Forced transfer by the Soviet government of the entire Karachay population
Deportation of the Karachays Operation Seagull
Part of Population transfer in the Soviet Union and World War II
Karachay-Cherkessia on the map of Caucasus
Location
Karachay Autonomous Oblast, North Caucasus
Date
2 November 1943
Target
Karachays
Attack type
forced displacement, ethnic cleansing
Deaths
653 during transit[1] 13,100[2]—19,000[3] in total
Victims
69,267 Karachays deported to forced settlements in the Soviet Union
Perpetrators
NKVD, the Soviet secret police
Motive
Russification,[4] retribution for Axis collaboration,[4] cheap labor for forced settlements in the Soviet Union[5]
Part of a series on
Forced population transfer in the Soviet Union
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Evacuation
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Gulag
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Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
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NKVD operation
Ingrian Finns
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Karachays
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NKVD operation
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1944–1946
1955–1959
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Operations
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German–Soviet population transfers
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The Deportation of the Karachays (Russian: Депортация карачаевцев), codenamed Operation Seagull, was the Soviet government's forcible transfer of the entire Karachay population from the North Caucasus to Central Asia, mostly to the Kazakh and Kyrgyzstan SSRs, in November 1943, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, after it was approved by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Nearly 70,000 Karachays of the Caucasus were deported from their native land. The crime was a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s.
Officially, the deportation was carried out in response to the Karachays supposed collaboration with occupying German forces. Originally only restricted to family members of rebel bandits during World War II, the deportation was later extended to the entire Karachay ethnic group. The Soviet government refused to acknowledge the fact that 20,000 Karachays served in the Red Army, greatly outnumbering the 3,000 Karachays who were estimated to have collaborated with the Wehrmacht (the German army). The deportation contributed to between 13,000 and 19,000 deaths, resulting in a 19% mortality rate for the deported population. The Karachays were the first North Caucasus ethnic group to be targeted by Stalin's policy of complete resettlement, which later encompassed five other ethnic groups.
They were rehabilitated in 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet Premier and undertook a process of de-Stalinization. In 1957, the Karachays were released from special settlements and allowed to return to their home region, which was formalized as the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast. By 1959, nearly 85% of Soviet Karachays resided in Karachay-Cherkessia. Later, in 1989, the Soviet government declared that the deportation was a crime. Some contemporary scholars such as Manus Midlarsky cite the Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks and the Karachays as ethnic groups which were singled out by Stalin's alleged genocidal behavior.[6]
^Richmond 2008, p. 116.
^Buckley, Ruble & Hofmann 2008, p. 207.
^Rywkin 1994, p. 67.
^ abMartin 2001b, pp. 326–327.
^Pohl 1999, p. 48.
^Midlarsky 2009, p. 265.
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