1941-1945
From the memorandum of the leadership of the partisan movement in the Crimea to the Commander of the North Caucasian Front S.M. Budyonny on the combat activities of partisans from November 1, 1941 to July 1942.
(spelling and punctuation preserved)
The Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks instructed the city and district committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks to recruit volunteers for partisan detachments, which, in the event of the Crimea being occupied by the Germans, should go into the forest and operate behind Nazi lines. Along with this, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Crimean ASSR was instructed to recruit sabotage groups to leave them in the rear of the invaders.
Shortly thereafter, Comrade Bulatov, Secretary of the Crimean All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, instructed Comrade Mokrousov to outline a scheme for the organization, disposition and combat activities of the detachments. In addition, the regional committee ordered the people's commissar of internal affairs, district and city committees of the party to procure food and uniforms, take it all into the forest and base it there. The base from which the volunteers were recruited was the destruction battalions, party and Soviet activists.
The number of partisans was determined by geographical conditions, i.e. the size of the forest area was taken, which could more or less safely shelter the partisans. It was assumed that from 5,000 to 7,500 people could accommodate and actively operate in the Crimean forests. Based on this calculation, a plan was built for the delivery of food, uniforms and weapons. It was assumed that the Germans would not hold out in the Crimea beyond May, so the delivery plan was built for six months: November-April.
Partisans must go into the forest from all regions and cities, except for the regions - Leninsky, Mayak-Salynsky and the city of Kerch, which must remain in the quarries of the Kerch Peninsula. According to the plan, the Crimean forests were divided into five regions: 1st region Eastern edge of the forest - Ortalan, Kapsikhor; 2nd district Ortalan-Kapsihor, highway Simferopol-Alushta.
3rd district highway Simferopol-Alushta, Mangush exclusively Gurzuf. 4th district Mangush-Gurzuf, Biyuk-Karalez, Mukhalatka. 5th district from this line to western border forests. In the 1st district, food should be based and detachments should be placed: Feodosia, Kirovsky district, Stary Krym and Sudak.
The 2nd district is planned for the districts of Ichki, Kolai, Seitler, Dzhankoy, Biyuk-Onlar, Karasubazar, Zuya.
3rd district - two Simferopol urban detachments, Simferopol rural, Alushta, Evpatoria, Telmansky, a detachment of NKVD officers 4th district - Bakhchisarai, Krasno-Perekopsky, Larindorfsky, Yalta, Ak-Sheikhsky, Ak-Mechetsky, Kuibyshevsky.
5th district - detachments of Sevastopol, Balaklava, Freidorf and Saksky. A total of 29 units should arrive. At the end of October, the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved: Commander of the Partisan Movement of Crimea Comrade Mokrousov, Commissar Secretary of the Simferopol Civil Code of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Comrade Martynov, Chief of Staff Major Smetanin, Chief of the First District Comrade Satsyuk, Commissar of the Secretary of the Sudak Republic of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ) comrade Osmanov, chief of staff - captain Zakharevich; the head of the second district, comrade Genova, the commissar of the secretary of the Dzhankoy RK of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, t Fruslov, the chief of staff, comrade Makal; head of the third district political instructor Seversky, commissar of the secretary of the Central Republic of Kazakhstan of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Simferopol comrade Nikanorov, chief of staff comrade Seleznev;
the head of the fourth district, t Bortnikov, the commissar of the secretary of the Yalta RK VKPb) t. Selimov, the chief of staff, t. Vergasov; Comrade Krasnikov, chief of the fifth district; Comrade Sobolev, commissar; Comrade Ivanenko, chief of staff. The commanders and commissars of the detachments were approved by the city committees and district committees of the CPSU (b).
By November 1, detachments in the amount of 24 arrived in the forest and occupied the areas designated by the heads of the districts. Detachments did not arrive in the forest: Krasno-Perekopsky, Larindorfsky, Freidorfsky and Kuibyshevsky, a detachment of NKVD workers, instead of which came the commandant platoon of the headquarters of the main leadership in the amount of 20 people, staffed by prison workers. Of the comrades approved by the OK of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Sobolev, Fruslov, Osmanov, Selimov, Zekirya did not appear for reasons unknown to us, in whose place they were appointed: in the 1st district - Vyalkov from the 48th cavalry division, in the Vasilenko area, in the 2nd district - regimental commissar Popov, Colonel Comrade Lobov was appointed chief of staff instead of Makal, in the 4th district - commissar Amelinov. The number in the detachments was from 100 to 150 people. Subsequently, three detachments were formed from the remnants of military units and single groups of Red Army soldiers remaining in the forest and a commander of three detachments - Gorodovikov, Kurakov, Aedinov, numbering 100-120 people in the detachment. In addition, the rest of the detachments were also replenished at the expense of groups and singles of military personnel. Finally in November partisan detachments there were 27 with a total number of 3456 people.
As can be seen from the foregoing, the bulk were non-military. As mentioned above, the detachments did not come to the forest: Krasno-Perekopsky, Freidorfsky and Larindorfsky and a detachment of NKVD workers. On November 2, Grinberg took the Telmansky detachment to Yalta, and Krasnikov disbanded the Saki detachment, which went to Sevastopol, explaining this by the decomposition of the detachment. They fled from the forest, but then the commissar of the 1st district Osmanov, the commissar of the Seitler detachment Puzakin, the commissar of the Karasubazar detachment Kaplun returned, and the commander of the Seitler detachment Evstafiev did not return.
Part of the people left the Seitler detachment, which was soon replenished by the military. Vereshchagin was appointed commander of the detachment. In November-December, desertion assumed a threatening character. During this period, 891 people deserted, mostly Tatars. In total, up to July 1942, about 1 (200 people) deserted, mainly from the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 1st districts. The reasons for the desertion were the instability of some elements, the sharp transition of the Tatar population to the Nazis, the desire of some connect with the Red Army (Sevastopol detachment, Feodosia - commissar Yakubovsky, Kirovsky - commander Aldarov, chief of staff Panarin).
Hunger was a terrible phenomenon in the life of the partisans. As mentioned above, the delivery of food was planned for six months. In fact, more was brought in, but as a result of many reasons, a lot of food did not have time to be taken to the forest from transshipments, and it fell into the hands of the Nazis or was taken apart by the local population, and those products that were stored were also mostly looted by the Nazis. In this they were helped by traitors, mainly from the Tatars, who took part in the transportation and basing. The 5th, 4th and 3rd districts suffered the most.
The 5th district, whose bases were on the Mekenziev mountains and in the area of the village of Aytodor, lost bases in the first days, as soon as the Nazis approached there. Soon the same fate befell the 4th and 3rd districts. By January, all detachments, except Evpatoria and Ak-Mechetsky, did not have bases, they ate at the expense of wild animals of the reserve, horses and captured food from the local pro-fascist population, and sometimes received from collective farmers (village Laki). All attempts to seize food from the enemy were unsuccessful, for the reason that the transportation of troops, food and ammunition was and is now being carried out under heavy security, often with the participation of tanks or tankettes.
