Talk:Population transfer in the Soviet Union/Archive 1

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I've always wondered what was the incentive of doing these transports? Creating an enemy? Colonialism? I mean, because racism always seemed rather anti-Machiavellian to me. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 05:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think there's an easy answer to that question. You can read all about Joseph Stalin, totalitarianism, History of the Soviet Union, History of Russia, the Russian Empire, katorga, russification, etc., and draw your own conclusions. Compare the perspectives of historians such as Richard Pipes with those of others such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. You may also find topics such as Józef Piłsudski's Prometheism to be a point of interest. heqs 06:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Why is not..

The ethnic cleansing of Germans from large part of their homeland in 1945 mentioned? Like Köningsberg and the parts that we given to Poland, this was all Soviets doing, hell they even added the whole of Köningsberg region to marvelous SU, and to this day call it as "Kaliningrad"..

Yes, and Köningsberg is still named after a communist criminal - one of the ones responsible for Katyń, too. The Soviet Union may not exist anymore, but its legacy is alive and well. There are plenty of Bolshevist sympathizers today. 178.37.146.119 (talk) 15:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Russian source books

Since this is english wikipedia... is it not unfair and bordering on being contrary to Wikipedia:No original research having this entire article based on those books? There is litle chance of many english speakers being able to verify the information. This is not far off someone coming up with information researched by theselves in government archives (eg. giving archive reference number) --maxrspct in the mud 18:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If the content comes from these books, it's probably not WP:OR. While a language barrier of citing Russian books is regrettable, many topics -- especially those concerning Soviet history -- are not adequately documented in English, so citing Russian books may at times be inevitable.
However, this does not necessarily mean the books you mean belong in the article. There may be other reasons to refer to them. Can you mention any? Digwuren 17:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Polish

The following piece was removed from the article. `'mikka 18:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The number of Polish citizens deported to Soviet Russia (Siberia) listed in the Vikipedia as 276,000, is erroneous. Based on Polish sources it is about a million ("W Sowieckim Osaczeniu", p.95, Zbigniew, S. Siemaszko, Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1991, ISBN 0 85065 210 3,). Total number of Polish citizens on Soviet territory, including the military, during WWII is estimated at about 1.7 million. I also object to the wording contained in the article:"Some ethnic deportations, eg. of Poles after 1939 from anexed territories of what is now Western Belarus and Western Ukraine (but was then Eastern Poland), were also JUSTIFIED BY POLITICAL/SOCIAL REASONS (capitalization mine). There was no justification for these deportations. There were entire families, small children, old men and women, some of them died during transport. In my box car there was a man 72 years old and two of his grand children, 4 and 6 years old. What "political/social reasons" could be for their deportation? The only reason was that they were Polish citizens. The same criteria were applied by Hitler to Jews. Was this "justified"?

Imprisonment is not population transfer

Putting a person into a prison or labor camp is a separate topic. It is not population transfer in normal understanding, although a person is moved from place to place. Gulag is covered into separate, big articles. For "related" isssues there is "See also" section. `'Miikka 15:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Putting one person into a prison -- sure. Putting hundreds of thousands of persons into a prison, hauling them a thousand kilometres into taiga, and then assigning them forced labour, however, is not only a Stalin's statistic, it is also population transfer, as well as a few other things such as misuse of judicial process.
Remember, under Stalin, Gulag was a significant industrial producer. Digwuren 17:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I was about to revert your removal. Then, I noticed the claim is sourced by the Institute for Historical Review, which certainly does not qualify as WP:RS. Thus, I concur in the removal for now. This may change if a better source is found. Digwuren 18:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Soviet Union was not the first to use proson labor. Imprisonment is not population transfer. Prisons by definition are away from person's home residence. When released from prison, a person can move back. It is not population transfer, which means forced purposeful change of place of permanent residence. `'Miikka 18:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Soviet prison system of the pre-Khruschev era considered forced settlement of unsettled territories a special goal upon itself. This was one of the reason of mass usage of the sentences such as "25+5": 25 years of imprisonment and forced labour followed by five years of internal exile. As one of the many cruel jokes of Stalin, people would theoretically be allowed to return to their former homes after those five years; however, 30 years having passed, and a likelihood of having built a new life within these internal exile years made it still hard if not impossible.
My point is not that any of these singular data points alone supports classification of these events as population transfer. Rather, I'm trying to make a point that Gulags were not about punishment as much as about state-planned population placement and forced labour, and in this context, based on *all* the tidbits given, it would seem that a population transfer, administered through the penal system, happened. Digwuren 19:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

This wansn't just a population transfer

If some 30% of some "antisoviet" ethnicity is moved to far north of Siberia, with winter teperature about -50 Celsium, it looks prety much like genocide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.118.205.130 (talk) 08:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Banditism

The current links in the reason columns lead to a Welsh radio show called Bandit. I am not really sure what the term exactly means so I'm hesitant to change it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.141.247.88 (talk) 20:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

What has the fate of POWs got to do with Ethnic Cleansing?

