"They were especially distinguished by brutal reprisals, they helped the invaders in the mass extermination of Soviet people."
Ukrainian radicals, backed by the Kiev authorities, claim that Russia is not only responsible for the "Stalinist genocide" of the Crimean Tatars, but has not yet given them all the "debts." The idea of repentance has been imposed on our compatriots for over a quarter of a century. The facts do not confirm the innocence of the deported people.
The testimony of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, who commanded the Wehrmacht troops on the peninsula in 1941, is known: “The majority of the Tatar population of Crimea was very friendly towards us. We even managed to form armed self-defense companies from the Tatars, whose task was to protect communications and their villages from attacks by partisans hiding in the Yayla mountains. The reason that a powerful partisan movement developed in Crimea from the very beginning, which caused us a lot of trouble, was that among the population of Crimea, besides the Tatars and other small ethnic groups, there were still many Russians … The Tatars immediately sided with us. They saw in us their liberators from the Bolshevik yoke, especially since we respected their religious customs. For example, an imposing Crimean Tatar deputation came to me, bringing an abundance of fruit and beautiful handmade fabrics for the liberator of the Tatars, Adolf Effendi. Generals Halder, Guderian, Rundstedt, or, for example, von Papen, the then German ambassador to Turkey, regularly reported about the close cooperation of the Crimean Tatar nationalists with the invaders in their reports to Berlin. The diplomatic missions of the latter in Moscow, Sofia and Berlin reported the same to Ankara.
"As soon as the front approached Perekop, a massive, as if on command, desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the Red Army began."
In 1940, the share of Russians in the permanent population of Crimea reached almost 50 percent, Ukrainians - about 14 percent, Crimean Tatars - 20 percent. Since August 1941, leaflets have been rained down on the Crimea from German aircraft promising to "finally resolve the issue of the independence of the Crimean Tatar nation." This was planned in the form of a protectorate of the Third Reich or a condominium (joint management) of Germany and Turkey. And as soon as the front approached Perekop (by the end of September 1941), a massive, as if on command, desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the Red Army began.
In December 1941, the German command began organizing the so-called Tatar or Muslim committees in the Crimea (they were also created in the North Caucasus. - AB). A month earlier, under the leadership of the Germans, armed Crimean Tatar self-defense units began to be created. Separate formations were sent to the Kerch Front and partly to the Sevastopol sector, where they participated in battles against the Red Army. "From the very first days of their arrival, the Germans, relying on the Tatar-nationalists, without robbing their property openly, as they did with the Russian population, tried to ensure a good attitude towards themselves," the head of the 5th partisan district wrote in a report to Moscow Crimea Vladimir Krasnikov. The Tatars were volunteered to be the guides of the punitive detachments. But most of all they were "famous" for the atrocities against the civilian population. Fleeing from reprisals, Russian-speaking residents and small indigenous peoples (Krymchaks, Karaites, Greeks) were forced to turn to the German authorities for help - and sometimes even found protection from them. From among the Crimean Tatars who surrendered, a special agent was prepared, which was thrown into the rear of the USSR for sabotage, anti-Soviet and nationalist agitation.
The memorandum of the deputy commissars of state security and internal affairs of the USSR B. Kobulov and I. Serov addressed to Stalin and Beria, dated April 22, 1944, says: “All 20 thousand Crimean Tatars deserted in 1941 from the 51st Army during its retreat from Crimea … Most of them began to serve the invaders, identifying partisans, Soviet intelligence officers, mocking the civilian population. The evidence that the desertion of the Crimean Tatars from the Red Army was almost universal is confirmed by numerous documents.
On March 10, 1942, at a general meeting in Alushta of the “Tatar Committee” of Crimea, “gratitude was expressed to the Great Fuhrer … for the free life he had given the Muslim people. Then they arranged a service for the preservation of life and health for many years to Adolf Hitler Effendi."
After the crushing defeat of the 6th German army of Paulus at Stalingrad, on the initiative of the Feodosia Muslim Committee, a meeting of the Crimean Tatars was organized, at which they decided to help the Wehrmacht to the bitter end and raised a million rubles to help him. At the end of 1942, the committee announced the slogan "Crimea is only for the Tatars" and in its statements noted that the future fate of the peninsula is annexation to Turkey. A significant event was the two visits to Feodosia of the Turkish emissary Amil Pasha, who actively called on the Crimean Muslims to support the German fascist army in every possible way.
In April 1944, the last battles for the liberation of the peninsula began. According to the documents, the Crimean Tatar punitive battalions resisted the Soviet army and local partisans to the last. So, in the area of the Islam-Terek station, three Crimean Tatar battalions fought against units of the 11th Guards Corps, losing only 800 prisoners. The 149th battalion stubbornly defended Bakhchisarai. The remnants of these units left the peninsula together with their masters and continued the struggle against the USSR. According to German data, in January 1945, more than 10 thousand Crimean Tatars fought in the German armed forces, mainly in the SS. When the Red Army was already approaching Berlin, every fifth adult Crimean Tatar shot at it. As I. B. Tito testified, Crimean Tatar detachments fought on the side of the Croatian Ustasha, Mikhailovich Chetniks (in Serbian Krajina) and in Bosnia until mid-May, a few units of which managed to break through to northern Italy and the neighboring region of Austria, where they surrendered. to the British.
