The NKVD boss, who liked to observe the process firsthand, reminded Stalin in May 1944 that there were still more “anti-Soviet elements” in the Crimea, namely the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians who had cooperated with the Germans or had family ties to foreign states. Their turn came on July 1, when the authorities reported that through June they had deported 15,040 Greeks, 12,422 Bulgarians, 9,620 Armenians, an assorted group of 1,119 Germans, Italians and others, and finally 3,642 “foreigners.” The total number eventually reached 66,000. All were said either to have been involved in anti-Soviet activity during the German occupation or to have family ties to foreign states.43
Muslims on the Turkish-Soviet border in Georgia also were subject to deportations. It was suspected that Turks, Kurds, and Khemshins who lived there might give aid to Turkey, a “potential aggressor,” so Stalin and Beria decided these people would have to go as well. Beginning on November 17, 1944, every man, woman, and child was rounded up, a total of 92,307 individuals. No consideration was given to those who were card-carrying members of the Communist Party or had otherwise shown their loyalty. What counted was that they were Muslims with actual or potential ties to “foreigners.” It took eleven days in a typically brutal operation to collect and ship them to distant lands in the east.44
The mortality rates of the ethnic groups deported from the Caucasus and Crimea between 1944 and 1950 was just over 25 percent. The Kalmyks’ mortality was at that average, but the Chechens’ was worse again, at 33.2 percent. The first years were the most difficult, but the death rates even after that paralleled those of prisoners in the Gulag.45
The correspondence to and from Moscow about the unfortunates conveys the air of rationality in tune with the lofty ideals of the country’s social experiment. And yet the retribution and revenge were emotional and vicious, striking innocent and guilty alike.
RETRIBUTION IN THE “RECOVERED” BALTIC STATES
Ivan Serov and Bogdan Kobulov, Beria’s top NKVD deputies, who worked together to sort out the Caucasus and Crimea, went into action behind the lines of the Red Army as it moved west.
The Soviet offensive to drive the Germans out of the Baltic states began on September 14, 1944. The sheer scale of the action dwarfs the justly famous landings earlier that year in Normandy. The Red Army used roughly ten times as many troops (900,000 in all) against Hitler’s Army Group North in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Even with a two-to-one Soviet advantage, it was tough slogging. Stalin insisted they batter their way through heavily defended positions, instead of trying to go around them, and so they took unnecessarily heavy losses. They captured the Latvian capital, Riga, on October 13 and drove thirty German divisions back to the northern tip of Lithuania (the Courland peninsula), where they were isolated. The battle for the Baltic states was won.46
Earlier in 1939 when the Red Army arrived there, Stalin had intended the permanent incorporation of these “recovered territories” into the USSR. Hitler had other ideas and in 1941 drove the Communists out. By 1944 on their return, the Kremlin had developed strategies to transform all three into Soviet republics run directly by the Politburo in Moscow.47
The Baltic peoples did not greet the Red Army as liberators. The new occupiers carried out executions of suspected collaborators, “spies,” politicians, civil servants, leaders of political parties, and assorted others, including some landowners branded as kulaks. We do not know exactly how many were killed. The Soviet arrival in Latvia was called “the time of chaos,” when arrests and killings were the norm. The NKVD built “filtration camps,” and tens of thousands went through them, to be checked for their political and social past.48
To the Red Army, locals were enemies or Nazi collaborators who deserved to be punished. One wounded air force pilot on his way home and traveling through Latvia in 1944 said that he would have loved to bomb “every house” because “they are traitors.” Such attitudes were also reflected in the behavior of the occupation forces. Thus the NKVD reported from Lithuania in 1945 that “many officers, sergeants and privates routinely drink, plunder and kill citizens.” The Estonian Communist Party said the same and was helpless to do anything, all the more as it needed the presence of the Red Army to stay in power.49
Moscow created special institutions to control each of the republics, with Stalin directly involved until autumn 1944.50 Soviet influence was confirmed physically by having Russians dominate the police and central administrations. In early 1945 they made up one-third or more of the central committees and the memberships of the Communist parties of the Baltic states. Trusted people with Baltic origins, who were Communists and who had lived for years in the Soviet Union, moved home and into privileged positions, as did demobilized Red Army soldiers.51
The NKVD measured success in terms of “liquidations”—those killed or arrested or who surrendered. In 1944 they numbered 7,504 in Lithuania, 1,075 in Latvia, and 1,394 in Estonia. The next year was by far the worst, and Lithuanian losses jumped to 40,541, in Latvia they went up to 7,016, and in Estonia to 5,671.52
There were attempts by the Baltic states to resist the invaders with movements going back for years, commonly called the Forest Brethren. Their latest hope was that the West would change its mind about the Soviet Union and might even go to war, a hope soon shared by other peoples once they were forced to live under Communism. By the summer of 1945 those expectations were gone, but young men like Edgar Ranniste, one of the Forest Brethren in Virumaa County, Estonia, carried on anyway. He recalled telling his men that their situation would get worse that autumn: “I think that whoever wants to continue hiding must stay alone or in a small group. Those of you who want to leave the forest, go ahead, but don’t start informing on those of us who stay. Don’t betray our positions as the price of your freedom. I personally have decided to remain loyal to the Republic of Estonia and not to subordinate myself to the terrorist government of Stalin, who has occupied our homeland.” He was soon discovered and deported to Siberia, though he survived the ordeal.53
A sure sign that the resistance was fading were the falling number of people caught in the Soviet net. In Lithuania those “liquidated” in 1946 declined from the previous year by almost 75 percent to 8,228. In Latvia they went down to 4,218, and in Estonia they dropped by more than half to 2,085. Thus the struggle gradually petered out, although it continued in some places into the 1950s, when small groups fought on.54
The Soviet interpretation of the resistance to the occupation was that “kulaks” were behind it all. It was they who supposedly led the struggle and incited the bedniaks (the poorest peasants) and seredniaks (literally, middle peasants, the second poorest) to join the fray. To deal with this situation, the authorities determined that a way had to be found to undermine the solidarity among the peasantry. Hence they adopted the policy of redistributing the lands of all those who had fled with the Germans. The Soviets favored the middle-range peasants at the expense of kulaks, who were harassed and gradually squeezed out. The USSR pursued this approach between 1944 and 1948, even though the resulting tiny and fragmented farms led to an overall decline in agricultural productivity. Once the insurgency was put down and the people were left with no one to fight for them, the Soviets would take the land back. Indeed, on May 21, 1947, the Politburo—in fact Stalin—issued secret orders to begin preparations for collectivization in the three countries, regardless of what local Communists thought.55