HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

From 1917 to 1991, a multitude of
war crime A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostage ...
s and
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...
were carried out by the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
or any of its Soviet republics, including the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...
and its
armed forces A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a ...
. They include acts which were committed by the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
(later called the
Soviet Army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...
) as well as acts which were committed by the country's secret police,
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
, including its Internal Troops. In many cases, these acts were committed upon the direct orders of Soviet leaders
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
and
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
in pursuance of the early Soviet policy of
Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...
as a means to justify
executions Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
and
political repression Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby ...
. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the Soviet Union, or they were committed during partisan warfare. A significant number of these incidents occurred in Northern, Central, and
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
before, during, and in the
aftermath of World War II The aftermath of World War II saw the rise of two global superpowers, the United States (U.S.) and the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). The aftermath of World War II was also defined by the rising threat of nuclear warfare, the creation and implementati ...
, involving
summary execution In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...
s and the
mass murder Mass murder is the violent crime of murder, killing a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more ...
of
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
(POWs), such as in the
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
and mass rape by troops of the Red Army in territories they occupied. In the 1990s and 2000s, war crimes trials held in the Baltic states led to the prosecution of some Russians, mostly ''in absentia'', for crimes against humanity committed during or shortly after World War II, including killings or deportations of civilians. Today, the
Russian government The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental body of the Russian Federation. It is accountable to the president of the Russian Federation and controlled by ...
engages in
historical negationism Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. This is not the same as '' historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic rein ...
. Russian media refers to the Soviet crimes against humanity and war crimes as a "Western myth". In Russian history textbooks, the atrocities are either altered to portray the Soviets positively or omitted entirely. In 2017, Russian president
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
, himself a war crime fugitive since 2023, while acknowledging the "horrors of
Stalinism Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...
", criticized the "excessive
demonization Demonization or demonisation is the reinterpretation of polytheistic deities as evil, lying demons by other religions, generally by the monotheistic and henotheistic ones. The term has since been expanded to refer to any characterization of indivi ...
of Stalin" by "Russia's enemies".


Background

The Soviet Union did not recognize
Imperial Russia Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor/empress, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * ...
's signing of the
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...
as binding, and as a result, it refused to recognize them until 1955. This created a situation in which war crimes by the Soviet armed forces could be justified, and also gave
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
a legal cover for the atrocities it committed against Soviet prisoners of war.


Russian Civil War


Blagoveshchensk massacre

In March 1918, over a thousand
Blagoveshchensk Blagoveshchensk ( rus, Благовещенск, p=bləɡɐˈvʲeɕːɪnsk, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Amur Oblast, Russia. It is located at the confluence of the Amur River, Amur and the ...
residents were massacred by
Red Guards The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...
who seized the city. Chekist I. P. Pavlunovsky reported that miners stormed the city, systematically killing those suspected of rebellion, including city administration staff and mining specialists. A 1919 press report corroborated the atrocities, stating over 1,000 locals were shot, with many students later joining the army. Far Eastern Socialist-Revolutionary-Maximalist I. I. Zhukovsky-Zhuk noted that ruthless, no-compromise methods, including summary executions, were common. He cited Amur authorities like Matveev and Dimitriev, both Communists, who shot dozens without trial, a practice known and tolerated by most, except for Blagoveshchensk anarchists.Тепляков, Алексей Георгиевич (2015)
"Суд над террором: партизан Яков Тряпицын и его подручные в материалах судебного заседания
. "АТАМАНЩИНА" И "ПАРТИЗАНЩИНА" В ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ВОЙНЕ: ИДЕОЛОГИЯ, ВОЕННОЕ УЧАСТИЕ, КАДРЫ: 719-728. – via
Russian Science Citation Index Russian Science Citation Index (Russian: Российский индекс научного цитирования) is a bibliographic database of scientific publications in Russian. It holds around 13 million publications by Russian authors a ...
.


Massacre of Kyiv

After the Battle of Kruty, which successfully delayed the Bolshevik advance on Kyiv and gave time for those who wanted to evacuate, the
Red Guards The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...
approached the outskirts of Kyiv on February 4, 1918, where Mikhail Muravyov gave the order to begin the assault. During the capture of the capital, poison gas was used and massive shelling was carried out, which did not stop for several days (up to 15 thousand shells), as a result of which, among other things, the house of
Mykhailo Hrushevsky Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky (; – 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. Hrushevsky is ...
was destroyed. On Duma Square (today
Maidan Nezalezhnosti Maidan Nezalezhnosti (, ) or Independence Square is the central town square of Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. One of the city's main squares, it is located on Khreshchatyk Street in the Shevchenko Raion. The square contains the iconic Ind ...
), Muravyov was met by a delegation of the city council led by then-mayor Yevhen Ryabtsov. Andriy Polupanov was appointed Soviet commander in Kyiv. Entering the city, Soviet troops killed about 5,000 civilians, declared enemies. Among the dead were only two politicians: Secretary for Territorial Affairs of UPR Oleksandr Zarudny and Central Rada deputy Isak Puhach.


Vladivostok massacre

In early April 1920, former Kolchak government head P. V. Volgodsky met two officers in
Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
who had fled Red Terror in Vladivostok. They reported that despite the socialist coalition government, Bolsheviks were actively arresting and killing
Whites White is a racial classification of people generally used for those of predominantly European ancestry. It is also a skin color specifier, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity and point of view. De ...
, often after torture. They stated, "In Vladivostok, there are systematic murders of White Guard officers. They are arrested and shot on their way to prison under the pretext of stopping escape attempts, etc."


Chita massacre and the elimination of the so-called "Semyonov jam"

Nestor Kalandarishvili's Red Army partisan detachment, known for its brutal attacks on the pro-White Buryat population, participated in capturing Chita and eliminating the "Semyonov jam." For example, in Fall 1920, the Khamnigan-Buryat Khoshun was devastated; three of its somons were completely deserted, and two others retained less than 200 of 6,000 inhabitants. Many who fled to Mongolia were killed, their bodies left unburied in March 1921, with over 70 corpses, including monks, women, and children, found near Byrtsin datsan. Beyond robbery, Kalandarishvili's unit also raped Buryat women and girls in late 1920. Despite the 5th Army command's accusations that Kalandarishvili's unit undermined Soviet power due to its criminal behavior, he faced no military sanctions, largely because his position had been strengthened by Lenin.


Amur River massacre

Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsyn and Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko's movement of two thousand troops down the
Amur River The Amur River () or Heilong River ( zh, s=黑龙江) is a perennial river in Northeast Asia, forming the natural border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China (historically the Outer and Inner Manchuria). The Amur ''proper'' is ...
involved the near-total extermination of rural intellectuals for "revolutionary passivity" and anyone resembling an urban "
bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
." Priests were either drowned in ice-holes or taken prisoner, and even volunteers joining the partisans were shot. One of Tryapitsyn's aides, Ivan Lapta, formed a Red Army detachment that "raided villages and camps, robbed and killed people," targeting those who withheld gold at the Limursk mines and looting Amgun gold mines and surrounding villages. Before occupying the regional center, Lapta's detachments, along with other Tryapitsyn associates, killed hundreds of Lower Amurians. Tryapitsyn's unit included about 200 Chinese and 200 Koreans from taiga gold mines, led by Ilya Pak. Tryapitsyn provided them generous cash advances, promising gold and many Russian women. Partisan chiefs, appointed for their ruthless determination, maintained control by allowing their units to plunder and kill.


Nikolaevsk-on-Amur massacre

In 1920,
Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...
and Japan discussed a
Far Eastern The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In modern times, the term ''F ...
buffer state A buffer state is a country geographically lying between two rival or potentially hostile great powers. Its existence can sometimes be thought to prevent conflict between them. A buffer state is sometimes a mutually agreed upon area lying between t ...
. Japan agreed to allow the Red Army into
Vladivostok Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...
after Kolchak's government collapsed, forcing Bolsheviks to accept a socialist zemstvo due to the significant foreign troop presence. Meanwhile, Tryapitsyn's forces besieged and captured Nikolaevsk-on-Amur in late February after an artillery bombardment. The city, isolated and with limited defenders, was promised no atrocities by the entering Red Army, who even signed a pact with the Japanese garrison on February 28. However, the Red Army immediately began looting and killing. The Red guerrillas violated their peace agreement with the Japanese garrison upon entering Nikolaevsk, killing residents and executing civilians sympathetic to the White Movement, including wealthy individuals. They then provoked the Japanese garrison, issuing an
ultimatum An ; ; : ultimata or ultimatums) is a demand whose fulfillment is requested in a specified period of time and which is backed up by a coercion, threat to be followed through in case of noncompliance (open loop). An ultimatum is generally the ...
to disarm, which Major Ishikawa, the Japanese commander, refused. On March 13, Ishikawa launched a preemptive strike, wounding Tryapitsyn. Despite this, Tryapitsyn organized resistance, overwhelming the Japanese garrison. The consul and all staff died in the consulate, which the guerrillas set ablaze. Tryapitsyn's unit also carried out brutal purges, exterminating Jewish women and children—children were killed with their mothers, and women were raped before execution. Jewish community members were drowned in the Amur River. These executions were systematically performed by dedicated squads of Russian, Korean, and Chinese partisans loyal to Tryapitsyn, who killed a set number of victims from a list nightly.Азаренков, Александр Алексеевич (2019). �
Дальневосточная республика как периферийная модель преодоления системного кризиса традиционной империи
”. 《Гражданская война на востоке России (ноябрь 1917-декабрь 1922 г.)》: 181-182.
Sergey V, Grishachev; Vladimir G, Datsyshen (2019). “ Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War and Japanese Troops in Russia's Far East, 1918–1922”. 《Brill》: 145~146.Кривенький, В. В.; Малафеева, Е. Г.; Фуфыгин, А. Н. (2018). �
ЯКОВ ТРЯПИЦЫН БЕЗ ЛЕГЕНД: НОВЫЕ ДАННЫЕ О СУДЬБЕ ПАРТИЗАНСКОГО КОМАНДИРА
�� . 《eruditorum 2018 Выпуск 26》: 128.
Тепляков, Алексей Георгиевич (2013).
ПАРТИЗАНСКИЕ СОЦИАЛЬНЫЕ ЧИСТКИ НА ВОСТОКЕ РОССИИ В 1919-1920 ГГ.: РОГОВЩИНА И ТРЯПИЦЫНЩИНА
. ПРОБЛЕМЫ ИСТОРИИ МАССОВЫХ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ РЕПРЕССИЙ В СССР. 1953-2013: 60 ЛЕТ БЕЗ СТАЛИНА. ОСМЫСЛЕНИЕ ПРОШЛОГО СОВЕТСКОГО ГОСУДАРСТВА: 135–142 – via
Russian Science Citation Index Russian Science Citation Index (Russian: Российский индекс научного цитирования) is a bibliographic database of scientific publications in Russian. It holds around 13 million publications by Russian authors a ...
.
Tryapitsyn's unit retreated only after destroying the entire city, burning wooden buildings and blowing up stone structures. In late May and early June 1920, on orders from Tryapitsyn's headquarters, Nikolaevsk-on-Amur was annihilated, surrounding fishing grounds burned, and inhabitants murdered based on "trustworthiness" and social affiliation. Remaining Japanese prisoners and dissenting Red Army partisans were also killed. The forced evacuation of some residents into the taiga resulted in nearly all children under five dying. The remaining population was forcibly taken by the Red Army through the taiga to a "red island" in the middle Amur, leaving Nikolaevsk as desolate ashes. Thousands of Russians were massacred by the Red Army.


