Mass repatriation was generally completed in the first six months after the end of the Great Patriotic War. By March 1946, 4,199,448 people had returned to the Soviet Union. According to popular belief, almost all of them went straight to the Gulag. Varlam Shalamov in “The Final Battle of Major Pugachoff” wrote: “... ship after ship were repatriated – from Italy, France and Germany – along a direct road to the extreme northeast.” It is hardly necessary to explain that there was no direct communication between Europe and the far northeast (i.e., Kolyma) – not after the war, nor at any other time. It is appropriate, however, to recall the popular expression at the time “we simply don’t just get arrested.” Returnees should have understood this literally.
The return of our people “from there” or “from the other side” i.e., a kind of “preliminary repatriation,” began long before the advancing Soviet troops crossed the Soviet border. In December 1941, to verify former prisoners of war and those who had been under siege, the People's Commissar of Defense issued Order # 05212, which established a network of filtration camps. Without much thought, popular historians and journalists assumed that this was a “passageway” or “threshold” to the Gulag. In fact, out of the 312,594 people who passed through the filtration camps from late 1941 to March 1944, the majority – 223,272 people – were sent into military service and then to the army, 5,716 people (1.8%) to the defense industry, 4,337 (1.4%) to the NKVD (!), and 1,529 to hospitals. A total of 1,799 prisoners died directly in the filtration camps (this figure is actually somewhat surprising given the appalling conditions in German captivity). 11,823 people were arrested, and an additional 8,255 were sent to penal battalions. Those who can be categorized as repressed numbered 19,538 people, or 6.2%. Another 56,403 people by that time (March 1944) had not yet been verified and remained in the filtration camps.
Of course, for the many officers and soldiers of the Red Army who had honestly performed their duties yet ended up in captivity or under siege, separated from their units due to insurmountable obstacles, the checks themselves in the filtration camps seemed insulting. At the same time, it was obvious that in time of war there was simply no way around it. At the end of the war, however, the Soviet command found it possible to greatly simplify the verification procedure: freed prisoners of war and civilians of military age, in bypassing the filtration camps, were immediately sent to various divisions of the Red Army and “verified” there.
In general, before the end of the war, about 8% of former prisoners were subjected to various types of repression, including those who by March 1944 had not yet been verified and remained in the camps. Taking into account the prisoners who were released after the war, the proportion who were repressed increased to 14.69% (226,127 people). This can be explained by the fact that many collaborators who were among the prisoners sought as long as possible to delay their encounter with Soviet troops and evacuated toward the west with the retreating Germans. The remaining 85% of former war prisoners, or 1,313,348 people, were sent to their place of residence, enlisted in the army, joined the labor battalions, or temporarily remained at the assembly transit points and worked there.
With respect to the civilian returnees, the percentage of those who were repressed or transferred to the NKVD, as written in official documents, was considerably smaller – 1.76% (46,740). Of those remaining, 2,146,126 were sent to their places of residence, 141,962 were drafted into the army, 263,647 were enrolled in work battalions, and 61,538 remained at the assembly points.
The labor battalions deserve special mention. They were in many ways reminiscent of the construction battalions that came later, and, perhaps, they may have therefore acquired a similar reputation among journalists and historians writing on the subject. These battalions were formed by a State Defense Committee decree dated August 18, 1945, i.e., when the war was over and the country needed workers rather than soldiers. Less than a year later, on July 12, 1946, the labor battalions were disbanded and their personnel enrolled in “permanent cadres of industry.” On September 30 of that same year, the former “workers” were guaranteed all the provisions of existing labor laws, as well as the rights and privileges of “ordinary” workers at the enterprises, including enterprises in the defense industry. The only restriction was that these people could not arbitrarily change their place of work, although this restriction was finally lifted by 1948.
The short history of the labor battalions is a telling example of the Soviet authorities’ general attitude to using returnees for their labor. Of course, restoring the country’s economy required a large number of workers, which the government sought to attract, making maximum use of all possible sources. At the same time, the Soviet leadership did not set for itself the goal of driving as many people as possible behind the barbed wire of the labor camps. This is something that needs to be recognized by scholars who hold liberal political views and view the blanket mandatory repatriation as a “humanitarian crime” committed by the Soviet and to a certain extent Western authorities. In his seminal work, “Victims of Two Dictatorships. Ostarbeiters and POW in Third Reich and Their Repatriation,” Polyan refers to the repatriation commissioner of the Council of People’s Commissars (thereafter the Council of Ministers) as the “Soviet version of Fritz Sauckel or, more precisely, as the anti-Sauckel.” However, he immediately makes the qualification that using the repatriates for labor purposes was not the prerogative of Golikov’s agency and that he did not aspire to take such authority upon himself.
