Deportation of the Karachays

Deportation of the Karachays Operation Seagull
Part of Population transfer in the Soviet Union and World War II
Dismemberment of Karachay and Balkar lands between the Circassian AO, Kabardin ASSR, Georgian SSR and Stavropol and Krasnodar Krais
Location	Karachay Autonomous Oblast, North Caucasus
Date	2 November 1943
Target	Karachays
Attack type	forced displacement, ethnic cleansing
Deaths	~653 during transit[1] ~estimated 13,100[2]—19,000[3] from 1944-1952 ~43,000 in total (of which 22,000 were children)[4][5][6][7]
Victims	69,267 Karachays deported to forced settlements in the Soviet Union
Perpetrators	NKVD, the Soviet secret police
Motive	Russification,[8] retribution for Axis collaboration,[8] cheap labor for forced settlements in the Soviet Union[9]

The Deportation of the Karachays (Russian: Депортация карачаевцев), codenamed Operation Seagull, was the Soviet government's forcible transfer of the entire Karachay population from the North Caucasus to Central Asia, mostly to the Kazakh and Kyrgyzstan SSRs, in November 1943, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, after it was approved by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Nearly 70,000 Karachays of the Caucasus were deported from their native land. 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.

Officially, the deportation was carried out in response to the Karachays supposed collaboration with occupying German forces. Originally only restricted to family members of rebel bandits during World War II, the deportation was later extended to the entire Karachay ethnic group. The Soviet government refused to acknowledge the fact that 20,000 Karachays served in the Red Army, greatly outnumbering the 3,000 Karachays who were estimated to have collaborated with the Wehrmacht (the German army). The deportation contributed to 43,000 deaths, resulting in a over 60% mortality rate for the deported population. The Karachays were the first North Caucasus ethnic group to be targeted by Stalin's policy of complete resettlement, which later encompassed five other ethnic groups.

They were rehabilitated in 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev became the new Soviet Premier and undertook a process of de-Stalinization. In 1957, the Karachays were released from special settlements and allowed to return to their home region, which was formalized as the Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast. By 1959, nearly 85% of Soviet Karachays resided in Karachay-Cherkessia. Later, in 1989, the Soviet government declared that the deportation was a crime. Some contemporary scholars such as Manus Midlarsky cite the Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks and the Karachays as ethnic groups which were singled out by Stalin's alleged genocidal behavior.^[10]