(serious disclaimer: i abhor any and all genocide and ethnic cleansing and do not intend to portray these phenomena as any good, i only wish to speculate on a scenario that involves them specifically and want no trouble with anyone.)
In the midst of WW2, Josef Stalin and his Soviet state apparatus executed a campaign of forced population transfers against several ethnic minorities in Crimea and the Caucasus in the wake of the German advance and retreat. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Kalmyks, Chechens, Balkars, Karachays, Ingushetians, and other groups were forced out of their traditional homes, their autonomous republics abolished, and marched off to Siberia and Central Asia as a cruel form of collective punishment for perceived collaboration with and sympathy for the Germans. The deportees remained in exile in labor camps, suffering and perishing from frequent malnutrition and disease, until Khrushchev's political reforms in 1957 when the prisoners and victims were allowed back into their old territories. The expulsion period from 1943 till 1957 is today classified by many as a crime against humanity, although debate still occurs on whether it should be classified as a genocide or if the stalinist authorities had a racist intent on eradicating these ethnic minorities.
So, what if Khrushchev's political thaw had not happened, perhaps through Khrushchev not coming to power in the first place due to being sidelined by a traditional stalinist, and the deportees remained in the eastern camps, with no right to return to their old homelands? Would a situation of continued exile even be sustainable at all? What would happen to these minorities?
In the midst of WW2, Josef Stalin and his Soviet state apparatus executed a campaign of forced population transfers against several ethnic minorities in Crimea and the Caucasus in the wake of the German advance and retreat. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Kalmyks, Chechens, Balkars, Karachays, Ingushetians, and other groups were forced out of their traditional homes, their autonomous republics abolished, and marched off to Siberia and Central Asia as a cruel form of collective punishment for perceived collaboration with and sympathy for the Germans. The deportees remained in exile in labor camps, suffering and perishing from frequent malnutrition and disease, until Khrushchev's political reforms in 1957 when the prisoners and victims were allowed back into their old territories. The expulsion period from 1943 till 1957 is today classified by many as a crime against humanity, although debate still occurs on whether it should be classified as a genocide or if the stalinist authorities had a racist intent on eradicating these ethnic minorities.
So, what if Khrushchev's political thaw had not happened, perhaps through Khrushchev not coming to power in the first place due to being sidelined by a traditional stalinist, and the deportees remained in the eastern camps, with no right to return to their old homelands? Would a situation of continued exile even be sustainable at all? What would happen to these minorities?
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