| Deportation of the Kalmyks | |
|---|---|
| Part ofPopulation transfer in the Soviet Union,Political repression in the Soviet Union andSoviet Union in World War II | |
 Map of the deportation of people from Kalmykia to Siberia in 1943 Kalmykia | |
| Location | Kalmykia |
| Date | 28–31 December 1943 |
| Target | Kalmyks |
Attack type | forced population transfer,ethnic cleansing |
| Deaths | 16,017[1]–16,594[2] people (between ~17 and ~19 percent of their total population) |
| Victims | 93,000Kalmyks deported toforced settlements in the Soviet Union |
| Perpetrators | NKVD, theSoviet secret police |
| Motive | Russification,[3] cheap labor forforced settlements in the Soviet Union,[4]Anti-Mongolianism |
Deportation of the Kalmyks, codenameOperation Ulusy (Russian:Операция «Улусы») was theSovietdeportation of more than 93,000 people ofKalmyk nationality, and non-Kalmyk women with Kalmyk husbands, on 28–31 December 1943. Families and individuals were forcibly relocated incattle wagons tospecial settlements forforced labor inSiberia. Kalmyk women married to non-Kalmyk men were exempted from the deportations. The government's official reason for the deportation was an accusation ofAxis collaboration duringWorld War II based on the approximately 5,000 Kalmyks who fought in the Nazi-affiliatedKalmykian Cavalry Corps. The government refused to acknowledge that more than 23,000 Kalmyks served in theRed Army and fought against Axis forces at the same time.
NKVD chiefLavrentiy Beria and his deputy commissarIvan Serov implemented the forced relocation on direct orders fromSoviet PremierJoseph Stalin. Up to 10,000 servicemen from the NKVD-NKGB troops participated in the deportation. It was part of theSoviet forced settlement program andpopulation transfers that affected several million Soviet citizens from ethnic minority groups between the 1930s and the 1950s. The specific targeting of Kalmyks was based on a number of factors, including the group's allegedanti-communist sentiment and Buddhist culture.
The deportation contributed to more than 16,000 deaths, resulting in a 17% mortality rate for the deported population. The Kalmyks were rehabilitated in 1956 afterNikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet Premier and undertook a process ofde-Stalinization. In 1957, the Kalmyks were released from special settlements and allowed to return to their home region, which was formalized as theKalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. By 1959, more than 60% of the remaining Kalmyks had returned home. The loss of life and socioeconomic upheaval of the deportations, however, had a profound impact on the Kalmyks that is still felt today. On 14 November 1989 theSupreme Council of the Soviet Union declared all of Stalin's deportations "illegal and criminal". Contemporary historical analyses consider these deportations an example ofpersecution and acrime against humanity.
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In the 1630s, severalOirat tribes from the westMongolia andDzungaria regions migrated further west, settling along theVolga river and eventually becoming a differentiated ethnic group called theKalmyks.[5] The Kalmyks spoke aMongolian dialect and practicedTibetan Buddhism.[5]
The Kalmyks became part of theRussian Empire and during the subsequentRussian Civil War, many of them fought with theanti-communist White Russian army. When theBolsheviks prevailed,many Kalmyks left Russia in 1920, with a significant proportion emigrating toYugoslavia andBulgaria.[6] The Kalmyks who remained in the newly formedSoviet Union resisted thecollectivization process of its agricultural and herding practices in the 1920s, formingguerrilla groups that continued to fight until 1926.[7]
In the 1920s,Joseph Stalin emerged as the newGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.Ben Kiernan, an American academic and historian, described Stalin's era as "by far the bloodiest of Soviet, or even Russian history".[8] In the 1930s, the Soviet government initiated ananti-religious campaign against Kalmyk Buddhism.[9] Of the 175Buddhist temples registered in the Russian Empire in 1917, all were destroyed by 1940.[10] In 1935, the Soviet government established theKalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic withElista serving as the capital.[6] According to the 1939 Soviet census, 131,271 Kalmyks were registered in the USSR.[11] An alternative source lists 134,400 Kalmyks during that time.[12]
In September and October 1937, around 172,000Soviet Koreans were deported, making it the first instance of Stalin's policy of resettling an entire nationality.[13]
