Although as a Georgian, Stalin belonged to one of the USSR's minority peoples, his concern was always with promoting the dominance of Russia within the Soviet state. He feared that to allow minority rights would encourage challenges to his central authority. One of his motives in implementing the purges was to suppress any signs of national independence by removing potential leaders of breakaway movements. A basic method he employed to suppress possible opposition was to deport whole peoples from their homeland to a distant region of the USSR. Outstanding examples of this were:
• In 1940, the takeover of the Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia), and of Bukovina and Bessarabia resulted in 2 million being deported, the majority of whom died.
• In 1941, after the outbreak of war, Stalin, anxious to prevent the peoples of the western region of the USSR from actively supporting the invading German armies, ordered the deportation to Siberia of various national groups, including Kalmyks, Ukrainians, Chechens, Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans; the deportations led to the deaths of one-third of the 4 million involved.
• By 1945, some 20 million Soviet people had been uprooted.
What does Source Q indicate regarding the extent of Stalin’s deportation policies?
World History