We will cite only some evidence of the crimes of the Crimean Tatar accomplices to the aggressors on their native land.
“The chairman of the district Muslim committee, Umerov Vekir, was arrested in the city of Sudak. In January 1942, during the landing of our troops near the city of Feodosia, Umerov's detachment detained 12 Red Army paratroopers and burned them alive."
“In the city of Bakhchisarai, the traitor Abibulaev Jafar, who voluntarily joined the punitive battalion created by the Germans in 1942, was arrested. For his active struggle against Soviet patriots, Abibulaev was appointed commander of a punitive platoon and executed civilians suspected of being in connection with the partisans."
“A group of local Tatars was arrested in the Dzhankoy region, who, on the instructions of the German authorities in March 1942, poisoned 200 gypsies and Karaites in a gas chamber”.
On May 11, 1944, the USSR GKO decree No. 5859-ss followed: “During the Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars betrayed their Motherland, deserted from the Red Army units defending the Crimea, and went over to the side of the enemy, joined the volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans,who fought against the Red Army. During the occupation of Crimea by fascist German troops, participating in German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars were especially distinguished by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German occupiers in organizing the forcible hijacking of Soviet citizens into German slavery and the mass extermination of Soviet people.
Crimean Tatars actively cooperated with the German occupation authorities, participating in the so-called Tatar national committees organized by the German intelligence, and were widely used by the Germans for the purpose of throwing spies and saboteurs into the rear of the Red Army. The "Tatar National Committees", in which the White Guard-Tatar emigrants played the main role, with the support of the Crimean Tatars directed their activities towards the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and worked to prepare the forcible separation of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of the German armed forces.
Considering the above, the State Defense Committee decides:
1. All Tatars to be evicted from the territory of the Crimea and to settle them for permanent residence as special settlers in the regions of the Uzbek SSR. The eviction shall be entrusted to the NKVD of the USSR. To oblige the NKVD of the USSR (Comrade Beria) to complete the eviction of the Crimean Tatars by June 1, 1944.
2. Establish the following procedure and conditions for eviction:
a) allow the special settlers to take with them personal belongings, clothing, household equipment, dishes and food in an amount of up to 500 kilograms per family.
Remaining property, buildings, outbuildings, furniture and household land are taken over by local authorities; All productive and dairy cattle, as well as poultry, are accepted by the People's Commissariat for Meat Industry, all agricultural products - by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the USSR, horses and other working cattle - by the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR, pedigree cattle - by the People's Commissariat of State Administration of the USSR.
Acceptance of livestock, grain, vegetables and other types of agricultural products shall be carried out with an extract of exchange receipts for each settlement and each farm."
It should be noted that deportation was also viewed as a measure to prevent interethnic conflicts, to protect the displaced from inevitable and, in the opinion of most people, just revenge.
According to the State Defense Committee, 191,044 persons of Tatar nationality were removed from the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. At the same time, 1137 anti-Soviet elements were arrested, and in total, 5989 people were arrested during the operation. Of the 151,720 Crimean Tatars exported to the Uzbek SSR in May 1944, 191 people died on the way. Some were relocated to the adjacent regions of Kazakhstan (4286 people) and Tajikistan. Separate groups went to the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (8597 people), to the Urals, to the Kostroma region. Six thousand Crimean Tatars of military age were mobilized into the Red Army.
According to the decision of the State Defense Committee, those who showed themselves in the fight against the invaders remained in Crimea. There were 1,500 of them.
Soon the Crimean ASSR was transformed into a region. In 1948, the replacement of Crimean Tatar toponyms by Russians began in the region. The area, according to available data, was planned to be renamed into Tauride. But soon after the death of Stalin, this campaign ended.
On September 5, 1967, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (No. 493) "On Citizens of Tatar Nationality Living in Crimea" was adopted, which in fact allowed those resettled to the Urals and Central Asia to return to the peninsula not in large numbers, but "surreptitiously". A secret KGB note to the Central Committee of the CPSU dated October 4, 1967 said: “… It should be noted that a significant part of the Tatar population expresses a desire to return to Crimea. At present, no mass resettlement is foreseen, but it is possible that starting from the spring of 1968 large groups of Tatars may begin to leave there. Party and Soviet bodies of the Crimean region need to keep this in mind and take into account in their daily work. "It also stated: "A group of people from among the so-called autonomists, which is putting forward a demand for an organized resettlement to Crimea and the creation of autonomy, has taken a particularly negative position in relation to the decree." They "have recently changed their tactics, considering it necessary to first move to Crimea, settle in compactly, and then raise the question of the formation of autonomy …"
The actions of the leadership of the USSR in 1944-1945 against the overwhelming majority of the Crimean Tatars were justified. The Soviet government was not going to officially reconsider the decision on deportation even during the period of voluntarism. Only by the end of the 1980s, "innovations" on this issue appeared in Moscow. Which, as subsequent events showed and current events in the region show, could not but contribute to the growth of Crimean Tatar nationalism.