The terror of 1920–1921 in the occupied Crimea

In late 1920 and early 1921, the Red Army carried out a mass
extermination Extermination or exterminate may refer to: * Pest control, elimination of insects or vermin * Extermination (crime), the killing of human on a large scale * Genocide, at least one of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in par ...
of Wrangel's army officers and soldiers, and civilians in Crimea. After seizing Crimea on November 21, 1920, Chekists formed the Crimean Strike Group under E. G. Evdokimov. These Chekists often bypassed investigations, relying on arrests and questionnaires to "judge" victims via troikas, leading to mass executions and incarcerations in concentration camps. Many arrestees, including women and teenagers, were immediately shot. It's believed Yefim Yevdokimov's "expedition" of special agents killed at least 12,000 people. This figure, recorded in his commendation for the Order of the Red Banner, noted executions included "up to 30 governors, more than 150 generals, more than 300 colonels, several hundred counter-intelligence spies." Territorial Chekists also actively participated in the killings. M.M. Vikhman, a former head of the Crimean Cheka, later boasted of personally killing "an ennite number of thousands of White Guards." Additionally, Red partisans exterminated at least 3,000 Crimeans. However, this terror sparked armed resistance and widespread indignation among local communists, who complained to central authorities. Consequently, in June 1921, a Plenipotentiary Commission began work in Crimea. M.H. Sultan-Galiev, a commission member, reported that Crimean workers estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Wrangel officers were shot across Crimea, with up to 12,000 in Simferopol alone..


Wartime sexual violence

Wartime sexual violence Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during an armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as War looting, spoils of war, but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomen ...
was a pervasive and culturally ingrained aspect of the Russian Civil War. As one European historian(Sighele, S) noted, the Cossack raids of 1815, involving the killing of men and rape of women, became legendary in France. Isaac Babel's "My First Goose" further illuminated this brutal mentality, quoting a Red cavalryman who implied defiling women earned "affection from the fighters." In September 1920, Commissioner N. Narimanov directly reported "open rape of girls and women" by the Red Army in Azerbaijan to Lenin.Тепляков, Алексей Георгиевич (2017).
"СОТНИ ДЕВУШЕК СТАЛИ ЖЕНЩИНАМИ...": МАССОВОЕ СЕКСУАЛЬНОЕ НАСИЛИЕ СО СТОРОНЫ ПАРТИЗАН СИБИРИ И ДАЛЬНЕГО ВОСТОКА (1918-1920 ГГ.)
. In Государство, общество, Церковь в истории России ХХ-XXI веков: 448-452. – via
Russian Science Citation Index Russian Science Citation Index (Russian: Российский индекс научного цитирования) is a bibliographic database of scientific publications in Russian. It holds around 13 million publications by Russian authors a ...
.
In war zones, captured women were treated as valuable commodities. A Bolshevik's 1921 letter from Uryankhai exemplified this, boasting of numerous available women and suggesting Red commanders' convoys included enslaved concubines. Cheka reports from early 1922 in Tuva detailed widespread excesses, even blaming "luxurious wives" of White Guard officers for seducing Soviet workers. Irregular units exhibited an increased propensity for violence, fueled by a lack of respect for women, loose morals, and class hatred. An ancient Siberian custom of gang rape among youth further contributed to widespread sexual crime. Mass rapes were a dark reality; insurgents, viewing women as spoils, raped wives of priests, officials, officers, merchants, nuns, and teachers, as well as peasant women. For instance, in June 1919, P.K. Lubkov's partisans gang-raped a teacher in Kolyon, driving her insane. Partisan gangs frequently seized women as sexual slaves, often killing them after abuse. The first mass murders of women by Reds occurred in Semirechye in spring-summer 1918. P.F. Sukhov's detachment in Altai kidnapped priests' wives and daughters, and T.F. Putilov explicitly took a "beautiful young woman" as spoils. Amur region partisans(including many Chinese, Koreans, Magyars, and Caucasians, frequently) also regularly abducted women. Late 1919 saw "many nuns killed and raped" during the Barnaul Bogoroditse-Kazan nunnery pogrom. A 1920 memoir described finding a tortured female corpse, indicating extreme suffering. In late 1920, N.A. Kalandarishvili's partisans not only robbed but also raped Buryat women and girls. Records from I.Ya. Tretiak's division in Biysk Uyezd in late 1919 confirm multiple incidents of group sexual violence, leaving "ruined maidens and pregnant women." When partisans captured Charyshskaya stanitsa in December 1919, "hundreds of girls became women, and women became unwilling traitors to their husbands." Documents corroborate these accounts; Biysk Line Cossacks complained to revolutionary committees in February 1920 about mass rapes and resulting diseases, though orders to prosecute were sabotaged. Western Siberian peasant Red Army fighters were equally brutal. In autumn 1919, they raped women during the capture of Aul station, and a commander specifically raped and shot a railway worker's wife at Rubtsovka. Mass rapes were characteristic of G. Rogov's and Yakov Tryapitsyn's detachments, with their headquarters often serving as centers for orgies. A December 1919 Cheka report detailed widespread rapes in Kuznetsk. Rogov's men abducted women and girls for "brutal pleasure," even at their headquarters. Victims included an 18-year-old teacher, a 19-year-old girl who died from shock, and a 52-year-old widow. Tryapitsyn's headquarters also hosted such orgies; his men in Susano village raped all girls, then attempted to burn them alive before being repelled by other partisans. Red Army partisans often raped minors, often killing them afterwards. The opera singer Vera Davydova survived Tryapitsyn's unit at the age of 14 and told Nikolaev local historian V.I. Yuzefov that after the evacuation she was immediately seized by a group of Red Army partisans, forcibly separated from her parents, for allegedly sending her to the "headquarters." Her mother's screams attracted one of the Red Army partisan leaders, who recognized her as his former teacher and intervened. Tryapitsyn's unit also sexually assaulted women during their hasty escape from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. N.D. Kolesnikova recalled: "It was forbidden for girls from the age of 16 to leave Nikolaevsk with their families. They had to go through the taiga together with the Red Army partisans. Luckily for me, I was only 13 years old." The Nikolaevsk-on-Amur pogrom and subsequent Tryapitsyn atrocities were marked by a mass hunt for women and girls, resulting in rapes and brutal murders. In summer 1920, numerous female and child corpses, disfigured by mutilations and stab wounds, were recovered from the Amgun River. One report from early July 1920 documented a 15-17-year-old girl with eight dagger wounds to the chest.


Before World War II

The Soviets reportedly deployed mustard gas bombs during the 1934 Soviet invasion of Xinjiang, many civilians were also killed by conventional bombs dropped by Soviet and aligned during the invasion.


Red Army and pogroms

The early Soviet leaders publicly denounced
antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
,William Korey, ''The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis.'' Slavic Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 111–135; included in: William Korey,
Anti-Semitism in Russia
', New York: Viking, 1973.
efforts were made by Soviet authorities to contain anti-Jewish
bigotry Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived social group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that pers ...
notably during the
Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
, and soldiers were punished whenever the Red Army units perpetrated
pogrom A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...
s, as well as during the
Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...
in 1919–1920 at Baranovichi. Only a small number of pogroms were attributed to the Red Army, with the majority of the 'collectively violent' acts in the period having been committed by
anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...
and
nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...
forces. The pogroms were condemned by the Red Army high command and guilty units were disarmed, while individual pogromists were court-martialed and faced execution. Although pogroms by Ukrainian units of the Red Army still occurred even after this,
Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
regarded the Red Army as the only force which was willing to protect them. It is estimated that 3,450 Jews or 2.3 percent of the Jewish victims killed during the Russian Civil War were murdered by the Bolshevik forces. In comparison, according to the
Morgenthau Report The Morgenthau report, officially the ''Report of the Mission of the United States to Poland'', was a report compiled by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., as member of the "Mission of the United States to Poland" which was appointed by the American Commissi ...
, a total of about 300 Jews died in all incidents involving Polish responsibility. However, as William Korey wrote: "Anti-Jewish discrimination had become an integral part of Soviet state policy ever since the late thirties.", as the new Stalin government moved to fight against perceived "Jewish infiltration" in the country, as well as growing conspiracies of "Jewish collaboration with the west and the
Bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted wi ...
".


The Red Army and the NKVD

On 6 February 1922, the
Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...
(All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) secret police was replaced by the State Political Administration or OGPU, a section of the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
. The declared function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union, which was accomplished by the large scale political persecution of "class enemies". The Red Army often gave support to the NKVD in the implementation of
political repression Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereby ...
s. As an internal security force and a prison guard contingent of the
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
, the Internal Troops repressed political dissidents and engaged in war crimes during periods of military hostilities throughout Soviet history. They were specifically responsible for maintaining the political regime in the Gulag and conducting mass deportations and
forced resettlement Population transfer or resettlement is a type of mass migration that is often imposed by a state policy or international authority. Such mass migrations are most frequently spurred on the basis of ethnicity or religion, but they also occur d ...
. The latter targeted a number of ethnic groups that the Soviet authorities presumed to be hostile to its policies and likely to collaborate with the enemy, including
Chechens The Chechens ( ; , , Old Chechen: Нахчой, ''Naxçoy''), historically also known as ''Kistin, Kisti'' and ''Durdzuks'', are a Northeast Caucasian languages, Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples native to the North Caucasus. ...
,
Crimean Tatars Crimean Tatars (), or simply Crimeans (), are an Eastern European Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea. Their ethnogenesis lasted thousands of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Blac ...
, and
Koreans Koreans are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula. The majority of Koreans live in the two Korean sovereign states of North and South Korea, which are collectively referred to as Korea. As of 2021, an estimated 7.3 m ...
. Applebaum, Anne (2003), '' Gulag: A History.'' Doubleday. , pg 583: "both archives and memoirs indicate that it was a common practice in many camps to release prisoners who were on the point of dying, thereby lowering camp death statistics."


World War II

War crimes by Soviet armed forces against civilians and prisoners of war in the territories occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941 in regions including
Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine (, ) refers to the western territories of Ukraine. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries, but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions ( oblasts) of Chernivtsi, I ...
, the
Baltic states The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern co ...
and
Bessarabia Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...
in Romania, along with war crimes in 1944–1945, have been ongoing issues within these countries. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
, a more systematic, locally controlled discussion of these events has taken place. Targets of Soviet atrocities included both collaborators with Germany after 1941 and the members of anti-communist
resistance movement A resistance movement is an organized group of people that tries to resist or try to overthrow a government or an occupying power, causing disruption and unrest in civil order and stability. Such a movement may seek to achieve its goals through ei ...
s such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( UPA) in
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, the
Forest Brothers The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic states, Baltic (Latvian partisans, Latvian, Lithuanian partisans, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known ...
in
Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
,
Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...
and
Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
, and the Polish
Armia Krajowa The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...
. The NKVD also conducted the
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
, summarily executing over 20,000 Polish military officer prisoners and
intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
in April and May 1940.


Baltic states


Estonia

Under the German-Soviet
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union on 6 August 1940 and renamed the
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, (abbreviated Estonian SSR, Soviet Estonia, or simply Estonia ) was an administrative subunit (Republics of the Soviet Union, union republic) of the former Soviet Union (USSR), covering the Occupation o ...
. The Estonian standing army was broken up, and its officers executed or deported. In 1941, some 34,000 Estonians were drafted into the Red Army, of whom less than 30% survived the war. No more than half of those men were used for military service. The rest were sent to labour battalions where around 12,000 died, mainly in the early months of the war. After it became clear that the German invasion of Estonia would be successful, political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD, so that they would not be able to make contact with the Nazi government. More than 300,000 citizens of Estonia, almost a third of the population at the time, were affected by deportations, arrests, execution and other acts of repression. As a result of the Soviet occupation, Estonia lost at least 200,000 people or 20% of its population to repression, exodus and war. Soviet political repressions in Estonia were met by an armed resistance by the
Forest Brothers The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic states, Baltic (Latvian partisans, Latvian, Lithuanian partisans, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known ...
, composed of former conscripts into the German military, Omakaitse militia and volunteers in the Finnish Infantry Regiment 200 who fought a
guerrilla war Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism ...
, which was not completely suppressed until the late 1950s.Valge raamat
pp. 25–30
In addition to the expected human and material losses suffered due to the fighting, over time this conflict led to the deportation of tens of thousands of people, along with hundreds of political prisoners and thousands of civilians died.


