Deportation in 1941
Joseph Stalin's forcible resettlement of over 1.5 million people, mostly Muslims, during and after World War II is now viewed by many human rights experts in Russia as one of his most drastic genocidal acts. Volga Germans and seven nationalities of Crimea and the northern Caucasus were deported: the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachai, and Meskhetians. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians.
Resistance to Soviet rule, separatism, and widespread collaboration with the German occupation forces were among the official reasons for the deportation of these non-Russian peoples. The possibility of a German attack was used to justify the resettlement of the ethnically mixed population of Mtskheta, in southwestern Georgia. The Balkars were punished for allegedly having sent a white horse as a gift to Adolf Hitler.
The deportees were rounded up and transported, usually in railroad cattle cars, to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, and Siberia -- areas called "human dumping grounds" by historian Robert Conquest. Most estimates indicate that close to two-fifths of the affected populations perished. The plight of the Crimean Tatars was exceptionally harsh; nearly half died of hunger in the first eighteen months after being banished from their homeland.
In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles. In his "secret speech" to the Twentieth Party Congress, he stated that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." That year, the Soviet government issued decrees on the restoration of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic and the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Republic, the formation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast', and the reorganization of the Cherkess Autonomous Oblast' into the Karachai-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast'. The Crimean Tatars, Meskhetians, and Volga Germans, however, were only partially rehabilitated and were not, for the most part, permitted to return to their homelands until after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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In 1941, all the colonists who had not yet emigrated from the Volga region were deported by Stalin's Soviet government to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and other remote regions because of their German heritage. The formal decree came on August 28, 1941 which abolished the Autonomous Socialistic Soviet Republic of the Volga Germans.
On September 1, 1941 mass evacuation was announced for the approximately 440,000 Volga Germans. Ten days later they began their forced deportation to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Many were forced to work in the Trudarmee (labor army) in camps such as Kolyma. The Volga Germans were then stripped of their citizenship and did not regain their civil rights until after Stalin’s death.
The Volga Germans were now treated as prisoners and were transported by rail to the camps. There were 151 train convoys departing from 19 stations. Some 20,000 NKVD troops and the huge quantities of rolling stock and other resources were diverted from the war effort in order to shift vast numbers of old people, women and children to distant lands quite unprepared to receive them. Fifty or 60 people were packed into each freight car and given water only when the train stopped every three or four days. Food, when provided, was generally salted herring which only made the prisoners' thirst that much greater. The journey could take many weeks.
The consequences were devastating. Some families were given as little as five or ten minutes to pack up their belongings and food for the trip. No food was supplied. Tens of thousands are believed to have died during journeys which lasted up to two months. In some cases, bodies were left in the overcrowded cattle wagons for weeks on end. In others, they were thrown out beside the tracks. Most estimates indicate that close to 40 percent of the affected population perished.
Many of the transfers took place in fall and winter months. Those who survived the journey often found themselves with inadequate clothing, no shelter, and no means to support themselves in temperatures as low as -40C in Siberia. Their movement was restricted to a limited zone always a few kilometers short of the nearest town.
The following chilling account appears in George J. Walters book: Wir Wollen Deutsche Bleiben: The Story of the Volga Germans_. Kansas City, Missouri, Halcyon House Publishers. 1982.
“Perhaps the best account of what happened is given by Victor Leiker, a New Jersey Journalist, who interviewed four natives of the Volga Republic in 1968. The men, ranging in age from forty-nine to fifty-three, made their way to Germany and settled there after the war. Leiker described the evacuation of Obermonjour as follows: ‘In Obermonjour the order came early in the morning. The people were given four hours in which to prepare for the evacuation. Anyone resisting or attempting to hide would be summarily shot, and a few were. Soldiers arrived a few hours after the order and herded the people to the banks of the river where they boarded barges and were taken to a railhead. Each person, regardless of age, was allowed one suitcase or bundle. Some suspected that they would be sent to Siberia and took all the clothes and bedding they could carry. Others took as much food as they could assemble. In the long run those with the extra clothing and bedding had the best chance of surviving the cold in the north where little or no preparation had been made for their arrival.
At the railhead the people were loaded into freight and cattle cars, some with open vents and some with no vents at all. And so began the long, horrible and disastrous trip to Siberia. No statistics are available, and we shall probably never know how many died on their trip to the the forced labor camps and how many in the forests, mines and fields of Siberia....There was only one railroad running through the Volga Republic and it had no branch lines. The people were almost always forced to walk to the nearest railroad station. It can be imagined that many of those not in good health, that many of the old and young, did not make it to the station.”