Is there a connection between German POWs and Soviet ethnic cleansing of Germans? The reference used for the statement “almost a million German POWs died in the camps” actually gives a different reason “The immense suffering Germany and her Axis partners had caused surely played a key role in the treatment of enemy POWs”. Which reference supports the death of German POWs was part of ethnic cleansing? Jniech (talk) 16:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. POWs removed from the paragraph in question. Ethnic cleansing of Germans was removal of civil population as described in this paragraph or the article. `'Míkka>t 17:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Effects on Catholics

The article should really consider examining to what extent Catholics were affected by population transfers in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. Poles, Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Bessarabians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc ; many of these populations had high percentages of Catholics, and it appears that one of the goals of these population transfers was to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church in the Oriental regions of the European continent. ADM (talk) 01:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure, and increase the influence of the Catholic Church in Siberia :-) Soviet Communists systematically eliminated the influence of all religions and churches. Russian Orthodox Church had its share of severe persecution by Bolsheviks much earlier. - Altenmann >t 03:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Good work you guys, this is an interesting page. I suggest you fuse it with Forced settlements in the Soviet Union and delete one of the two articles. They are very similar and may confuse new readers. -Chumchum7 (talk) 20:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

As the initial author of both, I was thinking about something similar. After I created them, they grew independently out of coordinating control. However instead of deleting, the content of both pages must be carefully split into two rather independent topics: "population transfer" and "types of forced settements", according to the original intention. - Altenmann >t 18:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, to clarify, I'm not suggesting any of the great work you started should be deleted. I propose you merge the two articles onto one page, with clear headings for each topic. That way, there'll be a 'one-stop shop' for this subject, and the extent of your efforts will be seen in one go. Because I was casually browsing, I saw the one article about a month after the other, and wish I had seen all the content on the same occasion. -Chumchum7 (talk) 17:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
To clarify, I didn't say that I thought you are suggesting to delete anything. Political repression in Soviet Union is a huge scope and I bet you didn't see many articles on the subject. This does not mean that all of them must be in the same page, titled GULAG. The topics I am talking about are close, but notably distinct, and of quite large size, too. You can find many groups of atricles which seem to go always together, such as Hungarians and Hungarian language. But wikipedia is not paper, and they are one mouse click away from another. You wrote: "I saw the one article about a month after the other" - why so? Most of the time they were wikilinked to each other. When I do the job, probably you will understand better what I mean. - Altenmann >t 00:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks - I had been casually browsing around a another subject, and stumbled across this, but the link to the other article didn't seem much more vital than any of the other links. It wasn't my core area of interest so I didn't spend a lot of time here. I guess its something to do with our psychology of observation - I guess like in advertising and in news media, some new and relatively less interested audience members will be lost if you don't grab them right away. Of course an Wikipedia isn't news or a commercial, but it has different kinds of readers with different levels of interest in each subject. Anyway, I'm now very interested and I've watchlisted these pages and I look forward to your work. Thanks again. -Chumchum7 (talk) 09:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Repatriation after World War II

Over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the Gulag.[35][36]

?????????? This sentence doesn't make sense at all!? Red Army Soldiers sent to Gulag?

--EruThe1 (talk) 18:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

In actuality, there is a confusion between two things: GULAG and filtration camps. All POWs were sent to numerous filtration camps (not GULAG) where they stayed while checked by NKVD. About 225,000 of them were found guilty in collaboration and sent to GULAG. Others were not found guilty and were either re-drafted, or assigned to labour battalions to participate in restoration of damaged economy, or sent home. I fixed this issue. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:35, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! --EruThe1 (talk) 10:56, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
  • "labour battalions to participate in restoration of damaged economy" - Communist propaganda language. The Russian name was "construction bataillons" and they constituted a mixture of Gulag conditions with army structure - poor feeding, hard work, louses, ilnesses. In the West it's called "slavery", but Slavs "participate in restoration of damaged economy".Xx236 (talk) 13:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Subjective impression doesn't change the sense of this concept, that is depicted more precisely just in so-called communist propaganda form. On the other side "slavery" can be understood as not only anti-communist propaganda (there's no physical or Bible-related evidence which of them is worse) but heavy POVish emotion. Unfortunately modern languages are too discrete to depict such an idea in both short and analytically neutral form.--213.208.170.194 (talk) 13:38, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

unreferenced claims

This sentence was removed from the article. In absence of a reliabe reference supporting it, it probably needs to stay outside: 

Moreover, Tatar Council organized a mass slaughter of Russian in Crimea, killing between 70,000 and 120,000 Russians.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.176.105.133 (talk) 13:12, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

External Link problems

Has anyone noticed that the external links for this article are broken? Because they are. Here's a rundown:

I haven't checked them all, but that's what I encountered just trying to find sources.

Yea55 (talk) 19:56, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

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Death tolls

I added a template to lede to get editor attention and discussion on this controversial matter. The death toll figures as they stand now are relying on exclusively one or few sources each providing stats for multiple ethnic groups. However, there may be multiple estimated figures for each group's death toll. So as it stands now the section is WP:POV/WP:WEIGHT.

