Deportation of Crimean Tatars turns into a propaganda tool again
On May 18, 1944, in pursuance of the resolution of the State Defense Committee No. 5859ss "On the Crimean Tatars", the forced resettlement of the Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek, as well as the Kazakh and Tajik SSR began. The operation went swiftly - initially it was planned to carry out it in 12-13 days, but already on May 20, Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Serov and Deputy People's Commissar of State Security of the USSR Kobulov reported in a telegram addressed to People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Beria: “The operation to evict the Crimean Tatars is over today, May 20, at 16 o'clock. Only 180,014 people were evicted, loaded into 67 echelons, of which 63 echelons with 173,287 people. sent to their destinations, the remaining 4 echelons will also be sent today."
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars, who were given the opportunity to return to Crimea only after half a century, still remains a convenient ground for a variety of speculations. This time the effect was further strengthened by the Eurovision media resource, which was won by the representative of Ukraine with the song “1944”. Its text was more than politicized, although the leadership of the competition, where political declarations were, as it were, prohibited by the regulations, considered it neutral.
Je suis Crimean Tatar
The most vigilant of the calendar was the "friends" of Russia. The Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the morning of May 18, which pathetically declared that the "occupation and illegal annexation" of Crimea by Russia "opened the wounds of deportation." Ankara's representatives threatened that Turkey "will not allow to forget the pain of the shameful policy aimed at the destruction of an entire people" and will continue to support the Crimean Tatars in "their peaceful and just struggle."
“On the anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which became a“black page”in the history of mankind, we condemn the fact of ethnic cleansing,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry summed up.
It is very curious that Turkey suddenly decided to condemn the fact of ethnic cleansing, which stubbornly resists the recognition and even mention of the Armenian genocide carried out on its territory since 1915 - the second most studied act of genocide in history after the Holocaust. There are good reasons for this - the Armenian genocide had much in common with the extermination of Jews in the Reich, up to medical experiments on the Armenians, who were called "harmful microbes" in official documents. The main propagandist of this policy was Dr. Mehmet Reshid, the governor of Diyarbekir, who was the first to order horseshoes to be nailed to the feet of the deportees. The 1978 Turkish Encyclopedia characterizes Resid as "a great patriot."
Turkey spends heavily on denial PR campaigns, including making generous donations to universities. And when the topic of recognition of the genocide by parliaments or governments of different states is actualized, Ankara threatens them with diplomatic and trade sanctions.
In Kiev, the anniversary of the deportation was widely covered, as expected. One cannot fail to note the constant attempts to tie the definition of "genocide" to the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and, through complex semantic manipulations, somehow blame modern Russia for what happened.
President of Ukraine Poroshenko personally took part in the “requiem evening in memory of the victims of the deportation of the Crimean Tatar people”, where, according to tradition, he declared himself a Crimean Tatar as a sign of solidarity.
And he made a heartfelt speech, where he tried his best to incite interethnic strife in the Russian Crimea. "The so-called friendship of peoples in Moscow", according to Poroshenko's text, spilled over into the "Russian occupation temporary power." And "Stalin's grandchildren worthy of their ancestor," as the Ukrainian leader said, "will revive the policy of genocide." Since “capitals, authorities and flags, tsars, general secretaries and presidents have changed in Russia … since the time of Catherine II, Petersburg and Moscow have invariably persecuted the Crimean Tatar people. This is a constant in the policy of Russia of all regimes,”Poroshenko proclaimed.
His speech was accompanied by widespread smaller-scale events, one way or another pedaling the theme of the eternal alliance of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars against the constant enemy - Russia and Russians.
All these activities were supported by a variety of media, including the BBC and Radio Liberty.
During the action dedicated to the next anniversary of the deportation from Crimea of representatives of the Crimean Tatar people. Photo: Alexey Pavlishak / TASS
Causes and Effects
It is safe to say that the topic of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars will regularly come to the surface as long as Russia has Crimea, as long as Russia has enemies and as long as Russia exists in general. This is too convenient an excuse for anti-Russian propaganda not to use it.
At the same time, the facts are such that the deportation of 1944 was, perhaps, the only possible action under those conditions, which certainly had nothing to do with genocide or an attempt at such.
If in the perestroika and post-perestroika periods it was possible to refer to a certain closed nature of the archives and the lack of access to the necessary data, due to which fantasies and conjectures were not restrained by anything, then by now the situation has changed. Information about the course of deportation and, most importantly, the reasons that led to it, is available to any researcher.
The Crimean Tatar during the Great Patriotic War could not be considered a model of a loyal Soviet citizen. With a total population of 200 thousand people (the pre-war Tatar population of Crimea was less than 20% of all inhabitants of the peninsula), according to a certificate from the High Command of the German Ground Forces of March 20, 1942, 20 thousand Crimean Tatars were in the service of the Reich, that is, almost everything suitable for a mobilization call population. Most of these 20,000 deserted from the Red Army.
This circumstance was one of the key theses in Beria's letter to Stalin No. 424/6 dated May 10, 1944, in which it was also stated that the German fascist invaders created an extensive network of "Tatar national committees", whose branches "widely assisted the Germans in organizing and putting together from among deserters and Tatar youth of Tatar military units, punitive and police detachments for actions against units of the Red Army and Soviet partisans. As punishers and policemen, the Tatars were distinguished by special cruelty."
The "Tatar national committees" took an active part, together with the German police, in organizing the deportation of over 50 thousand Soviet citizens to Germany: they collected funds and things from the population for the German army and carried out treacherous work on a large scale against the local non-Tatar population, oppressing it in every possible way. The activities of the "Tatar national committees" were supported by the Tatar population, "to whom the German occupation authorities provided all kinds of benefits and incentives."
Considering all of the above, the Soviet leadership faced a non-trivial task: how to react. The crimes committed literally in front of the rest of the non-Tatar majority of the population of the peninsula simply could not be ignored and put on the brakes. The vast majority of netatars perceived their neighbors as criminals and often blood enemies. The situation could well have turned into a real genocide, and spontaneous.
It was also problematic to act in accordance with the letter of the law - all the solutions to such situations prescribed in the laws again boiled down to actual genocide. According to article 193-22 of the then Criminal Code of the RSFSR, “unauthorized abandonment of the battlefield during a battle, surrender, not caused by a combat situation, or refusal to operate with a weapon during a battle, confiscation of property . If the Soviet government decided to act according to the law, then the majority of the Crimean Tatar adult male population would have to be shot.
As a result, deportation was chosen, which, contrary to myths, was carried out with the maximum possible comfort at that time. Although there was really no talk about the observance of human rights in their modern sense: in the courtyard, let us recall, it was 1944.
It is also noteworthy that during the three-day deportation, 49 mortars, 622 machine guns, 724 machine guns, 9888 rifles and 326,887 ammunition were seized from the "special contingent".
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the events that caused it do not belong to those pages of national history that are called glorious, but the lessons of history must not be forgotten. For this reason, the events in Crimea itself were far from as demonstrative as those of foreign "sufferers". The Government of the Republic of Crimea opened the first stage of the memorial at the Lilac station in the Bakhchisarai region. The head of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, said that "the complex will be crowned by a mosque and an Orthodox church as symbols of the unity not only of two religions, but of all confessions on the peninsula."
