The deportation of the Karachai people is history. The tragedy of the Karachai people

Every year, residents of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic celebrate a special date - May 3, the Day of the Revival of the Karachai people. This holiday is established in memory of the acquisition of freedom and the return to the homeland of thousands of deported residents of the North Caucasus, who were victims of the criminal Stalinist policy, subsequently recognized as genocide. The testimonies of those who have experienced the tragic events of those years are not only proof of its inhuman essence, but also a warning to future generations.

The seizure of the Caucasus and the activation of anti-Soviet forces

In mid-July 1942, the German motorized units managed to make a powerful breakthrough, and to a broad front, covering almost 500 kilometers, to rush to the Caucasus. The offensive was so rapid that on August 21 the flag of Nazi Germany fluttered on the top of Elbrus and stayed there until the end of February 1943, until the invaders were ousted by Soviet troops. At the same time, the fascists occupied the entire territory of the Karachai Autonomous Region.

The arrival of the Germans and the establishment of a new order gave impetus to activating the actions of that part of the population that was hostile to the Soviet regime and was waiting for an opportunity to overthrow it. Taking advantage of the favorable situation, these individuals began to unite in insurgent detachments and actively cooperate with the Germans. From their number, the so-called Karachai National Committees were formed, whose task was to maintain the occupation regime on the ground.

Of the total number of residents of the region, these people were extremely small percentage, especially since most of the male population was at the front, but the responsibility for betrayal was imposed on the entire nation. The result of the events was the deportation of the Karachai people, which forever became a shameful page in the history of the country.

The people who suffered from a handful of traitors

The forced deportation of Karachais was among the numerous crimes of the totalitarian regime established in the country by the bloody dictator. It is known that even among his closest associates, such obvious arbitrariness caused an ambiguous reaction. In particular, AI Mikoyan, who was then a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, recalled that it seemed ridiculous to accuse him of betraying a whole people, among whom were many Communists, representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia and the working peasantry. In addition, almost the whole male part of the population was mobilized in the army and, on a par with all, fought against the fascists. But only a small group of renegades tarnished themselves with treachery. However, Stalin showed obstinacy and insisted on his own.

The deportation of the Karachai people was carried out in several stages. Its beginning was the directive of April 15, 1943, compiled by the USSR Prosecutor's Office together with the NKVD. Appeared immediately after the liberation in January 1943 of Karachai by the Soviet troops, she contained an order for the forced resettlement to the Kirghiz SSR and Kazakhstan of 573 people who were members of the families of those who collaborated with the Germans. All their relatives were to be sent out, including infants and decrepit old people.

Soon the number of deportees was reduced to 472, as 67 members of the rebel detachments were guilty of local authorities. However, as further events showed, this was only a propaganda move that contained a lot of cunning, since in October of the same year a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR came out, on the basis of which all Karachais were subjected to forced migration (deportation), in the amount of 62,843 human.

For completeness, we note that, according to available data, 53.7% of them were children; 28.3% are women and only 18% are men, most of whom were old men or war invalids, since the others at that time fought at the front, defending the very power that deprived them of their homes and condemned them to the incredible suffering of their family.

The same decree of October 12, 1943, prescribed the liquidation of the Karachai AO, and all the territory that belonged to it was divided between neighboring subjects of the federation and was to be populated with "proven categories of workers" ─ this was exactly what was said in this sadly memorable document.

The beginning of the mourning

The resettlement of the Karachai people, or, in other words, the expulsion of them from centuries of settled lands, was carried out at a rapid pace and was carried out in the period from November 2 to November 5, 1943. In order to drive defenseless old people, women and children into freight cars, "force support for the operation" was allocated with the involvement of the NKVD military unit of 53,000 people (this is official data). At gunpoint they drove innocent people out of the houses and escorted them to the places of dispatch. Take with them allowed only a small supply of food and clothing. All the rest of the property, acquired over many years, was deported to be left to the mercy of fate.

All residents of the abolished Karachay Autonomous Region were sent to new places of residence in 34 echelons, each of which accommodated up to 2 thousand people and consisted of an average of 40 wagons. As the participants of those events later recalled, in each car there were about 50 settlers who, for the next 20 days, were forced to freeze, starve and die from illnesses, from suffocation and unsanitary conditions. The sufferings suffered by them are evidenced by the fact that during the journey, only according to official reports, 654 people died.

