| This dissertation explores the fate of ethnic groups internally deported by the Soviet leadership during the Second World War. Known collectively in the literature as "The Punished Peoples", the Russian Germans, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars were collectively accused of collaborating with the Nazi invader, and subsequently exiled, in their entireties, to Siberia and Central Asia as "special settlers". This dissertation follows the history of "The Punished Peoples" through the three phases of deportation, life in exile, and rehabilitation and return. It is the first study of the topic which uses the great wealth of archival resources made available after the fall of the Soviet Union, employing a wide range of documents from Communist Party, State and Secret Police archives, from the highest levels of authority in Moscow, through to the district level in Kazakhstan.;Recent historiography has subsumed the fate of the Punished Peoples under the wider historical framework of genocide and ethnic cleansing, arguing that Soviet ideology and practice became racialized in its war against the Nazis. This dissertation takes issue with this claim, and through comparison with other historical cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing and internment, argues that the Soviet regime remained committed to cultural, not racial-biological conceptions of nationality. This study contends that the Punished Peoples were exiled because the Soviet leadership saw them as insufficiently Sovietized; in the interwar period, these peoples had subverted Soviet institutions to maintain traditional cultures, economic structures and power relationships, which lay festering underneath a Soviet façade. In exile, Soviet authorities designed every relationship and point of contact with these peoples to be re-educational, and pursued a project to reforge these groups into salvageable, Soviet-style nations.;This re-educational mandate, however, was frustrated with competing projects on the ground, from local authorities, local populations, and the exile populations themselves. The arrival of the exiles in Kazakhstan presented an opportunity for both the exiles and local populations to negotiate, challenge and transform an emerging ethnic hierarchy, which ultimately shaped each group's access to goods, employment, justice, public space, and ultimately, re-integration.;In addition to filling an obvious historiographical gap, this study also speaks to broader issues within Soviet history, such as nationalities policy, ethnic relations, and center-periphery relations. Through comparative examples, it also makes wider contributions to histories of empire, ethnic cleansing, genocide, migration, and race. |
