All events · The World Wars

Deportation of the North Caucasus Peoples, Kalmyks, and Meskhetian Turks

1943–1944 · Europe & Northern Eurasia

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What happened

In late 1943 and 1944, Stalin's government carried out a series of forced deportations of entire ethnic groups from the North Caucasus and southern Georgia, on the grounds of alleged mass collaboration with German occupying forces (for the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars) or, in the case of Meskhetian Turks and neighboring groups, proximity to the Turkish border. In total roughly 800,000 people were transported, mostly in sealed freight cars, to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Siberia, and the affected peoples' autonomous republics were abolished. Mortality during transit and the following years from hunger, cold and disease was severe, with death-rate estimates for individual groups ranging from about 13% to over 20% in the first years alone. Survivors were confined to 'special settlements' under close surveillance until restrictions began easing after Stalin's death in 1953, with the Chechens and Ingush permitted to return to the Caucasus from 1957.

Parties

Soviet NKVD forces deported entire nationalities collectively accused of wartime disloyalty or unreliability — Kalmyks (December 1943), Chechens and Ingush (February 1944, Operation Lentil), Karachays and Balkars, and Meskhetian Turks, Kurds and Hemshils from southern Georgia (November 1944) — to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Siberia.

Disputed

The denominator

The 1939 Soviet census recorded 407,690 Chechens, 92,074 Ingush, 75,737 Karachays, 42,666 Balkars and 134,402 Kalmyks, about 753,000 in all; Meskhetian Turks, not counted separately in 1939, added roughly 90,000-100,000. NKVD operational reports for the deportations give closely comparable totals, since the operations aimed at the entire populations of these nationalities.

Where the baseline comes from

• Population transfer in the Soviet Unionopen-edited
• Deportation of the Chechens and Ingushopen-edited

On the death toll

NKVD archival records give 144,704 deaths among deported Chechens, Ingush, Karachays and Balkars alone for 1944-48, a 23.7% death rate; J. Otto Pohl calculates about 123,000 Chechen and Ingush deaths to 1949 and the demographer Dalkhat Ediev about 145,800, and adding Kalmyk and Meskhetian Turk mortality brings archival-based totals to roughly 150,000-200,000. Chechen national sources claim up to 400,000 perished among their community alone; Russian archival scholars regard such figures as unsupported by the special-settlement registers.

Documented forms of violence

NKVD operational records, the RSFSR's 1991 rehabilitation law and scholarship by Pohl and Ediev document the abolition of the deported peoples' autonomous republics and confiscation of their property, their confinement to special settlements under a compulsory labour regime, and the renaming of their towns and suppression of their institutions.

Formal findings

• European Parliament (2004) — Resolution of 26 February 2004 on EU-Russia relations, paragraph 15: the deportation of the entire Chechen people to Central Asia on 23 February 1944 on Stalin's orders 'constitutes an act of genocide' within the meaning of the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1948 Genocide Convention — source
• Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1991) — 1991 Law on the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples denounced the deportations as a policy of genocide and slander against the deported nationalities; the modern Russian state has not repeated the genocide characterisation — source

Movements mapped

• Chechens & Ingush → Kazakh/Kyrgyz SSR496,000
• Kalmyks → Siberia93,000
• Meskhetian Turks → Uzbek SSR115,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan

Sources

• Operation Lentil (Caucasus) - Wikipediaopen-edited
• Deportation of the Kalmyks - Wikipediaopen-edited
• Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks - Wikipediaopen-edited
• 80 years since the mass deportations of the Chechens and Ingush - Norwegian Helsinki Committeepress