There were hundreds of cases when the partisans were unable to take anything from damaged cars or wagons, because groups of partisans were attacked by escort groups or groups that quickly arrived at the scene of attack from nearby garrisons. The difficulty of obtaining food in the surrounding villages was that the detachments were located surrounded by Tatar villages, and the Tatar population was hostile to the partisans and was armed by the Germans.
It was difficult to penetrate into Russian or other villages, and especially to take out food, because in all the villages there were garrisons and there were detachments of local fascists.
Sevastopol (Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD of Crimea, comrade Smirnov) knew, through Krasnikov's walkie-talkie and through live communication, about the famine in the partisan detachments, but did not take measures, and only after Seversky wrote to comrade Oktyabrsky, then in April 1942 began to serve a small amount of food. Other areas were in a better position, but many detachments were half-starved, and they were saved by the fact that food began to be dumped there in early March.
We asked the Military Council of the Caucasian, and then the Crimean Front, to drop food to Seversky, we were promised, but this did not happen until the end of April. As a result of all this, 250 people died of starvation in three districts, and this contributed to desertion. Despite the difficulties experienced by the partisans, the encirclement by local fascists, the presence of large garrisons, the increased security of the roads, the detachments acted actively, except for the Selikhov landing group, which trailed behind. In addition to many battles in the forest, as well as for the villages of Koush, Ortalan, Baksan and Suuk-Su, the detachments carried out 631 operations, including 124 food operations, 7984 soldiers and officers, 787 trucks, 36 cars, small convoys (15- 20 wagons) - 31, wedges 3, motorcycles 23, tankers 22, tractors 6, 2 military train echelons were blown up, 25 bridges were blown up, 400 meters of railway track were damaged, 40 km of cable were cut, fascists and various traitors were shot 441 people.
Our losses: 341 killed, 241 wounded, 110 missing. Due to the fact that the archives of the central headquarters are buried in the forest, it does not allow now to describe the combat activities of each detachment, so we are forced to confine ourselves to summary data.
For 8 months, several mergers of detachments were carried out, as well as the displacement and relocation of the command and political staff. The chief and commissar of the 1st district, Satsyuk and Vyalkov, were dismissed for inactivity, cowardice, and other misconduct; head of the 5th district Krasnikov; commander of the Zuy detachment Litvinenko; commander and commissar of the Karasubazar detachment Timokhin and Kaplun; the commander of the Kirov detachment Aldarov was shot for corruption and desertion; the commissar of the 2nd district Popov was removed; commander of the Evpatoria detachment Kalashnikov; commander of the 1st Simferopol detachment Soldatchenko; commissar of the Seitler Detachment Puzakin; the commander of the 1st Simferopol detachment, Shchetinin, was transferred to the rank and file, and then appointed chief of staff of the 4th district. Shot by the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal for the murder of a wounded soldier, the murder of two lieutenants and for disarming and not accepting 15 Red Army soldiers, subsequently killed by the Romanians, into their detachment, the commander of the Kolai detachment Gubarev and commissar Shtepa.
Shot by the chief of staff of the 5th district Ivanenko, who went over to serve in the Gestapo; the head of the 2nd district, Genov, was removed by the Military Council of the Caucasian Front. The head of the 4th district, Bortnikov, was replaced by Major General Averkin; Feldman, commissar of the Biyuk-Onlar detachment, was removed from the Crimean NKVD. In connection with the appointment of Gorodovikov and Furik, the head of the 1st District Mokrous, Commissar Ponomarenko, was transferred to the detachment. Subsequently, movements were made in connection with the liquidation of the 4th and 5th districts, as well as in connection with the merger of detachments due to the small number of Ichkinsky with Kolaisky, Zuysky with Seitlersky. The best units should be considered:
Feodosia - commander Mokrous, commissioner Ponomarenko; Gorodovikov detachment, Dzhankoy detachment - commander Ryumshin, commissar Klevetov; Ichkinsky - Commander Chub, Commissar Bedin; Kurakov's detachment 4th Krasnoarmeisky; Alushtinsky - commander Ivanov, commissioner Eremenko; Yalta - the commander was Krivoshta, commissar Kucher; Red Army - Commander Aedinov, Commissar Sukhinenko; Bakhchisarai - Commander Macedonian, Commissioner Black; 2nd Simferopol - Commander Chussi, Commissar Tretyak; The Zuysky detachment - commander Kamensky, commissar Lugovoi is in the first place in terms of communication with the population, for intelligence and food supply, as well as the detachments of Chub and Kurakov. Of all the units, the worst of all is the 1st Krasnoarmeisky - commander Smirnov, commissar Polyansky. 4th Krasnoarmeisky - commander Nezamov, commissar Sidorov. These two detachments were formed from the Selikhov landing group.
At present, due to the abolition of the 4th and 5th districts, as well as the merger of some detachments, the number of detachments and the number of fighters is: 1st district - the head of the Chub district, Commissar Furik, detachments 4, number 517 people 1) Red Army No. 2 - commander Isaev, commissar Svinoboev, 2) Karasubazarsky - commander Zaretsky, commissar Kamansky, 3) Kirovsky - commander Pozyvaev, commissar Kryukov, 4) Feodosia - where Sudaksky is poured - commander Mokrous, commissar Ponomarenko.
2nd district - head of the district Kurakov, vrid. commissar Lugovoi, detachments 7, totaling 950 people, 1) Dzhankoy detachment, commander Shashlyk, commissar Kiselev, 2) Krasnoarmeysky No. 4 - commander Mitko, commissar Sidorov, 3) Krasnoarmeysky No. 3 - commander Baranovsky, commissar Egorov, 4) Krasnoarmeysky No. 1, commander Smirnov, commissar Polyansky, 5) Ichkino-Kolaisky, - commander Yuriev, commissar Bedin, 6) Zuysky - commander Kamensky, commissar Mozgov, 7) Biyuk-Onlarsky - commander Nightingale, commissar Orlov.
3rd district - head of Seversky, commissar Nikanorov, detachments 6, total number of 560 people, Simferopol No. 1 - commander Seleznev, commissar Filippov, 2) Simferopol No. 2 - commander of Chussi, commissar Tretyak, 3) Evpatoria - commander Ermakov, commissar Fartushny , 4) Alushtinsky - commander Amelinov, commissioner Eremenko, 5) Sevastopol - commander Zinchenko, commissioner Krivoshta, 6) Bakhchisarai - commander Macedonian, commissioner Cherny.
Platoon at the headquarters of the commander of 38 people, commander Fedorenko, commissioner Boyko. In total, as of July 1, 1942, there are 2125 people. The detachments are provided with food for 7-8 days. The detachments are fully equipped with rifles. There are approximately 200 cartridges per fighter, machine guns - 8, Degtyarev - 23, machine guns -56, but not all have cartridges, company mortars -16, battalion -1, 46 mm guns - 88 2.76 mm -2, explosion . about 130 kg of substances, not everyone is provided with hand grenades, well-equipped, but not everyone has an overcoat.
