Jan 20 2010
Update: Presidential Commission on Falsification Meets
Russia’s Commission to combat historical falsification has met. Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Presidential Administration, makes it reasonably clear what the goal has been all along.
“Let’s be realistic: there is a number of countries, in which political passions regarding certain issues of our history are still running high . . . At a strictly scientific level we have managed to sway our opponents or make them think about the futility of attempts to impose on us their view of history through falsification. . . . But success at a popular level is still far away.” (RIA-Novosti)
The “number of countries” are easily identifiable: Poland and the Baltics are fairly clearly the places that Naryshkin has in mind, and in particular the idea that the Soviet return in 1944-45 was not liberation but instead a new subjugation. But, as should go without saying, that idea is not a question of fact but a question of interpretation.
My modest proposal: let’s open up the Presidential Archive for the period from 1939-1945 and see if that sheds any light on these questions. Naryshkin’s in a position to make that happen.
I think that there really is no interpretation involved. It is a fact that the Soviet Union subjugated the Baltic states and Eastern Poland by force. They also did it in conspiracy with Nazi Germany and in violation of international law which is why the US and UK never recognized the Baltics as part of the USSR. The archives that have been opend up show that the NKVD and MVD forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children from Poland and the Baltic states to Siberia. Virtually nobody other than ethnic Russians currently deny that such forcible deportation of civilian populations is a crime against humanity. The basic problem is that Russia was never deStalinized the way Germany was deNazified. Hence a very large number of Russians including many in the government think that Stalin’s crimes against people in the Baltic states as well as others such as the Crimean Tatars were perfectly justifiable.
“The archives that have been opend up show that the NKVD and MVD forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children from Poland and the Baltic states to Siberia.” hundreds of thousands of women and children from Poland and Baltic states? dude, are you high?
is it so difficult to check Zemskov?
Is Katyn also a “question of interpretation”?
Isn’t it entirely up to Polish people to decide whether they were subjugated or not?
Is it a “question of interpretation” whether Germany sought o subjugate Russia? Maybe there are Germans (or others) who believe Germany sought to liberate Russia!
Oleg:
I just did check Zemskov, for 1949 the number of special settlers from Poland and the Baltic States that are women and children are as follows as of 15 July 1949.
Deported from Baltic States in 1949 – 24, 022 men, 40,877 women and 26,305 children.
Deported from Lithuania 1945-1948 – 13,453 men, 19,698 women and 13,305 children.
Zemskov, “Spetsposelentsy (po dokumentatsii NKVD-MVD)”, SI, no. 1, 1990, table 7, p. 12.
He does not provide a breakdown by age or sex for the 1940-1941 deportations. But, if the ratios are the same for 1949 then yes the number of women and children deported from the Baltic states and Poland certainly exceeds two hundred thousand. He places the number of deportees during these times as follows.
The numbers below are from his 2005 book.
During 1940-1941 the number of deportees from Poland, Moldova and the Baltic states is listed at nearly 470,000 so yes if more than half are women and children then hundreds of thousands of women and children were derported. He breaks this figure down to 380,00-385,000 were Polish citizens in 1940 and 85,000 “anti-Soviet elements” of various nationalities from the Baltic States, Moldova and E. Poland in 1941. (Zemskov, p. 91).
Please read Zemskov before you wrongly site him. It is obvious that the majority of deportees were women and children from the Zemskov figures and that the deportations from Poland and the Baltic States in the 1940s exceeds a half a million people.
Not including any of the Polish or Moldovan deportees, the number of women and children deported from the Baltic states alone is nearly a hundred thousand. A report from 13 March 19 March 1965 to Mikoyan from the procurators office lists the number of Baltic deportees as 157,684 of which 58,424 were women and 35,921 children under 15. (N.F. Bugai, “Ikh nado deportirovat’”, doc. 22, p. 205). It should be noted that the number of deportees listed in this report and hence the number of women and children is incomplete. Pavel Polian has tabulated the number of deportees from the Baltic states to be 203,590. (P. Polian, Aganist their Will, p. 167).
Thus from the three Baltic states there are a hundred thousand women and children who were deported. It reasonable to assume that at least a hundred thousand, a mere quarter, of the 389,382 Polish citizens deported or imprisoned by the Soviets in 1940 and 1941 were also women and children. (Bugai, doc. 16, p. 33). Especially being as that they make up almost two thirds the Baltic deportees.
Here is the direct quotation from V.N. Zemskov regarding the total number of deportees from the Baltic States, East Poland and Moldova druing 1940-1941. (V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930-1960, Moscow: Nauk, 2005, p.91).
????? ? ??????? ????????? ?????, ??????, ???????, ????????
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???????? ???????? ? ?????? ???? ? ?? ?????? ??????? ?????????????