For example, in the article Deportation of the Crimean Tatars (May 1944). It notes roughly 8,000 killed during transportation itself. Then provides a range of figures for deaths in exile. They vary by source, and you should also consider timeframe when thinking about deaths in exile. One counts up to year 1948, another 1951. The figures themselves are north of 40,000. One states 42k and another 45k. While another doesn't give a timespan limit but states "40,000 to 80,000" overall.

Even if we ignore the last figure, and go by the former. The death toll comes to 48,000 to 53,000, which is considerably higher than the 34,300 in the Death toll section here. I would assume similar dynamics are at play for many of the other ethnic groups listed. Any one else have any comment about this? DA1 (talk) 12:49, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Clearly the figures in this article should align with those in the article Deportation of the Crimean Tatars. If there are a number of sources giving different estimates, then the solution is to show the range. --Nug (talk) 22:04, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Nug: Do you know the distinction between Kirghiz SSR, Kirghizia and Kyrgyzstan being used? The same for the other countries in the table. I'm kind of confused by the inconsistent naming convention being employed. I presume they should all state Kirghiz SSR only, as that was the country/republic, given the years stated in the article. DA1 (talk) 05:56, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
I have added a range for the mortality rates, and thus several sources are now given for their death toll. I hope this helps. If someone finds other sources, feel free to add them. If nothing else in the article is contested, the template should be removed.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 18:40, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that does helps. I think we can agree the template can now be removed. --Nug (talk) 21:54, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Nug, 3E1I5S8B9RF7 Any clarification on the naming conventions being used for the destination in the "Timeline" section? And is the "Death toll" table only counting deaths in exile once they've reached their destination, or counting the deaths during the transfer as well? If it's the former, then why? There are still POV/weight issues here. DA1 (talk) 02:22, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
DA1 I don't understand your question. What "naming conventions" are you referring to?
As for the "Death toll" estimates, the figures include all the deaths, including during the transit. --3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 11:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
I used some examples in my 2nd post above. Not sure if there's any better way of explaining it.
If they include transit, then it would be higher. The source you're using itself does not factor deaths during transit. I looked it up on Google Books [1]. Its counting "deaths above expected mortality" rate in exile, not counting transit. Read the language used. DA1 (talk) 11:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
For example: 34,300 (Ediev) + 7,889 (NKVD's official est. of deaths during transport) = 42,189. Which coincides with the other figures. This is because it's only counting mortality rates while in exile, the entire page is discussing that, and does not factor direct deaths from transport. You can read page 207 alone, or pages 204-207. It mentions "settlers" and "special settlements" several times because its exclusively discusses deaths within the settlements/settlers and not transit. DA1 (talk) 12:17, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Page 207 of your link says: "The Karachai demographer D. M. Ediev estimates that there were 228,800 excess deaths due to deportation and exile among the Russian Germans from 1942 to 1952... His estimates for the other deported nationalities are equally as high". I take this that he automatically includes transport deaths, as well, in all of the figures for this page.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 06:55, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Expulsion of Germans

One recent editor included the post-World War II expulsion of Germans as part of this event, which might be problematic. By including 300,000–360,000 German deaths in the death toll, it makes for a debatable conclusion. Other sources mention that around 6 million people were deported by Stalin, but if we include this expulsion of Germans, then that figure changes. How many Germans were deported by the Soviet forces after WWII? My problem with this is that numerous other countries expulsed German citizens from their lands (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania...), while we also have the Potsdam Conference, where several Allied leaders confirmed their previous commitment to the removal of German populations, and thus the Soviet forces cannot be solely blamed on this expulsion. Or am I missing something?--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 12:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

response

It only includes the portion of deaths caused by the Soviets and excludes those caused by other countries, including those who died in Soviet controlled camps, forced labor, and massacres...

The Soviet Union also deported people from occupied territories such as the Baltic states, Poland, and territories occupied by Germans. A study published by the German government in 1974 estimated the number of German civilian victims of crimes during expulsion of Germans after World War II between 1945 and 1948 to be over 600,000, with about 400,000 deaths in the areas east of Oder and Neisse (ca. 120,000 in acts of direct violence, mostly by Soviet troops but also by Poles, 60,000 in Polish and 40,000 in Soviet concentration camps or prisons mostly from hunger and disease, and 200,000 deaths among civilian deportees to forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union), 130,000 in Czechoslovakia (thereof 100,000 in camps) and 80,000 in Yugoslavia (thereof 15,000 to 20,000 from violence outside of and in camps and 59,000 deaths from hunger and disease in camps).[13]

Which is why a figure of between 300,000 and 360,000 is used and not the full 600,000. (See italicized numbers) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:601:1501:1890:891B:239D:5B8F:9F3 (talk) 00:03, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

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Why is it not called Genocide

At least add the word "Forced" to the title. None of the transfered people wanted to abandon their home and go to Siberia. Hvn0413 (talk) 20:36, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

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