Communication between the main headquarters and the districts, as well as between the headquarters of the districts and the detachments, is exceptionally lively. The headquarters of the districts have messengers with whom they send mail to neighboring districts, and if the mail is intended for the General Headquarters, from the area close to the headquarters, the mail is carried by the messengers of this district. For example, a detachment has its own messengers who carry mail to the headquarters of the district and back, the messengers of the district carry mail to the neighboring either to the leadership of the district, or to the main headquarters, if it is located in this district. Approximately - messengers of the first district, delivers mail to the second district, transfers it to the chief of communications of the district, and he transfers it to the main headquarters through the messengers of the latter who are with him.
The most difficult - communication was carried out by the 3rd, 4th, 5th districts when the headquarters moved to the 2nd district, and when the headquarters was in the third district - the same picture was with the first and second districts. Due to the fact that the roads Simferopol - Alushta, Karasubazar - Uskut are heavily guarded, communication is very difficult.
There were cases, especially in winter, when communication was broken for a month, and in the first days, without waiting for messengers from the 1st and 2nd regions, we had to allocate a special group, which with great difficulty reached these regions, losing two one person (one killed, one missing) and one wounded.
For all the time from November to July, 21 people were killed communicating with the General Headquarters, and 10 between districts. Communication with the mainland was maintained with Sevastopol via Krasnikov's walkie-talkie, liaisons from the main headquarters and the 5th district and liaisons sent by Sevastopol . Radio communication was established by the Military Council of the Kav. front, which sent five radio operators with two stations to the 2nd region, the first region received one radio operator in February and one in March, who came with a walkie-talkie from the steppe.
The worst was in the 3rd district. Despite our repeated requests, it was only in May that a radio operator arrived at the Zuysky detachment for Seversky, who was kept by the authorized GO for the Zuysky detachment Kharchenko for more than a month, referring to Kapalkin’s order, and only after our categorical order, the radio operator was sent to Seversky. In addition, communication is maintained by aircraft, and once a group of people arrived in the 3rd district from Sevastopol by boat.
As seen above, the main core of the partisans were volunteers. It was assumed that during the retreat of the Red Army from the Crimea, not all units would have time to cross over to the Caucasian coast and those remaining in the Crimea should settle in the forest. Therefore, even when drawing up the scheme, the question of subordination and possible misunderstandings on this basis came up, especially knowing that discipline requires, in the event of a loss of communication with the immediate superiors, the subordination of a junior in rank to a senior, there was a fear that such bosses would not be found who did not recognize bosses approved by the regional committee, they will take it into their heads to subjugate all the military, as a result of which a jumble could result.
Therefore, the scheme and our order provided for the subordination of all the chiefs who got into the forest to the leadership of the partisans. Subsequently, in this spirit, an order was issued for the border troops and 51 armies. We learned about this already being in the forest, and even then not officially, but from the words of Major Izugenev and after Major General Averkin. Unfortunately, many commanders and commissars did not want to fulfill this order, they tried to break through to Sevastopol, as a result, the cadres surrendered, and only small groups managed to get to Sevastopol.
There were no cases of forcible annexation of the remnants of the units, but there were cases when the partisans, knowing that these remnants would not break through to Sevastopol, but would fall into the hands of the Nazis, disarmed those who did not want to stay in the forest. Mokrousov and Martynov themselves held a meeting with Izugenev and the commander of the border regiment (I don’t remember the number) Martynenok, but neither Izugenev nor Martynenok stayed. As a result, as it became known to us, after they came to Sevastopol with a small group, consisting exclusively of the chief political staff. All the rest surrendered to the Nazis.
Before our eyes, the remnants of one regiment, retreating through the reserve, surrendered in batches. And two days before that, Mokrousov told the regiment commander that if it was impossible for him to break through to Yalta, he had to stay in the forest. To this, the regiment commander (I don’t remember his last name) replied: “The Nazis will cross this line only over my corpse.”
Despite the desire of the commanders and commissars to break through, about 1,000 people settled in the forest, including the remnants of 48 kav. divisions in the amount of 100-120 people from the Gorodovikov regiment. These remnants were headed by Commissar Popov and Chief of Staff Lobov. General Averkin, under very mysterious circumstances, fought off these remnants on Demerdzhiyail, made his way to the headquarters of the main leadership and received command over the 4th district, and in December was killed by the Nazis in the Uzenbash area.
The partisans greeted their military comrades as relatives, providing them with all possible assistance with food, clothing and ammunition. Except for the cases in the Kolai detachment, where the detachment commander Gubarev and commissar Shtepa disarmed a group of 13 military men and expelled them from the detachment, as a result of which the group died, for which Gubarev and Shtepa were shot. The command and political staff of the Red Army, who fell into the forest, received appointments instead of non-military ones. It was indicated above that the chiefs of staff, the Central Headquarters and the districts were military.
Subsequently, the military led the detachments, were appointed to responsible positions in the regions. Popov, Lobov, Vyalkov, Major General Averkin, Aedinov, Seversky Chief of Staff Captain Kalugin, Lieutenant Colonel Shetinin, etc., and now most of the military are on the detachments. Relations with the military are very good, with the exception of Lobov, Popov and Selikhov. Moreover, when rumors reached us about the bad relationship between Popov and Lobov and the former head of the 2nd district, Genov, we wrote to them about it. In response, we received from Popov and Genov a refutation and confirmation of very good relations.
However, after that, the commander of the Dzhankoy detachment, Ryumshin, who died bravely in battle, wrote to us about the unhealthy relationship of this trio. When we came to the headquarters of the 2nd district in February, it turned out that this "friendly" troika was at odds, moreover, Lobov and Popov had dragged Selikhov and a number of other comrades into this squabble. Selikhov's walkie-talkie started working, and soon an order followed to dismiss Genov and appoint Selikhov, a weak-willed and mediocre person, to his place.
Martynov and I called Lobov, Popov and Genov in order to sort things out and reconcile them, but we saw that nothing would come of it. Genov was accused of being incapable, openly called a shepherd, that he did not give food to the military (on inspection it turned out that the military received food equally with the partisans) and some other minor sins. If Lobov and Popov did not pursue some goal, they could help Genov in eliminating his shortcomings in military knowledge and work well.
In order to defuse this atmosphere and strengthen the leadership of the 1st district, we appointed Lobov chief of staff there, he fell diplomatically ill. Selikhov's walkie-talkie started working, and three days later an order was issued by the Front Commander to leave Lobov as chief of staff of the 2nd district. Having received this order, Lobov instantly recovered.
In order to get acquainted with the political composition and identify the relationship, we gathered all of them for a meeting. Here we were met with hostility by all the commanders and political workers of the remnants of the 48th division. Most of all, they found fault with the words of Mokrousov, who said: “What are you doing with a lousy cavalry division” and said that the behavior of Popov and Lobov double-dealing borders on Trotskyism.
Moreover, the expression "lousy division" did not refer to the 48th division, and not to the existing remnants, which Lobov and Popov identified with the former division. We knew about Gorodovikov as a good commander from the stories of his fellow soldiers who were in the detachments of the 3rd district, and from the reports of Genov, so we had in mind to give him the 4th district. When this was discussed, Gorodovikov obeyed.
Here Popov came out and introduced himself as the commander of a division, which is subordinate only to him and no one can dispose of it without his knowledge. However, we did not agree with this statement and appointed Gorodovikov the head of the 4th district.
