Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag system of labor camps, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression. At the same time, involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of remote areas of the Soviet Union. This role was specifically mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps. Gulag  listen (from the Russian ГУЛАГ: Главное Управление Исправительно— Трудовых Лагерей, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey, The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps) was the branch of the Soviet internal police and security service that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit... A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in forced labor. ...

Unlike the Gulag camps, the involuntary settlements had the appearance of "normal" settlements: people lived in families, and there was a significant degree of freedom of travel. However, the travel was permitted only within the specified area, and all settlers were under the monitoring of NKVD (под надзором НКВД), i.e., once a month a person had to visit a local law enforcement office, at a selsoviet in rural areas or at a militsiya department in urban settlements). Black Ravens by Boris Vladimirski, a depiction of the cars used by NKVD agents. ... Selsoviet or selsovet (Russian: сельсове́т, short for се́льский сове́т), literally: rural soviet, was the lowest level administrative subdivision, similar to a rural district, in rural areas in the Soviet Union. ... Militsiya (Russian: мили́ция; Ukrainian: міліція; literally Militia) was the generic name for the police in the Soviet Union and a few other Communist countries. ...

Exile settlements

Exile settlements (ссыльное поселение, ssylnoye poselenie) were a kind of internal exile. The system of political and administrative exile existed in the Imperial Russia as well. The most notable category of exile settlers in the Soviet Union (ссыльнопоселенцы, ssylnoposelentsy) were the whole nationalities resettled during the Joseph Stalin rule (1928–1953). At various times, a number of other terms were used for this category: special settlement (спецпоселение), special resettlement (спецпереселение), administrative exile (административная высылка, a term which refers to an extrajudicial way of deciding the fates of people "by administrative means". To be in exile is to be away from ones home (i. ... Imperial Russia is the term used to cover the period of Russian history from the expansion of Russia under Peter the Great, through the expansion of the Russian Empire from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, to the deposal of Nicholas II of Russia, the last tsar, at the start... The wholesale removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career: Poles (1934), Koreans (1937), Ukrainians, Jews, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1940-1941 and 1945-1949), Volga Germans (1941), Balkars, Chechens, Ingushs (1943), Kalmyks (1944), Meskhetian Turks (1944), Crimean Tatars (18 May... Iosif (usually Anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 1879[1] – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union. ... 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Extrajudicial execution and extrajudicial punishment are terms to describe death sentences and other types of punishment, respectively, executed without prior proper judicial procedure. ... By administrative means (В административном порядке, V administrativnom poryadke) was an expression in use in the Soviet Union applied to the cases when some actions that normally required a collegial decision were left to the decision of certain officials, i. ...

Exiles were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union: Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Russian Far East. Siberian federal subjects of Russia Siberia ( Russian: Сиби́рь, common English transliterations: Sibir, Sibir; possibly from the Mongolian for the calm land) is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan constituting almost all of northern Asia. ... Map of Central Asia outlined in orange showing one set of possible borders Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... The term Russian Far East (Russian: Да́льний Восто́к Росси́и; English transliteration: Dalny Vostok Rossii) refers to the extreme south-east parts of Russia, between Siberian Federal District and the Pacific. ...

The population of the settlements

The major source of the population in exile settlements was victims of what is now called ethnic cleansing. The Soviet government feared that people of certain nationalities would act as "fifth column" subversives during the expected war, and took drastic measures to prevent this perceived threat. The deported were sent to prisons, labor camps, exile settlements, and "supervised residence" (residence in usual settlements, but under the monitoring of the NKVD). The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. ... Fifth column refers to any clandestine group of people which works covertly inside a nation to undermine its strength (psychological warfare) while the nation is simultaneously suffering an overt attack by a foreign power or another faction in a civil war. ... Black Ravens by Boris Vladimirski, a depiction of the cars used by NKVD agents. ...