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?????????, ????? 470 ??? . ???????, ?? ??? ????J\? ? 380-385 ???. -
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Given that other data provided by Zemskov suggest that nearly two thirds of the deportees were women and children, this certainly provides good evidence of hundreds of thousands of women and children being deported from Poland and the Baltic states. If even a quarter are women and children it proves Oleg wrong. Why he deliberately and maliciously miscited Dr. Zemskov I do not know. But, Dr. Stone should certainly note this calculated falsification and take appropriate steps.
The last quotation obviously did not work in Russian. Below is my English translation of Zemskov.
“From the moment of annexing Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Western Ukraine, Western Belorussia, right bank Molodovia, and Northenrn Bukovina into the USSR until the start of the Great Patriotic War from these regions were deported , on our count close to 470 thousand people, of these on the order of 380-385 thousand – the result of a series of deportations of Poles and Polish citizens and more than 85 thousand – ‘anti-Soviet elements’ of various nationalities.”
V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauk, 2005), p. 91.
Again this information clearly proves that Oleg was knowingly attributing statements to V.N. Zemskov that Zemskov’s writings clearly refute. Over half a million people were deported from Poland and the Baltic states during the 1940s. The gender and age breakdown for 1945-1949 clearly show that close to two thirds were women and children. There is no reason to believe that women and children made up less than a quarter of the 1940-1941 deportations. Hence yes the Soviet government did deport hundreds of thousands of women and children from Poland and the Baltic states according to Zemskov.
If you are going to drop names please make the proper citations. In this case the name you cite clearly refutes your poing.
hm.. maybe i am checking a wrong article.
Zemskov, “?????????? ???????????, ?????????????? ? ???????? (30-? – 50-? ????) ”
http://www.ecsocman.edu.ru/images/pubs/2006/11/21/0000295644/1999_n4_p114-124doc.pdf
Table 3. “number/demography of special settlers on Jan 1 1953″:
polish (36045);
from baltic countries (sent from 1945-1948) 81158+39279+19520~160000.
i am not an expert on gulag, so comments are welcome.
The table you are referring to is not the total number of deportees. It is the total number of living special settlers as of 1 January 1953. It does not include those released and those that died before 1953. It also includes those born not deported into the special settlements. You should go look at the 1990 article I am sure it is available on the web. That is where I found it. That article deals specifically with deportations to special settlements. The 1999 article you refer to is on the demography of the Gulag and has little on deportees other than the 1953 table.
Also you do not even cite all the relevent information on the table. On page 122 the table continues and gives two more categories of deportees from the Baltic states.
Kulaks from Lithuania 1951- men 5,512, women 7,418 and children 516
From the Baltic states 1940-1941- men 3,576, women 8,878, and children 160.
If we compare the number of women and especially children deported in 1941 still alive in 1945 to the 1953 figures it is obvious that there is a huge decline. Most of which can be accounted for by excess mortality. The break down for Baltic deportees still alive in 1945 is listed in the last paragraph.
In the case of the deportees from Poland most of them were released. In the case of the Baltic deportees large numbers of them perished, particularly those deported in 1941. If you look at V.N. Zemskov, _Spetsposelentsy v SSSR, 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauk, 2005), pp. 89-90 he notes that 389,041 Polish citizens were released by the Soviets from various forms of captivity in 1941-1942. Hence almost all the Poles deported in 1940-1941 were no longer special settlers by 1943. The figures for Polish deportees in 1953 refer to Soviet Poles deported in 1936 from Soviet Ukraine to Kazakhstan. See Zemskov’s article in SI from 1990, p. 17, endnote 23). These deportees were not from Poland, but ethnic Poles from Ukraine with Soviet citizenship.
Between 1942 and 1945 the number of “anti-Soviet elements” deported from the Baltic states, Moldova and E. Poland in 1941 in special settlements declined by almost half, 85,700 to around 43,000. (Zemskov, pp. 114-115). Since there are no records of any large scale releases of this contingent I think we can assume the vast majority perished. Also the surviving numbers in October 1945 are overwhelmingly women and children. Only 8,708 men versus 20,714 women and 13,677 children (Zemskov, p. 115). Like the 1948 and 1949 deportations over two thirds are women and children.
Oops the number of children in special settlements in 1953 from the 1941 Baltic deportations should be 7 not 160. I misread the column and entered those deported from Georgia 1951-1952. Also the citations to Zemskov unless otherwise noted are to his 2005 book. It should be obvious from the page numbers, but just to avoid confusion.
I am curious — what is Naryshkin alluding to when he says, “At a strictly scientific level we have managed to sway our opponents or make them think about the futility of attempts to impose on us their view of history through falsification.” ?
Who exactly have they ‘managed to sway’? And who was made to think about ‘the futility of attempts to impose on use their view of history’? Does anyone know what exactly he is referring to?
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