Mass Forcible Deportations of Ukrainians: From the Soviet unity of nations to Contemporary Russian War Crimes
Russia doing a full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Every day we receive information about more and more victims. This war does not end only with rocket attacks, robberies and violence. Unfortunately, the goals of the Russian occupier are more global – it is an attempt not only to physically but also mentally destroy Ukrainians, to erase national identity in the occupied territories. In this regard, the russian invaders, together with their collaborators, carry out forced deportations, which include the forced eviction of civilians to Russia, illegal adoption of minors and forced Russification.
In the article about the history of mass deportations of Ukrainians from Soviet times to the nowadays noted that this criminal practice is not new, this deportation system comes straight out of the Soviet playbook which resulted in the disappearance of entire ethnic groups and threatened to wipe out separate nations from the body of the USSR. Despite Moscow deported millions of Ukrainians to Russia between 1920s to 1940s, this crime against humanity hasn’t been legally condemned by the world community. As the USSR’s successor at the UN Security Council, Moscow repeats the its old crimes, including deportation of Ukrainians, trapped under Russian military control.
Deportations of Ukrainians during the Soviet Times
Soviet occupation subjected Ukrainians to deportation for various purposes, including destruction of nationally oriented intelligentsia and political elite, elimination of wealthy farms. In addition to ethnic Ukrainians, the Soviet repressive system forcibly expelled other ethnic groups that inhabiting Ukraine — Poles, Germans, Jews, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians and Ukrainians. Moscow strived for subjugation of the colonized peoples and elimination of ethnic differences to create "soviet nation". In total, about 6 million people were victims of Soviet deportations and forced relocations across the Soviet Union.
Preparing to deportation process. Arests of Ukrainian intellectuals in 1920s
The mass repressions of the Soviet era, one of the main methods of which was forced deportation, did not begin immediately, but gradually unfolded, starting with the arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. It was arranged in the 1920s with the establishment of the Soviet regime and primarily affected people who opposed occupation authorities — academics, teachers, social and political elite. Prior to deportations, the Soviet administration attempted to isolate its victims by prohibition of research and artistic activities, organizing scientific societies, and publishing works.
Starting with groundless arrests of doctors and professors from Kharkiv and Kyiv, on August 3, 1922, the Central Committee of the CP (b) U approved a full list of university professors subjected to arrest — 77 people in total. Among the prominent scientists imprisoned that summer were M. Ptukha (demographer), O. Korchak-Chepurkivsky (hygienist, epidemiologist), V. Chekhivsky and others.
Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR Korchak-Chepurkivskyi O.V.
According to archival documents, the victims were considered isolated rather than arrested, perfectly reflecting the main objectives of Lenin's purge of anti-Soviet intellectuals.
Deportations of ukrainian villagers in 1930s. "Dekulakization" process
In the 1930s, Soviet deportations became systematic and were connected with a forced "collectivisation" of Ukrainian peasants – the joining of their own farms and property to a collective farm created by Soviet activists. In fact, the Soviet government faced resistance to the establishment of a socialist regime in all villages, which included collectivisation and forced nationalisation of land. The disobedience of Ukrainian villagers and farmers, who were named as a "kulaks", was suppressed by forced deportation to Siberia.
The Soviets evicted 100,000 people from February to May 1930, and another 120-130,000 from June to July 1931, resulting in forced evictions of at least from 220–230 to 280 thousand Ukrainian villagers in total.
Soviet occupation of the western regions of Ukraine and forcible deportations
The new wave of deportations followed shortly after the Soviet invasion of Western Ukraine in September of 1939. This stage is represented by four major waves:
The first wave, conducted on February 10-13, 1940, affected 17.206 families, or 89,062 people. The second wave took place in April–May 1940 and resulted in eviction of more than 30,000 people to Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The third wave began in the summer of 1940, and targeted relatives of previously repressed people. According to the NKVD estimates, 37,532 families, or 83,207 people were deported from six western regions of Ukraine as of July 2, 1940.
The last, fourth wave of deportations began on the eve of the German-Soviet war. On May 16, 1941, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the deportation of the enemy element from the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and Moldavia", which resulted in forced evictions of 12,371 people from the western regions of Ukraine.
