Greek Operation of the NKVD

Greek Operation of the NKVD
Location Soviet Union (modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and others)
Date 1937[1]–1950
Target Ethnic Greeks
Attack type
 prison shootings, deportation
Deaths 20,000[2]—50,000 [3]
Perpetrators NKVD security forces

The Greek Operationa[›] (Russian: Греческая Операция, translit. Grecheskaya Operatsiya; Ukrainian: Грецька операція) was an organised mass persecution of the Greeks of the Soviet Union that was ordered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Greeks often use the term "pogrom" (πογκρόμ) for this persecution, though this term usually refers to mob violence rather than persecution by police acting under direct orders, as this one was.[4] It began on December 15, 1937 and marked the beginning of the repressions against Greeks went on for 13 years.[5] Depending on the sources, it is estimated that between 20,000[2] and 50,000[3] Greeks died by the end of this campaign.

A wave of Greek emigrants from the Soviet Union in 1937—1939 is often considered a consequence of Stalinist persecution of the Soviet Greek national movement.[1]

History

The 1926 Soviet census registered 213,765 Greeks in the country[6] and 286,000 in the 1939 census.[7] On 9 August 1937, NKVD order 00485 was adopted to target "subversive activities of Polish intelligence" in the Soviet Union, but was later expanded to also include Latvians, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians and Chinese.[8]

The prosecution of Greeks in USSR was gradual: at first the authorities shut down the Greek schools, cultural centres, and publishing houses.[4] Then, the secret police indiscriminately arrested all Greek men 16 years old or older.[4] All Greeks who were wealthy or self-employed professionals were sought for prosecution first.[4]

On many occasions, the central authorities sent telegrams to police forces with orders to arrest a certain number of Greeks, without giving any individual names,[4] and the police officers would arrest at random any persons of Greek origin until they reached the requested total number of arrests, until the process was repeated at a later date. In all, some 50,000 Greeks died from this persecution.[3]

Some soures claim that there was no widespread counter-revolutionary activity among the Soviet Greeks,[9] though there were exceptions in Constantine Kromiadi, an anti-communist of Greek origin, who was became later second in command in Andrey Vlasov Abwehr detachment during the Nazi German occupation of the Soviet Union in World War II[10] and Vladimir Mikhailovich Despotuli.

Axis collaboration

About one thousand Greeks from Greece and more from the Soviet Union, ostensibly avenging their ethnic persecution from Soviet authorities, joined the Waffen-SS, mostly in Ukrainian divisions. A special case was that of the infamous Ukrainian-Greek Sevastianos Foulidis, a fanatical anti-communist who had been recruited by the Abwehr as early as 1938 and became an official of the Wehrmacht, with extensive action in intelligence and agitation work in the Eastern front. [11]

Remembrance

In 1938, 20,000 Soviet Greeks arrived in Greece.[12] Between 1965 and 1975, another 15,000 Greeks emigrated from the Soviet Union and went to Greece.[13] A monument to all Greek victims of GULAG was unveiled in Magadan in 2011. [14] Unlike many other 'punished' ethnic groups, the Soviet Greeks were never officially rehabilitated either by the Soviet or the post-Soviet legislation.[15] In the early 1990s, a movement arose advocating a creation of a new Greek autonomy in the Krasnodar region, but it failed to achieve support. One Soviet Greek man, born in 1959, described this outcome with the following words:

See also

Notes

  • ^ a: In Greece, Grecheskaya Operatsiya is also known with the transliteration Gretseskayia Operatsia as that is how it was printed in various publications.[4][16] In Greek, it is known as Ελληνική Επιχείρηση,[4] which means "Greek Operation".

References

  1. 1 2 Popov 2016, p. 64.
  2. 1 2 Will Englund (November 12, 2012). "Greeks of the steppe". Washington Post. Retrieved 30 June 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 Agtzidis 1991, p. 372—382.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Το πογκρόμ κατά των Ελλήνων της ΕΣΣΔ, ΕΛΛΑΔΑ, 09.12.2007
  5. ↑ "Репрессии в 1930-1950 гг. по отношению к грекам СССР"
  6. ↑ Vouitra 2011, p. 131.
  7. ↑ Kubiiovych & Struk 1984, p. 97.
  8. ↑ Marshall 2010, p. 335.
  9. ↑ Bugay 1996, p. 91.
  10. ↑ Thomas 2015, p. 16.
  11. ↑ Hondromatidis, Iakovos I Mavri Skia Stin Ellada ("The Black Shadow Over Greece"), Athens 2004 (in Greek)
  12. ↑ Olson, Pappas & Pappas 1994, p. 274.
  13. ↑ Olson, Pappas & Pappas 1994, p. 275.
  14. ↑ "Памятник грекам, жертвам сталинского ГУЛАГа, откроют на Колыме"
  15. 1 2 Popov 2016, p. 61.
  16. ↑ Day of Remembrance for the Greeks of Pontus, an article by Voice of Greece

Books and journals

  • Agtzidis, Vlasis (1991). "The Persecution of Pontic Greeks in the Soviet Union". Journal of Refugee Studies. 4 (4): 372—382. doi:10.1093/jrs/4.4.372.
  • Bugay, Nikolay (1996). The Deportation of Peoples in the Soviet Union. New York City: Nova Publishers. ISBN 9781560723714. OCLC 36402865.
  • Kaya, Bülent (2002). The Changing Face of Europe: Population Flows in the 20th Century. Council of Europe. ISBN 9789287147905. LCCN 2007397168.
  • Kubiiovych, Volodymyr; Struk, Danylo Husar (1984). Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume 2 (revised ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  • Marshall, Alex (2010). The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule. Routledge. ISBN 9781136938252. LCCN 2010003007.
  • Olson, James Stuart; Pappas, Lee Brigance; Pappas, Nicholas Charles (1994). An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313274978.
  • Polian, Pavel (2004). Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR. Budapest; New York City: Central European University Press. ISBN 9789639241688. LCCN 2003019544.
  • Popov, Anton (2016). Culture, Ethnicity and Migration After Communism: The Pontic Greeks. Routledge. ISBN 9781317155805.
  • Thomas, Nigel (2015). Hitler’s Russian & Cossack Allies 1941–45. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472806888.
  • Vouitra, Eftihia (2011). The 'Right to Return' and the Meaning of 'Home': A Post-Soviet Greek Diaspora Becoming European?. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 9783643901071.
  • de Waal, Thomas (2010). The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199750436.

Bibliography

  • Ivan Dzhukha, «Греческая операция. История репрессий против греков в СССР.» — СПб. Издательство «Алетейя», 2006. — 416 с. — (серия: «Новогреческие исследования»). — 2500 экз. ISBN 5-89329-854-3
  • [1]
  1. ↑ Hondromatidis, Iakovos I Mavri Skia Stin Ellada ("The Black Shadow Over Greece"), Athens 2004 (in Greek)
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