Upon arrival, all Karachais were settled in small groups in 480 settlements, spread out over a vast territory stretching all the way to the foothills of the Pamirs. This is irrefutable evidence that the deportation of Karachais in the USSR pursued the goal of their full assimilation among other peoples and the disappearance as an independent ethnos.

Conditions of detention of deportees

In March 1944, under the NKVD of the USSR, the so-called Special Settlements Division was created, namely, those who, being victims of the inhuman regime, were expelled from their land and forcibly sent for thousands of kilometers, were named in official documents of the place of residence. In the conduct of this structure were 489 special forces in the territory of Kazakhstan and 96 in Kyrgyzstan.

According to the order issued by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs LP Beria, all deportees were obliged to obey special rules. They were categorically forbidden to leave the confines of the settlement controlled by this NKVD commandant's office without a special pass signed by the commandant. Violation of this requirement was equated with escape from places of detention and was punished with hard labor for a period of 20 years.

In addition, the settlers were ordered to inform the employees of the commandant's office about the death of their family members or the birth of children within three days. They were also obliged to report about the shoots, not only committed, but also preparing. Otherwise, the perpetrators were brought to justice as accomplices in the crime.

Despite the reports of the commandants of special settlements on the safe accommodation of families of migrants in new places and their involvement in the social and labor life of the region, in fact only a small part of them received more or less tolerable living conditions. The main mass for a long time was deprived of shelter and huddled in shacks, hastily made up of abandoned material, and even in dugouts.

The situation was also catastrophic with the supply of new settlers. Witnesses of those events recalled that they were constantly starving, deprived of any organized supply. Often it happened that people brought to extreme exhaustion used to eat roots, cake, nettles, frozen potatoes, alfalfa and even the skin of worn out shoes. As a result, only according to official data released during the perestroika years, the death rate among internally displaced persons reached 23.6% in the initial period.

The incredible suffering associated with the deportation of the Karachai people was partly facilitated only by the kind participation and help from the neighbors of Russians, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and representatives of other nationalities who retained their inherent humanity, despite all military trials. Especially active was the process of rapprochement of the settlers with the Kazakhs, in memory of which the horrors of the famine that they had experienced in the early 1930s were still fresh.

Repression against other peoples of the USSR

Karachais became not the only victims of Stalin's tyranny. No less tragic was the fate of other indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus, and with them ethnic groups living in other parts of the country. According to the majority of the researchers, representatives of 10 nationalities were subjected to forcible deportation, including Crimean Tatars, Ingush, Kalmyks, Ingermanland Finns, Koreans, Meskhetian Turks, Balkars, Chechens and Volga Germans , in addition to the Karachais .

All the deported peoples without exception moved to areas that were far from their historical places of residence and fell into an unusual and sometimes life-threatening situation. A common feature of the deportations that took place, allowing them to be considered part of the mass repressions of the Stalin period, is their extrajudicial nature and contingency, expressed in the displacement of huge masses belonging to one or another ethnic group. In passing, we note that the deportation of a number of social and ethnoconfessional groups of the population, such as Cossacks, kulaks, etc., also entered the history of the USSR.

The executioners of their own people

Issues related to the deportation of various peoples were considered at the level of the highest party and state leadership of the country. Despite the fact that they were initiated by the bodies of the OGPU, and later by the NKVD, their decision was beyond the competence of the court. There is an opinion that during the war years, and also in the subsequent period, the head of the commissariat of internal affairs LP Beria played a key role in the implementation of forced relocations of entire ethnic groups. It was he who gave Stalin reports, containing materials related to subsequent repression.

According to reports, at the time of Stalin's death, which followed in 1953, there were almost 3 million deported persons of all nationalities in special settlements in the country. Under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, 51 departments were established, which monitored the settlers with the help of 2,916 commandant offices operating in their places of residence. Suppression of possible escapes and searches of fugitives was carried out by 31 operatively-search division.

Long way home

The return of the Karachai people to their homeland, as well as its deportation, took place in several stages. The first sign of the impending changes was the decree issued a year after Stalin's death by the decree of the Minister of the Interior of the USSR on the removal from the commandant's offices of special settlements of children born in deported families after 1937. That is, from this moment the curfew regime did not apply to those whose age did not exceed 16 years.

