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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 nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill the ethnically cleansed territories. In most cases their destinations were underpopulated remote areas, see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union.

Contents 1 Deportations of social categories 2 Transfers of ethnicities 3 Labor force transfer 4 Timeline 5 See also 6 References 7 Wikisource 8 External links

Kulaks were the most numerous social category of deported. Resettlement of people officially designated as kulaks continued until early 1950, including several major waves.

Some ethnic deportations, e.g., of Poles after 1939 from annexed territories of what is now Western Belarus and Western Ukraine (but was then Eastern Poland), were also justified by political/social reasons.

A number of religions, most prominent being Jehovah's Witnesses, were declared anti-Soviet, and their members deported.

The wholesale removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career: Poles (1934), Koreans (1937), Ukrainians, Jews, Romanians (1939-1941 and 1944-1953) Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1940-1941 and 1945-1949), Volga Germans (1941), Balkars, Chechens, Ingushs (1944), Kalmyks (1944), Meskhetian Turks (1944), and Crimean Tatars (18 May 1944). Large numbers of kulaks regardless their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia.

In the years during World War II particularly in 1943-44, the Soviet government conducted a series of deportations. 1.9 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Treasonous collaboration with the invading Germans and anti-Soviet rebellion were the reasons for these deportations. Out of approximately 183,000 Crimean Tatars, 20,000 or 10% of the entire population served in German battalions.^[1]

The deportations started with Poles from Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia (see Polish minority in Soviet Union) 1932-1936. Koreans in the Russian Far East were deported in 1937. Volga Germans and seven (overwhelmingly Turkic or non-Slavic) nationalities of the Crimea and the northern Caucasus were deported: the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, and Meskhetian Turks. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians. From the newly conquered Eastern Poland 400,000 people were deported. The same followed in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (over 200,000 people were deported). Likewise, Romanians from Chernivtsi Oblast and Moldova had been deported in great numbers which range from 200.000 to 400.000. According to the last census in Russia and Kazakhstan, there are 20,000 Romanians in the latter while at least 180,000 exist in the former. The overwhelming majority of these deportees successfully made their trip to Central Asia. For example, out of 225,000 deported Crimeans, 193,000 or 86% were located in their appropriate settlements in October 1946. [1]

After World War II, the population of the Kaliningrad Oblast was replaced by the Soviet one, mainly by Russians.

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting 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." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Chechnya and the Baltic republics.

Punitive transfers of population transfers handled by Gulag and the system of involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union were planned in accordance with the needs of the colonization of the remote and underpopulated territories of the Soviet Union. (Their large scale has led to a controversial opinion in the West that the economic growth of the Soviet Union was largely based on the slave labor of Gulag prisoners.) At the same time, on a number of occasions the workforce was transferred by non-violent means, usually by means of "recruitment" (вербовка). This kind of recruitment was regularly performed at forced settlements, where people were naturally more willing to resettle. For example, the workforce of the Donbass and Kuzbass mining basins is known to have been replenished in this way. (As a note of historical comparison, in Imperial Russia the mining workers at state mines (bergals, "бергалы", from German Bergauer) were often recruited in lieu of military service which, for a certain period, had a term of 25 years ).

There were several notable campaigns of targeted workforce transfer.

• Twenty-five-thousanders
• Labor Army#Russian Germans
• Virgin Lands Campaign
• Baku oil industry workers transfer: During the Great Patriotic War, in October 1942, about 10,000 workers from petroleum sites of Baku with families were transferred to several sites with potential oil production: the "Second Baku" area (Volga-Ural oil field), Kazakhstan and Sakhalin, under the potential German threat (Germany failed to seize Baku, though).

