Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Special Settlers in Kyrgyzstan

Now that classes are over it looks like I will have some free time to do some research this summer. I would like to do something specifically related to Kyrgyzstan. In particular I would like to research the special settlement system in Kyrgyzstan during the 1940s and 1950s. During World War II, Kyrgyzstan became "home" to over 100,000 special settlers, mostly deportees from the Caucasus. In October 1945 the number of special settlers in Kyrgyzstan reached 112,400. (Bugai, doc. 17, p. 237). The Karachais formed the first wave of war time deportees to Kyrgyzstan. The NKVD deported most members of this nationality, 68,938 people from their homeland on 2 November 1943. (Pobol' and Polian, p. 389). By 22 November 1943, 22,721 of these people had arrived in Kyrgyzstan. (Pobol' and Polian, doc. 3.82, p. 402). The Soviet government sent most of the rest of them, 45,500 people, to Kazakhstan (Bugai, doc. 2, pp. 97-98). After resettling the Karachais, the Stalin regime deported Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Meskhetian Turks to Kyrgyzstan during the course of 1944. These people lived in Kyrgyzstan as internal exiles until the late 1950s.

Sources:

N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportivrovat'" (Moscow: "Druzhba narodov", 1992).

N.L. Pobol' and P.M. Polian, eds., Staliniskie deportatsii 1928-1953 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Fond "Demokratiia", 2005).

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