Many Soviet Citizens Resettled During World War II ‘Not Just the Deported,’ Historians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 2 – The Russian authorities have come up with a new way to minimize the crime of deporting entire nations during World War II for supposedly collaborating with the Germans. Not only are they equating that with the US detention of Japanese Americans, but they are insisting that during the war, all Soviet citizens were resettled and “not just ‘the deported.’”

            In an article entitled “Resettlement During the War Affected Everyone and Not Just ‘the Deported,’” Nakanune news agency journalist Elena Temnova describes how millions of Soviet citizens were shifted to cities in the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia in order to save the country’s industrial production and ability to carry on the war (nakanune.ru/articles/115972/).

                That policy has been described many times, but what is new is this: she uses it to minimize the deportation of non-Russian groups from the Caucasus by arguing that things were hard for everyone in those years and that “enormous masses of people were forced to leave their native places for one or another reason.”

            Most were honest Soviet citizens who were moved so that they would not fall victim to the Nazi invasion or ethnic Germans whom Moscow moved out of the not unreasonable concern that they might help the invader, an action Temnova suggests that paralleled what the US did with Japanese Americans along the West coast.

            Those who today engage in “speculative” discussions about the deportation of peoples, the journalist continues, “forget this” and then she pointedly asks why do people still focus on this issue “if it was ‘international practice’ and used even by ‘the most advanced and democratic countries?’”

            She quotes historian Igor Pykhalov, the author of a study of World War II, on this point. He falsely says that most deportations were selective as in the western portions of the USSR where only the families of those who had taken arms against Soviet power were sent eastward. And he asserts that the deported nations were treated remarkably well.

            Many today are so willing to accept as criminal any action Stalin took that they forget to ask what the evidence shows, Pykhalov says; and that is why there are still those who talk about the deported nations as “punished peoples.”  In fact, many of these deported received better treatment than other Soviet citizens who were moved about.

            Another Russian historian, Vyacheslav Tetekin, concurs. In support of his claim, he cites the example of Chechen Ruslan Khasbulatov who “turned up with his family in Kazakhstan after the deportation of the Chechens, received an education,” and was then able to make a remarkable career.

            His family had housing, even though many Russians moved eastward didn’t. His “parents had work and the means for existence and the children received a first-class education exactly as did children throughout the country.” That is why Khasbulatov “while being one of ‘the victims’ of this massive resettlement,” was prepared so well.

            And Aleksey Gagarin, an archivist in Sverdlovsk, says that these “forced measures found understanding among the people” because those who were pulled back from near the front for whatever reason found it far easier to live than would have been the case had Moscow not organized their “’deportation.’”

            This suggestion that there was a certain equivalence between the shifting of millions of Soviets eastward and the forced deportation of the peoples of the Caucasus and that the Stalinist regime did its best to treat each of them well is a dangerous new development in Russian propaganda, one fully consistent with Vladimir Putin’s continuing whitewashing of Stalin.