Crimean Tatar

During the second world war, the Nazis and the Romanian army invaded the Soviet Union, thus most of the western regions of the Soviet Union and its Communist allies were falling under German occupation. This, along side Stalin’s paranoia about the Slavs that were not Russian, led to the Soviet government’s reactions towards its own allies and people near the end of the Soviet Union, as it could be understood as “If Hitler considered the German attack on the Soviet Union as a colossal ‘struggle of two world views against each other,’ Stalin viewed the war as a fight to the death between Slavs and Germans” (Naimark, 89). One such example was Poland’s Home Army, which was one of the armies that were cooperating with the Red Army against the Nazi …show more content…
“Certainly, there were instances of Tatar cooperation with German occupying forces,” as was stated by the Forced Migration Projects of the Open Society Institute (14). The key word here is “instances”. This word indicates that it was not the Crimean Tatar population as a whole that collaborated with the Nazis, as there were Crimean Tatars in the Red Army. Only around ten percent of the population collaborated with the Nazis, while the rest remained neutral. “Although they may not have actively supported the Nazis, the behavior of Tatars during the occupation indicated a widespread anti-Soviet mood” (Forced Migration Project, Open Society Institute, 15), these moods left in the minds of the occupiers and the Soviet government that these people could be used. Those Crimean Tatars who did collaborate led to the creation of Anti-Soviet units, “Tatars set up village home-guard units, which were part of the Nazi administration” (Naimark, 101). However, “…such collaborative acts were by no means limited to the Crimean Tatars” (Forced Migration Project, Open Society Institute, 14). It is important to note here that this was indeed the case. Not only did Crimean Tatars collaborate with the Nazis, but so did Ukrainians and Russians, just to name a few, those that felt that the Nazis were the lesser of the two evils. This is true, however there was no forced migration of all Ukrainians to Siberia, and this never happened to all Russians either. Yet, due to the actions of a few Crimean Tatars who aided the Nazis during the World War II, the whole of the Crimean Tatar population was forcibly exiled on one day. No matter how one looks at it, this is a serious repression of an ethnic people under the claim that they all collaborated with the Nazis. While the claim is correct for some Crimean Tatars, it is not correct for all. Knowing this, it can be assumed that