Figure 1.--The Crimean Tatars had an especially horrendous experience. Soviet authorities deported the entire population of Crimean Tatars, including Communist Oarty members (May 18-20, 1944). NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria executing Stalin's orders oversaw the process. Many estimate the population at about 200,000 people, but we have seen numbers exceeding 430,000. An estimated 90 percent were women, children, and the eldely. [Allworth] This was because so many young men were in the fughting services. The Crimean Tatars who survived the German occupation of the peninsula in just in 3 days to remote rural locations in Central Asia (primarily Uzbecistan) and Siberia. .

The Crimean Tatars had an especially horrendous experience. Soviet authorities deported the entire population of Crimean Tatars, including Communist Oarty members (May 18-20, 1944). NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria executing Stalin's orders oversaw the process. Many estimate the population at about 200,000 people, but we have seen numbers exceeding 430,000. An estimated 90 percent were women, children, and the eldely. [Allworth] This was because so many young men were in the fughting services. The Crimean Tatars who survived the German occupation of the peninsula in just in 3 days to remote rural locations in Central Asia (primarily Uzbecistan) and Siberia. They were transported in cattle cars. They were one of the ten ethnicities who were encompassed by Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union. No provisions were preoared for their arrival. Some 100,000 of the deportees are believed to have perished mostly starving after arrival. A year later, after the end of the War as imprtantblments of the Red Army was demobilizing, Crimean Tatar soldiers who had fought the Germans were also sent into exile too. Stalin decided on the deportation as collective punishment for the perceived collaboration of some Crimean Tatars with the invading Germans. Soviet media identified the Tatars as traitors. Tatar nationalists deny this and charge that the deportation waspart of a larger Soviet plan to gain access to the Dardanelles and acquire Turkish territory. Tatars ethnic kinship as seen as a security threat.

Created: 7:24 AM 10/16/2019
Last updated: 7:24 AM 10/16/2019