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Finding the Motherland: Repatriation to the USSR after World War II – Part 1

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Finding the Motherland: Repatriation to the USSR after World War II – Part 1

03.11.2009

Sixty-five years ago systematic work began in the Soviet Union on the return home of Soviet citizens who ended up in Germany and the occupied countries as a result of the war. In a sense, the history of postwar repatriation is one of the most important subjects still influencing the understanding and interpretation of the relationship between man and country throughout the entire Russian world. However, we can talk not only about the history but about the myths associated with it, because for many years due to various reasons (primarily ideological), repatriation remained one of the blank spots in the national historiography. Even today, despite the appearance of publications based on real documents, repatriation is often perceived solely as a series of violent, “repressive” actions conducted by Soviet authorities (as well as governments of several Western countries, as we discuss below). The process of repatriation itself is portrayed as something between the deportations of repressed peoples and the mass “boardings” that took place in the 1930s.

The reason for the mythologizing was not so much a conscious distortion of facts or a biased interpretation in favor of the political circumstances prevailing in society as the lack of sufficient objective information, especially documents. Thus, many authors (most of whom were journalists) who turned to the topic in the late 1980s and early 1990s – when writing about repatriation finally became possible – relied mainly on the “camp prose” of Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and others, as well as on works by foreign authors, including emigres who by that time  had been published in our country.

It is obvious that both groups of “sources” cannot be considered objective documentary evidence. Former prisoners of the Gulag and emigre memoirists write mostly about their experiences or put things on paper that they heard from others. In addition, these works, for quite understandable reasons, are distinguished by their significant degree of bias. Nevertheless, they are now often viewed as practically the ultimate truth. For example, Varlam Shalamov’s “The Final Battle of Major Pugachoff” was made into a feature film by NTV in 2005, i.e., for the 60th anniversary of the Victory. Students in secondary schools are unofficially recommended to watch the film.

As is well known, the story deals with the attempt by a group of former soldiers led by Major Pugachev to escape from the Kolyma camp. The group had been in German captivity and later received a sentence on trumped-up charges of espionage. To date, it has been documentarily established that the prototype of Major Pugachev, convicted “without guilt,” was the former castigator Ivan Tonkonogov, who was convicted of murdering and torturing Soviet citizens in the temporarily occupied territories. With regard to prisoners of war in general, according to archival documents they generally did not move from one camp to another (from German camps to Soviet ones), but rather after a brief check, they were sent in the army, national industries and even to the forces of the NKVD. Nevertheless, the image of Major Pugachev, i.e., the soldier who was honestly doing his duty yet nevertheless fell into the Gulag simply because he had found himself as a German prisoner of war, continues to live in literature, journalism, and now in film, despite well-known facts, which, as of yet, have not been refuted by anyone.

The first academic publications concerning repatriation appeared a bit later than journalistic nonfiction, which is typical for virtually all subjects that were previously taboo. All the historians who have treated this subject can be divided into two groups, namely the “statist” historians who generally endorsed the actions of the Soviet government as stemming from real economic and political necessity (Shevyakov, Pykhalov) and historians oriented toward “human rights,” i.e., those who focus on the legal and humanitarian aspects of the problem (Polyan). Their point of view, as one can easily assume, is virtually the same opinion as that held by Western and emigre scholars (Betell, Tolstoy) who treat total compulsory repatriation of Soviet citizens as a humanitarian crime, not only by the Soviet government but also by Western governments that refused to grant political asylum to those people who did not wish to return to the Soviet Union.

These scholars, standing on positions of “human rights,” often overlook or, rather, deliberately do not take into account a number of quite obvious obstacles. It is well known that the agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain on the mandatory repatriation of displaced persons was reached at a meeting of the three countries’ leaders at Yalta in February 1945. Then, at the end of the war, the need to facilitate the return home of all those who found themselves in exile during the war was taken for granted. Accordingly, the need for repatriation was also not questioned. It was believed that repatriation would be avoided only by those who disgraced themselves by collaborating with the enemy. Attitudes toward the collaborators among both the authorities and the general public in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition were sharply negative. Any help and even indulgence for Vlasovists and other traitors was virtually equated with enemy cooperation. Western governments traditionally relied heavily on public opinion at the time – at the final stages of the war and immediately after its end – simply because they could not do otherwise.

Of course, the West did not want to bear any legal responsibility for protecting former castigators and other types of collaborators. This included handing over those who, strictly according to the letter of the agreements, were not subject to repatriation, i.e., “old” emigres and so-called “Westerners” who were native to regions that were not part of the Soviet Union prior to the outbreak of the war and who had served in the volunteer units of the Wehrmacht and the SS.

Attitudes toward displaced Soviet people who sought to remain in the West began to change only later with the beginning of the Cold War when former enemies were gradually transformed into “allies in the fight against communism.” But even then, Western countries simply could not physically accept all potential defectors. According to some scholars, in particular, Zemskov, there was a maximum of approximately half a million people, constituting the backbone of the second wave of emigration, who could realistically adapt to living in the West. Confirmation of this was the arrival in camps for displaced persons in Germany, Austria and other European countries of those who failed to settle in their new countries – thousands of former Soviet citizens – as well as those whom the governments refused to accept even in countries where there was every opportunity for resettlement (e.g., Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil).