=Mass deportations

= On 14 June 1941, and the following two days, 9,254 to 10,861 people, mostly urban residents, of them over 5,000 women and over 2,500 children under 16,Conclusions of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity
, historycommission.ee; accessed 13 December 2016.
Laar, Mart (2006)
Deportation from Estonia in 1941 and 1949
. ''Estonia Today'': Fact Sheet of the Press and Information Department, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (June 2006).
439 Jews (more than 10% of the Estonian Jewish population) were deported, mostly to
Kirov Oblast Kirov Oblast ( rus, Кировская область, p=ˈkʲirəfskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in Eastern Europe. Its administrative center is the city of Kirov. As of the 2010 census, the population ...
,
Novosibirsk Oblast Novosibirsk Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southwestern Siberia. Its administrative center, administrative and economic center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of N ...
or prisons. Deportations were predominantly to
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
and
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
by means of railroad cattle cars, without prior announcement, while the deported were given a few night hours at best to pack their belongings and separated from their families, usually also sent to the east. The procedure was established by the Serov Instructions. Estonians in
Leningrad Oblast Leningrad Oblast (, ; ; ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). The oblast has an area of and a population of 2,000,997 (2021 Russian census, 2021 Census); up from 1,716,868 recorded in the 2010 Russian census ...
had already been subject to deportation since 1935.


=Destruction battalions

= In 1941, to implement Stalin's
scorched earth policy A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and i ...
, destruction battalions were formed in the western regions of the Soviet Union. In Estonia, they killed thousands of people including many women and children, and burned down dozens of villages, schools and public buildings. Many atrocities were committed by these forces, such as the case of a school boy named Tullio Lindsaar, who had all of the bones in his hands broken for hoisting the
flag of Estonia The national flag of Estonia () is a tricolour (flag), tricolour featuring three equal horizontal triband (flag), bands of blue at the top, black in the centre, and white at the bottom. The flag is called () in Estonian. The tricolour was alrea ...
before being bayoneted to death, or Mauricius Parts, son of
Estonian War of Independence The Estonian War of Independence, also known as the War of Freedom in Estonia, was a defensive campaign of the Estonian Army and its allies, most notably the United Kingdom, against the Soviet Russian westward offensive of 1918–1919 and the ...
veteran Karl Parts, who was killed after being doused in acid, just six weeks after the imprisonment of his father by Soviet occupation forces (who would later also be executed by Soviet forces while in prison). In August 1941, all residents of the village of Viru-Kabala were killed including a two-year-old child and a six-day-old infant, the battalions also occasionally burned people alive, according to survivors of the massacres. A partisan war broke out in response to the atrocities of the destruction battalions, with tens of thousands of men forming the
Forest Brothers The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic states, Baltic (Latvian partisans, Latvian, Lithuanian partisans, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known ...
to protect the local population from these battalions; in general, the destruction battalions murdered ~1,850 people in Estonia, almost all of them partisans or unarmed civilians. Another example of the destruction battalions' actions is the Kautla massacre, where twenty civilians were murdered and tens of farms and houses looted, burned down or destroyed, with many of the people killed after being
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
d and beaten by Soviet troops. The low toll of human deaths in comparison with the number of burned farms is due to the Erna long-range reconnaissance group breaking the Red Army blockade on the area, allowing many civilians to escape.


Latvia

On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
, in which Latvia was included in the
Soviet sphere of influence The term "Soviet empire" collectively refers to the world's territories that the Soviet Union dominated politically, economically, and militarily. This phenomenon, particularly in the context of the Cold War, is used by Sovietologists to descri ...
. On 17 June 1940, Latvia was occupied by the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
. The
Kārlis Ulmanis Kārlis Augusts Vilhelms Ulmanis (; 4 September 1877 – 20 September 1942) was a Latvian politician and a dictator. He was one of the most prominent Latvian politicians of pre-World War II Latvia during the Interwar period of independence from N ...
government was removed, and rigged elections were held on 21 June 1940 with only the Communist
Latvian Working People's Bloc The Communist Party of Latvia (, LKP) was a political party in Latvia. History Latvian Social-Democracy prior to 1919 The party was founded at a congress in June 1904. Initially the party was known as the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party ...
allowed to participate, "electing" the
rubber stamp A rubber stamp is an image or pattern that has been carved, molded, laser engraved, or vulcanized onto a sheet of rubber. Rubber stamping, also called stamping, is a craft in which some type of ink made of dye or pigment is applied to a rub ...
People's Parliament which made resolution to join the Soviet Union, with the resolution having already been drawn up in Moscow prior the election. Latvia was officially annexed by the Soviet Union on 5 August, and on 25 August all people in Latvia were declared citizens of the Soviet Union. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...
was closed isolating Latvia from the rest of the world. In the 1941
June deportation The June deportation of 1941 (, , ) was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been ...
, tens of thousands of Latvians, including whole families with women, children and old people, were taken from their homes, loaded onto freight trains and taken to
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
correctional labour camp Correctional labour camps (), were penal labour camps in the Soviet Union. Background In the Russian Empire, by 1917, most prisons were subordinate to the Main Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice, which worked in conjunction with th ...
s or forced settlements in Siberia by the Soviet occupation regime on the orders of high authorities in Moscow. Prior to the deportation, the
People's Commissariat A People's Commissariat (; Narkomat) was a structure in the Soviet state (in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, in other union and autonomous republics, in the Soviet Union) from 1917–1946 which functioned as the central executive ...
established operational groups who performed arrests, and search and seizure of property. Arrests took place in all parts in Latvia including rural areas.


Lithuania

Lithuania and the other
Baltic States The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern co ...
, fell victim to the secret addendum to the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
between the USSR and Germany, signed in August 1939. First Lithuania was invaded by the Red Army on 15 June 1940, and then the Soviet Union annexed it on 3 August 1940. The annexation resulted in mass terror, the denial of civil liberties, the destruction of the economic system and the suppression of Lithuanian culture. Between 1940 and 1941, thousands of Lithuanians were arrested and hundreds of political prisoners were arbitrarily executed. More than 17,000 people were deported to Siberia in June 1941. After the German
invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory (country subdivision), territory controlled by another similar entity, ...
of the Soviet Union, the Soviet political apparatus was either destroyed or retreated east. Lithuania was then occupied by
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
for a little over three years. In 1944, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. Following World War II and the subsequent suppression of the Lithuanian
Forest Brothers The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic states, Baltic (Latvian partisans, Latvian, Lithuanian partisans, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, Estonian) partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known ...
, the Soviet authorities executed thousands of resistance fighters and civilians, whom they accused of helping them. Some 300,000 Lithuanians were deported or sentenced to terms in prison camps on political grounds. Lithuania lost an estimated nearly 780,000 citizens in the Soviet occupation. Of these, around 440,000 were war refugees. The estimated death toll in Soviet prisons and camps between 1944 and 1953 was at least 14,000. The estimated death toll among deportees between 1945 and 1958 was 20,000, including 5,000 children. During the restoration of Lithuanian independence in 1990 and 1991, the Soviet army killed 13 people in Vilnius during the
January Events The January Events () were a series of violent confrontations between the civilian population of Lithuania, supporting independence, and the Soviet Armed Forces. The events took place between 11 and 13 January 1991, after the Act of the Re-Esta ...
.


Poland


1939–1941

In September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied it in accordance with the secret protocols of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...
. The Soviets later forcefully occupied the Baltic States and parts of Romania, including
Bessarabia Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...
and Northern Bukovina. German historian Thomas UrbanWorldCat
Thomas Urban.
Library catalog. Holdings. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
writes that the Soviet policy towards the people who fell under their control in occupied areas was harsh, showing strong elements of
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...
.Thomas Urban,
Der Verlust
'', p. 9 (ibidem): "Massendeportationen nach Rußland. Seit dem frühen Morgen zogen Wagen mit ganzen polnischen Familien durch die Stadt zum Bahnhof. Man schaffte reichere polnische Familien, Familien von national gesinnten Anhängern, polnischen Patrioten, die Intelligenz weg, Familien von Häftlingen in sowjetischen Gefängnissen, es war schwer, sich auch nur ein Bild davon zu machen, welche Kategorie Menschen deportiert wurden. Weinen, Stöhnen und schreckliche Verzweiflung in polnischen Seelen ..Sowjets freuen sich lautstark und drohen damit, daß bald alle Polen deportiert werden. Und man könnte das erwarten, weil sie den ganzen 20. Juni über und am folgenden 21. Juni 941pausenlos Menschen zum Bahnhof brachten." Alojza Piesiewiczówna.
The NKVD task forces followed the Red Army to remove 'hostile elements' from the conquered territories in what was known as the 'revolution by hanging'. Polish historian, Prof.
Tomasz Strzembosz Tomasz Strzembosz (11 September 1930 – 16 October 2004) was a Polish people, Polish historian and writer who specialized in the World War II History of Poland (1939–1945), history of Poland. He was a professor at the Polish Academy of Scienc ...
, has noted parallels between the Nazi
Einsatzgruppen (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...
and these Soviet units. Many civilians tried to escape from the Soviet NKVD round-ups; those who failed were taken into custody and afterwards they were deported to
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
and vanished in the
Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
s. Thomas Urban,
Der Verlust
'' (PDF file, direct download), p. 145. Verlag C. H. Beck 2004, . "Revolution durch den Strick."
Torture was used on a wide scale in various prisons, especially in those prisons that were located in small towns. Prisoners were scalded with boiling water in Bobrka; in Przemyślany, people's noses, ears, and fingers were cut off and their eyes were also cut out; in
Czortków Chortkiv (, ; ; ) is a city in Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast, western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Chortkiv Raion, housing the district's local administration buildings. Chortkiv hosts the administration of Chortkiv urban hrom ...
, the breasts of female inmates were cut off; and in Drohobycz, victims were bound together with barbed wire. Similar atrocities occurred in Sambor, Stanisławów, Stryj, and
Złoczów Zolochiv (, ; ; ; ) is a small List of cities in Ukraine, city in Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine, and the administrative center of Zolochiv Raion. It hosts the administration of Zolochiv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The city is lo ...
. Jan T. Gross. ''Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia.'' Princeton University Press, 2002. pp. 181–182 According to historian, Prof. Jan T. Gross: According to sociologist, Prof. Tadeusz Piotrowski, during the years from 1939 to 1941, nearly 1.5 million persons (including both local inhabitants and refugees from German-occupied Poland) were deported from the Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland deep into the Soviet Union, of whom 58.0% were Poles, 19.4%
Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
and the remainder other ethnic nationalities. Only a small number of these deportees returned to their homes after the war, when their homelands were annexed by the Soviet Union. According to American professor
Carroll Quigley Carroll Quigley (; November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations. He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown Univer ...
, at least one third of the 320,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army in 1939 were murdered.
Carroll Quigley Carroll Quigley (; November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations. He is remembered for his teaching work as a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown Univer ...
, ''Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time'', G. S. G. & Associates, Incorporated; New Ed edition, June 1975,
It's estimated that between 10,000-35,000 prisoners were killed either in prisons or on prison trail to the Soviet Union in the few days after the 22 June 1941 German attack on the Soviets (prisons: Brygidki,
Złoczów Zolochiv (, ; ; ; ) is a small List of cities in Ukraine, city in Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine, and the administrative center of Zolochiv Raion. It hosts the administration of Zolochiv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The city is lo ...
,
Dubno Dubno (, ) is a List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality located on the Ikva River in Rivne Oblast (oblast, province) of western Ukraine. It serves as the capital city, administrative center of Dubno Raion ...
, Drohobycz, and so on).


