ABSTRACT
This is the decree (prikaz) deporting ethnic Germans from the Volga German Republic, Saratov and Stalingrad oblasts mainly to Siberia and Kazakhstan. They were accused of conspiring with the advancing Wehrmacht troops. Ethnic Germans in the Red Army, the party and other institutions were also affected. The Germans were absolved of all blame by Khrushchev but their republic was never returned to them. They, together with the Crimean Tatars, are the only two deported nationalities which did not receive their old territory back. In all, about 52 nationalities were deported in the 1940s. Recent Russian estimates put the number exiled or resettled between 1941 and 1948 at about 3.3 million with another 215,000 being despatched later. Besides storing up hatred of Russians and the Soviet regime, these deportations had an unexpected consequence. They forced disparate nationalities from the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia to cooperate to survive. Some of the mafia gangs of the 1980s and 1990s in Russia began in embryo in exile.