DuringWorld War II,Nazi Germanyinvaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. On 26 August 1942, Nazi forces captured Elista in Kalmykia and soon after established theKalmykian Cavalry Corps, consisting of approximately 5,000 men under the leadership of former intelligence officer Dr. Rudolf Otto Doll.[14] The Corps fought against theRed Army,Soviet partisans, and protected Kalmyk livestock from Soviet forces.[14] At the same time, 23,540 Kalmyks served in theRed Army[15] and eight were ultimately awarded recognition asHeroes of the Soviet Union.[16] Thus, Kalmyks fought on both sides in World War II.[7] Around a quarter of the Kalmyk population fled across the Volga river to escape theGerman occupation.[17] The fighting resulted in the destruction of many buildings and widespread looting, with total damages in the region estimated to be as high as 1,070,324,789 Rbls.[18] When the German forces withdrew, many Kalmyks evacuated with them.[14] The Red Army recaptured Elista on 31 December 1942.[19] Once back under Soviet control, the Kalmyks were accused of being disloyal and fighting alongsideAxis forces.[6]
During World War II, eight ethnic groups were expelled from their native lands by the Soviet government: theVolga Germans, theChechens, theIngush, theBalkars, theKarachays, theCrimean Tatars, theMeskhetian Turks, and the Kalmyks.[20] Approximately 650,000 people were deported from theCaucasus region[21] in 1943 and 1944 and a total of 3,332,589 people were deported during the entire war.[22]
Lavrentiy Beria, head of theSoviet secret police, championed the Kalmyk deportation, stating that the Kalmyks were "unreliable". The decision was formally advanced by theState Defense Committee and approved by Stalin in October 1943.[23] On 27 October 1943,NKVD deputyIvan Serov arrived in Elista to begin preparations for the mass deportation. He met local party members at the office of the formerFirst Secretary of the Kalmyk Communist Party and announced that the Kalmyks would be deported. When asked for the reason, Serov stated that it was because the Kalmyks "left the front and joined the Germans".[24] That same month, NKVD deputy V.V. Chernyshov held a meeting inMoscow with NKVD representatives fromAltai,Krasnoyarsk,Omsk andNovosibirsk to discuss the resettlement of the Kalmyks to these areas. The Kalmyk region, including its largest town of Elista, was divided into several operative districts. An NKVD operative was assigned to each district and required to develop plans to carry out the deportations, including mapping railway routes and identifying the number of trucks and soldiers necessary.[25]
On 27 December, theKalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formally abolished by the Soviet government.[26] Parts of its former territory were assigned toAstrakhan,Stalingrad,Rostov,Stavropol, andDagestan. The former capital of Elista was renamed to Stepnoy.[17] Resolution No. 1432 425 of theSoviet of People's Commissars, formally determining the resettlement of the Kalmyks, was adopted on 28 December 1943. It was signed byVyacheslav Molotov but not made public.[27]
On the morning of 28 December 1943, NKVD agents entered the homes of the Kalmyks and announced the Decree of thePresidium of the Supreme Soviet, requiring the immediate deportation of Kalmyks toSiberia. The Decree included formal accusations of Nazi collaboration, anti-Soviet acts, and terrorism.[28] The Kalmyks were given 12 hours to pack their belongings.[23] They were allowed to carry up to 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) of property per family, and multiple families had to share space in one truck. Soviet soldiers searched the Kalmyk houses and confiscated firearms, anti-Soviet literature, and foreign currency.[29] Every person of Kalmyk ethnicity, including women, children and the elderly, were loaded onto trucks and sent to nearby railway stations.[23] Only non-Kalmyks and Kalmyk women married to men of ethnic groups, not subject to deportation, were allowed to stay. Soviet forces surrounded Kalmyk settlements from the outset to prevent any potential resistance.[30] At the start of the deportation, 750 Kalmyks were arrested as "gang members" or "anti-Soviet elements".[31]
The Soviet government initially employed 4,421 NKVD agents, 1,226 soldiers, and 1,355 trucks as part of the operation.[32] This number increased to 10,000 servicemen from the NKVD-NKGB troops, diverted from theEastern Front.[33] State Security Major General Markeyev, theIvanovo Oblast NKVD Chief, oversaw the deportation.[34]