1944–1945

In Poland, German Nazi atrocities ended by 1945, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Red Army forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in
plunder Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...
, rape and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the regime.Grzegorz Baziur, "Armia Czerwona na Pomorzu Gdańskim 1945–1947" ''Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej'' 2002, nr 7Janusz Wróbel, "Wyzwoliciele czy Okupanci. Żołnierze Sowieccy w Łódzkim 1945–1946" ''Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej'' 2002, nr 7.Łukasz Kamiński "Obdarci,głodni,żli, Sowieci w oczach Polaków 1944–1948" ''Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej'' 2002, nr 7Mariusz Lesław Krogulski, "Okupacja w imię sojuszu" Poland 2001. Soldiers of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) were persecuted and imprisoned by Soviet forces as a matter of course.From reviews of
Norman Davies Ivor Norman Richard Davies (born 8 June 1939) is a British and Polish historian, known for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland and the United Kingdom. He has a special interest in Central and Eastern Europe and is UNESCO Profes ...
, '' God's Playground'', Columbia, . "On the 22 August the NKVD was ordered to arrest and disarm all members of the Home Army who fell into their hands." Carlo D'Est
Rising '44': Betraying Warsaw
New York Times, 25 July 2004. "While t the same timethe NKVD under General Ivan Serov was unleashing another brutal purge against the Poles in the liberated territories of Poland." Donald Davidson
Rising '44' by Norman Davies
, London, Macmillan, 2004. . Retrieved 28 December 2014.
Most victims were deported to the gulags in the Donetsk region.Andrzej Paczkowski

, pp. 372-375 (in) ''Black Book of Communism. Crimes, Terror, Repression.'' Harvard University Press, London, 1999. "The territories newly annexed by the USSR in the autumn of 1944 subsequently witnessed arrests on a massive scale followed by deportations to the gulags or transfer to forced-labor sites, particularly in the Donetsk region." Retrieved 28 December 2014.
In 1945 alone, the number of members of the
Polish Underground State The Polish Underground State (, also known as the Polish Secret State) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland ...
who were deported to Siberia and various labor camps in the Soviet Union reached 50,000.''Poland's holocaust'' By Tadeusz Piotrowski. Page 131.
.
Rzeczpospolita, 02.10.04 Nr 232,
Wielkie polowanie: Prześladowania akowców w Polsce Ludowej
' (Great hunt: the persecutions of AK soldiers in the People's Republic of Poland). Retrieved 7 June 2006.
Units of the Red Army carried out campaigns against Polish partisans and civilians. During the Augustów chase in 1945, more than 2,000 Poles were captured and about 600 of them are presumed to have died in Soviet custody.Agnieszka Domanowska,
Mały Katyń. 65 lat od obławy augustowskiej
' (Little Katyn. The 65 anniversary of Augustow roundup),
Gazeta Wyborcza (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish nationwide daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It was launched on 8 May 1989 on the basis of the Polish Round Table Agreement and as a press organ of the Solidarity (Polish trade union), t ...
, 2010-07-20.
It was a common Soviet practice to accuse their victims of being fascists in order to justify their death sentences. The perversion of this Soviet tactic lay in the fact that practically all of the accused had in reality been fighting against the forces of Nazi Germany since September 1939. At that time the Soviets were still collaborating with Nazi Germany for more than 20 months before
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
started. Precisely therefore these kinds of Poles were judged capable of resisting the Soviets, in the same way that they had resisted the Nazis. After the War, a more elaborate appearance of justice was given under the jurisdiction of the
Polish People's Republic The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...
orchestrated by the Soviets in the form of mock trials. These were organized after victims had been arrested under false charges by the NKVD or other Soviet controlled security organisations such as the
Ministry of Public Security Ministry of Public Security can refer to: * Ministry of Justice and Public Security (Brazil) * Ministry of Public Security of Burundi * Ministry of Public Security (Chile) * Ministry of Public Security (China) * Ministry of Public Security of Co ...
. At least 6,000 political death sentences were issued, and the majority of them were carried out. It is estimated that over 20,000 people died in Soviet prisons . Famous examples include
Witold Pilecki Witold Pilecki (; 13 May 190125 May 1948), known by the codenames ''Roman Jezierski'', ''Tomasz Serafiński'', ''Druh'' and ''Witold'', was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader. As a youth, Pilecki ...
or Emil August Fieldorf.Andrzej Kaczyński (02.10.04), (Great hunt: The persecutions of AK soldiers in the People's Republic of Poland), Rzeczpospolita, Nr 232, last accessed 30 September 2013. . The attitude of Soviet servicemen towards ethnic Poles was better than their attitude towards the Germans, but it was not entirely better. The scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a
pandemic A pandemic ( ) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic (epi ...
of
sexually transmitted diseases A sexually transmitted infection (STI), also referred to as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and the older term venereal disease (VD), is an infection that is spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, oral ...
. Although the total number of victims remains a matter of guessing, the Polish state archives and statistics of the Ministry of Health indicate that it might have exceeded 100,000. 
Dr. Marcin Zaremba
of
Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...
, the co-author of the article cited above – is a historian from
Warsaw University The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well as 100 specializat ...
Department of History Institute of 20th Century History
cited 196 times in Google scholar
. Zaremba published a number of scholarly monographs, among them: ''Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm'' (426 pages

''Marzec 1968'' (274 pages), ''Dzień po dniu w raportach SB'' (274 pages), ''Immobilienwirtschaft'' (German, 359 pages), se
inauthor:"Marcin Zaremba" in Google Books.

Joanna Ostrowska
of
Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...
, Poland, is a lecturer at Departments of Gender Studies at two universities: the
Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...
of Kraków, the
University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...
as well as, at the
Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...
. She is the author of scholarly works on the subject of mass rape and forced prostitution in Poland in the Second World War (i.e. "Prostytucja jako praca przymusowa w czasie II Wojny Światowej. Próba odtabuizowania zjawiska," "Wielkie przemilczanie. Prostytucja w obozach koncentracyjnych," etc.), a recipient of Socrates-Erasmus research grant from Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, and a historian associated with
Krytyka Polityczna ''Krytyka Polityczna'' (; "The Political Critique") is a network of Polish left-wing intellectuals. The network is based around a journal of the same name founded by Sławomir Sierakowski in 2002, but is open to voices from across the political s ...
.
In
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
, the Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by mass rapes of Polish women and girls, as well as the plunder of private property by Red Army soldiers. This behavior reached such a scale that even Polish Communists installed by the Soviet Union composed a letter of protest to
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
himself, while
church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...
Masses were held in expectation of a Soviet withdrawal. The article concerning World War II history of the city ("Occupied Krakow"), makes references to the fifth volume o
''History of Krakow''
entitled "Kraków in the years 1939-1945,"
see bibliogroup:"Dzieje Krakowa: Kraków w latach 1945-1989" in Google Books
() written by Chwalba from a historical perspective, als
cited in Google scholar.
, url-status=bot: unknown , title=OKUPOWANY KRAKÓW - z prorektorem Andrzejem Chwalbą rozmawia Rita Pagacz-Moczarska, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080524235517/http://www3.uj.edu.pl/alma/alma/64/01/02.html , archive-date=24 May 2008
The Red Army was also involved in mass-scale looting in liberated territories.


Finland and Ingria

Between 1941 and 1944, Soviet partisan units conducted raids deep inside Finnish territory, attacking villages and other civilian targets. In November 2006, photographs showing Soviet atrocities were declassified by the Finnish authorities. These include images of slain women and children. The partisans usually executed their military and civilian prisoners after a minor interrogation. Around 3,500 Finnish prisoners of war, of whom five were women, were captured by the Red Army. Their mortality rate is estimated to have been about 40 percent. The most common causes of death were hunger, cold and oppressive transportation.


Deportation of the Ingrian Finns

By 1939 the Ingrian Finnish population had decreased to about 50,000, which was about 43% of 1928 population figures, Taagepera (2013), p. 144 and the Ingrian Finn national district was abolished., Taagepera (2013), p. 143 Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Leningrad Blockade, in early 1942 all 20,000 Ingrian Finns remaining in Soviet-controlled territory were deported to
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
. Most of the Ingrian Finns together with Votes and
Izhorians The Izhorians (; ; ; ) are a Finnic indigenous people native to Ingria. Small numbers can still be found in the western part of Ingria, between the Narva and Neva rivers in northwestern Russia. They are also referred to as Ingrians, although the ...
living in German-occupied territory were evacuated to Finland in 1943–1944. Finland was forced to return the evacuees per the
Moscow Armistice The Moscow Armistice was signed between Finland on one side and the Soviet Union and United Kingdom on the other side on 19 September 1944, ending the Continuation War. The Armistice restored the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, with a number of modi ...
. Soviet authorities did not allow the 55,733 people who had been handed over to settle back in Ingria, and instead deported them to central regions of Russia. Scott and Liikanen (2013), pp. 59–60 The main regions of
Ingrian Finns Ingrian Finns (, ; ) are the Finnish people, Finnish population of Ingria (now the central part of Leningrad Oblast in Russia), descending from Lutheranism, Lutheran Finnish immigrants introduced into the area in the 17th century, when Finland ...
forced settlement were the interior areas of Siberia,
Central Russia Central Russia is, broadly, the various areas in European Russia. Historically, the area of Central Russia varied based on the purpose for which it is being used. It may, for example, refer to European Russia (except the North Caucasus and ...
, and
Tajikistan Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to ...
. Evmenov and Muslimov (2010), p. 92


Soviet Union


Retreat by Soviet forces in 1941

Deportations, summary executions of political prisoners and the burning of foodstocks and villages took place when the Red Army retreated before the advancing Axis forces in 1941. In the Baltic States,
Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
, Ukraine, and Bessarabia, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents before fleeing from the advancing Axis forces.


Deportation of Greeks

The prosecution of Greeks in the USSR was gradual: at first the authorities shut down the Greek schools, cultural centres, and publishing houses. Then, in 1942, 1944 and 1949, the NKVD indiscriminately arrested all Greek men 16 years old or older. All Greeks who were wealthy or self-employed professionals were sought for prosecution first. This affected mostly
Pontic Greeks The Pontic Greeks (; or ; , , ), also Pontian Greeks or simply Pontians, are an ethnically Greek group indigenous to the region of Pontus, in northeastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). They share a common Pontic Greek culture that is di ...
and other Minorities in the
Krasnodar Krai Krasnodar Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (a krai), located in the North Caucasus region in Southern Russia and is administratively a part of the Southern Federal District. Its administrative center is the t ...
and along the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...
coast. By one estimate, around 50,000 Greeks were deported.Το πογκρόμ κατά των Ελλήνων της ΕΣΣΔ
''ΕΛΛΑΔΑ'', 09.12.2007
On 25 September 1956, MVD Order N 0402 was adopted and defined the removal of restrictions towards the deported peoples in the special settlements. Afterward, the Soviet Greeks started returning to their homes, or emigrating towards Greece.


Deportation of Kalmyks

During the Kalmyk deportations of 1943, codenamed Operation Ulussy (Операция "Улусы"), the
deportation Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people by a state from its sovereign territory. The actual definition changes depending on the place and context, and it also changes over time. A person who has been deported or is under sen ...
of most people of the Kalmyk nationality (as well as Russian women married to Kalmyks, but not Kalmyk women married to people of other nationalities) in the Soviet Union (USSR), around half of all (97–98,000) Kalmyk people deported to Siberia died before being allowed to return home in 1957.


Deportation of Crimean Tatars

After the retreat of the ''Wehrmacht'' from Crimea, the NKVD deported around 200,000
Crimean Tatars Crimean Tatars (), or simply Crimeans (), are an Eastern European Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea. Their ethnogenesis lasted thousands of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Blac ...
from the peninsula on 18 May 1944. 109,956 of them died, which represents 46% of the entire Crimean Tatar population.


Northern Caucasus

In 1943 and 1944, the Soviet government accused several entire ethnic groups of Axis collaboration. As a punishment, several entire ethnic groups were deported, mostly to Central Asia and Siberia into labor camps.


