Danubius International Conferences, 11th International Conference The Danube - Axis of European Identity

Concealed Deportation or Eviction under the Pretext of Fighting the Kulaks (based on Materials from the Village of Suvorovo, Izmail region, 1948)

Liliya Tsyganenko
Last modified: 2021-06-11

Abstract

Stalin's theory of building a communist future was incompatible with the very existence of private property. One of the basic conditions for building communism was the implementation of the collectivization policy, which was brought into action in the vast territory of the USSR in the early 1930s. Among the consequences of collectivization were famine, deportations, and the death of millions of people. The fact that the lands that became part of the USSR after World War II (part of Moldova and Southern Bessarabia, Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic states) differed significantly from the main Bolshevik territories, gave rise to the task in the shortest possible time to eliminate these discrepancies with the help of already proven methods: nationalization, collectivization, hunger, deportations.

Based on the preserved archival documents, using the example of individual settlements of the Danube region (the village of Suvorovo, Izmail region), we will analyze the Soviet policy towards the local peasantry, revealing the true goals, methods and consequences of the so-called "dekulakization", which led to a change in the social and ethnic composition population of the region.