, and western parts of Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
in 1951, an event known as "Operation North
Operation North
Operation North was the code name assigned by the USSR Ministry of State Security to massive deportation of the members of the Jehovah's Witnesses and their families to Siberia in the Soviet Union on 1–2 April 1951.-Background:...
".
Only in September 1965, a decree of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers canceled the "special settlement" restriction for members of these religious groups.
Azerbaijanis from the Armenian SSR
By the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, No 4083, of December 23, 1947 http://karabakh-doc.azerall.info/ru/hisdoc/hd014.htm, from 100 000 up to 150 000 Azerbaijanis in Armenian SSRArmenian SSR
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic The Armenian Soviet...
became subject to a "voluntary resettlement" to Azerbaijan.
Other
The above are the major, most populous categories of exile settlers. There were a number of smaller categories. They were small in the scale of the whole Soviet Union, but rather significant in terms of the affected categories of population. For example, in 1950 all IraniansIranian peoples
The Iranian peoples are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group, consisting of the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of Indo-European-speaking peoples...
, with the exception of persons of Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
ethnicity, were resettled from the Georgian SSR, a population of some 4,776 persons.
Labor settlements
Labor settlements (трудопоселение, trudoposelenie) were a method of internal exile that used settlers for obligatory laborUnfree labour
Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery as well as all other related institutions .-Payment for unfree labour:If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms:...
. The main category of "labor settlers" (трудопоселенцы, trudoposelentsy) were kulaks and members of their families deported in 1930s before the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
. Labor settlements were under the management of Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, but they must not be confused with labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s.
The first official document that decreed wide-scale "dekulakization
Dekulakization
Dekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
" was joint decree of Central Executive Committee
Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union
The Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union was the highest governing body in the Soviet Union in the interim of the sessions of the Congress of Soviets, existed from 1922 until 1938, when it was replaced by the Supreme Soviet of first convocation....
and Sovnarkom by 1 February 1930. Initially families of kulaks were deported into remote areas "for special settlement" without particular care about their occupation. In 1931-1932 the problems of dekulakization and territorial planning of the exile settlement was handled by a special Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
commission known as Andreev-Rudzutak Commission (комиссия Андреева-Рудзутака) named after Andrey Andreev
Andrey Andreev
Andrey Andreev, with real name Andrey Ogandzhanyants is a Russian businessman who founded the internet social networking and dating site Badoo as well as other Russian internet businesses: SpyLog, Begun and Mamba .-Family and personal life:He spent his childhood in Moscow and studied at the...
and Yan Rudzutak
Yan Rudzutak
Jānis Rudzutaks was a Latvian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician.Rudzutaks was born in the Kuldīga district of the Courland Governorate , into the family of a farm worker. In 1903, he started working in a factory in Riga. Two years later, he joined Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party...
. The notions of "labor settlement"/"labor settlers" were introduced in 1934 and were in official use until 1945. Since 1945 the terminology was unified, and exiled kulaks were documented as "special resettlers — kulaks".
Free settlements
Free settlements (вольное поселение, volnoye poselenie) were for persons released from the confines of labor camps "for free settlement" before their term expiration, as well as for those who served the full term, but remained restricted in their choice of place of residence101st kilometre
101st kilometre is a colloquial name for the law restricting freedom of movement in the Soviet Union.In the Soviet Union, the rights of an inmate released from the prison would typically still be restricted for a long period of time...
. These people were known as free settlers (вольнопоселенцы, volnoposelentsy).
The term was in use earlier, in Imperial Russia, in two meanings: free settlement of peasants or cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
s (in the sense of being free from serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...
) and non-confined exile settlement (e.g., after serving a katorga
Katorga
Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia...
term).
In the Soviet Union, a decree of Sovnarkom of 1929 about labor camps said, in part:
- "For gradual colonization of the regions where concentration camps are to be established, suggest the OGPU and Narkomat of Justice to urgently plan activities based on the following principles: (1)
(2) (3) ".
The "free settlers" of the first category were often required to do the work assigned to the corresponding labor camp or some other obligatory work. Later, people could be assigned for "free settement" in other places as well, even in towns, with obligatory work wherever a workforce was required.
Population statistics
For a long time the numbers of people prosecuted in the Soviet Union were based on various estimates, counted in tens of millions and varied by a wide margin. After the dissolution of the Soviet UnionDissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
the researchers gained access to the archives of NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. The revealed numbers point rather to lower numbers of the estimate range. In particular, data on January 1, 1953, show "only" 2,753,356 of "deported and special settlers". Also, Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was a Russian historian and officer.-Biography:...
in his book about Stalin quoted an MVD document that reports 2,572,829 on January 1, 1950.
Olga Shatunovskaya
Olga Shatunovskaya
Olga Grigoryevna Shatunovskaya was a member of the Shvernik Commission....
, a member of a special commission during the 1960s
Shvernik Commission
Shvernik Commission was an informal name of the commission of the CPSU Central Committee Presidium headed by Nikolay Shvernik for the investigation of political repression in the Soviet Union during the period of Stalinism. Other members were Alexander Shelepin, Zinovy Serdyuk, Roman Rudenko, Olga...
appointed by Khrushchev, has concluded in her report that "from January 1, 1935 to June 22, 1941, 19,840,000 enemies of the people were arrested. Of these, 7,000,000 were shot in prison, and a majority of the others died in camp." These figures were also found in the papers of Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
member Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....
. Historian Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Volkogonov
Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov was a Russian historian and officer.-Biography:...
, head of a special Russian parliamentary commission, citing KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
documents available after the fall of the USSR concluded that "from 1929 to 1952, 21.5 million [Soviet] people were repressed. Of these a third (7,166,666) were shot, the rest sentenced to imprisonment, where many also died."
See also
- Deportation of Romanians in the Soviet UnionDeportation of Romanians in the Soviet UnionThe Soviet deportations from Bessarabia were part of Joseph Stalin's policy of political repression...
- Gulag: Colonization
- Penal transportationPenal transportationTransportation or penal transportation is the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between...
- ZATO
- 101st kilometre101st kilometre101st kilometre is a colloquial name for the law restricting freedom of movement in the Soviet Union.In the Soviet Union, the rights of an inmate released from the prison would typically still be restricted for a long period of time...
- Population transfer in the Soviet UnionPopulation transfer in the Soviet UnionPopulation transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
- The Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...
- Human rights in the Soviet UnionHuman rights in the Soviet UnionHuman rights in the Soviet Union have been viewed differently, one view by the communist ideology adopted by the Soviet Union and another by its critics. The Soviet Union was established after a revolution that ended centuries of Tsarist monarchy...
Wikisource
- A decree about labor camps, 1919, in Russian
- A decree about penal labor, 1929, in Russian