As for those “transferred to the NKVD,” according to instructions, they included the following: the police leadership, the “people's guard,” the “local defense,” the volunteer unit command, rank and file police officers and volunteers who participated in punitive actions, former members of the Red Army who voluntarily sided with the enemy, officers of the Gestapo and other intelligence or similar agencies, as well as mayors and village elders who actively collaborated with the occupiers. As of March 1, 1946, there was a total of 272,867 people in this contingent. All of them, according to instructions, were to be arrested and tried.
However, not everyone ultimately ended up behind barbed wire. Despite the fact that surrender to captivity called for criminal prosecution, in practice it was rarely used and was reversed by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on July 7, 1945 – “On Amnesty in Connection with the Victory over Nazi Germany.”
For ordinary soldiers of police battalions and “volunteer” forces, imprisonment was replaced by transfer to special settlements for a period of six years. From 1946-1947, a total of 148,079 people were sent to special settlements. On January 1, 1953, there were 56,746 people remaining in them – the rest had been released after serving their sentences. The last collaborators (Vlasovists) remaining in the settlements were granted freedom by the “Adenauer amnesty” proclaimed by a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 17, 1955. In addition, at that time 56,910 people were released early from the camps, among whom were many former active collaborators, primarily officers from the volunteer and police forces.
The scale of repression against returnees was, contrary to popular belief, relatively small. Penalties of varying severity (as of March 1946) were imposed on 6.5% of the returnees. At the same time, it would be wrong and, moreover, absurd to think that the other returnees – who were in no way guilty – met with a positive attitude from the Soviet administration or that the return process went smoothly and without incident.
Excesses actually began immediately after the release of war prisoners and OST-Arbeiter from the first camps. In some cases, OST-Arbeiter became victims of looting, along with the German civilian population. There were by far more cases of “sexual harassment” or even rape of women, however. Many of these and similar incidents occurred when the liberators and the liberated were in a drunken state.
Cases of arbitrariness on the part of individual members of the Soviet command or military administration were also quite frequent. Some of them felt it best to engage in overkill rather than not go far enough, which meant punishment for the innocent. Others let those assigned to them out of their control without making any attempt to prevent inevitable excesses or organize a normal supply of returnees for transfer home.
The attitude of Soviet authorities to returnees changed several times – both for better and for worse. Initially, in the fall of 1944, the Office of the Commissioner for Repatriation and other “involved” agencies feared that a large part of war prisoners and OST-Arbeiter would not want to return to the USSR after the war. These fears did not come true, however. As it turned out, surveys of the liberated prisoners and OST-Arbeiter showed that many of them feared that they would not be allowed to return home.
In general, communication (in a broad sense) with the returnees showed that their outlook and political attitudes, despite their rather long stays abroad, had not significantly changed. A report by the command of the NKVD troops charged with protecting the home front of the Central Group of Soviet Forces, issued on October 26, 1945, stated: “The political mood of those repatriated Soviet citizens is healthy among the vast majority, and it is characterized by a great desire to come home soon – to the USSR. Everywhere there is considerable interest and a desire to learn what is new with life in the USSR, as well as to participate as quickly as possible in the work to eliminate the destruction caused by the war and strengthen the economy of the Soviet state.”
Later, beginning around the second half of 1946, when most of the pro-Soviet-minded former OST-Arbeiter and prisoners of war had returned home, the attitude of the Soviet authorities toward the remaining returnees changed toward greater circumspection and distrust, which was to a certain extent justified given the large number of convinced defectors, including former collaborators. Certainly this attitude was influenced by the Cold War, as well as the campaigns against “rootless cosmopolitanism” and “kowtowing to the West” that had unfolded in the Soviet Union.
However, such fluctuations were not strongly reflected in the “general line” of the Soviet leadership. All returnees who were not subjected to imprisonment or exile retained all their civil rights and were covered by labor legislation, social insurance and other provisions. Another matter often concerned “excesses,” especially “deep in the provinces” where local officials strove for greater vigilance to cover themselves, thus acting contrary to the instructions from the center. In the end, the matter was taken up by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which on August 4, 1945 adopted a special resolution “On the Organization of Political Awareness Education for Repatriated Soviet Citizens.” The resolution stated: “Individual party and government officials have taken the path of indiscriminate distrust of repatriated Soviet citizens. We must remember that returning Soviet citizens have regained all the rights held by Soviet citizens and must be brought into active participation in labor as well as socio-political life.”
Intervention of the center allowed the situation on the ground to be mitigated, but it did not lead to drastic changes for the better. However, many incidents of discrimination with respect to returnees were due not to “malice” on the part of local authorities but rather to the dysfunction of the bureaucratic machine. It was the same situation that would affect the provision of benefits to various categories of citizens in future years.
In general, returnees, although they escaped wide-scale repression, from a moral and psychological standpoint experienced considerable discomfort. This discomfort was felt equally under Stalin and in later times when all legal restrictions imposed on them had been removed.
