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Soviet "Special Settlement" Regime for Deported Nationalities

1945–1957 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

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What happened

Whole nationalities deported during and immediately after the Second World War - among them Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Karachays, Kalmyks, Meskhetian Turks, Koreans, Greeks and large numbers from the annexed Baltic states, western Ukraine and Poland - were not imprisoned in camps but registered as "special settlers" in fixed places of residence. The regime was one of confinement rather than incarceration: settlers lived and worked in ordinary settlements but were legally second-class residents, obliged to register with an MVD commandant, forbidden to move without permission, and liable to criminal penalties, including long terms of hard labour, for leaving their assigned area. Archival counts opened after 1991 show 2.57 million registered in January 1950 and 2.75 million in January 1953, the peak of the system. After Stalin's death the regime was dismantled piecemeal by decrees through 1954-1956 removing groups from the register and from administrative supervision: Poles deported in 1936 in January 1956, Kalmyks in March, Greeks, Bulgarians and Armenians in March, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds and Hemshins in April, and Chechens and Ingush in July 1956 - the last expressly without the right to return to their homeland. In 1957-1958 the national autonomies of the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars were restored and those peoples were permitted to return, while the Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans and Meskhetian Turks were not, their return bans lasting into the late Soviet period; the Supreme Soviet declared the deportations criminal in November 1989.

Parties

The Soviet NKVD/MVD holding deported national and social groups as spetsposelentsy in designated settlements under administrative supervision and a ban on leaving the assigned perimeter

Disputed

The denominator

Soviet reconstructions (Andreev, Darsky and Kharkova) put the USSR at about 170.5 million at the start of 1946, between the 1939 census of 170.6 million and the 1959 census of 208.8 million. MVD registers record a peak of 2,753,356 special settlers, drawn from some twenty deported nationalities and social categories.

Where the baseline comes from

• Special settlements in the Soviet Unionopen-edited
• Demographics of the Soviet Unionopen-edited

On the death toll

NKVD/MVD registers analysed by Viktor Zemskov record on the order of 400,000 deaths among nationalities deported to special settlements in the 1940s, with recorded mortality of about 14.6 per cent among Meskhetian Turks, 17.4 per cent among Kalmyks, 19.6 per cent among Crimean deportees and 23.7 per cent among North Caucasus deportees; most of that mortality fell in 1944-47, so estimates for the post-1945 regime alone are lower and uncertain. Nicolas Werth puts total Soviet deportation-related mortality at 1-1.5 million across the whole Stalin period, and scholars dispute how far the archival registers undercount.

Documented forms of violence

NKVD/MVD archival records analysed by Viktor Zemskov, J. Otto Pohl and Pavel Polian document confinement of some 2.5 million people under commandant supervision with a ban on leaving the assigned settlement, compulsory labour assignments, and the 1948 decree making exile permanent and punishing escape with twenty years of hard labour.

Formal findings

• European Parliament (2004) — 2004 resolution recognising the 1944 deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples as genocide; Russia rejects the characterisation — source

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Kazakhstan

Related entries

• Continues from: Soviet Annexation of the Baltic States and Mass Deportations
  Baltic families deported in 1945-1949, notably in Operation Priboi in March 1949, were held under the special settlement regime until the mid-1950s.
• Continued as: The Return of the Deported North Caucasus Peoples and the Conflicts of Restoration
  Chechens and Ingush held under the special-settlement regime returned to the North Caucasus once it was lifted in 1956-57. 415,000 people are counted in both entries.

Sources

• Special settlements in the Soviet Union - archival population figures and affected nationalitiesopen-edited
• Population transfer in the Soviet Union - the 1956 de-registration decrees and restoration of autonomiesopen-edited