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Concept
Deportation of the Kalmyks
Summary
The Kalmyk deportations of 1943, codename Operation Ulusy (Операция «Улусы») was the Soviet deportation of more than 93,000 people of Kalmyk nationality, and non-Kalmyk women with Kalmyk husbands, on 28–31 December 1943. Families and individuals were forcibly relocated in cattle wagons to special settlements for forced labor in Siberia. Kalmyk women married to non-Kalmyk men were exempted from the deportations. The government's official reason for the deportation was an accusation of Axis collaboration during World War II based on the approximately 5,000 Kalmyks who fought in the Nazi-affiliated Kalmykian Cavalry Corps. The government refused to acknowledge that more than 23,000 Kalmyks served in the Red Army and fought against Axis forces at the same time.
NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria and his deputy commissar Ivan Serov implemented the forced relocation on direct orders from Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Up to 10,000 servicemen from the NKVD-NKGB troops participated in the deportation. It was part of the Soviet forced settlement program and population transfers that affected several million Soviet citizens from ethnic minority groups between the 1930s and the 1950s. The specific targeting of Kalmyks was based on a number of factors, including the group's alleged anti-communist sentiment and Buddhist culture.
The deportation contributed to more than 16,000 deaths, resulting in a 17% mortality rate for the deported population. The Kalmyks were rehabilitated in 1956 after Nikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet Premier and undertook a process of de-Stalinization. In 1957, the Kalmyks were released from special settlements and allowed to return to their home region, which was formalized as the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. By 1959, more than 60% of the remaining Kalmyks had returned home. The loss of life and socioeconomic upheaval of the deportations, however, had a profound impact on the Kalmyks that is still felt today. On 14 November 1989 the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union declared all of Stalin's deportations "illegal and criminal".
Official source
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