Apparently, Selikhov's radio started working again, and on the 3rd day we received an order to create a military group, which included Gorodovikov's detachment with the subordination of this group to Selekhov. When checking the detachments, it turned out that Popov kept Kaplun, who had thrown away his party card, as commissar of the Karasubazar detachment.
When working out our order to intensify actions, he began to engage in quiet squabbles, aggravated relations between the military and non-military, had a concubine, and messed around. All this forced us to raise the question of replacing him, which happened; the Military Council appointed Buskadze in his place. After his dismissal, instead of honestly working, he was idle (report to Buskadze), gathered the offended (Kvashnev, Kasyanov, Yegorov, Polyansky and others), intrigued and was engaged in projecting. Having received the appointment of the commissar of the II district, he, having come to the Headquarters, began to swear obscenely to the head of the district Kurakov, the leadership of the partisan movement, wrote an order to transfer the translator Bella Trakhtenberg, Lobov's concubine, from our detachment to his disposal, wrote an order to remove the commissioners from work OO, appointed by us, and about the appointment of others in their place, including the loafer Kasyanov, and when he came to land at the landing site, he tried to forcibly put Kvashnev on the plane out of turn, threatened with a stick and cursed obscenely deputy. Martynov, authorized by us for evacuation, Domnin (See the material sent by us to the Special Department of the Front). This open revolt of Popov outraged us, Mokrousov arrested Popov and handed him over to a military tribunal, about which he informed you by telegram on the same day.
Lobov is an elusive intrigue, if not worse. All his work is aimed at inciting and making things worse. He slandered us to the Military Council of Crimea. Front, accused us of persecuting the military, adhered to and inspired the commanders to devote more time to reconnaissance, which essentially amounted to disrupting the operation. He adhered to the tactics of keeping the detachments in a heap, while moving our headquarters, he drove Selikhov's detachments after us, contrary to our orders. On orders from the Kokasan region, a detachment of Gorodovikov and Kurakov should withdraw to Terka, and he drove this detachment and the military.
When our headquarters moved from the Kokasan region in May, Selikhov himself suggested the idea of conducting a food operation in the villages located north of Kazanly.
We have approved this plan. Instead, Selikhov drove the 2nd detachment to the Terke region, and when Mokrousov gave Selikhov a scolding for this, he said that he had received Lobov's order for this. Colonel Lobov refused this. When Selikhov fell ill, Martynov and Lobov went to him to talk about his and Buskadze's evacuation, he agreed subject to your permission, and when Lobov wrote an order for the temporary release of Selikhov due to illness, Lobov began to tell Mokrousov that the order was written incorrectly, since there was no report from Selikhov.
To Mokrousov’s remark that you said that you spoke to him, “no, I didn’t say that,” Lobov lied. This pissed off Mokrousov, and he cursed him and said in a fit of irritability: “T. Soroka, shoot Lobov." But no one shot him, and Mokrousov would not have allowed it. It must be admitted that Mokrousov acted very, very badly here.
T. Bulatov raised the question, what is our opinion if the partisan detachments are divided into two independent regions with direct subordination to the mainland. We write to the Great Land because we still do not know to whom we are subordinate. Directives were sent to us by the Military Council of the Crimean Front, the Crimean Regional Committee of the Party, the Primorskaya Army, the NKVD of Crimea, and now the Military Council of the Cavalry. front. All this stunned us, and we did not know "which god to pray"! This must be put an end to and the partisan movement must be subordinated to one leadership.
The question of separation is difficult for us to resolve. Of course, in the presence of good regular communication by radio and air with the body to which the partisans are subordinate, and the difficulties of communication between the areas separated by the Simferopol-Alushta highway, dismemberment would, perhaps, be useful, and since we have no reason to hope for this, then the abolition of the unified leadership in the Crimea may have a detrimental effect on deeds, and even if such people as Lobov and Popov end up at the head of the administration of independent regions. For these reasons, we cannot offer anything.
Prospects for replenishing people and supplying detachments Unfortunately, we began to establish contact with the population of the steppe regions only from April. Before that, it was almost impossible, since we had neither clothes nor documents with which our people could travel from the forest, and in winter it was impossible to walk hundreds of miles with an overnight stay in the field. For these reasons, we knew only by hearsay about the life and mood of the peasants.
As for the Tatar population of the mountainous regions, from the first days of the occupation of the Crimea by the fascists, the vast majority of them followed the fascists, which excluded the possibility of us doing work other than undercover. After establishing contact with the village, it was established that the overwhelming majority of the peasants were Soviet-minded, but terror had strangled them so much that people were afraid of each other and even close relatives.
Even before that, the Zuysky detachment, thanks to the energy and popularity of the commissar of the detachment, Comrade Lugovoy, had close ties with the collective farmers of the Zuysky district, especially with the village of Barabanovka, from where he drew various information and food, and subsequently almost all the inhabitants of this village went into the forest to Lugovoy . When we established contact with the steppe regions, about which see below, it turned out that the peasants were not averse to partisan and go into the forest, but fear for the families that the Nazis would destroy if their relatives went into partisans held them back.
At that time, the Nazis had not yet managed to rob the village completely, and there was food that would have been given to the partisans, but it was not possible to organize its delivery to the forest due to the strong developed espionage, the lack of horses and the difficulties associated with transportation, especially through the Simferopol highway. Feodosia, heavily guarded, and passing Tatar villages. Now this situation has worsened due to increased surveillance and terror, lack of food for the collective farmers, and there is no hope for a harvest, since only seeds can produce a harvest, so the only source is the delivery of food to the Crimea from the Kuban.
Collective farmers will go to the forest with their families, which cannot be allowed. In particular, our agent came to us from the village of Besheran in July and asked whether it was possible to lead people into the forest. We said - only without families. Went to negotiate with them. How this issue will be resolved is hard to say. Our opinion boils down to the fact that there will be an influx of people into partisan detachments, and it can be organized provided that family members are evacuated from the forest to mainland and increased food dumping.
Thus, the population will also act against the fascists in the steppe. The cadres of the partisans, having survived the hungry winter, are overwhelmingly sick and exhausted. For these reasons, people are unlikely to hold out for long, especially if Crimea is not liberated before winter. Therefore, the question arises of replacing them with new, fresh people, which in practice can be done without much difficulty. The change of people can be done by air with a landing of TB on Karabi Yayle and by sea with the approach of a boat between Otuzy-Kozy, Novy Svet, Kapsikhor and at Semidvorye. There are no such opportunities in the Seversky district. These points have been explored, and now it is only necessary to resolve this question in practice.
Our opinion in this case boils down to the following: a) Kurakov and Chub give the order of approach for boats. b) Boats go to these points with people and food. c) On the shore they are met by armed people with packs plus those to be evacuated. d) The disembarked people and detachments lift the load on themselves and on packs and go with it to the camps.
Organize underground work in the Crimea began in April m-tse. To this end, politically literate comrades with organizational abilities were selected and sent to the regions as party representatives. We decided that in order to avoid the possibility of provocations and betrayal, we should not immediately create party groups, but began with the creation of groups of Soviet patriots, and only after the comrades showed their devotion to our cause in concrete deeds, create party groups from among them ...
