Early in the morning of May 18, 1944, the Soviet internal affairs forces gathered Crimean Tatars in an organized manner and forced 180,041 Tatars to be loaded onto trains for Central Asia in just three days. It was goodbye to Crimea, where they had lived for 700 years. Why did the Soviet Union exile the entire Tatar population?

The eight feuds

The crisis that triggered this forced move was rooted in ethnic tensions between the Tatars and the Russians.In the early 13th century, the Mongol Turkic tribes living in northern China crisscrossed the Eurasian continent. Europeans feared them and called them "Tatar" or "Tartar", meaning "Mongol-speaking tribes".

Above_?　Crimea in the mid-15th century, with the fledgling Crimean Khanate in the north and the Italian Genoese colony and Principality of Sidoro in the south

In 1237, the Tatars, who had belonged to the Mongol Khanate of Chincha, gradually settled in Crimea, and in 1430 the Tatars not only converted to Islam, but also broke away from the Khanate of Chincha and founded the Crimean Khanate. In 1478, the resource-poor Tatars became involved with the Ottomans. Their ancestors also came from the Mongolian plateau, and they shared a strong **** of culture, religion, customs and language.

The Ottomans' strong support, the Crimean Khanate turned into a "bad neighbor" in Eastern Europe, all around the invasion, encroachment on the land, looting of property, plundering the population, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and other countries suffer greatly. 1572, the Crimean Khanate siege of Moscow, "captured nearly 150,000 people, the remains of which were stuffed with Moscow's corpse," said the Ottomans. 150,000 people, and the corpses filled the Moskva River."

According to Catholic missionary Karl Gyubai, "Every year 20,000 slaves were transshipped from the Crimean Peninsula, and for more than 200 years, from the 14th century, when the Crimean Tatars were first established, until the end of the 16th century, the Crimean Tatars **** trafficked in as many as three million slaves." The two peoples' struggle for living space forged a bond.

Above_? Crimean Tatars

Religious strife

The Tatars' discord with the Russians also had a religious element interfering. In 988 AD, Archduke Vladimir of the Duchy of Kiev married Princess Anna of the Byzantine dynasty, marking an alliance between the two countries. In order to consolidate their relationship, Archduke Vladimir abandoned his original polytheistic religion and adopted Orthodox Christianity as the state religion in Kseniso, a suburb of Sevastopol, accepting the teachings of the religion as the state religion and ordering the Rus' to be baptized.

After the 13th century, the Rus' tribes split into three branches, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, as a result of feudal secession. Orthodox Christianity became the spiritual link that united the three. The Tatars living in Crimea were y committed to Islam and regarded each other as "infidels". The religious rivalry between the two sides is a firestorm.

After the end of the Crimean War, hundreds of thousands of Tatars left their homes, and in 1897, when the census was taken, there were only 188,000 Tatars in the region, accounting for one-third of the total, while Russians and Ukrainians accounted for 45 percent. Forty percent of the Tatars who held on to their homeland were landless before the October Revolution. The religious rivalry has invariably torn the local community apart, setting the stage for future strong moves.

Above_? The Crimean War, also known as the War of the East in Russia, was a war that broke out in Europe between 1853 and 1856

War Stirring

The state of "fight or flight" in Tsarist Russia lasted until the second half of the 17th century. The Duchy of Moscow, under the rule of Ivan the Terrible, was expanding rapidly, while the Ottomans were politically corrupt and declining. The powerful Tsars began to say "no" to the Ottomans and fought bloody battles, and in 1783 Ekaterina II declared that the Crimea was her "dowry to Russia". Despite the conquest of their lands, the Tatars did not give up.

The Tatars were always on the opposite side of the Russians during the 12 centuries of Russian-Turkish wars and Soviet infighting. After the October Revolution, Lenin tried to ease ethnic tensions by creating the Tatar-dominated Crimean Autonomous **** and State. At that time Tatar and Russian were included as official languages, and Tatar culture, education and arts were supported and protected.

The good times didn't last long, as the 1927 campaign against "bourgeois nationalism" led to the exile of more than 30,000 members of the intellectual elite, and the execution or exile of most of the Islamic imams. The government forcibly closed 106 mosques and madrasas, made Russian a compulsory subject in Tatar schools, and completely "Russified" place names. The radical nationalist policy inadvertently increased the Tatars' hatred of Russia.