Date of transfer	Targeted group	Approximate numbers	Place of initial residence	Transfer destination	Reason for transfer
April 1920	Terek Cossacks	45,000	North Caucasus	Ukraine, northern Russia	"Decossackization"
September 1922	"Socially dangerous elements"	18,000	Western border regions of Ukraine and Byelorussia	Western Siberia, Far East	Social threat
1930–1936	Kulaks	2,323,000	"Regions of total collectivization", most of Russia, Ukraine, other regions	Northern Russia, Ural, Siberia, North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan	Collectivization
November–December 1932	Peasants	45,000	Krasnodar Krai (Russia)	Northern Russia	Sabotage
1933	Nomadic Kazakhs	200,000	Kazakhstan	China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey
February–May 1935	Ingrian Finns	30,000	Leningrad Oblast (Russia)	Vologda Oblast, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan
February–March 1935	Germans, Poles	412,000	Central and western Ukraine	Eastern Ukraine
May 1935	Germans, Poles	45,000	Border regions of Ukraine	Kazakhstan
July 1937	Kurds	2,000	Border regions of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
September–October 1937	Koreans	172,000	Far East	Northern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan
September–October 1937	Chinese, Harbin Russians	9,000	Southern Far East	Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan
1938	Persian Jews	6,000	Mary Province (Turkmenistan)	Deserted areas of northern Turkmenistan
January 1938	Azeris, Persians, Kurds, Assyrians	n/a	Azerbaijan	Kazakhstan	Iranian citizenship
February–June 1940	Poles (including refugees from Poland)	276,000	Western Ukraine, western Byelorussia	Northern Russia, Ural, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan
July 1940	"Foreigners" / "Other ethnicities"	n/a	Murmansk Oblast (Russia)	Karelia and Altai Krai (Russia)
May–June 1941	"Counter-revolutionaries and nationalists"	107,000	Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania	Siberia, Kirov (Russia), Komi (Russia), Kazakhstan
September 1941 – March 1942	Germans	More than 780,000	Povolzhye, the Caucasus, Crimea, Ukraine, Moscow, central Russia	Kazakhstan, Siberia
September 1941	Ingrian Finns, Germans	91,000	Leningrad Oblast (Russia)	Kazakhstan, Siberia, Astrakhan Oblast (Russia), Far East
1942	Ingrian Finns	9,000	Leningrad Oblast (Russia)	Eastern Siberia, Far East
April 1942	Greeks, Romanians, etc.	n/a	Crimea, North Caucasus	n/a
June 1942	Germans, Romanians, Crimean Tatars, Greeks with foreign citizenship	n/a	Krasnodar Krai (Russia)	n/a
August 1943	Karachais	70,500	Karachay-Cherkessia	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, other	Banditism, other
December 1943	Kalmyks	93,000	Kalmykia	Kazakhstan, Siberia
February 1944	Chechens, Ingushes, Balkars	522,000	North Caucasus	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
February 1944	Kalmyks	3,000	Rostov Oblast (Russia)	Siberia
March 1944	Kurds, Azeris	3,000	Tbilisi (Georgia)	Southern Georgia
May 1944	Balkars	100	Northern Georgia	Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
May 1944	Balkars	182,000	Crimea	Uzbekistan
May–June 1944	Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks	42,000	Crimea	Uzbekistan (?)
May–July 1944	Kalmyks	26,000	Northeastern regions	Central Russia, Ukraine
June 1944	Kalmyks	1,000	Volgograd Oblast (Russia)	Sverdlovsk Oblast (Russia)
June 1944	Kabardins	2,000	Kabardino-Balkaria	Southern Kazakhstan	Collaboration with the Nazis
July 1944	Russian True Orthodox Church adherers	1,000	Central Russia	Siberia
August–September 1944	Poles	30,000	Ural, Siberia, Kazakhstan	Ukraine, European Russia
November 1944	Meskhetian Turks, Kurds, Hamshenis, Karapapaks	92,000	Southwestern Georgia	Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
November 1944	Lazes and other inhabitants of the border zone	1,000	Ajaria (Georgia)	Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
December 1944	Members of the Volksdeutsche families	1,000	Mineralnye Vody (Russia)	Siberia (according to other sources Tajikistan)	Collaboration with the Nazis
January 1945	"Traitors and collaborators"	2,000	Mineralnye Vody (Russia)	Tajikistan	Collaboration with the Nazis
May 1948	Kulaks	49,000	Lithuania	Eastern Siberia	Banditism
June 1948	Greeks, Armenians	58,000	The Black Sea coast of Russia	Southern Kazakhstan	For Armenians: membership in the nationalist Dashnaktsutiun Party
June 1948	"Spongers" ("тунеядцы")	16,000	n/a	n/a	"Social parasitism"
October 1948	Kulaks	1,000	Izmail Oblast (Ukraine)	Western Siberia
January 1949	Kulaks	94,000	Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia	Siberia, Far East	Banditism
May–June 1949	Armenians, Turks, Greeks	n/a	The Black Sea coast (Russia), South Caucasus	Southern Kazakhstan	Membership in the nationalist Dashnaktsutiun Party (Armenians), Greek or Turkish citizenship (Greeks), other
July 1949 – May 1952	Kulaks	78,400	Moldavia, the Baltic States, western Byelorussia, western Ukraine, Pskov Oblast (Russia)	Siberia, Kazakhstan, Far East	Banditism, other
March 1951	Basmachis	3,000	Tajikistan	Northern Kazakhstan
April 1951	Jehova's Witnesses	3,000	Moldavia	Western Siberia