However, the extent of “anti-return” sentiment among Soviet displaced persons should not be exaggerated. According to Zemskov, had repatriation been strictly voluntary, the number of people remaining in the West would unlikely have exceeded one million. In reality, as we have already mentioned, their number was two times less. Among those unwilling to return to the Soviet Union were most of the residents of the Baltic states, western Ukraine and western Belorussia. “Easterners,” i.e., those people who lived within the borders of the Soviet Union before September 17, 1939, on the contrary, for the most part sought to return home. In general, according to Zemskov, who bases his conclusions on data from questionnaires and explanatory notes by emigres themselves, the reports of NKVD informers in the camps of returnees and numerous memoirs, among the displaced Soviet persons (both “Easterners” and “Westerners”) those determined to return were no less than 70% and defectors – approximately 5%. The remaining 25% were hesitant – in other words, those who basically wanted to return home but who feared reprisals. These figures are often questioned, but even straight opponents of Zemskov, in particular, Boldyrev, recognize that the number of those who would have agreed to repatriation without any coercion would have amounted to 60-75%, while the remaining 25-40% cannot be categorized as former collaborators and other staunch defectors.

The Soviet government, although it sought a general return of all its citizens, did not set as its goal the need to convince the masses of displaced persons of the need to return home, much less “catch” all those who were in Europe and put them back behind the barbed wire. This task simply did not exist. As we have already mentioned, most of the former Soviet prisoners of war in concentration camps, OST-Arbeiter, sought themselves to return to the Soviet Union. The Soviet government had to gather and register the displaced persons scattered throughout virtually all of Europe, including those in neutral countries, to check them (including to identify criminals). It also had to arrange for the subsequent transport of these people back to the Soviet Union.

The problem was, without exaggeration, of titanic proportions. At the end of the war, there were approximately 5 million Soviet citizens living outside the country. Of these, 1.7 million were former prisoners of war; the rest were former OST-Arbeiter and refugees who either voluntarily left with the retreating Germans or who were forcibly evacuated by them. More than 3 million people were located in the territories controlled by the Allies, and, accordingly, less than 2 million were in the regions occupied by the Red Army.

Such a large-scale and complicated (especially in a technical sense) problem was solved, of course, at the state level. On August 24, 1944, the State Defense Committee adopted a decree  “On Organizing the Reception of Returning Soviet Citizens Forcibly Evacuated by the Germans, as well as Those Who for Various Reasons Fell Behind the Border Between the USSR and Poland.” Two days later, the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decreed “On Soviet Prisoners of War and Soviet Citizens Forcibly Evacuated by the Germans to the Territories of Italy and France.”

On October 4, 1944, General-Colonel Filipp Golikov was appointed by the Council of People's Commissars (later the Council of Ministers) of the USSR to handle issues of repatriation. On October 6, a resolution was adopted on the activities of the commissioner, and on October 23, the Office of the Commissioner for Repatriation was formed. Representatives of the office were sent to the army or, rather, to the army assembly-transit points that were established on the front. The liberated territories established checkpoint filtration camps and NKVD camps. The tasks of the personnel at these points and in the camps included gathering, recording, initial verification and repatriation of displaced persons. Originally, the amount of time required for verification and, accordingly, for people to spend in the camps was 10-15 days. But this guideline was rarely adhered to, mostly because of the huge number of people. The average stay at the checkpoint filtration camps and prefabricated transit points lasted from 1-2 months.

The organization of transit points and camps was dictated not only by the need for verification. These points also had to provide food, clothing and basic necessities – after arriving at the camps or assembly points until they arrived at their places of permanent residence, people received allowances according to the norms established for the personnel at the rear of the Soviet army. They were also given much-needed medical care. It is obvious that accomplishing this task could only have been done through some sort of centralized mechanism. It was necessary not only to prevent an uncontrolled movement of large numbers of people around Europe but also to prevent looting and clashes with local residents. In short, the “camp” or centralized nature of repatriation was an objective necessity. By the way, the Western allies did exactly the same thing when they deployed camps for displaced persons in their areas of occupation.

With regard to the process of repatriation, it is described in detail by many authors, in particular the above-mentioned Polyan, Zemskov, Shevyakov and others. There is no point in recounting their work. We will note only that the vast majority of displaced persons – 4,199,448 people, of whom 2,660,013 were civilians and 1,539,475 were prisoners of war – returned to the Soviet Union as early as March 1, 1946. In the following years the number of repatriations declined. In 1947-1952, just over 50,000 people returned. The period of mass repatriation, therefore, was actually completed in the first six months after the end of the war. However, the “emotional epic of millions of people finding the Motherland, who had violently been deprived of it by foreign conquerors,” as Zemskov referred to the repatriation in one of his articles, does not end here.

Article to be continued…

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