Deportations from border territories in 1939–1941

Several waves of forced resettlement occurred from the territories on the Western borders, because the Soviet government believed this to be the most likely direction of a potential strike by the most probable aggressor. These territories included Murmansk Oblast and the recently annexed lands: parts of Poland and Romania, and the Baltic States. Murmansk Oblast (Му́рманская о́бласть) is an oblast in north-western Russia. ... Baltic states and the Baltic Sea The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a term which nowadays refers to three countries in Northern Europe: Estonia Latvia Lithuania Prior to World War II, Finland was sometimes considered, particularly by the Soviet Union, a fourth Baltic state. ...

In territories annexed from Poland (the Kresy territories and the Bialystok Voivodship), the initial wave of repression of 1939 was in a way a continuation of the Polish operation of the NKVD and was rationalized as conviction of "social enemies", or "enemies of the people": military, police and administrative personnel, large landowners, industrialists, merchants. They were usually sentenced to 8–20 years of labor camps. In addition, the population along Poland's Eastern border, as well as forest-guards and railroad workers were interned. Massive deportations of the Polish population into remote areas of the Soviet Union were performed in 1940–1941. The name Kresy (Polish for borderlands) (or more correctly Kresy Wschodnie, Eastern Borderlands) is used by Poles to refer to the eastern part of Poland in the inter-war period. ... Polish: województwo białostockie) - a unit of administrative division and local government in Poland in years 1975-1998, superseded by Podlasie Voivodship. ... Polish operation of the NKVD refers to the coordinated actions of NKVD in 1937-1938 according to the NKVD Order no. ... For the play by Henrik Ibsen, see An Enemy of the People. ... A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in forced labor. ... The word internment is generally used to refer to the imprisonment or confinement of people without due process of law and a trial. ...

Estimates of the total number of resettled Poles vary between 400,000 and 1.6 million people.

On 23 June 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD, ordered the Murmansk Oblast to be cleaned of "foreign nationals", both Scandinavians and all other nationalities. People of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian (see also "Kola Norwegians") ethnicities were moved to Karelo-Finnish SSR. Germans, Koreans, Chinese, and others were moved to Altai. June 23 is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 191 days remaining. ... 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Lavrenty Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия) (29 March 1899 - 23 December 1953), Soviet politician and police chief, is remembered chiefly as the executor of Joseph Stalins Great Purge of the 1930s, although in fact he presided only over the closing stages of the Purge. ... Black Ravens by Boris Vladimirski, a depiction of the cars used by NKVD agents. ... Murmansk Oblast (Му́рманская о́бласть) is an oblast in north-western Russia. ... Scandinavia is the cultural and historic region of the Scandinavian Peninsula. ... The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (Karelo-Finnish S.S.R., Finnish Karjalais-Suomalainen sosialistinen neuvostotasavalta, Russian Карело-Финская Советская Социалистическая Республика or Karelo-Finskaya Sovietskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika) was a republic of the Soviet Union that existed between 1940 and 1956. ... For the republic in Russia, see Altai Republic. ...

Deportations of "exiled settlers" from Baltic States (Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians) and annexed part of Romania (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina) were carried out in May-June 1941. Old map of Bessarabia Bessarabia or Bessarabiya (Basarabia in Romanian, Besarabya in Turkish) was the name used by Russia to designate the eastern part of the territory known as Moldova (Moldavia in English), which was occupied by Russia in 1812. ... Bukovina (Bucovina in Romanian; Буковина, Bukovyna in Ukrainian; Buchenland or Bukowina in German; Bukowina in Polish), on the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, comprises an historic province now split between Romania and Ukraine. ...

In 1941 a significant number of Poles were amnestied and freed from "special settlement" (but still barred from border territories).

"Preventive" deportations of nationalities in 1941–1942

These deportations concerned Soviet citizens of "enemy nationality". The affected were ethnic Germans, Finns, Romanians, Italians, and Greeks. At the end of this period Crimean Tatars were included in this wave of deportation. The Crimean Tatars (Qırımtatar, Pl. ...

