From 1930 to 1952, the government of the Soviet Union, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin under the direction of the NKVD official Lavrentiy Beria, forcibly transferred populations of various groups. These actions may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite directions to fill ethnically cleansed territories. Dekulakization marked the first time that an entire class was deported, whereas the deportation of Soviet Koreans in 1937 marked the precedent of a specific ethnic deportation of an entire nationality.
The Kalmyk deportations of 1943, codename Operation Ulusy 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.
The deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union was the forced transfer of nearly 172,000 Soviet Koreans (Koryo-saram) from the Russian Far East to unpopulated areas of the Kazakh SSR and the Uzbek SSR in 1937 by the NKVD on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union Vyacheslav Molotov. 124 trains were used to resettle them 6,400 km to Central Asia. The reason was to stem "the infiltration of Japanese espionage into the Far Eastern Krai", as Koreans were at the time subjects of the Empire of Japan, which was the Soviet Union's rival. However, some historians regard it as part of Stalin's policy of "frontier cleansing". Estimates based on population statistics suggest that between 16,500 and 50,000 deported Koreans died from starvation, exposure, and difficulties adapting to their new environment in exile.
Caucasus Germans are part of the German minority in Russia and the Soviet Union. They migrated to the Caucasus largely in the first half of the 19th century and settled in the North Caucasus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the region of Kars. In 1941, the majority of them were subject to deportation to Central Asia and Siberia during Joseph Stalin's population transfer in the Soviet Union. After Stalin's death in 1953 and the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Caucasus Germans were allowed to return, though only few did. Many assimilated and, after 1991, emigrated to Germany. Although the community today is a fraction of what it once was, many German buildings and churches are still extant, with some turned into museums.
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars or the Sürgünlik ('exile') was the ethnic cleansing and the cultural genocide of at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars which was carried out by Soviet Union authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944, supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, mostly women, children, and the elderly, even Communist Party members and Red Army members, to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They constituted one of the several ethnicities which were subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.
Mir Jafar Abbas oghluBaghirov was the communist leader of the Azerbaijan SSR from 1933 to 1953, under the Soviet leadership of Joseph Stalin.
Azerbaijanis in Armenia numbered 29 people according to the 2001 census of Armenia. Although they have previously been the biggest minority in the country according to 1831–1989 censuses, they are virtually non-existent since 1988–1991 when most fled or were forced out of the country as a result of the tensions of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War to neighboring Azerbaijan. The UNHCR estimates that the current population of Azerbaijanis in Armenia to be somewhere between 30 and a few hundred people, with most of them living in rural areas as members of mixed couples, as well as elderly or sick. Most of them are reported to have changed their names to maintain a low profile to avoid discrimination.
The Kurds in Azerbaijan form a part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space. Kurds established a presence in the Caucasus with the establishment of the Kurdish Shaddadid dynasty in the 10th and 11th centuries. Some Kurdish tribes were recorded in Karabakh by the end of the sixteenth century. However, virtually the entire contemporary Kurdish population in the modern Azerbaijan descends from migrants from 19th-century Qajar Iran.
Mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia took place several times throughout the 20th century, and sometimes some of them have been described by some authors as acts of forced resettlement and ethnic cleansing.
Ruben Gukasovich Rubenov, also known as Ruben Mkrtichyan, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician who served as the 6th First Secretary of Azerbaijan Communist Party and revolutionary.
Kurds in Russia form a major part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, with close ties to the Kurdish communities in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Kurds in Kazakhstan form a part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, and encompass people born in or residing in Kazakhstan who are of Kurdish origin. According to the most recent Kazakh census in 2011, the Kurdish population is 38,325 or 0.2% of the population, but Vice President of the Kurdish Association of Kazakhstan, Malikshah Gasanov numbers the population up to 46,000, because many Kurds list themselves as Turks and Azeris. Other sources predict this number to be higher, counting up to 60,000 Kurds in Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era, most of the Kurdish population in the Kazakh SSR were deported there by Joseph Stalin from the Armenian, Azerbaijan and Georgian Soviet republics. Years later, Kurds immigrated to Kazakhstan from the neighbouring countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The Kurds in Turkmenistan form a part of the historically significant Kurdish population in the post-Soviet space, and encompass people born in or residing in Turkmenistan who are of Kurdish origin. In the 17th century, Abbas I of Persia and Nader Shah settled Kurdish tribes from Khuzestan alongside the Iranian-Turkmen border. More Kurds arrived to Turkmenistan in the 19th century to find unclaimed land and to escape starvation.