Organized groups launched propaganda work among the population and for this purpose they used newspapers and magazines delivered to us in the forest. The groups were given the following tasks: to carry out agitation and mass work among the population, to organize and carry out work to disrupt various kinds of enemy measures, to carry out acts of sabotage, to recruit new members, etc.
According to the data received from the district representatives, one can see a new increase in oppression and terror by the Nazis over the population. All food, livestock, poultry and clothes are taken from the population. From "voluntary" methods of confiscating the population for export to Germany, the occupiers switched to methods of undisguised violence. They give a layout for the settlement, the headman supplies the stipulated number of people for export. Intolerable conditions have been created for the population, and if they do not go to the partisan detachments, it turns out that it is because the Gestapo launched a demagogic agitation about the massacre by the partisans of anyone who appears in the forest.
And there are those who want to go to the partisans. This is in the presence of our agitation, which is not yet firmly established. We gave instructions to the district party representatives to oppose our Soviet truth to the fascist demagogy. Organize explanations to the population about the actual state of the war, about the atrocities of the occupiers, about the facts of the political and economic lack of rights of the population, that the partisans are cracking down and will crack down on the occupiers and traitors to our people, and that the partisans will gladly meet everyone who wants to help them in their selfless fight. Consequently, there is a base for replenishing partisan detachments.
It is only necessary, through skillfully and energetically staged agitation, to awaken the idea among the population about the need for a merciless struggle against the invaders, by any means and under any conditions, to show the population on the concrete facts of the atrocities of the Nazis that the only way out for our people from lawlessness. Comrade Davydkin especially reports on intelligence and intelligence activities.
Basically, the work consisted of: they gave intelligence data, according to which the command of the Crimean Front could fully determine the intentions of the enemy and build their operational plans. In particular, from our reports on the grouping of tank formations in the triangle of Koktebel - Feodosia - Stary Krym, it could be unmistakably judged that the enemy was aiming his main blow at our left flank. So it was before the Kerch catastrophe and before the fall of the hero - Sevastopol. Unfortunately, as rumors reached us, many of our radiograms, which provided important intelligence about the enemy's preparations for an attack on Kerch, were deciphered after the fall of Kerch. So it was or not, it is necessary to check.
In March, at the request of the Military Council of the Crimean Front, we presented a list of especially distinguished partisans for an award. A total of 67 people were represented, and the Military Council did not require characteristics for those represented. So far, the show has not taken place. At the same time, all those nominated by Selikhov for the award have already been awarded.
Commander of the Crimean partisan movement Colonel (Mokrousov)
Commissioner Secretary of the Simferopol Civil Code of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Art. battalion commissar (Martynov)
SELIMOV MUSTAFA VEYISOVICH
Even in my youth, I heard the name Selimov, always pronounced with special reverence. Remembering the deportation, the echelons noted that in our echelon there was a government car in which Mustafa Selimov rode. For some reason, I then believed that Selimov in the Crimea was the most important Crimean Tatars. I did not join a pioneer organization, but the elders around me, respected and revered by me, were mostly communists. As a child, I heard from them about the Crimean ASSR and its creator V.I. Lenin, about whom they always spoke with special reverence and admiration. Also, when the conversation touched on the situation of the people, the past and hopes for a better future, they uttered the name of Mustafa Selimov. So in my childhood I got the impression that Mustafa Selimov, for our people, is equivalent to Lenin.
Already in 1955, when I started working at school and the elders began to perceive me as an interlocutor, I learned that Mustafa aga was the secretary of the Yalta district party committee and during the war the commissar of the Southern Union of Crimean partisans. More full information received in 1959, when Dzheppar - Odzha, gave me a bound collection of documents from the first stage of the national movement, trips to Moscow and Kyiv, past receptions, the composition of our representatives and their speeches. In conversations, it was always emphasized that Mustafa Selimov was with them. From these conversations, I formed the image of an outstanding person, equal to Lenin for us. Dzheppar Akimovich himself is a holy man, a thoughtful intellectual, who enjoyed great authority among everyone I knew, always spoke with special reverence about Mustafa Veyisovich Selimov, and I dreamed of meeting him, as many probably dreamed of meeting their idol or genius. He envied the people around him and able to meet and talk.
After the earthquake in Tashkent on April 26, 1966, some people left the danger zone. Apartments with small cracks in the walls were vacated. Thanks to this, I received a two-room apartment in the village of the Tashavtomash plant, Ordzhonikidzevsky district, which was part of the service area of our Specialized Construction Administration. I immediately got acquainted with comrades Riza-agya Umerov and Asan Ibrish, who had lagged behind for life. He went to work in the UNR 227 as the deputy head of the VET. Free time appeared, which I completely devoted to the national movement, together with Riza-aga and Asan. Our site was directly the village of Tashavtomash, agricultural "Durmen", agricultural Kibray with all branches, Ulugbek, the village of SoyuzNIHI and the village. Lunacharskoe. More precisely, the entire Ordzhonikidzevsky district of the Tashkent region. And in each of these large regions had its own active, enterprising young and senior responsible persons. I don’t remember exactly on what occasion Riza Umerov’s “duva” prayer service was, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly for me, before the rest of the invitees, an intelligent man of strong build with a fragile-looking woman enters the courtyard, and turning to Rize-aga says: “Well, command, how can I help you". Ria-aga immediately fussed and led them to the terrace, called his wife: "Fatima, agan keldy, azyrla sofran." “Men evelje yardymga keldym,” Mustafa answered - yes, and let his wife, Aunt Meryem, onto the terrace. It turned out that he was the brother of Fatima - apte Selimova - Riza's wife - yeah. Until now, just close my eyes and remember him. Before me rises his unforgettable image. A well-groomed elegant man who creates a special aura around him is fit, strong, athletic, reeking of health. Especially impressive are his always laughing unique, captivating and understanding sparkling eyes. So suddenly and unexpectedly happened my first acquaintance with this amazing man who stood at the heart of the national movement and served his people until the end of his days. Since 1970, our group, which began its work among the communists and the intelligentsia of our people, in order to increase their activation and inclusion in the national movement during the recession, directly worked on ideological and strategic problems and tasks under the patronage of Mustafa Selimov.
He was our ideologue, and all our actions, letters, trips, etc. we always agreed with him until his death in Moscow during the operation on October 14, 1985. He turned out to be easy to handle, and, based on the actual experience of age and position, he never tried to show this difference to his interlocutor, respecting the opinions of others, talking to everyone as an equal. Subsequently, I began to enter their house and even drank exceptional, personally caring for them, starting from bushes grown in the yard, ending with the production of special quality wine.
Here are a number of documents confirming the special role of Mustafa Selimov in the national movement of the Crimean Tatars and the messages of the KGB of Ukraine to the Central Committee of Ukraine published in Lately in Kyiv.
Delegation of communists, WWII veterans in Moscow. August 1957
In the first row, fourth from the left, Twice Hero of the USSR Amet-Khan Sultan
In the second row, Mustafa Selimov, fifth from the left
« In a memorandum № 1/545* dated September 27 this year (1956) we reported to you about the received intelligence data on the behavior of the Crimean Tatars, in particular, about the unification of the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia to fight for the return of the Crimea to the Tatars and the “centers” allegedly created by them for this purpose in the cities of Odessa and Tashkent.