"Punitive" deportations of nationalities in 1943–1944

These deportations concerned ethnicities declared guilty of cooperation with Nazi occupants: a number of peoples of North Caucasus and Crimea: Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Crimean Bolgars, as well as Kalmyks. The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Southern Federal District ( Russian: Ю́жный федера́льный о́круг; tr. ... The Crimea (officially Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukrainian transliteration: Avtonomna Respublika Krym, Ukrainian: Автономна Республіка Крим, Russian: Автономная Республика Крым, pronounced cry-MEE-ah in English) is a peninsula and an autonomous republic of Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea. ... The Chechen Republic (Russian: Чеченская Республика; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика/Noxçiyn Respublika), also known as Chechnya (Russian: Чечня, Chechen: Нохчичьо/Noxçiyçö), Chechnia or Chechenia, is a constituent republic of the Russian Federation. ... The Republic of Ingushetia (Russian: Республика Ингушетия; Ingush: ГIалгIай Мохк) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... The Balkar (малкъар /malqar/) people are a Turkic people of the Caucasus region, thet titular population of Kabardino-Balkaria. ... The Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia (Russian: Карача́ево-Черке́сская респу́блика, or, less formal, Карача́ево-Черке́ссия) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... 1. ... The Crimean Tatars (Qırımtatar, Pl. ... Bulgars (also Bolgars or proto-Bulgarians) a people of Central Asia, probably originally Pamirian, whose branches became Slavicized and perhaps Turkic over time. ... The Republic of Kalmykia (Russian: Респу́блика Калмы́кия; Kalmyk: Хальм Тангч) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ...

Post-war deportations

Deportations after the end of WWII were not particularly differentiated or classified by "NKVD operations". The affected were people from the territories that were under the administration of the Axis Powers: family members of persons accused of loyalty to the Axis administration and of persons who continued resistance to Soviet power, which was clasified as "banditism". A significant number of former Ostarbeiters were "filtered" into exile as well. "Cleansing" of the annexed territories continued until early 1950s. German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ... The Axis Powers is a term for those participants in World War II opposed to the Allies. ...

Ukazniks

The term ukaznik derives from the Russian term "ukaz" that means "decree". It applies to convicted according to various Soviet ukazes, but the most common usage refers to a series of decrees related to what later formalized in the Soviet law as parasitism, or evasion from socially-useful work. Among the first of these was the decree of June 2, 1942 "About the Criminal Answerability for Evasion from Socially Useful Work and for Antisocial Parasitic Way of Life in Agricultural Sector" (Об ответственности за уклонение от общественно полезного труда и за ведение антиобщественного паразитического образа жизни в сельском хозяйстве). It was usually applied to kolkhozniks who failed to carry out their work qouta (trudodni, "labour-days"). The term of exile was 8 years. During 1948-1952 33,266 special settlers - "ukazniks" have been registered. Unlike other exile settler categories, children of these exiles were not subject the Decree. Ukase (Russian: указ, ukaz) in Imperial Russia was a proclamation of the tsar government, or a religions leader patriarch that had the force of law. ... The Nazi propaganda poster titled New People reads: This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime. ... June 2 is the 153rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (154th in leap years), with 212 days remaining. ... 1942 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... A kolkhoz (Russian: колхо́з) was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms or sovkhozes. ...