Above_? Map of the Soviet Union

World War II, the Soviet Union issued a national mobilization order, nearly 25,000 young Tatars were enlisted in the Red Army, and more than a dozen were honored as Heroes of the Soviet Union during the war. But when the Nazi 11th Army attacked Crimea, these Tatars deserted in droves. A village called Ko?osz, where 130 Tatars joined the Red Army, saw 122 of them desert.

According to the report of the Crimean State Committee of the UN*** (B) that year, "According to information provided by the partisans, at the time of the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula by the German army, in the Tatar villages of the Sudak district, the majority of the villagers took part in welcoming the Germans. The villagers served the Germans with delicious food such as grapes, fruits and sweet wine."

Above_? Erich von Manstein, a high-ranking Nazi German commander of Polish descent during World War II

The Tatar rebellion was also confirmed by the Germans. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commander of the Nazi 11th Army, recalled, "Most of the Tatar population was friendly to us, and the Tatars were instantly on our side. They saw hope in us, we became their liberators from the Bolshevik yoke, and a consolation party of Tatars came to see me, bringing lots of fruit and a handmade fabric, which they wished to dedicate to 'Mr. Adolf', the savior of the Tatars."

A Nazi war criminal named Otto Orlandov confessed at the Nuremberg trial that he had masterminded a "self-defense force" of Tatar men, many of whom volunteered, even in whole villages, to take part in operations against Soviet partisans in Crimea. In a letter, Nikolai Lugovoy, a former political commissar of the Crimean Partisan Joint Command, bemoaned the fact that "on the Crimean Peninsula, the partisan units have unexpectedly met with unprecedented hostility from the Tatars." After World War II, the rift between the Tatars and the Russians deepened, and provided an excuse to suffer liquidation and retribution from the victors after the war.

Above_? Crimean Tatars who joined the German army

Forced order from on high

The sudden forced removal of the Tatars was the result of the implementation of the highest resolution of the Soviet Ministry of the Interior.On May 7, 1944, the sixth day of the total evacuation of the Germans from the Crimea, the Soviet Special Forces carried out a surprise inspection of the hiding Tatars and seized 5,395 rifles, 250 automatic rifles, 337 machine guns, 31 mortars and large quantities of ordnance and ammunition. doors, as well as a large amount of ordnance and ammunition.

The Soviet hierarchy believed that the Tatars living in the Crimea during the Patriotic War had "collectively betrayed" the Soviet Union and "helped the occupying forces of Nazi Germany," and that the nation must be punished as a whole. Resolution 5859, which required the Ministry of Internal Affairs to remove "all Tatars from the territory of the Crimea by a deadline and to settle them permanently as special settlers in the area of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist **** and State."

Above_? Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (December 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953)

A week later, the government committed 23,000 troops, 100 jeeps, 250 trucks, and 67 train echelons to implement the resolution. Afterward, the exiled Tatars revealed that they had only 15 minutes to pack their bags. The Tatars paid the price for their "help".

The Tatars died of starvation because the train lacked food supplies during the forced move. Tatars who moved into Central Asia were not so lucky. Local special settlements underestimated the number of people moving in, resulting in a serious lack of basic security facilities such as transportation, medical care, food and shelter, and the rampant spread of dysentery, typhoid, malaria, scabies and other diseases, the Tatars suffered severe attrition. By 1948, the mortality rate among Tatars who had moved to Uzbekistan was as high as 29.6 percent. The misfortunes of the Tatars were just a microcosm of the many ethnic problems in the Soviet Union that left a security risk at the end of the Cold War.

Written by Counting White as Black? Proofread/edited by Lilith?

References:

1 Chen Guansheng? The Ethnic Exile of the Crimean Tatars

2 Peng? Hua? Crimea - The Lost Paradise of the Tatars

3 Zhu? Fai? Deported Tatars in the Soviet Union

4Qu? Mr. Xie Qiqi? Xie Qiqi? The Exile and Return of the Crimean Tatars in the 20th Century

The text was created by the History University Hall team, and the accompanying images are copyrighted by the original authors.