=Chechnya-Ingushetia

= On 23 February 1944,
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...
, the head of the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
, ordered the deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush population of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR by freight trains to remote areas of the Soviet Union (such as Siberia, the Urals and Central Asia). The operation was called "Chechevitsa" (Operation Lentil), (its first two syllables pointing at its intended targets), and is often referred to by Chechens as the "Aardakh" (the Exodus). The operation was started following complaints by the NKVD of "low level of discipline, prevalence of banditry and terrorism, disloyalty of the Chechens to the Communist party" and alleged "collaboration with the occupying German forces", citing an alleged confession of a German agent where he supposedly claimed that the German forces had "major support among the Ingush". The Chechen-Ingush Republic was never occupied by the German army, but the repressions were officially justified by "an armed resistance to Soviet power", although the charges of local collaboration with the Nazis were never subsequently proven in any Soviet court. NKVD troops went systematically from house to house to collect individuals, the inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in Studebaker US6 trucks, before being packed into unheated and uninsulated
freight cars A railroad car, railcar (American English, American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and International Union of Railways, UIC), also called a tra ...
, with the locals being given only about 15 to 30 minutes to pack for the surprise transfer. According to a correspondence dated 3 March 1944, at least 19,000 officers and 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR were sent to implement this operation. The plan envisaged that 300,000 people were to be deported from the lowland in the first three days, while the remaining 150,000 people living in the mountain regions would be deported by the next days; some 500 people were also deported by mistake, even though they were not Chechens or Ingush. Through the initial deportations, ~478,479 people were forcibly resettled in the Aardakh: 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush; in May 1944, Beria issued a directive ordering the NKVD to browse the entire USSR in search for any remaining members of these ethnic groups, as a result, an additional 4,146 Chechens and Ingush were found in
Dagestan Dagestan ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Fede ...
,
Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...
,
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
,
Krasnodar Krasnodar, formerly Yekaterinodar (until 1920), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city stands on the Kuban River in southern Russia, with a population of 1,154,885 residents, and up to 1.263 millio ...
, Rostov and
Astrakhan Astrakhan (, ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the Caspian Depression, from the Caspian Se ...
, with the total number of deportees being reported by the NKVD as around 493,269 by May and ~496,460 by July. They were loaded onto 180 special trains, about 40 to 45 persons into each
freight car Goods wagons or freight wagons (North America: freight cars), also known as goods carriages, goods trucks, freight carriages or freight trucks, are unpowered railway vehicles that are used for the transportation of cargo. A variety of wagon types ...
, each family was allowed to carry up to 500 kg of personal belongings on the trip, Some 40% to 50% of the deportees were children.; 333,739 people were evicted, of which 176,950 were sent to trains already on the first day of the operation, with Beriya reporting that there were only about six "cases of resistance", while 842 were "subject to isolation" and another 94,741 were removed from their homes by 11 PM, Much of the
livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...
owned by locals was later sent to
kolkhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to eme ...
es in
Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...
, Stavropol Krai,
Voronezh Voronezh ( ; , ) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects wes ...
and Orel Oblasts, many of these animals perished from exhaustion during the following months. The people were transported in cattle trains that were not appropriate for human transfer, lacking electricity, heating or running water. The exiles inside endured many
epidemics An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of Host (biology), hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example ...
(such as
typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...
), which lead to deaths from
infections An infection is the invasion of tissue (biology), tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host (biology), host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmis ...
or hunger, survivors recall that the wagons were so full of people that there was barely any space to move inside them, and that the deportees were given food only sporadically during the transit and were not told where they would be taken to. The wagons did not even stop for
bathroom A bathroom is a room in which people wash their bodies or parts thereof. It can contain one or more of the following plumbing fixtures: a shower, a bathtub, a bidet, and a sink (also known as a wash basin in the United Kingdom). A toilet is al ...
breaks, with the passengers being forced to make holes in the floor to relieve themselves. The transit to Central Asia lasted for almost a month, with the special trains traveling almost 2,000 miles to reach their destinations. 239,768 Chechens and 78,479 Ingush were sent to the Kazakh SSR, whereas 70,089 Chechens and 2,278 Ingush arrived in Kirgiz SSR. Smaller numbers of the remaining deportees were sent to
Uzbek SSR The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (, ), also known as Soviet Uzbekistan, the Uzbek SSR, UzSSR, or simply Uzbekistan and rarely Uzbekia, was a union republic of the Soviet Union. It was governed by the Uzbek branch of the Soviet Communist P ...
,
Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...
and
Tajik SSR The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Tajikistan, the Tajik SSR, TaSSR, or simply Tajikistan, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1929 to 1991 in Central Asia. The Tajik Re ...
, the deportees arrived at the regions without shelter or food, and were in many occasions taken to special settlements, where all prisoners aged 16–45 would be forced to work in mines, farms, factories or construction in return for food stamps (with the threat of severe punishment if non-compliant), as well as report monthly to the NKVD office at the camp. Those that attempted to escape would be sent to
gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
s, and the children of the prisoners would inherit their "exile" status. Malnutrition (caused by the negligence of the authorities to provide food for the prisoners), alongside exhaustion (from overworking) and mistreatment from Soviet forces led to high death rates among the local population. Many deported children were beaten by the local guards for "disobedience", and many families were left without proper housing: only 5,000 out of the 31,000 families in Kirgiz SSR were provided with housing, with one district having prepared only 18 apartments for over 900 families, the Chechen and Ingush children also had to attend school in the local language, not their own. On many occasions, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the aul of Khaibakh, about 700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death by NKVD General Mikheil Gveshiani, who was praised for this and promised a medal by Beria. Many people from remote villages were executed per Beria's verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush deemed 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot. This meant that those deemed too old or weak were to either be shot or left to starve in their beds alone. The soldiers would also sometimes rob from the empty homes. Those who resisted, protested or "walked too slow" were shot on the spot; in one incident, NKVD soldiers climbed up the Moysty mountain and found 60 villagers there, even though their commander ordered the soldiers to shoot the villagers, many soldiers instead fired in the air, the commander then ordered many of these soldiers to join the villagers while another platoon fired at all of them.


=Kabardino-Balkaria

=
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...
arrived in
Nalchik Nalchik (, ; ; ) is the capital city of Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia, situated at an altitude of in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains; about northwest of Beslan (Beslan is in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania). It covers an area of ...
on 2 March 1944, and in the early morning of 8 March 1944, two days earlier than planned, Balkar's population was ordered to get ready to leave their homes. The entire operation lasted about two hours, with the entire Balkar population of the region being evicted. Around 17,000
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
troops and 4,000 local agents participated in this operation. By 9 March, 37,713 Balkars were deported in 14 train convoys, they arrived at their destinations in the Kazakh and Kyrgiz socialist republics and by 23 March. Official Soviet documents reveal that 562 people died during the deportation. Many more died during the harsh years in exile and in labor camps: in total, it is estimated that 7,600 Balkars died as a consequence of the deportation, amounting to 19.82 percent of their entire ethnic group.


Germany

According to historian Norman Naimark, statements in Soviet military newspapers and the orders of the Soviet high command were jointly responsible for the excesses of the Red Army. Propaganda proclaimed that the Red Army had entered Germany as an avenger to punish all Germans.
Norman M. Naimark Norman M. Naimark (; born 1944, New York City) is an American historian. He is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He writes on modern Ea ...
Cambridge: Belknap, 1995
Some historians dispute this, referring to an order issued on 19 January 1945, which required the prevention of mistreatment of civilians. An order of the military council of the
1st Belorussian Front The 1st Belorussian Front (, ''Pervyy Belorusskiy front'', also romanized " Byelorussian"), known without a numeral as the Belorussian Front between October 1943 and February 1944, was a major formation of the Red Army during World War II, bein ...
, signed by Marshal Rokossovsky, ordered the shooting of looters and rapists at the scene of the crime. An order issued by Stavka on 20 April 1945 said that there was a need to maintain good relations with German civilians in order to decrease resistance and bring a quicker end to hostilities.


Murders of civilians

On several occasions during World War II, Soviet soldiers set fire to buildings, villages, or parts of cities, and they used deadly force against locals who attempted to put out the fires. Most Red Army atrocities took place only in what was regarded as hostile territory, however, there were several massacres committed in Poland, e.g. the Przyszowice massacre. Soldiers of the Red Army, together with members of the NKVD, frequently looted German transport trains in Poland in 1944 and 1945. Thomas Urban ''Der Verlust'', p. 145, Verlag C. H. Beck 2004, For the Germans, the organized evacuation of civilians before the advancing Red Army was delayed by the Nazi government, so as not to demoralize the troops, who were by now fighting in their own country. Nazi propaganda—originally meant to stiffen civil resistance by describing in gory and embellished detail Red Army atrocities such as the Nemmersdorf massacre—often backfired and created panic. Whenever possible, as soon as the Wehrmacht retreated, local civilians began to flee westward on their own initiative. Fleeing before the advancing Red Army, large numbers of the inhabitants of the German provinces of
East Prussia East Prussia was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's ...
,
Silesia Silesia (see names #Etymology, below) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Silesia, Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at 8, ...
, and
Pomerania Pomerania ( ; ; ; ) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The central and eastern part belongs to the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, West Pomeranian, Pomeranian Voivod ...
died during the evacuations, some from cold and starvation, some during combat operations. A significant percentage of this death toll, however, occurred when evacuation columns encountered units of the Red Army. Civilians were run over by tanks, shot, or otherwise murdered. Women and young girls were raped and left to die.
Antony Beevor Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works, mainly on the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War, and most recently the Russian Revolution and Civil War. ...
, ''Berlin: The Downfall 1945'', Penguin Books, 2002,
Documentary
on German public TV (ARD) of 2005
Thomas Darnstädt, Klaus Wiegrefe ''"Vater, erschieß mich!"'' in ''Die Flucht'', S. 28/29 (Herausgeber
Stefan Aust Stefan Aust (; born 1 July 1946) is a German journalist. He was the editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine from 1994 to February 2008 and has been the publisher of the conservative leading newspaper since 2014 and the paper's editor until ...
und Stephan Burgdorff), dtv und SPIEGEL-Buchverlag,
In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet
air force An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...
flew bombing and strafing missions that targeted columns of refugees. Although mass executions of civilians by the Red Army were seldom publicly reported, there is a known incident, Treuenbrietzen massacre. During the first occupation of the town by the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
, on 21 April or 22 a higher Soviet officer was shot. After that the
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...
briefly returned. After the second occupation of the town, Red Army soldiers rounded up the civilians and shot the adult men in a nearby forest. The official estimate is between 30 and 166 civilian victims. Some German sources claimed about 1,000 victims, but this must be rejected on the basis on the actual number of town residents. The first mayor of the
Charlottenburg Charlottenburg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Established as a German town law, town in 1705 and named after Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen consort of Kingdom ...
district of Berlin, Walter Kilian, appointed by the Soviets after the war ended, reported extensive looting by Red Army soldiers in the area: "Individuals, department stores, shops, apartments ... all were robbed blind." In the
Soviet occupation zone The Soviet occupation zone in Germany ( or , ; ) was an area of Germany that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a communist area, established as a result of the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945. On 7 October 1949 the German Democratic Republ ...
, members of the SED reported to Stalin that looting and rape by Soviet soldiers could result in a negative reaction by the German population towards the Soviet Union and the future of socialism in East Germany. Stalin is said to have angrily reacted: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honour of the Red Army through the mud." Accordingly, all evidence—such as reports, photos and other documents of looting, rape, the burning down of farms and villages by the Red Army—was deleted from all archives in the future GDR. 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 Expulsion or expelled may refer to: General * Deportation * Ejection (sports) * Eviction * Exile * Expeller pressing * Expulsion (education) * Expulsion from the United States Congress * Extradition * Forced migration * Ostracism * Pers ...
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). These figures do not include up to 125,000 civilian deaths in the
Battle of Berlin The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. After the Vistula–Od ...
. About 22,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed during the fighting in Berlin only.