In addition, on the basis of the same order, boys and girls older than that age were given the right to travel to any city in the country for admission to educational institutions. If they were enrolled, they were also removed from the records of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The next step on the way to the return to the homeland of many illegally deported peoples was made by the government of the USSR in 1956. The impetus for him was NS Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, in which he criticized the cult of Stalin's personality and the policy of mass repression carried out during his reign.

According to the decree of July 16, restrictions on special settlements were removed from Ingushes, Chechens and Karachais, evicted during the war, and all members of their families. Representatives of the other repressed peoples did not fall under this decree and were given the opportunity to return to places of former residence only after a while. Later, all repressive measures were abolished against the ethnic Germans of the Volga region. Only in 1964, by a governmental decree, absolutely unfounded accusations of complicity with the fascists were lifted from them and all restrictions on freedom were abolished.

Debunked "heroes"

In the same period, there appeared another, very characteristic document for that era. It was a government decree to end the decree of March 8, 1944, signed by MI Kalinin, in which "all-Union elder" represented 714 chekists and army officers who distinguished themselves in performance of "special assignments" for awarding high government awards.

Under this vague formulation was meant their participation in the deportation of defenseless women and old people. The lists of "heroes" were personally made by Beria. In view of the sharp change in the party's course caused by the revelations made from the rostrum of the Twentieth Party Congress, all of them were deprived of their previous awards. The initiator of this action was, in his own words, member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee A. I. Mikoyan.

Day of revival of the Karachai people

From the documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, declassified in the years of perestroika, it is clear that by the time this resolution was issued, the number of special settlers was significantly reduced as a result of the removal of students, as well as a certain group of disabled people, from the children who had not reached the age of 16 during the previous two years. Thus, in July 1956, the freedom was granted to 30100 people.

Despite the fact that the decree on the release of Karachais was issued in July 1956, the final return was preceded by a long period of various kinds of procrastination. Only on May 3 of the following year the first echelon with them arrived at home. It is this date that is considered the Day of Revival of the Karachai people. During the following months, all the other repressed persons returned from special settlements. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, their number was 81,405 people.

At the beginning of 1957, the government issued a decree on restoring the national autonomy of the Karachais, but not as an independent subject of the federation, as it was before deportation, but by joining the territory they occupied with the Circassian Autonomous Region and thus creating the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Region. In the same territorial and administrative structure were additionally included Klukhorsky, Ust-Dzhkgutinsky and Zelenchuksky districts, as well as a significant part of the Psebai district and the suburban zone of Kislovodsk.

On the road to full rehabilitation

The researchers note that this and all subsequent decrees that abolished the special regime of the repressed peoples contained a common feature ─ they did not even contain a distant hint of criticism of the policy of mass deportations. In all documents, without exception, it was said that the resettlement of entire nations was caused by "wartime circumstances", and at the moment the need for people to stay in special settlements has disappeared.

The question of the rehabilitation of the Karachai people, like all other victims of mass deportations, was not even raised. All of them continued to be considered criminals, pardoned by the humanity of the Soviet government.

Thus, the struggle for the complete rehabilitation of all peoples who were victims of Stalin's tyranny was still ahead. The period of the so-called Khrushchev thaw, when many materials testifying to the lawlessness perpetrated by Stalin and his entourage were made public by the public, and the party leadership took a course to silence the previous sins. In this situation, it was impossible to seek justice. The situation changed only with the beginning of perestroika, than the representatives of the peoples repressed before did not hesitate to use.

Restoration of justice

At their request, in the late 1980s, under the CPSU Central Committee, a commission was set up to draft the Declaration on the Full Rehabilitation of All Peoples of the Soviet Union, subjected during the years of Stalinism to forcible deportation. In 1989, this document was considered and adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In it, the deportation of the Karachai people, as well as representatives of other ethnic groups, was sharply condemned and characterized as an illegal and criminal act.

Two years later, a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued that abolished all previously adopted governmental decisions on the basis of which numerous peoples inhabiting our country were subjected to repression and declared their forced relocation by an act of genocide. The same document prescribed to consider any attempt at agitation aimed at the rehabilitation of repressed peoples, as unlawful acts and to bring those responsible to justice.

In 1997, a special decree of the head of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic established a holiday on May 3 - the Day of Revival of the Karachai people. This is a kind of tribute to the memory of all those who for 14 years were forced to endure all the burdens of exile, and those who did not live to the day of liberation and return to their native lands. By tradition, it is marked by various mass events, such as theatrical performances, concerts, equestrian sports competitions and auto rallies.