Walters notes that little is known about banished persons who survived, and he expresses anger that Russia has escaped censure from the international community for what it has done.
In the Volga colonies, all German institutions disappeared. German buildings remained but often were reconfigured for different use. The many contributions Volga Germans made to the region were buried under the hostility to all things Germanic.
"A few communites were hard to crack: the million German farmers who had lived for two centuries on the banks of the Volga rallied behind their church pastors. Not until 1941 were Stalin's men able to dispossess the Volga Germans."
"Stalin and his Hangmen" by Donald Rayfield
Family preparing for deportation
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Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities by Robert Conquest
Moscow, Associated Press, The New York Times, Monday, September 8, 1941: [Late Sunday, U.S. time]
A mass movement into exile in Siberia was ordered today for the heavily German-derived population of the Volga area because of its alleged readiness to sabotage the Russian war effort. [Many of Stalin's numerous slave/death camps were located in Siberia.] ... The German Volga territory is an autonomous Soviet Republic in European Russia, north of the Caspian Sea.
Of its population of 571,089 in 1926 about 67 percent were Germans. The republic covers some 10,329 square miles [101 x 101], about three-fourths lying on the left bank of the Volga River and the remainder of the right bank. ... The German population grew from 27,000 colonists settled there in 1760-61 at the invitation of Catherine the Great by special manifesto when the population was so much less than today that the government was concerned about the development of the uncultivated territory. ... ...
Moscow, Wireless to The New York Times, By Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Monday, September 8, 1941: [Late Sunday, U.S. time]
In a sweeping move designed to obviate permanently any dangers of a fifth-column movement in the Volga German Republic, which has housed hundreds of thousands of Germans since the latter part of the 18th century, when Catherine the Great invited in settlers from South Germany, the Soviet Supreme Council has signed a decree ordering the resettlement of that population in Siberia. ... This predominantly farming folk will be moved eastward as soon as possible. A decree signed by President Mikhail I. Kalinin on Aug. 28 indicates its obvious purpose by stating: "According to reliable information received by the military authorities, thousands and tens of thousands of diversionists and spies among the German population of the Volga are prepared to cause explosions in these regions at a signal from Germany." ...
This Volga settlement is the easternmost colony of Germans. The accent of the Volga settlers, however, is markedly different from that of the inhabitants of the present Reich. ...
When this war started there was considerable speculation as to how extensively the Nazis were seeking secretly to organize dissent among the racial element. President Kalinin's decree now indicates that the government is taking no chances. Russia watched with interest the uprisings of German settlers in the Yugoslav Banat during the Nazi invasion last April. Although the German Army's drive toward the Volga is a tremendous distance from its possible eventual objectives, it is clear that steps toward preventing present or future trouble are already being taken. The decree, whose existence was made public today, is based on the theory that possible German efforts to muddy the waters in the Volga Republic might necessitate a Soviet action against the entire population in that region and that therefore to avoid such a predicament it is more advisable to resettle that population on Siberian land. This area is not only far from any danger of such interference but needs development. ...
It is stated that no Germans from the Volga have reported the existence of the purportedly large numbers of dissidents who have been uncovered. ...
"If diversionist acts took place," the decree said, "under orders from Germany by German dissidents or spies in the Volga German Republic or in neighboring regions, and bloodshed resulted, the Soviet Government would be forced under martial law to adopt reprisal measures against the entire Volga German population. In order to avoid such an undesirable occurrence and to forestall serious bloodshed, the President of the Supreme Council of the U.S.S.R. has found it necessary to resettle the entire German population of the Volga regions to other districts under the condition that the resettled peoples be allotted land and given State aid to settle in the new regions. The resettled Germans will be given land in the Novosibirsk and Omsk districts, the Altai region of the Kazakhstan Republic, and neighboring localities rich in land. In connection with this, the National Defense Council is instructed to resettle as soon as possible all Volga Germans who will be given land estates in new regions."
... Nothing has been said about whether the regions evacuated by these Germans will be settled by new inhabitants, but because of great industrial and agricultural importance of the Volga settlement it is most likely that this will take place. Hundreds of thousands of persons have been removed successfully from White Russia and the Western Ukraine and it is not impossible that some of them will be deposited in the Volga strip.