Deportation of the Balkars

Deportation of the Balkars
Part of Population transfer in the Soviet Union and World War II
Partition of Karachay and Balkar lands between the Circassian AO, Kabardin ASSR, Georgian SSR and Stavropol and Krasnodar Krais
Location	Kabardino-Balkaria, North Caucasus
Date	March 8, 1944 (1944-03-08)
Target	Expulsion and resettlement of the Balkars, population 37,103
Attack type	Population transfer, ethnic cleansing, massacre
Deaths	~3,494 died in transit (8% of the population)[1][2] ~from 1944-1952 estimated 7,600-11,000 died in total (20-25% of the population)[3][4] ~Some sources claim over 50% of the population died in the deportation, which would amount to over 18,000 deaths in total
Victims	37,713 Balkars deported to forced settlements in the Soviet Union
Perpetrators	NKVD, the Soviet secret police
Motive	Russification,[5] colonialism[6]

The Deportation of the Balkars was the expulsion by the Soviet government of the entire Balkar population of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on March 8, 1944, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by General Secretary Joseph Stalin. All the 37,713 Balkars of the Caucasus were deported from their homeland in one day. The crime was a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of non-Russian Soviet ethnic minorities between the 1930s and the 1950s.^[7][8] Officially the deportation was a response to the Balkars' supposed collaboration with occupying German forces. Later, in 1989, the Soviet government declared the deportation illegal.^[9]