By checking these data through the State Security Committee under the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR, it was established that the Crimean Tatar Selimov Mustafa, together with Aladinov Shamil, Murtazaev Veli ..., Bolat Yusuf and others, really formed an unofficial group (the so-called "Headquarters"), which Tatar language, organization of national schools, theater. They demand permission for Crimean Tatars to travel to Crimea and return their property left in Crimea. They are trying to persuade the Crimean Tatars to go to the Crimea without permission and seize their former property from the new owners.
In March of this year. this group sent a letter to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU demanding that the Crimean Tatars be restored to their former position.
In September of this year. Selimov traveled to Moscow in order to, together with Asanov (mentioned in our memorandum), Gafarov and others living there, to remind the relevant authorities of the requirements set forth in the letter mentioned above.
At the same time, Selimov and Gafarov visited the writer A. Perventsev 28 , from whom they demanded a letter refuting the facts set forth in his novel "Honor from a Young Man" 29 about the betrayal of some Crimean Tatars during the Patriotic War. At the same time, they tried to intimidate PERVENTSEV, declaring that if he did not write such a letter, he would "regret".
At present, the same group is preparing a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine with a request to assist the Crimean Tatars to return to permanent residence in Crimea.
Asanov (Moscow) and other persons residing outside of Uzbekistan are participating in the preparation of this letter.
In their letter, they express their readiness to continue seeking the return of their national autonomy, declaring that “this dream will always haunt them until they set foot on Crimean land”*. YES Sat Decorate. - F. 2. - Op. 2 (1959). - Por. 9. - Ark. 251-252. Original. Document in the funds of the Sovereign Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine is visible.
Many of the Crimean Tatars refused to put their signatures under this document, and 233 people made inscriptions on the back demanding the return of confiscated property to them and permission to leave for residence in Crimea.
Subsequently, such sentiments among a certain part of the Crimean Tatars began to be supported and systematically inflamed by a group of people who in the past held responsible and leading positions in Crimea.
This inflammatory activity has intensified every year, becoming more open and persistent.
Gradually, the leading core of the Tatar movement began to form, the so-called initiative group, which included the most active supporters of the idea of returning the Tatars to Crimea and granting them national autonomy.
Such persons include:
Selimov Mustafa Veisovich, 1914 ( doc. fact 1910) year of birth, member of the CPSU
since 1931, former secretary of the Yalta city party committee and commissar of the Southern Union of Crimean partisans. He works as a deputy director of the Tashkent Institute "Uzgiprovodkhoz".
Murtazaev Veliulla, born in 1900, member of the CPSU, former secretary of the Bakhchisaray district party committee, lives in the city of Samarkand.
Umerov Bekir, born in 1900, member of the CPSU, former party worker, personal pensioner, lives in the city of Samarkand.
Osmanov Bekir Osmanovich, born in 1911, former partisan, expelled from the party in December 1966 for active incitement among the Tatars, slander and falsification of facts. Lives in the city of Fergana.
Gafarov Ablyakim Selimovich, born in 1907, member
CPSU, former head of the Department of the Polymer Industry
of the state chemical plant under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, lives in the city of Mos
que. - Alyadinov Shamil Seitovich, member of the CPSU, Tatar writer, in the past held a responsible post in the Crimea, lives in the city of Tashkent.
After the issuance of the decree of April 28, 1956, the listed persons actively carried out inflammatory activities, incited nationalist sentiments among the Tatars, led the movement of the Tatars for the return to the Crimea and granting them autonomy.
Under their influence, similar "initiative groups" were created in a number of districts and cities of the republics of Central Asia, the Krasnodar Territory and some regions of the Ukrainian SSR.
In August 1967, the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to remove the indiscriminate accusation from the Crimean Tatars of complicity with the Nazi invaders, in connection with which the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree of September 5, 1967 "On citizens of Tatar nationality living in Crimea." YES Sat Ukraine. - F. 13. - Ref. 481. - Ark. 45-48. copy.
to the General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU To members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU Comrade Suslov“In early April 1956, we, a group of communists from the Crimean Tatars, addressed the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU with a letter in which we outlined the circumstances under which the Crimean Tatar people were expelled, and what grave consequences this eviction of the people led to.
We ask you to resolve the issue of the Crimean Tatar people in the light of the decisions of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the wills of V. I. Lenin on national question.»
Members of the CPSU: /Refat Mustafayev/signature /Shamil Alyadipov/signature /Mustafa Selimoye/signature /Amet-Usni Penerdeyuyi/signature /Izmail Khairullayev/signature 7. 09. 56
Collection of documents and materials
After 1966, Mustafa-aga did not participate in public events, city, regional and republican meetings, with a large number of representatives from the field, but he gathered a narrow circle of leaders of the movement. Numerous memoirs of compatriots have been preserved about this.
Extensive material on the activities of Mustafa Selimov is in the collection of participants in the national movement "ADALET Qureshi Saflarynda" by Idris Chelebi-oglu Asanin. Telling about each member of the movement, events and connections with like-minded people, please note that Mustafa Selimov is in the first place for everyone.
Aider Mustafaev recalls that back in 1953 or 54 after the death of Stalin,
Mustafa Selimov, taking advantage of the fact that he was released from commandant supervision back in 1945, traveled to the regions of Uzbekistan and established contacts with his reliable comrades in partisan struggle and party work, participants in the Second World War.
Valuable memories were left by Ifta Dzhemilev that back in 1954 M. Selimov organized individual letters from the former leading workers of the Crimea to the Central Committee of the CPSU. Recalling later on the meeting at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, in particular, he notes that on September 14 a letter was sent to N. Mukhitdinov signed by 14 party members and on December 6 they were received by N. Mukhitdinov.
The first to speak for 35 minutes was M. Selimov, who said at the end: "We will fight for our right until the goal is fully achieved." (Adalet volume I. p. 207.), the second Shamil Alyadin, and the third Veliulla Murtazaev and M. Selimov insisted on the next meeting with big amount party members from among the Crimean Tatars. The organizers of the second meeting were M. Selimov, Sh. Alyadin, I. Khairullaev, U. Penirdzhi. And after the meeting, which was attended by 107 communists, it was decided to create initiative groups in all places where our people live. It was decided to prepare an Appeal to the Central Committee of the CPSU for work with the population, outlining not only the political and constitutional rights of the people, including historical background, the participation of the people in the Second World War, as well as the victims suffered in the war and as a result of expulsion, at the same time the goal of which was to educate the people in the struggle for their rights. M. Selimov, Sh. Alyadin, Yu. Bolat, Dzheppar Akimov were elected as executive editors. The elders and creators of the Crimean Tatar national movement developed the basic principles and demands of the people:
Organized return home - Crimea,
Restoration of the liquidated Crimean autonomy,
Create all conditions for the normal life of the Crimean Tatar and other peoples living in Crimea.