The deportation was given the code name "Operation Ulusy"[34] and affected 93,139 Kalmyks,[35] including 26,359 families.[36] Only three Kalmyk families avoided deportation.[7] The operation proceeded as planned, with no security incidents reported.[31] The Kalmyks were packed intocattle carts[37] and loaded onto 46 east-bound trains.[38] They were sent on a journey to remote areas of over a thousand miles away.[39] One witness recalled that they traveled for two weeks, with no opportunity to practice basic hygiene.[37] Another witness described that the children slept on the bunks, while the grown ups slept on the floor of the wagons. They made a hole on the floor, placed suitcases around it and used it as a toilet. Meals were available, though only once per day. Some deportees shared their food during the long transit. The trains would occasionally stop to release the people inside, though only for a short amount of time.[40] The deportation was completed on 31 December.[41] A majority of them (91,919) were deported by the end of the year, though an additional 1,014 people were also evicted in January 1944.[34] The entire operation was guided by Beria and Serov. Other officials who participated in it included Victor Grigorievich Nasedkin, Head of theGulag and Commissar of the State Security of the 3rd degree, and Dmitri Vasilevich Arkadiev, the Head of the Transport Department of the USSR NKVD.[42] The Kalmyks were sent to various locations in Siberia—by January 1944, 24,352 had been sent to theOmsk Oblast, 21,164 to Krasnoyarsk Krai, 20,858 to Altai Krai, and 18,333 to Novosibirsk Oblast.[34] Alternative sources indicate that, beginning in 1944, 6,167 Kalmyk families were in the Altai, 7,525 in the Krasnoyarsk, 5,435 in Novosibirsk and 8,353 in the Omsk Region. 660 families were also located in theTomsk Region, 648 in theKazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, 522 inTobolsk, 2,796 in theYamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and 1,760 in theKhanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.[43]
HistorianNikolay Bugay described the deportation as involving four distinct stages: (1) deportations in the Kalmyk region; (2) deportations in the Rostov Region; (3) deportations in the Stalingrad region; and (4) deportations of active duty Kalmyks serving in the Red Army.[41] The final stage took place between 1944 and 1948, and involved not only Kalmyks, but also the Karaychs, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars serving in the Red Army — all were discharged and exiled to the special settlements.[15] Ethnic Russians were settled in the previously Kalmyk areas, changing their identity.[44]
ThePresidium of the Supreme Soviet issued a decree on 26 November 1948, titled "On Criminal Accountability for Escapes from Places of Compulsory and Permanent Settlement by Persons Exiled to Remote Regions of the Soviet Union during the Period of the Great Patriotic War".[45] The decree formally stated that all deported ethnic groups must remain in permanent exile.[46]
The Kalmyks were placed under the administration of thespecial settlements.[47] These settlements providedforced labor for underdeveloped and inhospitable regions of the Soviet Union.[4][48] Deportees routinely worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. They suffered from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, with food rations tied to work quotas.[49]
Upon arrival at the camps, male and female deportees were separated, washed, and forced to line up outside in the winter cold.[37] Living conditions were minimal and cramped, with many having to share beds and sleep on the floor.[50] 45,985 Kalmyk deportees were registered as laborers, including 28,107 in the agriculture sector, 1,632 in the mining and gold extraction industry, 784 in coal mining, and 259 in the timber industry.[51]
Of the 93,139 deported Kalmyks, approximately 1,400 died in transit and a similar number became gravely ill.[52] Hunger, cold, work conditions, and infections resulted in many additional fatalities at the forced labor camps.[53] Soviet sources indicate that 83,688 Kalmyks were registered in the special settlements as of early 1945, meaning that more than 13,000 people had died or disappeared in the first two years of the deportation.[52] In 1945, 3,735 Kalmyk children died (a 9.3 percent mortality rate) while only 351 Kalmyk children were born.[52]
Official Soviet archives recorded approximately 16,000[54] deaths among the deported Kalmyks, a more than 17% mortality rate.[1] Unofficial NKVD estimates placed the mortality rate even higher, at 19%.[38]
Of the ethnic groups subjected to forced deportation by Soviet authorities, the Kalmyks suffered the greatest relative losses. The 1959 census listed 106,100 Kalmyks, down from 134,400 as of the 1939 census, meaning a more than 20% decline within a single generation.[12]