• National operations of NKVD
• Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union
• Kalmyk deportations of 1944
• Nazi-Soviet population transfers
• Russification
• Population transfer
• Evacuation of East Prussia

• Martin, Terry. 1998. "The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing," Journal of Modern History 70 (December): 813-861.
• Polian, Pavel (Павел Полян), Deportations in the USSR: An index of operations with list of corresponding directives and legislation, Russian Academy of Science.
• Павел Полян, Не по своей воле... (Pavel Polyan, Not by Their Own Will... A History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR), ОГИ Мемориал, Moscow, 2001, ISBN 5-94282-007-4
• 28 августа 1941 г. Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР "О выселении немцев из районов Поволжья".
• 1943 г. Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР "О ликвидации Калмыцкой АССР и образовании Астраханской области в составе РСФСР". *Постановление правительства СССР от 12 января 1949 г. "О выселении с территории Литвы, Латвии и Эстонии кулаков с семьями, семей бандитов и националистов, находящихся на нелегальном положении, убитых при вооруженных столкновениях и осужденных, легализованных бандитов, продолжающих вести вражескую работу, и их семей, а также семей репрессированных пособников и бандитов"
• Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР от 13 декабря 1955 г. "О снятии ограничений в правовом положении с немцев и членов их семей, находящихся на спецпоселении".
• 17 марта 1956 г. Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР "О снятии ограничений в правовом положении с калмыков и членов их семей, находящихся на спецпоселении".
• 1956 г. Постановление ЦК КПСС "О восстановлении национальной автономии калмыцкого, карачаевского, балкарского, чеченского и ингушского народов".
• 29 августа 1964 г. Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР "О внесении изменений в Указ Президиума Верховного Совета СССР от 28 августа 1941 г. о переселении немцев, проживающих в районах Поволжья".
• 1991 г: Laws of Russian Federation: "О реабилитации репрессированных народов", "О реабилитации жертв политических репрессий".

1. ^ Alexander Statiev, "The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942-44", Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (Spring 2005) 285-318

• State Defense Committee Decree No. 5859ss: On Crimean Tatars (See also Three answers to the Decree No. 5859ss)

The number of Polish citizens deported to Soviet Russia (Siberia) listed in the Vikipedia as 276,000, is erroneous. Based on Polish sources it is about a million ("W Sowieckim Osaczeniu", p.95, Zbigniew, S. Siemaszko, Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1991, ISBN 0 85065 210 3,). Total number of Polish citizens on Soviet territory, including the military, during WWII is estimated at about 1.7 million. I also object to the wording contained in the article:"Some ethnic deportations, eg. of Poles after 1939 from anexed territories of what is now Western Belarus and Western Ukraine (but was then Eastern Poland), were also JUSTIFIED BY POLITICAL/SOCIAL REASONS (capitalization mine). There was no justification for these deportations. There were entire families, small children, old men and women, some of them died during transport. In my box car there was a man 72 years old and two of his grand children, 4 and 6 years old. What "political/social reasons" could be for their deportation? The only reason was that they were Polish citizens. The same criteria were applied by Hitler to Jews. Was this "justified"?

• Polian's index online
• Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 by J.Otto Pohl. Books.google.com
• These Names Accuse (Soviet Deportations in Latvia)
• Baltic Deportation Order No 001223 — Full text, English
• DEPORTATIONS Revelations from the Russian Archives at the Library of Congress
• Chechnya: European Parliament recognises the genocide of the Chechen People in 1944
• Эдиев Д.М. Демографические потери депортированных народов СССР. Ставрополь, 2003