In the summer of 1957, from July 27 to September 2, a delegation led by Mustafa Selimov, consisting of Refat Mustafaev, Veliulla Murtazaev, Dzheppar Akimov, Shamil Alyadin, Bekir Osmanov, Ilyas Mustafaev, Izzet Seferov, Seitumer Emin, Zelikha Niyazieva-Kermenchikli, was in Moscow they were joined by Suleiman Asanov, Zeitulla Ablyakimov, Amet Khan-Sultan, Midat Selimov and Ramazan Ibraimov from Leningrad
We visited the Writers' Union of the USSR, where they protested against the books by A. Perventsev and Vergasov. We went to Kyiv in two cars, where we met with Kovpak.
On September 2, they were received at the Central Committee from the propaganda department by V. Gromov, who, as a result of the conversation, declared: “Comrades, understand the Crimea is not the Kalmyk steppes.”
Idris Asanin himself recalls how he, together with Eshref Shemi-zade, Bekir Umerov, Dzheppar Akimov and Fazyl Ametov, went to Mustafa Selimov.
He believed that he was given great confidence to be present in this narrow circle, where the tactical and strategic tasks of the national movement were solved. Adaleth volume I.p.126.
The KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR [for] No. 320 * dated August 27, 1975 reported to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party: “On the intensification of anti-social activities of the Crimean Tatar “autonomists” in connection with the upcoming XXV Congress of the CPSU.
According to operational data, the leaders of the "autonomists" Veli Suleiman, Godzhenov Refat, Muratov Abdurashit and others living in Uzbekistan have recently collected signatures among the Tatars under documents prepared for the authorities and intend to send their "representatives" to Moscow with them.
In addition, it became known that Crimean Tatar “autonomists” who do not manifest themselves as extremists are preparing some kind of “appeal” to the authorities on behalf of a group of Tatars and are raising funds to send this “appeal” in October this year. representatives to Moscow. Some "autonomists", referring to the documents of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, declare that if the 25th Congress of the CPSU does not satisfy their requests, they will turn to international organizations on this issue.
Reported to the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. YES SB Ukraine. - F. 16. - Op. 7 (1985). - Ref. 17. - Ark. 48-49. Original.
List of activists of the Crimean Tatar people Secretary General Central Committee of the CPSU L.I. Brezhnev and all members and candidates for membership in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for the sake of developing the national nutrition of the Crimean Tatars Veresen 1975.
“31 years have passed since the Crimean Tatar people were expelled from their historical homeland of Crimea... Our veterans turned to you with hope before the 30th anniversary of the Victory. We are approached with a similar question and our compatriots. What can we say to them? In this regard, we bring to the attention of party and state authorities the deepest aspirations of our compatriots to return to their national homeland - Crimea. Thus, more than 500 Crimean Tatar communists in November 1972 turned to a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, comrade. RASHIDOV Sh.R. Our people did not receive a response to this appeal from the communists.
In support of the communists, the Crimean Tatar people in November 1973 appealed to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which stated: “The interests of further strengthening the friendship of the Soviet peoples and nationalities, the Leninist formulation of the national question in the USSR, the current situation of our people, require the speedy return of the Crimean Tatars to their national homeland - Crimea and restoration of equal rights with all peoples and nationalities living in the USSR.
The signatories indicated 24 prominent communists of our people as their trusted representatives. There was no response to this request either. More than 1,100 voters did not receive a response to their appeal, submitted to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR through their deputy Enver Aliyev, who personally submitted it with his cover letter on December 14, 1973 to the commission addressed to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Comrade Podgorny N.V.
The appeal remains unanswered to this day. famous people of the Crimean Tatar people, which, with signatures in September 1974, was sent personally to each of you, a member and candidate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. In all the above appeals, our compatriots raise one question, to return the Crimean Tatar people to their national homeland - Crimea.
At the request and instruction of our compatriots, we gave our consent to be their representatives in bringing and raising the issue of returning to their homeland, before party and state authorities .. To this day, we have not received a response to any of the submitted appeals from any of the addressees. In violation of the Decree of the PVS of the USSR of April 12, 1968, according to which the authorities are obliged to respond to the proposals and applications of citizens within one month.
Our compatriots and we, the authorized representatives indicated under the appeals, appeal to you with the greatest request to positively decide the fate of our people, return them to their national homeland - Crimea.
Abdurakhmanov Uzeir; Aliyev Enver; Alyadinov Shamil; Ametov Kadyr; Ablaev Enver; Bilyalov Nafe; Vagapov Osman; Veli Suleiman; Godzhenov Refat; Dzhemilev Sefersha;
Jivan Ismail; Islyamov Abselyam; Izmailov Ibraim; Kasimov Yagya; Kalafatov Enver; Kamilov Amet; Mustafaev Osman; Mustafaev Refat; Omerov Server; Ramazanov Ibraim;
Selimov Midat; Selimov Mustafa; Seitov Yakub; Bekir died; Umerov Ablyamit; Useinov Rasim; Tairov Seitmemet; Khalilov Edem; Chalbash Khalil; Eminov Ruslan*.
YES SB Ukraine. - F. 16. - Op. 7 (1985). - Ref. 17. Ark. 55-59. Certified copy
HEADING "Milliy areket KGB nin kozlerinen" Informational message of the intercessor of the head of the KDB under the Republic of Moldova of the URSR S. Mukha to the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine V. Shcherbitsky about the choice of signing among the Crimean Tatars to turn the Crimean Tatar people to their Batkivshchyna. M. Kiev 12 spring 1975
Twenty-two of these representatives signed the appeal.
Ibraim Ramaanov fell ill and could not come to Kyiv, where, according to the agreement, he had to sign, we did not find Ismail Jivan. Aliev Enver made a personal deputy request, according to which we were summoned to the Tashkent Regional Communist Party. Tairov Seitmemet sent with his deputy's request, sent by me to him, the statements that came to my address from the Crimea. Omerov Server helped to purchase a Moskvich car out of turn. Dzhemilev Mustafa was erroneously entered into the list of the KGB of Ukraine, was proposed by the signing communists as a representative of the former chief agronomist of the Crimea, the communist Sefersha Dzhemilev, he signed the appeal and worked with us; helped in collecting signatures from the communists and the intelligentsia of Samarkand. I have the original signed by the others. A scanned copy is attached. The signatories were active promoters of the events indicated in the published appeal. Of the older generation, Suleiman Veli was the most active, never tired, energetic and purposeful. Among the intelligentsia, Umerov Ablyamit, an artist of "Haytarma", an entertainer, helped and went to Moscow. The restless Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Chalbash went to the polling stations and worked with compatriots who had left for the Crimea. Edem Khalilev, responsible for Yangiyul and the region, actively participated in all events. Despite his advanced age, Bekir Umerov did not lag behind in activity. But as it should be, the young, nominated by representatives of the communists and the intelligentsia, not only did not lag behind the older generation, but also put forward their own initiatives and put them into practice themselves. In the process of common work, we, the young, met and consulted with Mustafa Veyisovich, because the main work fell on the young.
Having started working with the communists and the intelligentsia, in view of the start, after a series of trials and the departure of part of the active “initiators” outside Uzbekistan, we had to expand our activities to all areas and, if possible, to our entire densely populated population. The arguments in the press that a split has taken place in the national movement have no real basis.