In general, the Soviet authorities deported 1 million 173 thousand people from the western regions of Ukraine from September 1939 to June 1941.After the end of the Second World War, mass deportations returned to western Ukraine followed by a transfer of 78,000 more Ukrainians within the "Operation West", conducted on October 21, 1947.
Order №. 00430 of the Minister of State Security of the USSR Viktor Abakumov on deportation
The deportations were used a repressive method of subjugating the occupied territories, which consisted in resettling Russians in abandoned homes of Ukrainians, after they was forcibly transferred to Russia’s Siberia known for its extreme climate conditions. Only hundreds of deportees were able to return to their homeland after years of deportation, while a lot of victims died in exile.
Forcible deportations of Ukrainians in 2022-2023
Since the launch of all-out invasion, Russia once again revived the same criminal methods of the Soviet era. Occupation of Ukrainian terrains is inexorably followed by deportation of local population to remote Russian regions, abduction and indoctrination of children. Russian network of "temporary accommodation centers" — in fact, filtration facilities — precisely repeat Soviet concentration camps, where Ukrainian deportees are subjected to strict detention and ideological influence of Russian security forces. According to Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, at least 2 million 800 thousand Ukrainians have been deported to Russia since February 2022. At the same time, data from the UNHCR are indicate 2.8 million Ukrainian citizens in the Russian Federation and another 16,705 Ukrainian citizens are in the Republic of Belarus. It must to understand that this numbers is not final, and some sources give much higher figures, from 2,8 to 4,7 million people of whom 260 to 700 thousand are children. Trying to find out the number of deported children, the data is also very different, but the scale is impressive. The Children of War website indicates that 738 thousand children have been deported based on open sources voiced by the Russian Federation. The platform has identified 19499 children who were deported from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine between February 24, 2022 to June 2023.
Some of the stories are astonishing in its cruelty and encourage us to rethink the values enshrined by the international organizations and laws. Yevhen from Mariupol was among many Ukrainians, forcibly taken to the filtration camp with his children. While the man was being groundlessly held in detention for 45 days, his children were deported to Russia and set for illegal adoption to Russian families. Likewise, Olena, a nurse and a mother of 8 from Izium (Kharkiv region), lost her mother due to Russian strike on a hospital where she worked, while her injured son Andrii was captivated by the enemy troops. The Russians refused to provide any information regarding the boy’s whereabouts for months, driving the woman into despair. Both Yevhen and Olena managed to return their children — however, the number of similar stories without happy endings is yet to be established.
The Russian authorities carefully prepared for deportations, selecting deportation routes, building temporary accommodation facilities and providing funding for their maintenance. In attempts to annihilate Ukrainian identity, they deport civilians to remote areas of Russia, deprive them of possibility to return and are force deportees to adopt Russian citizenship.
Children remain the primary target, as age makes them vulnerable to Russian propaganda and "re-education". The Kremlin exploits kidnapped Ukrainian children to manipulate the "humanitarian" mission of evacuating children from Russia-induced hostilities. Many minors are being forcibly adopted by Russian families and given Russian citizenship despite having parents, which complicates the process of bringing them home even more.
The abovementioned details of Russia’s war crimes against Ukraine prove that mass deportations, kidnapping and assimilation of Ukrainian children are not the side effects of wartime, but a thoroughly orchestrated policy. The world must remain steadfast in its commitment to supporting Ukraine as the Kremlin’s defeat is the only efficient wat to halt Russian deportations and secure the supremacy of human rights worldwide.
As a conclusions we shout constant a fact that the above-mentioned acts of the Russian occupiers against ukrainians are a violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, Article 78 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, Article 21 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 283 of the Family Code of Ukraine, which fully gives grounds to speak of modern Russia as a terrorist state at the international level. Russia must be held accountable for the deportations, and most importantly- return the illegally deported people and the first decisions have already been made. Thus, for the illegally deportation of Ukrainians judges of International Criminal Court arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. At the same time, the condemnation of the illegal deportation of Ukrainians and support for the decision of the International Criminal Court were also announced at this year’s G7 Summit in Japan.
Vladyslav Havrylov, researcher and writer in PR Army