Mass rapes

As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany. Scholars agree that the majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet occupation troops. Western estimates of the traceable number of rape victims range from two hundred thousand to two million. Following the Winter Offensive of 1945, mass rape by Soviet males occurred in all major cities taken by the Red Army. Women were gang raped by as many as several dozen soldiers during the occupation of Poland. In some cases victims who did not hide in the basements all day were raped up to 15 times. Ostrowska, Zaremba: "Kobieca gehenna". ''Krytyka Polityczna'', 4 March 2009.
Source:
Polityka ''Polityka'' (, ''Politics'') is a centre-left weekly news magazine in Poland. It had a circulation of 95,300 during 2021. ''Polityka'' has a slightly intellectual, socially liberal profile, setting it apart from the more conservative ''Wprost ...
nr 10/2009 (2695).
According to historian
Antony Beevor Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works, mainly on the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War, and most recently the Russian Revolution and Civil War. ...
, following the Red Army's capture of Berlin in 1945, Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as eight years old. The explanation of "revenge" is disputed by Beevor, at least with regard to the mass rapes. Beevor has written that Red Army soldiers also raped Soviet and Polish women liberated from
concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
s, and he contends that this undermines the revenge explanation, they were often committed by rear echelon units. According to Norman Naimark, after the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians usually received punishments ranging from arrest to execution. However, Naimark contends that the rapes continued until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined troops to strictly guarded posts and camps. Naimark concluded that "The social psychology of women and men in the Soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until, one could argue, the present." According to
Richard Overy Richard James Overy (born 23 December 1947) is a British historian who has published on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany. In 2007, as ''The Times'' editor of ''Complete History of the World'', he chose the 50 key dates of world his ...
, the Russians refused to acknowledge Soviet war crimes, partly "because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."


Hungary

According to researcher and author Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000
civilian A civilian is a person who is not a member of an armed force. It is war crime, illegal under the law of armed conflict to target civilians with military attacks, along with numerous other considerations for civilians during times of war. If a civi ...
s were killed during the
Siege of Budapest The siege of Budapest or battle of Budapest was the 50-day-long encirclement by Soviet and Romanian forces of the Hungarian capital of Budapest, near the end of World War II. Part of the broader Budapest Offensive, the siege began when Budapes ...
: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by Nazi SS and
Arrow Cross Party The Arrow Cross Party (, , abbreviated NYKP) was a far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National Unity. They were in power from 15 October 1944 to ...
death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...
s. Ungváry writes that when the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. Estimates of the number of rape victims vary from 5,000 to 200,000. According to Norman Naimark, Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered. Even embassy staff from neutral countries were captured and raped, as was documented when Soviet soldiers attacked the Swedish legation in Germany. A report by the Swiss legation in Budapest describes the Red Army's entry into the city: According to historian James Mark, memories and opinions of the Red Army in Hungary are mixed.


Romania

The Soviet Union also committed war crimes in
Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
or against
Romanians Romanians (, ; dated Endonym and exonym, exonym ''Vlachs'') are a Romance languages, Romance-speaking ethnic group and nation native to Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Sharing a Culture of Romania, ...
from the beginning of the occupation of
Bessarabia Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...
and Northern
Bukovina Bukovina or ; ; ; ; , ; see also other languages. is a historical region at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe. It is located on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians and the adjoining plains, today divided betwe ...
in 1940 all the way to the German invasion in 1941, and later from the expulsion of the Germans in the region until 1958. One example was the Fântâna Albă massacre, in which 44–3,000 Romanians were killed by the
Soviet Border Troops The Soviet Border Troops () were the border guard of the Soviet Union, subordinated to the Soviet state security agency: first to the ''Cheka''/State Political Directorate, OGPU, then to NKVD/Ministry for State Security (USSR), MGB and, final ...
and the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
while attempting to escape to Romania. Such event has been referred to as the "Romanian Katyn". Another infamous massacre committed by Soviet troops was the Lunca massacre, where Soviet border troops opened fire against several Romanian civilians attempting to escape into Romania, killing 600 of them, only 57 managed to escape, with another 44 being arrested and tried as "members of a counter-revolutionary organization", 12 of them were sentenced to death, with the rest being sentenced to 10 years forced labour and 5 years loss of civil rights, the family members of those arrested and shot would later be arrested and sent to Siberia and Central Asia During the occupation, the Soviet government and army deported thousands of Romanian civilians from the occupied regions into "special settlements". According to a secret Soviet Ministry of Interior report dated December 1965, 46,000 people were deported from the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic or Moldavian SSR (, mo-Cyrl, Република Советикэ Сочиалистэ Молдовеняскэ), also known as the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldovan SSR, Soviet Moldavia, Sovie ...
for the period 1940−1953. Religious persecution was also widespread, the Soviet government sought to exterminate all forms of organized religion in its occupied territories, often persecuting the Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish churches, the Soviet
political police 300px, East_German.html" ;"title="Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German">Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 19 ...
arrested numerous
priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...
s, with others being arrested and interrogated by the Soviet NKVD itself, then deported to the interior of the
USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and killed. Thousands of
Transylvanian Saxons The Transylvanian Saxons (; Transylvanian Saxon dialect, Transylvanian Saxon: ''Siweberjer Såksen'' or simply ''Soxen'', singularly ''Sox'' or ''Soax''; Transylvanian Landler dialect, Transylvanian Landler: ''Soxn'' or ''Soxisch''; ; seldom ''sa ...
would later be deported from 1944 to 1949 under Soviet occupation, with hundreds or even thousands dying on their way to camps in Siberia and Central Asia before being able to come back to their home country.


Yugoslavia

According to Yugoslav politician Milovan Djilas, at least 121 cases of rape were documented, 111 of which also involved murder. A total of 1,204 cases of looting with assault were also documented. Djilas described these figures as, "hardly insignificant if it is borne in mind that the Red Army crossed only the northeastern corner of Yugoslavia".Naimark (1995), pp. 70–71. This caused concern to the Yugoslav communist partisans, who feared that stories of crimes committed by their Soviet allies would weaken their standing among the population. Djilas writes that in response, Yugoslav partisan leader Joseph Broz Tito summoned the chief of the Soviet military mission, General Korneev, and formally protested. Despite having been invited "as a comrade", Korneev exploded at them for offering "such insinuations" against the Red Army. Djilas, who was present at the meeting, spoke up and explained the
British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
had never engaged in "such excesses" while liberating the other regions of Yugoslavia. General Korneev responded by screaming, "I protest most sharply at this insult given to the Red Army by comparing it with the armies of capitalist countries." The meeting with Korneev not only "ended without results", it also caused Stalin to personally attack Djilas during his next visit to
the Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall along with the K ...
. In tears, Stalin denounced "the Yugoslav Army and how it was administered." He then "spoke agitatedly about the sufferings of the Red Army and the horrors that it was forced to endure while it was fighting through thousands of kilometers of devastated country." Stalin climaxed with the words, "And such an Army was insulted by no one else but Djilas! Djilas, of whom I could least have expected such a thing, a man whom I received so well! And an Army which did not spare its blood for you! Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?" According to Djilas, the Soviet refusal to address protests against Red Army war crimes in Yugoslavia enraged Tito's government and it was a contributing factor in Yugoslavia's subsequent exit from the
Soviet Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...
.


Czechoslovakia (1945)

Slovak communist leader Vlado Clementis complained to Marshal
Ivan Konev Ivan Stepanovich Konev ( rus, Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев, p=ɪˈvan sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ˈkonʲɪf, links=no; 28 December 1897 – 21 May 1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forc ...
about the behavior of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Konev's response was to claim it was done mainly by Red Army deserters.


China

During the invasion of Manchuria, Soviet and Mongolian soldiers attacked and raped Japanese civilians, often encouraged by the local Chinese population who were resentful of Japanese rule.Mayumi Itoh, ''Japanese War Orphans in Manchuria: Forgotten Victims of World War II'', Palgrave Macmillan, April 2010,
p. 34.
/ref> The local Chinese population sometimes even joined in these attacks against the Japanese population with the Soviet soldiers. In one famous example, during the Gegenmiao massacre, Soviet soldiers, encouraged by the local Chinese population, raped and massacred over one thousand Japanese women and children. Fujiwara, 1995 p.323 Property of the Japanese were also looted by the Soviet soldiers and Chinese. Many Japanese women married themselves to local Manchurian men to protect themselves from persecution by Soviet soldiers. These Japanese women mostly married Chinese men and became known as "stranded war wives" (zanryu fujin). Following the
invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory (country subdivision), territory controlled by another similar entity, ...
of the Japanese
puppet state A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its ord ...
of
Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially known as the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Great Manchuria thereafter, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China that existed from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945. It was ostens ...
(
Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...
), the Soviets laid claim to valuable Japanese materials and industrial equipment in the region. A foreigner witnessed Soviet troops, formerly stationed in Berlin, who were allowed by the Soviet military to go at the city "for three days of rape and pillage." Most of
Mukden Shenyang,; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; formerly known as Fengtian formerly known by its Manchu name Mukden, is a sub-provincial city in China and the provincial capital of Liaoning province. It is the province's most populous city with a p ...
was gone. Convict soldiers were then used to replace them; it was testified that they "stole everything in sight, broke up bathtubs and toilets with hammers, pulled electric-light wiring out of the plaster, built fires on the floor and either burned down the house or at least a big hole in the floor, and in general behaved completely like savages." According to some British and American sources, the Soviets made it a policy to loot and rape civilians in Manchuria. In
Harbin Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban area, urban population (after Shenyang, Lia ...
, the Chinese posted slogans such as "Down with Red Imperialism!" Soviet forces faced some protests by Chinese communist party leaders against the looting and rapes committed by troops in Manchuria. There were several instances where Chinese police forces in Manchuria arrested or even killed Soviet troops for various crimes, leading to some conflicts between the Soviet and Chinese authorities in Manchuria. Japanese women in Manchukuo were repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers every day including underage girls from the families of Japanese who worked for the military and the Manchukuo rail at Beian airport and Japanese military nurses. The Russians seized Japanese civilian girls at Beian airport where there were a total of 1000 Japanese civilians, repeatedly raping 10 girls each day as recalled by Yoshida Reiko and repeatedly raped 75 Japanese nurses at the Sunwu military hospital in Manchukuo during the occupation. The Russians rejected all the pleading by the Japanese officers to stop the rapes. The Japanese were told by the Russians that they had to give their women for rape as war spoils. Soviet soldiers raped Japanese women from a group of Japanese families that were with Yamada Tami that attempted to flee their settlements on 14 August and go to Mudanjiang. Another group of Japanese women that were with Ikeda Hiroko that on 15 August tried to flee to Harbin but returned to their settlements were raped by Soviet soldiers.


Japan

The Soviet Army committed crimes against the Japanese civilian populations and surrendered military personnel in the closing stages of World War II during the assaults on
Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
and
Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...
. On 10 August 1945, Soviet forces carried out fierce naval bombardment and artillery strikes against civilians awaiting evacuation as well as Japanese installations in Maoka. Nearly 1,000 civilians were killed by the invading forces. After the 15 August 1945 Gyokuon broadcast, telephone operators at the Maoka Post Office were on duty without having been evacuated. On 20 August, Soviet troops landed in Maoka and 10 of the 12 female telephone operators on duty in fear of war crimes committed by Soviet troops, attempted suicide in the station, nine of which were killed. Apart from the telephone operator who committed suicide, other station employees who remained behind and those who were not on duty that day were killed by grenades and gunfire from Soviet soldiers, bringing the total number of those killed at the Maoka station to 19.「樺太終戦史」(昭和48年発行 樺太終戦史刊行会編纂) During the evacuation of the Kuriles and Karafuto, civilian convoys were attacked by Soviet submarines in the Aniva Gulf. Soviet
Leninets-class submarine The ''Leninets'' or L class were the second class of submarines to be built for the Soviet Navy. Twenty-five were built in four groups between 1931 and 1941. They were minelaying submarines and were based on the British L-class submarine, , which ...
''L-12'' and ''L-19'' sank two Japanese refugee transport ships ''Ogasawara Maru'' and '' Taito Maru'' while also damaging ''No.2 Shinko Maru'' on 22 August, 7 days after
Hirohito , Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...
had announced Japan's unconditional surrender. Over 2,400 civilians were killed.


