Thus, the first blows against harmonious relations among nationalities in the Soviet Union were dealt by the Soviet state itself, not the invading enemy.
In late 1943 and early 1944, several nationalities of the Northern Caucasus region were deported, also on charges of collaborating with the enemy: the Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Karachai. They were followed soon after by the Kalmyks and Crimean Tatars. At the same time, other non- Russian peoples were removed from the shores of the Black Sea: Greeks, Bulgarians, and Krymchaks. Their fate was soon shared by the Kurds and the Khemshins. Plans were made to deport the Abkhazians, too. In all cases where a deported nationality had its own autonomous region, that administrative structure was abolished. The deportations affected over 1 million people, most of them Muslims.21 They were crowded into cattlecars and shipped off to Siberia, the Urals, and Central Asia. The aim of the deportations was essentially to have a more "reliable" (i.e., Russian) population along the Soviet borders and in areas where there was tension.
Russians and Ukrainians were brought in to replace the deported populations in the towns and villages of the Northern Caucasus, the Stavropol region, and the Crimea.
The deportees lived under very crowded conditions and in great deprivation. Tens of thousands died of starvation and disease while being deported or in the first years of adjustment to their new status and location. They were restricted to "special settlements," where they existed under constant close surveillance, not allowed to move about as they pleased. No books, magazines, or newspapers in their native languages were published, and teaching the mother tongue in the schools was forbidden. They no longer had access to university education.
In Transcaucasia, despite the fact that German troops reached the Greater Caucasus Range in the fall of 1942, the situation was relatively stable among the non-Russian nationalities, although in the mountains there were armed groups hostile to Soviet rule. The large concentration of NKVD troops and Red Army units in the region was one of the most powerful arguments against any attempt to revolt. Moreover, the nationalities of Transcaucasia saw no practical way to protect themselves other than by loyal support to the Soviet state. The entry of Soviet troops into Iran at the beginning of the war, the alliance between the USSR, England, and the United States, and the traditional enmity toward Turkey (especially on the part of Armenians) were also contributing factors.
In the republics of Central Asia, the nationalities situation during the war was complicated by the influx of refugees, evacuees, and deportees. The war effort required the creation of a new economic infrastructure in the region, an increase in the production of cotton and nonferrous metals, exploration for and exploitation of new sources of raw materials, and the exploitation of such sources when found. The influx of Russians, Ukrainians, and others substantially changed the economy and culture of Central Asia, particularly in relation to urban growth and development, for it was in the cities that the bulk of the new Russian population concentrated. According to an Uzbek demographer,
Before the 1950s, and particularly in the years before and during the Great Patriotic War, the industrialization of the peripheral national regions, including the republics of Central Asia, and the strong migration of Russians into these regions (as well as Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and some other nationalities), brought as a consequence a noticeable decrease in the proportion of the population constituted by the nationalities originally inhabiting the union republics of Central Asia, as well as the autonomous republics and regions of the area.22
The weight and influence of Russians in the local administration and, above all, in local industry rose in proportion to the influx of Russians, while the Russian language and Soviet Russian culture penetrated more deeply into the native milieu. This had the political side effect of heightening the interdependence of the local elite and the "all-union" bureaucracy.
During the war, the population of the Culag was sharply increased by the deportees from the Baltic states, western Poland, Moldavia, and the Caucasus, as well as by Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, "defeatist elements," "okruzhentsy" (troops who had been encircled by the Germans), and other unfortunates. The detainees were put to work building airports, landing strips, and roads in the Far North. It was they, not enthusiastic Communist youth, as tourist guides today claim, who built Magadan, the capital of the Kolyma region. It was also they who built the underground hangars near Kuibyshev and the airports and landing strips at Soroka, Onega, Kargopol, on the northern Dvina, and in the northern Urals and Pechora regions. The slave labor of prisoners was used in war plants, the expansion of port facilities on the Arctic Ocean, and the construction of roads in Siberia and Transcaucasia. Prisoners died by the thousands from undernourishment and fatigue and from the inhuman treatment meted out by the guards and administrators, by the entire NKVD system, which was aimed at breaking and destroying the human personality. The loss of life among camp inmates proceeded at a preplanned rate. Those assigned to heavy labor lived no more than three years as a rule. New prisoners were brought in to replace the dead; and the process went on without end.
As we have said, the camps were swelled with the victims of the "purges" in the newly annexed territories of western Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina. From 1939 to 1941, 1,060,000 Polish citizens were deported to Siberia and the Urals. This deportation began with the Soviet—German pact ushering in a new partition of Poland.23
Estimates vary on the number of Poles sent to "corrective labor camps." According to information at the time, there were 200,000; but more recent information compiled by Robert Conquest suggests there were 440,000 in the labor camps; the remaining 620,000 were sent either to prisoner of war camps or enforced settlements in remote areas.
Two hundred thousand people were deported from the Baltic countries, that is, 4 percent of the combined total population of 5 million. Of these, between 50,000 and 60,000 ended up in the labor camps. Two hundred thousand were also deported from Bessarabia. Many Volga Germans, representatives of an "enemy nationality," likewise were sent to the camps;
later some of the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, and peoples of the Northern Caucausus deported in 1943—1944 also ended up in the camps.
The slave labor force was also replenished with inmates convicted under a law prohibiting theft of state property, which dated from August 1932. Usually this meant the culprit had stolen a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes, or, often, had picked some leftover potatoes or ears of grain from an already harvested field.
There were new categories as welclass="underline" those convicted of "spreading rumors" or "sowing panic," and those who had failed to bring in their radios. (At the beginning of the war a government decree ordered that all citizens surrender their radio sets to be kept in state storage until the end of the war.) By the late summer of 1941, the okruzhentsy began to arrive in the camps, soldiers who had been encircled by the Germans because of the errors of their commanders or the conditions of war and who had miraculously escaped. As a general rule, all these categories were sentenced to ten years in the camps. After the Battle of Moscow, those suspected of having stayed in the city, rather than fleeing or being evacuated, were rounded up. It was said they had planned to welcome the Germans in Moscow.
Later additions to the camps were those who had collaborated with the enemy: the German-appointed Biirgermeisters and village elders, those who had served in the German-sponsored police in occupied areas (the so-called Polizei), members of nationalist organizations, "Vlasovites" (supporters of General Vlasov, discussed later in this chapter), and German and Japanese war criminals. A 1943 law providing for death by hanging or condemnation to hard labor was applied to the last several categories.24