“If we had wings we would fly to you”. Kiril Feferman
in greater detail in the chapters dealing with the Ginsburg letters.
1 In this chapter, I rely on some findings that have already been published in my previous articles. See Kiril Feferman, “A Soviet Humanitarian Action?: Centre, Periphery and the Evacuation of Refugees to the North Caucasus, 1941–1942,” Europe-Asia Studies 61, no. 5 (July 2009): 813–831; idem, “Jewish Refugees under the Soviet Rule and the German Occupation in the North Caucasus,” in Revolution, Repression and Revival: The Jews of the Former Soviet Union, ed. Zvi Gitelman and Yaacov Ro’i (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 211–244.
2 Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War, 1941–1946 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 48–76.
3 Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 24–47. Cf. Alexander Statiev, “Motivations and Goals of Soviet Deportations in the Western Borderlands,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 6 (2005): 977–983.
4 David R. Stone, “The First Five-Year Plan and the Geography of the Soviet Defense Industry,” Europe-Asia Studies 57, no. 7 (2005): 1061.
5 Decree of the Executive Session of the Council of Labor and Defense “On the order of removal of valuable property, institutions, enterprises and human resources from the regions threatened by the enemy,” April 20, 1928, Yad Vashem Archive (henceforth YVA): JM/24678. Source: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (henceforth GARF): A-259/40/3028.
6 Aleksandr Kurtsev, “Bezhenstvo,” in Rossiia i pervaia mirovaia voina, ed. N. N. Smirnov (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), 129–147.
7 Decrees of SNK SSSR “On the evacuation of workers and employees of evacuated enterprises” and “On the order of evacuation of population during the war,” Top secret, July 5, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3022. Cf. Dubson, “On the Problem of the Evacuation,” 42–43.
8 The Council for Evacuation, “Transfer of children from the cities of Moscow and Leningrad to rural areas,” Top secret, July 1, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3023.
9 I enlarge on this subject in my article, Feferman, “A Soviet Humanitarian Action?,” 813–831.
10 K. Pamfilov, The Council for Evacuation’s memorandum “On regulating the registration of the evacuated population and the improvement of information work; on location of the evacuated citizens,” Top secret, December 25, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3014.
11 “Status and structure of Council for Evacuation. Attachment to the decision of SNK SSSR,” Top secret, June 24, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3028.
12 The first head of the Council was Lazar Kaganovich. On July 16, 1941, he was replaced by Shvernik.
13 Decree of SNK SSSR “On the arrangement of the population evacuation during the war,” Top secret, July 5, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3022.
14 “Status and structure of the Council for Evacuation,” YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3028.
15 Report by K. Pamfilov, Top secret, December 25, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3014. A postwar Soviet study mentioned a lower estimate of 7.4 million people evacuated by the spring of 1942. I. I. Belonosov, “Evakuatsiia naseleniia iz prifrontovoi polosy v 1941–1942 gg.,” in Eshelony idut na Vostok. Iz istorii perebazirovaniia proizvoditel′nykh sil SSSR v 1941–1942 gg. Sbornik statei i vospominanii, ed. Iu. A. Poliakov (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 26.
16 Dubson, “On the Problem of the Evacuation,” 38 (footnote 6).
17 Belonosov, “Evakuatsiia naseleniia iz prifrontovoi polosy,” 28.
18 E. Rees, “The Changing Nature of Centre–Local Relations in the USSR, 1928–1936,” in Centre–Local Relations in the Stalinist State 1928–1941, ed. E. Rees (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 9–36.
19 For example, Fedor Kiselev, Gosudarstvennaia politika po otnosheniiu k evakuirovannomu naseleniiu v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Na materialakh Kirovskoi oblasti i Udmurtskoi ASSR, PhD diss., Kirov, Viatkskii gosudarstvennyi tekhnicheskii universitet, 2004, 77–85. Cf. Mariia Potemkina, “Evakuatsiia i natsyional′nye otnosheniia v sovetskom tylu v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny,” Otechestvennaia istoriiia 3 (2002): 148–156.