Korea

During the Soviet occupation of North Korea, it was reported that Soviet soldiers committed rape against both Japanese and
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...
women alike in the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Soviet soldiers also looted the property of both Japanese and Koreans living in northern Korea. The Soviets laid claim to Japanese enterprises in Manchuria and northern Korea and took valuable materials and industrial equipment. North Korean residents initially held high hopes for the Soviet army, which had entered their territory as a liberation force, bringing an end to Japanese colonial rule. However, these expectations were quickly shattered. According to eyewitness accounts from the time, Soviet troops engaged in widespread misconduct upon their arrival, looting residents' belongings and committing acts of rape against local women, terrorizing the population. The full extent of the misconduct was revealed to Soviet experts sent to assess North Korea's economic situation in late 1945. The situation was so severe that they reported it directly to the Primorsky Military District. A report from the Soviet military command at the end of 1945 on the political attitudes of North Korean residents highlited the widespread issue of Soviet soldiers commting rape against local women. According to the report, in September 1945, less than a month after the Soviet army entered
Pyongyang Pyongyang () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is sometimes labeled as the "Capital of the Revolution" (). Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. Accordi ...
, an elderly Korean resident approached the Soviet military command and made the following plea: It was reported that the Soviet Military tolerated the rape of Japanese women residing in North Korea more than that of Korean women. At the time of the Soviet army's entry, approximately 215,000 Japanese civilians were residing in North Korea. As residents of an "occupied territory," Japanese women were openly subjected to mass rape by Soviet soldiers in broad daylight, while assaults on Korean women, considered residents of a "liberated area", were committed more discreetly, often in concealed locations or at night. This phenomenon was seen as similar to Norman Naimark's claim that, in Eastern Europe, Slavic women, such as Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, and Serbian women, who were considered "liberated" were relatively spared from rape by Soviet troops compared to non-Slavic women, such as German and Hungarian women, who were considered "occupied." By October 1945, the frequency and severity of misconduct by Soviet soldiers had significantly decreased, likely due to a direct order issued by
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
on September 20, 1945, to the authorities of the Soviet 25th Army stationed in North Korea, including the commander of the
Far Eastern Front The Far Eastern Front (Russian: Дальневосточный фронт) was a front — a level of military formation that is equivalent to army group — of the Red Army during the Second World War. Early war service Тhe Far Eastern Front wa ...
. Issued about a month after the Soviet Army's entry into North Korea, the order's sixth provision stated: "The military in North Korea must strictly observe discipline, avoid harming residents, and behave courteously." As a result, stricter enforcement by the Soviet military command led to a noticeable decline in misconduct by Soviet soldiers in the following month. Crackdowns on misconduct by Soviet soldiers reportedly intensified from early 1946, and measures taken by the Soviet military command contributed to a reduction in such incidents. Jeong Ryul, a Koryoin Soviet officer and interpreter for Ivan Chistyakov, testified that in January 1946, Stalin issued a secret directive to the
Soviet Civil Administration The Soviet Civil Administration (SCA) was the government of the northern half of Korea from 24 August 1945 to 9 September 1948 though governed concurrently after the setup of the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea in 1946. Even thou ...
ordering the immediate execution of soldiers who harmed the North Korean population. He stated that in
Wonsan Wonsan (), previously known as Wonsanjin (), is a port city and naval base located in Kangwon Province (North Korea), Kangwon Province, North Korea, along the eastern side of the Korean Peninsula, on the Sea of Japan and the provincial capital. ...
, ten Soviet soldiers charged with robbery and rape were shot, and a similar number were also executed in
Hamhung Hamhŭng (''Hamhŭng-si''; ) is North Korea's List of cities in North Korea, second-most populous city, the capital of South Hamgyong, South Hamgyŏng Province and the 16th largest city in the Korea, Korean Peninsula. Located in the southern part ...
. According to Bruce Cumings, a report from the
United States Army Military Government in Korea The United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) was the official ruling body of the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula from 9 September 1945 to 15 August 1948. The country during this period was plagued with political a ...
stated that "by January 1946, the Soviet Union had introduced military police to enforce strict control over its soldiers." However, looting and violence by Soviet soldiers were only relatively reduced, not completely eradicated. According to a Japanese resident in Namsi,
North Pyongan Province North Pyongan Province (also spelled North P'yŏngan; ; ) is a western provinces of North Korea, province of North Korea. The province was formed in 1896 from the northern half of the former Pyongan Province, P'yŏng'an Province, remained a pro ...
, rapes by Soviet soldiers began occurring in late October, with sexual violence against Japanese women becoming particularly severe. In response, some North Korean security forces reportedly evacuated Japanese women to the mountains or local Korean homes for protection. Soviet soldiers who had exhausted their military currency freely engaged in looting. Officers also committed offenses and were arrested as a result. For example, between May 13 and May 25, 1946, a total of 229 Soviet soldiers were arrested in
Haeju Haeju () is a city located in South Hwanghae Province near Haeju Bay in North Korea. It is the administrative centre of South Hwanghae Province. As of 2008, the population of the city is estimated to be 273,300. At the beginning of the 20th centu ...
,
Hwanghae Province Hwanghae Province (''Hwanghae-do'' ) was one of the Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon era. Hwanghae was located in the northwest of Korea. The provincial capital was Haeju. The regional name for the province was Haeseo (). It is a reg ...
, including six officers. Despite several official measures and arbitrary attempts to enforce discipline, misconduct, including assault, harassment, looting, and murder, by both Soviet soldiers and officers continued until the end of 1946.


Treatment of prisoners of war

Although the Soviet Union had not formally signed the Hague Convention, it declared itself bound by the convention's provisions as well as by its own "Regulations for the Treatment of PoWs". However, in practice, it often ignored the convention as well as its own rules. George Sanford wrote that Soviet public declarations and laws on the humane treatment of PoWs were "part of the Soviet 'big lie' for
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
". One of the Soviet Union's earliest war crimes were those against
Polish prisoners of war Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...
in the aftermath of the
Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...
in the 1939; it is estimated that during that conflict, approximately 2,500 Polish soldiers were murdered in various executions and reprisals for offering resistance by Soviets and Ukrainian nationalists. The most infamous of these was the
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
, a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and
intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several places, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the
mass graves A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...
were first discovered. Throughout the Second World War, the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau collected and investigated reports of crimes against the Axis POWs. According to Cuban-American writer Alfred de Zayas, "For the entire duration of the Russian campaign, reports of torture and murder of German prisoners did not cease. The War Crimes Bureau had five major sources of information: (1) captured enemy papers, especially orders, reports of operations, and propaganda leaflets; (2) intercepted radio and wireless messages; (3) testimony of Soviet prisoners of war; (4) testimony of captured Germans who had escaped; and (5) testimony of Germans who saw the corpses or mutilated bodies of executed prisoners of war. From 1941 to 1945 the Bureau compiled several thousand depositions, reports, and captured papers which, if nothing else, indicate that the killing of German prisoners of war upon capture or shortly after their interrogation was not an isolated occurrence. Documents relating to the war in France, Italy, and North Africa contain some reports on the deliberate killing of German prisoners of war, but there can be no comparison with the events on the Eastern Front." In a November 1941 report, the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau accused the Red Army of employing "a terror policy... against defenseless German soldiers that have fallen into its hands and against members of the German medical corps. At the same time... it has made use of the following means of camouflage: in a Red Army order that bears the approval of the
Council of People's Commissars The Council of People's Commissars (CPC) (), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (), were the highest executive (government), executive authorities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the Soviet Union (USSR), and the Sovi ...
, dated 1 July 1941, the norms of international law are made public, which the Red Army in the spirit of the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare are supposed to follow... This... Russian order probably had very little distribution, and surely it has not been followed at all. Otherwise the unspeakable crimes would not have occurred." According to the depositions, Soviet massacres of German, Italian, Spanish, and other Axis POWs were often incited by unit
Commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means ' commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and ...
s, who claimed to be acting under orders from Stalin and the
Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...
. Other evidence cemented the War Crimes Bureau's belief that Stalin had given secret orders about the massacre of POWs. During the winter of 1941–42, the Red Army captured approximately 10,000 German soldiers each month, but the death rate became so high that the absolute number of prisoners decreased (or was bureaucratically reduced). Hubertus Knabe ''Tag der Befreiung? Das Kriegsende in Ostdeutschland'', Propyläen 2005, Soviet sources list the deaths of 474,967 of the 2,652,672 German Armed Forces taken prisoner in the war. Dr. Rüdiger Overmans believes that it seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that additional German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody as POWs, putting the estimates of the actual death toll of German POW in the USSR at about 1.0 million.


Massacre of Feodosia

Soviet soldiers rarely bothered to treat wounded German POWs. A particularly infamous example took place after the Crimean city of
Feodosia Feodosia (, ''Feodosiia, Teodosiia''; , ''Feodosiya''), also called in English Theodosia (from ), is a city on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. Feodosia serves as the administrative center of Feodosia Municipality, one of the regions into ...
was briefly recaptured by Soviet forces on 29 December 1942. 160 wounded soldiers had been left in military hospitals by the retreating Wehrmacht. After the Germans retook Feodosia, it was learned that every wounded soldier had been massacred by Red Army, Navy, and
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
personnel. Some had been shot in their hospital beds, others repeatedly bludgeoned to death, still others were found to have been thrown from hospital windows before being repeatedly drenched with freezing water until they died of
hypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...
.


Massacre of Grishchino

The Massacre of Grischino was committed by an armoured division of the Red Army in February 1943 in the eastern Ukrainian towns of Krasnoarmeyskoye, Postyschevo and Grischino. The
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...
Untersuchungsstelle also known as WuSt (Wehrmacht criminal investigating authority), announced that among the victims were 406 soldiers of the Wehrmacht, 58 members of the
Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a Civil engineering, civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible ...
(including two Danish nationals), 89
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
soldiers, 9 Romanian soldiers, 4 Hungarian soldiers, 15 German civil officials, 7 German civilian workers and 8 Ukrainian volunteers. The places were overrun by the Soviet 4th Guards Tank Corps on the night of 10 and 11 February 1943. After the reconquest by the
5th SS Panzer Division Wiking The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking () or SS Division Wiking was an infantry and later an armoured division among the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions of Nazi Germany. During World War II, the division served on the Eastern Front. It surrendere ...
with the support of 333 Infantry Division and the 7th Panzer Division on 18 February 1943 the Wehrmacht soldiers discovered numerous deaths. Many of the bodies were horribly mutilated, ears and noses cut off and genital organs amputated and stuffed into their mouths. Breasts of some of the nurses were cut off, the women being brutally raped. A German military judge who was at the scene stated in an interview during the 1970s that he saw a female body with her legs spread-eagled and a broomstick rammed into her genitals. In the cellar of the main train station around 120 Germans were herded into a large storage room and then mowed down with machine guns.


Postwar

Some German prisoners were released soon after the war. Many others, however, remained in the
GULAG The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
long after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Among the most famous German POWs to die in Soviet captivity was Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who died of injuries, sustained possibly under torture, in a concentration camp near Stalingrad in 1952. In 2009, Captain Hosenfeld was posthumously honored by the State of Israel for his role in saving Jewish lives during The Holocaust. Similar was the fate of Swedish diplomat and Office of Strategic Services, OSS operative Raoul Wallenberg.


