Deportation of Crimean Tatars

Date: May 18, 1944 • Location: Yangirabot, Uzbekistan

The Soviet Union forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR and elsewhere in the country.

During the Sürgünlik ("exile"), at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars were subjected to ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide through deportation carried out by Soviet Union authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944. The deportation was supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, even Soviet Communist Party members and Red Army soldiers, from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of several ethnicities that were subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.