Is it true that during WW2 the Soviet authorities enforced collective punishment on certain minority ethnic groups due to collaboration with Nazis? (Specifically Crimean Tatars) I’ve heard about this from leftist circles and from reactionary circles. The claim, at least on surface level, seems pretty damming.
If this happened, then why? And was it a mistake or was it a necessary evil?
Some nationalities (Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, Kalmyks, and Karachay-Balkars) had higher rates of collaboration with Nazis than the overall population even though majority of their group opposed the Nazis in many cases. They probably shouldn’t have been deported, although I understand that the authorities had to make quick decisions in wartime and many of them would have been killed anyway by the Nazis if they hadn’t been deported. However, the Germans many regions of Russia had arrived during Tsarist times as settlers and had often been in the nobility, which made many of them counterrevolutionary. The deportation of Volga Germans is probably the only one of these deportations I would defend considering how Germans in other areas such as the Sudetenland had enabled Nazi expansion.
In addition, some groups not suspected of supporting the Nazis, specifically Jews, were deported to far away from the front lines in order to keep them away from the Nazis.
This is long text. But it is maybe interesting, because I tell about my relatives and german villages in Siberia.
However, the Germans many regions of Russia had arrived during Tsarist times as settlers and had often been in the nobility, which made many of them counterrevolutionary.
It highly depends. Most were also just peasents which were suffering from kulaks. The Germans arriving in tsarist Russia were just peasants which were invited by tsar Katharina, she promised many things. And almost nothing of those promises could be fulfilled. I don’t know how many of these peasants actually became peasants, because I don’t know much about Volga Germans. I also don’t know if it was right or wrong to deport them.
But I can tell something about my ancestors. My grand-grand-grandfather was a rich german guy who arrived in southern Siberia and founded a village, where other germans settlers moved in. They didn’t liked them, because he was a shitty kulak who expropriated them.
He always had an argument with my grand-grandfather and inherited nothing to him. That’s why he started to dislike kulaks and supported the bolsheviks, like other settlers there. After the revolution the german villages hat names like “Rosa” (Referring to Rosa Luxemburg). Other names remained.
The interesting part was then the second world war. One relative, a descendet from my grand-granduncle, was in the Red Army and fought also against fascist Germany. But he got captured and was treated very, very well, because he was german. Well in the end he joined the Wehrmacht, while other still remained in the Red Army. Idk if he was also in Berlin, at least my russian grand-grandfather fought against germans in Berlin. Weird constellation to be honest.
The german dude settled somewhere in Stuttgart and had a good life, West-Germany treated him well. Later he wrote a book about it and released it. Dont know its name, my grandfather died few years ago so I can’t ask him about his name again. Never heard from any of my relatives ever something positive about nazism. I have so so many relatives, its insane. Enough in Russia, Germany and somehow before the revolution the kulak part settled into the USA lol
It is an interesting micro cosmos. But as I said, I don’t know much about Volga Germans, I never met one. But if I think about this relative who joined the Wehrmacht in the end, it was maybe right do deport them, I don’t know. I mean he was not a fascist in first place, but Germany made him joining the Wehrmacht. I can imagine they could have done something like that to the Volga Germans. Treating them very well and and and.
The USSR did deport ethnic minorities due to confirmed or suspected collaboration with the Nazis, and while this obviously wasn’t a great thing, most of the time it made some kind of sense and was because of what I call “the cold calculus of war/suffering”
Despite it being horrible, it’s “better” for 5-10 percent of the population that’s deported to die on the way, than for 40 percent or more for the population to be murdered by the nazis.
I also think that the fact that the USSR didn’t help or actively stalled and prevented people from returning to their homelands was disgusting and wrong, but I’m wary of those statements since they come from neoliberal sources.
I don’t want to dismiss claims because they come from neoliberals, because I have integrity, but I also don’t think we should trust every claim they make.
I think that out of all the ethnic deportations, the Tatars went too far the most. Neoliberals do downplay the nazi infiltration and intimidation that was done to the tatars, but I’ve read that the Stalin primarily wanted the Black Sea region for geographical purposes, which the Tatars and other groups were part of him.
This isn’t to say that the neoliberal accusations are completely true, I don’t buy that, and this isn’t to forget the memory of tens of thousands of heroic Tatar Soviet soldiers.