Relegious persecution

A number of religious sects (such as Jehovah's Witnesses ("свидетели иеговы"), Truly Orthodox Christians ("истинно-православные христиане", Innokentians ("иннокентьевцы"), Adventists-Reformists ("адвентисты-реформисты")) were outlawed for their violation of the Soviet law "On the Separation of Church from the State and the School from the Church". In particular, these sects forbade their members to join the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol, or to serve in Soviet Army. Usually members of these sects and especially their leaders were subject to criminal law and treated on case-by-case basis. However on March 1, 1953, the USSR Council of Ministers issued a decree, "On Expulsion of Active Participants of the anti-Soviet Illegal Sect of Jehovists and their Family Members" (Постановление Совета Министров СССР о выселении активных участников антисоветской нелегальной секты иеговистов и членов их семей №1290-467 от 3 марта 1951 года). According to this decree, about 9,400 Jehovah's Witnesses, including about 4,000 children were resettled from the Baltic States, Moldova, and western parts of Belarus and Ukraine in 1951. A sect is a small religious group that has branched off of a larger established religion. ... The separation of church and state is a concept in law whereby the structures of state or national government are kept separate from those of religious institutions. ... Czechoslovak pioneers A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. ... Komsomol (Комсомол) is a syllabic abbreviation word, from the Russian Kommunisticheski Soyuz Molodiozhi (Коммунистический союз молодёжи), or Communist Union of Youth. The organisation served as the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU), the youngest members being fourteen years old, the upper limit for an age... This article is about the armed forces of the Soviet Union. ... Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of law that regulates governmental sanctions (such as imprisonment and/or fines) as retaliation for crimes against the social order. ... March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). ... 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Baltic states and the Baltic Sea The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a term which nowadays refers to three countries in Northern Europe: Estonia Latvia Lithuania Prior to World War II, Finland was sometimes considered, particularly by the Soviet Union, a fourth Baltic state. ...

In 1954, a decree of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers cancelled the "special settlement" restriction for members of these sects.

Other

The above are the major, most populated categories of exile settlers. There were a number of smaller categories. They were small in the scale of the whole Soviet Union, but rather significant in terms of the affected categories of population. For example, in 1950 all Iranians, with the exception of persons of Armenian ethnicity, have been resettled from the Georgian SSR, 4,776 persons. State motto: პროლეტარ ყველა ქვეყნისა, შეერთდით! Official language Georgian since 1978 (Georgia was the only Soviet republic to have an official language) Capital Tbilisi Chairman of the Supreme Council Zviad Gamsakhurdia (at independence) Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 10th in former Soviet Union 69,700 km2 -- Population  - Total (1989)  - Density Ranked...

Labor settlements

Labor settlements (трудопоселение, trudoposelenie) were a method of internal exile that used settlers for obligatory labor. The main category of "labor settlers" (трудопоселенцы, trudoposelentsy) were kulaks and members of their families deported in 1930s before the Great Purge. Labor settlements were under the management of Gulag, but they must not be confused with labor camps. Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for forms of work, especially in modern or early modern history, in which adults and/or children are employed without wages, or for a minimal wage. ... Kulaks (from the Russian кулак (kulak, fist)) is a pejorative term extensively used in Soviet political language, originally referring to relatively wealthy peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labor, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 1906. ... The Great Purge is the name given to campaigns of repression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s which included a purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ... Gulag  listen (from the Russian ГУЛАГ: Главное Управление Исправительно— Трудовых Лагерей, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey, The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps) was the branch of the Soviet internal police and security service that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit... A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in forced labor. ...

The first official document that decreed wide-scale "dekulakization" was joint decree of Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom by 1 February 1930. Initially families of kulaks were deported into remote areas "for special settlement" without particular care about their occupation. In 1931-1932 the problems of dekulakization and territorial planning of the exile settlement was handled by a special Politburo commission known as Andreev-Rudzutak Commission (комиссия Андреева-Рудзутака) named after Andrey Andreev and Yan Rudzutak. The notions of "labor settlement"/"labor settlers" were introduced in 1934 and were in official use until 1945. Since 1945 the terminology was unified, and exiled kulaks were documented as "special resettlers — kulaks". The term Central Executive Committee refers to governing bodies with executive power of various parties and governments. ... This article or section should be merged with Peoples Commissar Sovnarkom (Russian language СовНарКом, the abbreviation of the phrase Совет Народных Комиссаров, Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, the Council of Peoples Commissars, sometimes Russian СНК, the SNK), was the administrative arm of the Soviet government. ... February 1 is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1930 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Politburo is short for Political Bureau. ... Yan Ernestovich Rudzutak (Latvian Janis Rudzutaks, Russian Ян Эрнестович Рудзутак, August 3, 1887-July 29, 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician. ...