20 Kuban′ v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945: Khronika sobytii, ed. A. Beliaev and I. Bondar′ (Krasnodar: Sovkuban′, 2000), vol. 1, 76–77.
21 Il′ia Al′tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v SSSR, 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: Fond “Kovcheg”: Kollektsiia “Sovershenno sekretno,” 2002), 388–389. Cf. Yitzhak Arad, The History of the Holocaust. The Soviet Union and the Annexed Territories (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004), 177–202 [Hebrew]. Cf. Manley, To the Tashkent Station, 99–100, 166–167. Cf. Edwards, Fleeing to Siberia, 38–39.
22 The sources referenced here relate to the mixed Cossack-Russian localities (Krasnodar) and the indigenous North Caucasians (Kalmykia and unspecifiied North Caucasian indigenous localities). Senior Inspector Shklovskii, speech at session of the SNK of the Kabardino-Balkar ASSR, May 5, 1942, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3527.
23 Ibid.
24 Saul Borovoi, Vospominaniia: Pamiatniki evreiskoi istoricheskoi mysli (Moscow: Evreiskii Universitet v Moskve, Jerusalem: Gesharim, 1993), 250, 252. Cf. Testimony of Anfisa Kalnitskaya, 1926, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Department of Oral History (henceforth ICJ, DOH): TC 2759 (not transcribed). Cf. Testimony of Lyudmila Bradichevsky, May 13, 1996, ICJ: (217) 183, p. 3, and others.
25 Vladimir Gel′fand, Dnevnik 1941–1946 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2015), 44.
26 Testimony of Yury Burakovsky, in Evakuatsiia. Vospominaniia o detstve, opalennom ognem Katastrofy. SSSR, 1941–1945, ed. Aleksandr Berman and Alla Nikitina (Jerusalem: Soiuz uchenykh-repatriantov, 2009), 91–92.
27 Testimony of Sara Labinov, no date, ICJ: TC 2773, side A. Cf. Testimony of Ida Mandelblat, no date, YVA: VT/1911.
28 Information provided by the Head of the Military Department of Soldato-Akeksandrovsky Raion Committee of the VKP(b) B. Fadeev, Top secret, August 30, 1941, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii Stavropol′skogo kraia (henceforth GANISK): 1/2/64, pp. 8–10. In Stavropol′e: Pravda voennykh let. Velikaia Otechestvenaia v dokumentakh i issledovaniiakh, ed. V. Belokon′, T. Kolpikova, Ia. Kol′tsova, V. Maznitsa (Stavropol: Stavropol′skii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2005), 35.
29 Maksim Andrienko, Naselenie Stavropol′skogo kraya v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: otsenka povedencheskikh motivov, PhD diss., Pyatigorsk, Piatigorskii gosudarstvennyi lingivisticheskii universitet, 2005, 57.
30 Ibid., 57.
31 NKVD to Shvernik, November 25, 1942, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3529. Cf. Shklovskii, report “On the conditions of the evacuated population in Kabardino-Balkar ASSR,” June 2, 1942, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3527.
32 Kiselev, Gosudarstvennaia politika, 79. Cf. Viktor Fedotov, Evakuirovannoe naselenie v Srednem Povolzh′e v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (1941–1945 gg.): Problemy razmeshcheniia, sotsial′noi adaptatsii i trudovoi deiatel′nosti, PhD diss., Samara: Samarskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 2004, 113. Cf. Mariia Potemkina, “Evakonaselenie v ural′skom tylu. Opyt vyzhivaniia,” Otechestvennaia istoriia 2 (2005): 93–94.
33 Shklovskii, speech, YVA: JM/24678. Source: GARF: A-259/40/3527.
34 Decree of the Council for Evacuation “On the plan for the evacuation of members of families of workers and employees from Karelo-Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Belorussian, Ukrainian (western areas), Moldavian SSR, districts of Murmansk, Leningrad and Smolensk,” Top secret, July 7, 1941, YVA: JM/24678. GARF: A-259/40/258, p. 66.
35 Distribution of evacuees (registered by lists) by districts and republics