Kalmyk Activist Charged with Rehabilitating Nazism Because He Wrote a Year Ago that Soviet Soldiers Acted “like Nazis” when They Deported His Nation in 1943

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 15 – Of all the punished peoples Stalin deported in whole or in part, the Kalmyks have received perhaps the least attention. That is unfortunate because their 1942 deportation was even more cruel than those of others as the Soviet dictator pulled troops fighting Nazi invaders and had them behave like Nazis in deporting the Kalmyks.

            On that history and how it has left the Kalmyks among the most anti-Russian of all the non-Russian peoples inMoscow’s empire, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/02/stalin-treated-kalmyks-much-worse-than.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/stalin-pulled-soviet-soldiers-from.html).

            Equally tragically, Moscow’s harsh approach to those among the Kalmyks it views as its opponents continues. The Russian-appointed prosecutor in that Buddhist North Caucasus republic has brought charges of “rehabilitating Nazism” against Boris Todayev, 66, a rights activist there (svoboda.org/a/natsisty-v-litse-sovetskih-soldat-pravozaschitnika-iz-kalmykii-presleduyut-za-statjyu-o-deportatsii/33853820.html).

            The basis of this charge like the charges against the Kalmyks in 1943 is absurd on its face. Todayev, one  of the organizers of the republic’s peoples front in Gorbachev’s time, is accused to “rehabilitating Nazism” because he quoted a Kalmyk woman in an article a year ago saying that Soviet soldiers had behaved “like Nazis” in deporting the Kalmyks.

             That article appeared in the Kalmyk opposition newspaper Narn and is available at pub-831ee2724cbf4b9a9fc6ab77c5d64003.r2.dev/narn-news/releases/Narn_9.pdf. Todayev is currently under house arrest, but because he has been behind bars in the past, Memorial has included him in its list of political prisoners.

            Other activists speaking in support of him suggest that what the Russian authorities are doing now not only provides support for those who draw parallels between the Nazi regime and the Stalinist state but gives new impetus to those who want to pursue independence from the Putinist state now. 

            Putin signed a law in July 2021 banning the drawing of any public parallel between the role of the USSR and that of Nazi Germany in World War II. Thus from Moscow’s perspective what it is doing in the Tokayev case is completely legal. But it is far from morally justified and like so many other Putin actions is proving ever more counterproductive.