Saturday, August 27, 2011

More on the 70th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Russian-Germans

Sunday marks the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Volga and other Russian-Germans from their ancestral territories in European areas of the USSR and the Caucasus to Siberia and Kazakhstan. According to one NKVD statistical compilation between September third and Christmas 1941, the Stalin regime ruthlessly uprooted 856,168 Russian-Germans from their homelands in the western USSR. Other Soviet documents give slightly different figures. On 25 December 1941, the NKVD issued a report on the number of Russian-Germans they had sent on trains headed for Siberia and Kazakhstan. This report provided a breakdown of the number of deportees by region of origin. Not all of these victims of ethnic cleansing made it alive to the eastern areas of the USSR. Many died en route.

Volga Region

Former Volga German ASSR - 446,480
Saratov Oblast -46,706
Stalingrad Oblast -26,245

Other Regions of Russia

Moscow - 3,524
Moscow Oblast - 4,925
Tula Oblast - 3,058
Kabardino-Balkar ASSR - 5,803
North Ossetia ASSR - 2,415
Rostov Oblast - 38,288
Ordzhonikidze Krai - 98,903
Krasnodar Krai - 37,300
Kubyshev Oblast - 8,787
Daghestan ASSR - 3,592
Chechen-Ingush ASSR - 420
Voronezh Oblast - 5,125
Gorky Oblast - 2,544
Kalmyk ASSR - 5,525
Simferopol' Crimean ASSR - 1,900 (Most of the Crimean German population was first forcibly evacuated to Ordzhnokidze Krai about 60,000 and Rostov Oblast about 3,000 starting on 15 August 1941. They are included in the figures for those two territories).

Ukraine

Zaporozhia Oblast - 32,032
Voroshilov Oblast- 9,858
Stalin Oblast - 35,477
City of Dnepropetrovsk - 3,250

Other Republics of the USSR

Armenia - 212
Georgia - 20,423
Azerbaijan - 22,841

Total

856,168

Source: O.L. Milova, Deportatsiia narodov SSSR (1930-e -1950-e gody. Chast' 2. Deportatsiia nemtsev (Moscow: RAN, 1995, pp. 47-56).

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