On 13 December 1953, a Kalmyk delegation headed by Djab Naminov-Burkhinov lodged a formal complaint with theUN Secretary-GeneralDag Hammarskjöld.[12] After Stalin's death in 1953,Nikita Khrushchev started a process ofde-Stalinization, reversing many of previous policies.[55]In his secret speech on 24 February 1956, Khrushchev condemned the ethnic deportations:
This deportation action was not dictated by any military considerations. Thus, already at the end of 1943, when there occurred a permanent breakthrough at the fronts... a decision was taken and executed concerning the deportation of all the Karachay from the lands on which they lived. In the same period, at the end of December 1943, the same lot befell whole population of the Autonomous Kalmyk Republic. In March all the Chechen and Ingush peoples were deported and theChechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic was liquidated. In April 1944, all Balkars were deported to faraway places from the territory of the Kalbino-Balkar Autonomous Republic and the Republic itself was renamed the Autonomous Kabardin Republic.[56]
In August 1953, theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union overturned the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1948, which ordered that all the evicted ethnic groups must remain in permanent exile.[46] The Kalmyks were officially released from special settlement supervision on 17 March 1956.[57] On 9 January 1957, a Soviet decree established theKalmyk Autonomous Oblast and on 29 July 1958, it officially became theKalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.[58]
By 1959, more than 60% of deported Kalmyks had returned to their home region.[59] Even though 72,665 persons returned by that year, there were still 33,401 of them outside Kalmykia.[60] By 1989, nearly 85% of Soviet Kalmyks resided in Kalmykia.[61] However, the deportations permanently altered the ethnic composition of the region, reducing the number of ethnic Kalmyks in the population from 75% in 1926 to 45% in 1989.[62] A record low was in 1959 when the Kalmyks made up only 35% of the population. Conversely, the share of Russians in Kalmykia increased from 10.7% in 1926 to 55.9%.[63] Many Kalmyks were grateful to Khrushchev for restoring their lands, and a street in Elista was named in his honor.[64]
On 14 November 1989 theSupreme Council of the Soviet Union declared all of Stalin's deportations "illegal and criminal".[65] On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of theRussian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, under its chairmanBoris Yeltsin, followed suit and passed the lawOn the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation andgenocide".[66] Russian historianPavel Polian considered all the deportations of entire ethnic groups during Stalin's era, including those from the Caucasus, acrime against humanity.[67]
HistorianAlexander Nekrich concluded that, while there were some Kalmyks who collaborated with Nazi Germany, "the majority of Kalmyks not only remained loyal to the system but fought to defend it, arms in hands".[26] ProfessorBrian Glyn Williams concluded that thedeportation of the Meskhetian Turks, in spite of their lands never coming close to the scene of combat during World War II and which coincided with the deportation of other ethnic groups from Caucasus andCrimea, lends the strongest evidence that all the deportations were a part of a larger concealed Soviet foreign policy rather than a response to any "universal mass treason".[68] Scholar Nelly Bekus assumes that one of the motivations for the Soviet forced transfer was theRussification of these areas.[3] Historians Hugo Service and Curtis Richardson described the deportation as an example of Soviet "ethnic cleansing",[69][70] with Service opining it aimed to "stigmatize particular ethnic groups as posing a special danger to the Soviet state"[69]
In its 1991 report,Human Rights Watch described all of the Soviet mass deportations as a form ofcollective punishment since groups were targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.[26] It also noted that none of these ethnic groups were given any kind of compensation for the harm caused by the deportations.[53] Social anthropologist Valeriya Gazizova similarly concluded that the Kalmyks were subject to Sovietpersecution.[71]
On 28 December 1996, sculptorErnst Neizvestny unveiled his monument to the deported Kalmyks in Elista, titledExile and Return, a bronze sculpture around 3 metres (120 in) high.[48] In 2012, over 1,800 Kalmyks filed a request for compensation from the government as victims of the deportation. The Elista City Court rejected their application.[72]
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