Free settlements

Free settlements (вольное поселение, volnoye poselenie) were for persons released from the confines of labor camps "for free settlement" before their term expiration, as well as for those who served the full term, but remained restricted in their choice of place of residence. These people were known as free settlers (вольнопоселенцы, volnoposelentsy).-1...

The term was in use earlier, in Imperial Russia, in two meanings: free settlement of peasants or cossacks (in the sense of being free from serfdom) and non-confined exile settlement (e.g., after serving a katorga term). Imperial Russia is the term used to cover the period of Russian history from the expansion of Russia under Peter the Great, through the expansion of the Russian Empire from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, to the deposal of Nicholas II of Russia, the last tsar, at the start... The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey. ... Costumes of Slaves or Serfs, from the Sixth to the Twelfth Centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original Documents in the great Libraries of Europe. ... Katorga (ка́торга, from Greek: katergon (galley)) was a system of penal servitude in Imperial Russia. ...

In the Soviet Union, a decree of Sovnarkom of 1929 about labor camps said, in part: This article or section should be merged with Peoples Commissar Sovnarkom (Russian language СовНарКом, the abbreviation of the phrase Совет Народных Комиссаров, Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, the Council of Peoples Commissars, sometimes Russian СНК, the SNK), was the administrative arm of the Soviet government. ...

"For gradual colonization of the regions where concentration camps are to be established, suggest the OGPU and Narkomat of Justice to urgently plan activities based on the following principles: (1) <to transfer the convicts of good behavior to free settlement ahead of term> (2) <to leave the convicts served full term but restricted in residence, for settlement and supply them with land> (3) <to allow the settlement of released convicts volunteered to stay>".

The "free settlers" of the first category were often required to do the work assigned to the corresponding labor camp or some other obligatory work. Later, people could be assigned for "free settement" in other places as well, even in towns, with obligatory work wherever a workforce was required. Obedinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (or OGPU) (Combined State Political Directorate, also translated as All Union State Political Board) was the name of the secret police in the Soviet Union in one of the stages of its development. ...

Population statistics

For a long time the numbers of people prosecuted in the Soviet Union were based on various estimates, counted in tens of millions and varied by a wide margin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the researchers gained access to the archives of NKVD. The revealed numbers point rather to lower numbers of the estimate range. In particular, data on January 1, 1953, show "only" 2,753,356 of special settlers. This invoked a harsh criticism of both the researchers and the validity of the acrhived data. Common responses to the criticism is that NKVD offices had all reasons to show the actual number of the registered people, since this demonstrated the "good job" done by the organisation. Furthermore, these data are rather difficult to forge, since they rely on the whole huge volume of the archival information, rather than on several reports. The rise of Gorbachev Although reform stalled between 1964–1982, the generational shift gave new momentum for reform. ... Black Ravens by Boris Vladimirski, a depiction of the cars used by NKVD agents. ...

See also

• Gulag: Colonization
• Penal transportation
• ZATO
• 101st kilometre

Gulag  listen (from the Russian ГУЛАГ: Главное Управление Исправительно— Трудовых Лагерей, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey, The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps) was the branch of the Soviet internal police and security service that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit... In law and in history, particularly with reference to the histories of Australia and United Kingdom, the word transportation refers to the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. ... -1...

References

• Павел Полян, Не по своей воле... (Pavel Polyan, Not by Their Own Will... A History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR), ОГИ Мемориал, Moscow, 2001, ISBN 5-94282-007-4
• V.N.Zemskov, Inmates, Special Settlers, Exile Settlers, Exiled and Evicted (Statistical-Geographical Aspect). In: History of the USSR, 1991, no.5, pp. 151-165. (in Russian)

Wikisource

• A decree about labor camps, 1919, in Russian
• A decree about penal labor, 1929, in Russian