In November 1941, insurgents in that area totaled approximately 5,000, and in the summer of 1942, this figure increased by 300 percent.34 In February 1942, there were 6,540 anti-Soviet fighters in only twenty Chechen villages. Many Chechens and Ingush left the Red Army to join the insurgents in the mountains. In January 1942, most of the insurgents joined the Special Party of Brothers of the Caucasus (OPKB) with the goal of fighting for the defeat of Russia in the war with Germany and later creating a Muslim state.35 This party established contacts with the Germans and from July 1942 to July 1943, the Germans parachuted numerous groups of Caucasian saboteurs, mostly Soviet POW volunteers, into Chechnya and Dagestan.36
Groups of insurgents also appeared in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The Abwehr helped anti-Soviet emigrants to cross the Soviet border to join the insurgents. Pro-German sentiments ran high among the population of the German-occupied areas of the Northern Caucasus because they were under the control of General Ernst Köstring, the former German attaché in Moscow from 1931–33 and 1935–41. Köstring and most of his HQ officers belonged to the military resistance group that hated Hitler and tried hard to ameliorate the Nazi racial policy in those areas.37 In February 1943, the Red Army counteroffensive began, and in October 1943 the Germans were defeated in the Caucasus.
Beria was sent to the Caucasus as a Stavka representative twice, in August–September 1942 and March 1943.38 Of course, he brought Merkulov and other cronies with him. Beria created a formation of NKVD troops consisting of 121,000 men, separate from the Red Army units. However, most of these troops were not involved in the fight against the Germans. During his trial in 1953, Beria testified: ‘I didn’t allow the NKVD troops to participate in the defense of the Caucasus… [because] the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush was planned.’39
Stalin’s reprisal for the insurgency was truly terrible.40 On January 31, 1944, the GKO issued two top secret orders to deport the Chechen and Ingush populations to Kazakhstan and Kirgizia.41 In total, about 650,000 men, women, and children were deported by 19,000 SMERSH, NKVD, and NKGB operative officers backed up by 100,000 NKVD troops, and 714 officers were given military awards. As an NKVD officer recalled, during professional training the security officers were shown an educational documentary film about the arrests and deportations of the kulaks and their family members from Russia in the late 1920s–early 1930s.42 Therefore, the NKVD and SMERSH were well trained for such actions.
The deportations were executed with extreme cruelty. People who could not be transported, such as patients in hospitals, were burned, buried alive, or drowned in lakes.43 Mikhail Gvishiani, former head of Beria’s guards whom Beria brought to Moscow, supervised the burning alive of 700 inhabitants in the village of Khaitoba.44 Like Abakumov, he received the Order of Suvorov of the 2nd Rank for the operation.
Similarly, in March 1944 the Kabardins and Balkars were deported from the neighboring regions of the Caucasus; Beria personally commanded the action.45 Then, in May–June 1944, the Crimean Tatars (a population of 180,000), Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians were deported from the Crimea to Central Asia.46 Interestingly, Hitler had the same idea as Stalin, to completely evacuate the population of the Crimea, which Hitler wanted to turn into a German Gibraltar.47 At the end of 1944, the Turks-Meskhetians and Kurds living in Georgia were also deported to Central Asia.48
Notes
1. ‘Ognennaya duga’: Kurskaya bitva glazami Lubyanki, edited by A. T. Zhadobin, V. V. Markovchin, and V. S. Khristoforov, 25 (Moscow: Moskovskie uchebniki, 2003) (in Russian).
2. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 558.
3. Report of A. S. Shcherbakov to Stalin, dated May 22, 1943. Document No. 238 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD–NKGB–GUKR ‘Smersh.’ 1939–March 1946, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov, and N. S. Plotnikova, 377–85 (Moscow: 2006) (in Russian).
4. Ibid., 382–3.
5. Yakov Aizenstadt, Zapiski sekretarya voennogo tribunala (London: Overseas Publication Interchange Ltd., 1991), 69 (in Russian).
6. The above-cited Shcherbakov’s report, 383.
7. Ibid., 384.
8. NKO Order No. 0089-ss, dated May 31, 1943. Document No. 240 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 385–6.
9. Ibid., 384.
10. Zvyagintsev, Voina na vesakh Femidy, 294.
11. Lidiya Golovkova, Sukhanovskaya tyur’ma. Spetsob’ekt 110 (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2009), 96–97 (in Russian).
12. Details of Paulus’s surrender in I. A. Laskin, Na puti k perelomu (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1977), 322–34 (in Russian).
13. From unpublished memoirs by Ivan Laskin, quoted in Aleksandr Rud’, ‘Moi general,’ Literaturnyi Krym, no. 17–18 (164–165), May 27, 2005 (in Russian), http://lit-crimea.narod.ru/164-167/rud17-20.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.
14. ‘Ivan Laskin’ (in Russian), http://militarytimes.com/citations-medalsawards/recipient.php?recipientid=22918, retrieved September 8, 2011.
15. Aleksei Teplyakov, ‘Chekist dlya Soyuza pisatelei,’ Politicheskii zhurnal, no. 11-12 (154-155), April 2, 2007 (in Russian).
16. An excerpt fromTeplinsky’s letter to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, dated June 4, 1953. Quoted in Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov’ (Moscow: Terra, 2008), 356 (in Russian).
17. Abakumov’s report, dated April 1, 1944. Quoted in B. V. Sokolov, Razvedka. Tainy Vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Ast-Press, 2001), 196–201 (in Russian).
18. Quoted in ibid., 202–3.
19. Quoted in ibid., 180.
20. Soviet biographers of Marshal Vasilii Sokolovsky do not mention Sokolovsky’s failure. See M. Cherednichenko, ‘Marshal Sovetskogo Soyuza Vasilii Sokolovskii,’ in Polkovodtsy i voennonachal’niki Velikoi Otechestvennoi. Vypusk 1 (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1971), 331–71 (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/bio/commanders1/10.html, retrieved September 8, 20011.
21. NKO Order No. 0379, dated November 23, 1944. Document No. 268, in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Prikazy, 13 (2-3), 332 (in Russian).
22. P. G. Grigorenko., V podpol’e mozhno vstretit’ tol’ko krys… (New York: Detinets, 1981), 294–306 (in Russian).
23. V. M. Shatilov, A do Berlina bylo tak daleko… (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1987), 324 (in Russian).
24. Page 741 in Mikhail Shmulev, ‘Pochemu ya ne prazdnuyu Den’ pobedy,’ Golosa Sibiri. Vypusk vtoroi (Kemerovo: Kuzbassvuzizdat, 2005), 738–49 (in Russian).
25. Pages 299–300 in Anna Timofeeva-Yegorova, Nebo, ‘shturmovik,’ devushka. ‘Ya—“Beryoza”! Kak slyshite menya?…’ (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2007) (in Russian).
26. Zvyagintsev, Tribunal dlya ‘stalinskikh sokolov,’ 130.
27. Recolections by Nikolai Bogdanov, in M. I. Veller, Kavaleriiskii marsh (St. Petersburg: Lan’, 1996) (in Russian), Chapter 7, http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/veller1/01.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.