After World War II


Hungarian Revolution (1956)

According to the United Nations Report of the Special Committee on the problem of Hungary (1957): "Soviet tanks fired indiscriminately at every building from which they believed themselves to be under fire." The UN commission received numerous reports of Soviet mortar and artillery fire into inhabited quarters in the Buda section of the city, despite no return fire, and of "haphazard shooting at defenseless passers-by."


Afghanistan (1979–1989)

Scholars Mohammad Kakar, W. Michael Reisman and Charles Norchi believe that the Soviet Union was guilty of committing a genocide in Afghanistan. The army of the Soviet Union killed large numbers of Afghans to suppress their resistance. Up to 2 million Afghans were killed during the war, many of them by Soviet forces and their Afghan allies. In one notable incident the Soviet Army committed mass killing of civilians in the summer of 1980. One notable war crime was the Laghman massacre in April 1985 in the villages of Kas-Aziz-Khan, Charbagh, Bala Bagh, Sabzabad, Mamdrawer, Haider Khan and Pul-i-Joghi in the Laghman Province. At least 500 civilians were killed. In the Kulchabat, Bala Karz and Mushkizi massacre on 12 October 1983, the Red Army gathered 360 people at the village square and shot them, including 20 girls and over a dozen older people. The Rauzdi massacre and Padkhwab-e Shana massacre were also documented. In order to separate the mujahideen from the local populations and eliminate their support, the Soviet army killed and drove off civilians, and used scorched earth tactics to prevent their return. They used booby traps, mines, and chemical substances throughout the country. The Soviet army indiscriminately killed combatants and noncombatants to ensure submission by the local populations. The provinces of Nangarhar Province, Nangarhar, Ghazni, Laghman Province, Lagham, Kunar Province, Kunar, Zabul Province, Zabul, Kandahar, Qandahar, Badakhshan Province, Badakhshan, Logar Province, Lowgar, Paktia Province, Paktia and Paktika Province, Paktika witnessed extensive depopulation programmes by the Soviet forces. The Soviet forces abducted Afghan women in helicopters while flying in the country in search of mujahideen. In November 1980, a number of such incidents had taken place in various parts of the country, including Laghman and Kama. Soviet soldiers as well as KHAD, KhAD agents kidnapped young women from the city of Kabul and the areas of Darul Aman and Khair Khāna, Khair Khana, near the Soviet garrisons, to rape them. Women who were taken and raped by soldiers were considered 'dishonoured' by their families if they returned home. Deserters from the Soviet Army in 1984 claimed that they had heard of Afghan women being raped. The rape of Afghan women by Soviet troops was common and 11.8 percent of the Soviet war criminals in Afghanistan were convicted for the offence of rape. There was an outcry against the press in the Soviet Union for depicting the Soviet "war heroes" as "murderers", "aggressors", "rapists" and "junkies".


Pressure in Azerbaijan (1988–1991)

Black January (), also known as Black Saturday or the January Massacre, was a violent crackdown in Baku on 19–20 January 1990, pursuant to a state of emergency during the
dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
. In a resolution of 22 January 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR declared that the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet#USSR Supreme Soviet, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 19 January, used to impose emergency rule in Baku and military deployment, constituted an act of aggression. Black January is associated with the rebirth of the Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan Republic. It was one of the occasions during the ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika'' era in which the USSR used force against dissidents. According to official estimates of Azerbaijan, 147 civilians were killed, 800 people were injured, and five people went missing.


War crimes trials and legal prosecution

In 1995, Latvian courts sentenced former KGB officer Alfons Noviks to life in prison for genocide due to forced deportations in the 1940s. In 2003, August Kolk (born 1924), an Estonian national, and Petr Kislyiy (born 1921), a Russian national, were convicted of crimes against humanity by Estonian courts and each sentenced to eight years in prison. They were found guilty of Operation Priboi, deportations of Estonians in 1949. Kolk and Kislyiy lodged a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights, alleging that the Criminal Code of 1946 of the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...
(RSFSR) was valid at the time, applicable also in Estonia, and that the said Code had not provided for punishment of crimes against humanity. Their appeal was rejected since the court found that Resolution 95 of the United Nations General Assembly, adopted on 11 December 1946, confirmed deportations of civilians as a crime against humanity under international law. In 2004, Vassili Kononov, a Soviet partisan during World War II, was convicted by Supreme Court of Latvia as a war criminal for killing three women, one of whom was pregnant."Case of Kononov v. Latvia"
European Court of Human Rights. 17 May 2010. Retrieved 18 May 2010.
He is the only former Soviet partisan convicted of
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...
. The sentence was condemned by various high-ranking Russian officials. On 27 March 2019, Lithuania convicted 67 former Soviet military and KGB officials who were given sentences of between four and 14 years for the January Events (Lithuania), crackdown against Lithuanian civilians in January 1991. Only two were present—Yuriy Mel, a former Soviet tank officer, and Gennady Ivanov, a former Soviet munitions officer—while the others were sentenced ''Trial in absentia, in absentia'' as they were living in Russia.


In popular culture


Film

* ''A Woman in Berlin (film), A Woman in Berlin'' (2008) depicts the mass sexual assaults committed by Soviet soldiers in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, Soviet zone of occupied Germany. It is based on A Woman in Berlin, the diary of Marta Hillers. * ''The Admiral (2008 film), Admiral'' (2008), a film set during the
Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
, depicts Red soldiers and sailors committing numerous massacres of former members of the Imperial Russian Navy's officer corps. * ''The Beast (1988 film), The Beast'' (1988), a film set during the Soviet–Afghan War, depicts Red Army war crimes against civilian noncombatants and a Pashtuns, Pashtun clan's quest for revenge. * ''Charlie Wilson's War (film), Charlie Wilson's War'' (2007), set during the Soviet–Afghan War, accuses the Soviet state of systematic genocide against Afghan civilians. It is mentioned that Soviet forces are leaving no one alive and are even slaughtering livestock in order to starve the Afghan people into submission. * ''Katyń (film), Katyń'' (2007), depicts the
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
through the eyes of its victims and the decades long battle by their families to learn the truth. * ''Red Scorpion'' (1988), a film with Dolph Lundgren, set in Africa, depicts Soviet war criminal killing civilians with flamethrower.


Literature

* ''Prussian Nights'' (1974) a war poem by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The narrator, a Red Army officer, approves of the troops' crimes as revenge for Nazi atrocities in Russia, and hopes to take part in the plundering himself. The poem describes the gang-rape of a Polish woman whom the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
soldiers had mistaken for a German. According to a review for ''The New York Times'', Solzhenitsyn wrote the poem in trochaic tetrameter, "in imitation of, and argument with the most famous Russian war poem, Aleksandr Tvardovsky's ''Vasili Tyorkin''." * ''Apricot Jam and Other Stories'' (2010) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In a short story about Marshal Georgii Zhukov's futile attempts at writing his memoirs, the retired Marshal reminisces about serving against the Tambov rebellion, peasant uprising in Tambov Province. He recalls Mikhail Tukhachevsky's arrival to take command of the campaign and his first address to his men. He announced that total war and scorched earth tactics are to be used against civilians who assist or even sympathize with the peasant rebels. Zhukov proudly recalls how Tukhachevsky's tactics were adopted and succeeded in breaking the uprising. In the process, however, they virtually depopulated the surrounding countryside. * ''A Man without Breath'' (2013) by Philip Kerr. A 1993 Bernie Gunther thriller (genre), thriller which delves into the The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945, Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau's investigations of Soviet war crimes. Kerr noted in his Afterward that the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau continued to exist until 1945. It has been written about in the book of the same name by Alfred M. de Zayas, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1989. .


Art

* On 12 October 2013 a then 26-year-old Polish art student, Jerzy Bohdan Szumczyk, erected a movable statue next to the Soviet World War II memorial in the Polish city of Gdańsk. The statue depicted a Soviet soldier attempting to rape a pregnant woman; pulling her hair with one hand whilst pushing a pistol into her mouth. Authorities removed the artwork because it had been erected without an official permit, but there was widespread interest in many online publications. The act promoted an angry reaction from the Russian ambassador in Poland.


See also

* Allied war crimes during World War II * Anti-communist mass killings * Antisemitism in the Soviet Union * Destruction battalions * Evacuation of East Prussia * Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin * Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union * German war crimes * Human rights in the Soviet Union * Italian war crimes * Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union * Japanese war crimes * List of massacres in the Soviet Union * List of war crimes#Soviet Union perpetrated crimes, List of Soviet Union perpetrated war crimes * Mass graves in the Soviet Union * Mass operations of the NKVD * Military history of the Soviet Union * Military occupations by the Soviet Union * Nemmersdorf massacre * NKVD prisoner massacres * Operation Frühlingserwachen * Population transfer in the Soviet Union * Racism in the Soviet Union *
Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...
* Russian war crimes * Soviet plunder * United States war crimes * Waffen-SS#War crimes and atrocities, War crimes and atrocities of the Waffen-SS * War crimes of the Wehrmacht


References


Notes


Citations


Sources

* Antony Beevor, Beevor, Antony, ''Berlin: The Downfall 1945'', Penguin Books, 2002, * Bergstrom, Christer (2007). ''Barbarossa – The Air Battle: July–December 1941''. London: Chevron/Ian Allan. . * * * * * Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, ''The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945'' (in Wikipedia). Preface by Professor Howard Levie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. . New revised edition with Picton Press, Rockland, Maine, . * de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, ''A Terrible Revenge. The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944–1950'', St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, * * * * Hall, Steve and Lionel Quinlan (2000). ''KG55: Greif Geshwader''. Walton on Thames: Red Kite. * * * Max Hastings, Hasting, Max, ''Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945'', Chapter 10: Blood and Ice: East Prussia * Marta Hillers, Hillers, Marta, ''A Woman in Berlin: Six Weeks in the Conquered City'' Translated by Anthes Bell, * Bernhard Fisch, Fisch, Bernhard, ''Nemmersdorf, Oktober 1944. Was in Ostpreußen tatsächlich geschah.'' Berlin: 1997. . * * * * Catherine Merridale, Merridale, Catherine, ''Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939–1945'', London: Faber and Faber, 2005, * Norman Naimark, Naimark, Norman M., ''The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949.'' Harvard University Press, 1995. * * * * John Toland (historian), Toland, John, ''The Last 100 Days'', Chapter Two: Five Minutes before Midnight * * Walter, Elizabeth B., ''Barefoot in the Rubble'' 1997, * *


External links


The forgotten victims of WWII
Masculinities and rape in Berlin, 1945, James W. Messerschmidt, University of Southern Maine

''A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City'',

* [http://historicaltextarchive.com/books.php?op=viewbook&bookid=7&post=3 Swiss legation report of the Russian invasion of Hungary in the spring of 1945]
German rape victims find a voice at last
Kate Connolly, The Observer, 23 June 2002
"They raped every German female from eight to 80"
Antony Beevor, The Guardian, 1 May 2002
Excerpt, Chapter one
The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945–2002 – William I. Hitchcock – 2003 – ( evacuation of East Prussia, The occupation of East Prussia)
Description of the atrocities of the Red Army in East Prussia
quotations from Ilya Ehrenburg, poems by anti-cruelty Red Army officers and details of suicides and rapings of German women and children in
East Prussia East Prussia was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's ...
.
Book Review: The Siege of Budapest: 100 Days in World War II

HNet review of ''The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949.''


History News Network (Focus on the Asian front) * [https://web.archive.org/web/20090419015621/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/6043-11.cfm 27 Jan 2002 on-line article regarding author Antony Beevor's references to Soviet rapes in Germany] * Report of an eyewitness: Erika Morgenstern, who survived Königsberg 1945 as a child (in German): , , {{DEFAULTSORT:Soviet War Crimes Soviet war crimes, Aftermath of World War II in the Soviet Union Murder in the Soviet Union, war crimes Massacres in the Soviet Union, war crimes Persecution of Muslims Persecution of Christians