Soviet leaders and authorities officially condemned nationalism and proclaimed internationalism, including the right of nations and peoples to self-determination. Soviet internationalism during the era of the USSR and within its borders meant diversity or multiculturalism. This is because the USSR used the term "nation" to refer to ethnic or national communities and or ethnic groups. The Soviet Union claimed to be supportive of self-determination and rights of many minorities and colonized peoples. However, it significantly marginalized people of certain ethnic groups designated as "enemies of the people", pushed their assimilation, and promoted chauvinistic Russian nationalistic and settler-colonialist activities in their lands. Whereas Vladimir Lenin had supported and implemented policies of korenizatsiia, Joseph Stalin reversed much of the previous policies, signing off on orders to deport and exile multiple ethnic-linguistic groups brandished as "traitors to the Fatherland", including the Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Kalmyks, Koreans and Meskhetian Turks, with those, who survived the collective deportation to Siberia or Central Asia, were legally designated "special settlers", meaning that they were officially second-class citizens with few rights and were confined within small perimeters.
The deportation of the Soviet Greeks was a series of forced transfers of Greeks of the Soviet Union that was ordered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and carried out by the NKVD and the MVD in 1942, 1944 and 1949. It affected mostly Pontic Greeks along the Black Sea coast, most notably from Krasnodar Krai from where they were deported in all three deportations, resulting in ethnic cleansing of this area. The deported Soviet and foreign Greeks residing along the coast of Crimea and the Caucasus were resettled in cattle trains to the modern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while their property, which was left behind, was confiscated. After de-Stalinization in the 1950s, some Greeks returned to their original homes, but most chose to emigrate to Greece, marking the end of the centuries long Greek community along the Black Sea coast. It is estimated that around 70,000 to 80,000 Greeks were uprooted in these three waves of deportations. At least 15,000 Greeks had died by the end of the deportations. Some scholars characterize the deportation as a genocide against Greeks.
The deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was the forced transfer by the Soviet government of the entire Meskhetian Turk population from the Meskheti region of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic to Central Asia on 14 November 1944. During the deportation, between 92,307 and 94,955 Meskhetian Turks were forcibly removed from 212 villages. They were packed into cattle wagons and mostly sent to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Members of other ethnic groups were also deported during the operation, including Kurds and Hemshins, bringing the total to approximately 115,000 evicted people. They were placed in special settlements where they were assigned to forced labor. The deportation and harsh conditions in exile caused between 12,589 to 50,000 deaths.
The Deportation of the Karachays, codenamed Operation Seagull, was the Soviet government's forcible transfer of the entire Karachay population from the North Caucasus to Central Asia, mostly to the Kazakh and Kyrgyzstan SSRs, in November 1943, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, after it was approved by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Nearly 70,000 Karachays of the Caucasus were deported from their native land. The crime was a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s.
Deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia – is the resettlement of the Azerbaijani population of the Armenian SSR in 1947-1950, which was carried out in accordance with the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 4083 dated with 23 December 1947.
Caucasian Kurds are ethnic Kurds which come from or live in the region of the Caucasus. The first Kurdish presence in the Caucasus region can be traced back to the middle of the 10th Century. Some groups of Caucasian Kurds were deported to Central Asia in 1937, 1938, and 1944 by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, with most of their descendants now residing in Kazakhstan. The total number of Caucasian Kurds inside and outside the Caucasus region is unknown.
Azerbaijan has had a deliberate policy of forced assimilation of ethnic minorities since Soviet times and up to the present. Non-Turkic peoples, such as Talyshis, Lezgins, Tats and others have been subjected to forced Azerbaijanization (Turkification).
