The Deportation and Fate of the Crimean Tatars (J. Otto Pohl, 2000)

Fighting against the Nazis were an equally large number of Crimean Tatars in the Red Army.

In total, close to 20,000 Crimean Tatars served in German organized self-defense battalions during WWII.

The German military authorities in the Crimea began creating self defense battalions from Crimean Tatar POWs in January 1942.

Eight of these soldiers even won the Hero of the Soviet Union award.

Despite the fact that Crimean Tatars were the second largest nationality in the partisans after Russians

Most of the Crimean Tatar population remaining in the Crimea in May 1944 were women and children.

the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet officially rescinded the charges of treason against the Crimean Tatars on 5 September 1967

Despite an official recognition of the falsehood of this charge by the Soviet government in 1967, it is still repeated by some Russian chauvinists today.

The Crimean Tatars actively petitioned and lobbied Moscow for rehabilitation from 1957 on.

On 21 April 1968, Crimean Tatars in Chirchik, Uzbekistan staged a major demonstration to celebrate Lenin's birthday and demand repatriation to the Crimea.

In a little over four years nearly 250,000 or almost half of all Crimean Tatars in the former Soviet Union managed to returnto the Crimea.

According the NKVD archives between May 1944 and 1 January 1945, 13,592 Crimean Tatars died in Uzbkistan.

This figure represents 9.1% of the Crimean Tatars exiled to Uzbekistan

In a year and a half, 17.8% of the Crimean Tatars exiled to Uzbekistan perished.

A report from Col. V. Shiain on the work of the MVD Section on Special Settlers dated April 1953 provides some important figures on special settler mortality.

between arriving in the special settlements and 1 July 1948, the recorded number of Crimean Tatar, Greek, Armenian and Bulgarian deaths is 44,887, 19.6% of those deported.

Adjusting for natural deaths, Michael Rywkin calculates that 42,000 Crimean Tatars perished as a result of the deportations by May 1949

Many Crimean Tatar activists cite 100,000 or 46% of the 1939 Crimean Tatar population.

At a bare minimum, Stalin's deportations, exile, and forced labor mobilization killed more than 20% of the Crimean Tatar population in less than five years.

The NKVD recorded a total of 191 Crimean Tatars dying enroute to Uzbekistan.

Between 18 May and 6 June 1944, more than 6,000 Crimean Tatars permanently disappeared.

Brian Williams places the number of deaths of Crimean Tatars enroute to the special settlements at 7,000.

Michael Rywkin places it at 7,900.

The real reason for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars appears to be related to Soviet foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

The Stalin regime deported the Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks in preparation for this anti-Turkish campaign.

In March 1945, Molotov informed the Turkish ambassador to Moscow that the Soviet Union was not going to renew the 1925 Soviet-Turkish Treaty of Neutrality.

On 7 July 1945, Molotov formally requested that Turkey allow Soviet naval bases in the Straits and cede Kars and Ardahan.

The following paper by J. Otto Pohl was presented at the 5th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities

It is clear that Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars qualifies as genocide under this definition.