The main movement was based on work with the population. Individuals are not satisfied with this painstaking work, designed to constantly disturb the population with the problems of returning to their homeland in Crimea, restoring its constitutional equality. Mustafa Veyisovich believed and inspired us that the solution of our national question mainly and primarily depends on our people. Therefore, it is necessary to work persistently among the people, to regularly remind of the homeland of national dignity, which can be preserved only by returning to the homeland in the Crimea and there can be no other homeland, neither in Jizzakh, nor in Mubarek. Meetings should be the method of work at the polling stations, when they gather, breaking away from work, and talk on the topic of the homeland, not only interest appears, but patriotism is also brought up. It is necessary to use legal opportunities, one of the most acceptable is the collection of signatures for appeals to the Party Central Committee. People gather to get acquainted with the appeal and its discussion, which does not contradict the laws and cannot be prohibited. Therefore, appeals must be sustained, for the leadership of the Central Committee, the issue of the Crimean Tatars is well known and not new. We need to make appeals, using any occasion, anniversary, etc. the main thing is not to let the people relax, forget and take root. The contents of the appeals should have information for the people, for their education, and are addressed to the Central Committee, and not contain politically incoherent expressions, clues that could attract activists to the dock.
He warned that it was impossible to glorify some of our comrades who were not self-possessed, who had departed from the main painstaking work, with sharp attacks that attracted the attention of the authorities and were subjected to trial.
Of course, in such a vast, nationwide, democratically built movement of people, with different characters, different educational and intellectual levels, it is impossible to force them to obey a single rule, especially in a protracted process. Of course, there are people who are ready to throw out their emotions out of desperation, unable to endure the long painstaking daily work, not seeing the result, not hoping for a result, they took individual actions, thus considering to influence the solution of the problem under pressure. external forces. These actions were never initiated by the leaders of the movement and were not encouraged. This is confirmed by the published reports of the KGB of Ukraine to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. These are the laws of any long struggle. Remain in the ranks are persistent, persistent, patient, psychologically prepared in advance for long distance wrestlers.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider the national movement in everyday work with the people at the polling stations, and not in the past. litigation. This is probably what unbiased historians will do in the future. A national movement, a popular movement, and not attacks by individuals. It itself does not arise and does not live without constant nourishment and the work of its driving mechanisms. Any movement is damped in a resisting medium, without a constantly acting driving force. No specific mechanism. You need to study the whole mechanism and its driving force, and not just breakdowns, accidents - litigation.
But this is beyond the scope of this review of the role of Mustafa Veyisovich Selimov in the national movement.
Communists and intellectuals signed after they made sure that the letter was signed by Mustafa Selimov and the address filled in with his own hand. The authority of Mustafa Selimov among all the Crimean Tatars was the highest. His personal case on exclusion from the ranks of the CPSU in December 1966 "for active incitement among the Tatars, slander and falsification of facts" was considered in the primary cell of SoyuzNIHI, after he was supported by all members of the cell, the case was postponed.
The attitude towards active communists of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan is illustrated by a fragment from the report of the first secretary of the Tashkent OK KPuz Gulamov: "... individual nationalists from among the former leading workers of the Crimea, hungry for power, pursuing careerist goals, against the will and desire of the Tatar population, playing with the fate of the working Tatars, stir up nationalist feelings of returning to Crimea. These persons, secretly from the party organizations, fabricate and collect signatures under possible statements through pressure, collect money and embezzle the collected funds, profiting from it. These people are trying to increase their influence on the Tatar youth by spreading nationalistic appeals among them.
We must mercilessly, regardless of faces, expose these dirty provocateurs who encroach on the most sacred thing - the friendship of peoples"Shorthand of the XI plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. February 2 - 3, 1960.
But then in 1975, the question arose again of considering the personal case of a member of the CPSU and it was already considered in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, but even there, despite all the attempts of the representatives "from above", the assembled members of the CPSU considered it possible to confine themselves to a warning. This was due to the activation of members of the CPSU from among the Crimean Tatars and the intelligentsia.
Links, forced relocations have been practiced for a long time. Recent examples are the settlement of the Kuban, the North Caucasus and Siberia in Russian Empire. Australia was also settled by the British. In all cases, the exiled and resettled were fixed in new places. The return of the deported peoples of the Caucasus and the Kalmyks was carried out by the state with the allocation of not only funds, but transport (one car for two families). But also construction for returning new houses and settlements. Restoration of their statehood at the legislative level. All content on the site:
In this regard, Mustafa Veyisovich Selimov defined the main goal of the movement as work among our population. The idea of belonging to a single nation, the idea of preserving the people and the idea of the inseparable connection of the people with its cradle, where only the revival of statehood is possible, and the acquisition of true equality and human dignity.
And appeals - petitions should be only a form of work, directed mainly not to the state, but to the education of the people, their enlightenment, the necessary charge of patriotism.
Izet Izedinov, Osman Mustafayev, I visited our writer Shamil Alyadin for several days at his house and at the writers' dacha in Durmen, with the aim of recording his memoirs on a tape recorder. He agreed and shared his memories of the birth of the national movement and those who stood at its origins.
According to the memoirs of Shamil-aga, Mustafa Selimov was the father of the movement, and Shamil Alyadin, Yusuf Bolat were the direct initiators and guides with him, and Nuriddin Mukhitdinov, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, played a very important role. The recording has been preserved and is at the disposal of Bekirov's Server.
I have the original signatures
Selimov Mustafa in the center
TO THE POLITBURO OF THE CC CPSU
“Crimean Tatars at the turn of the 13th-19th centuries owned the entire Crimea and the northern regions of the former Tauride province numbered several million people,” (Newspaper “Life of Nationalities”, No. 21, for 1921)
The tsarist satraps raised the question of the expulsion of all Crimean Tatars from Crimea and the transformation of the Territory into a purely Russian one for Catherine II. But her resolution on the document read - "Civilized Europe - this will not forgive us" and she recommended that the Tatars themselves leave Crimea. As you know, this idea of hers was intensively implemented. “The inhuman methods of tsarist colonization over the course of a century erased from the lives of hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of emigrants to Turkey” (ibid.), as well as to Bulgaria, Romania and other regions of the world. Some of them still keep the fire lit in the Crimea, in the hope of returning.
The same newspaper, in the same issue, wrote: “The leader of the Turkish workers organized in a trade union is a Crimean Tatar, a third of the members of the Central Committee of the Turkish Communist Party are Crimean Tatars,” and further: “Tatars under the onslaught of the Germans, Russian colonists, Russian landlords and the bourgeoisie were pushed back from the wide and rich steppes of Tavria and the Northern Crimea into a scorched yayla. Those who remained on the plain became landless, and the average German colonist owns 500-1000 hectares of arable land. Colonization stopped at the mountains, because horticulture and especially viticulture require special skills.
Our people are in big trouble. The statements of the progressive people of mankind, the Program of our Party, the Constitution of the USSR, the decisions of congresses and plenums of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the teachings of V. I. Lenin on the national question do not even hint at the possibility of admitting the tragedy that befell the Crimean Tatars in 1944 because of national identity, although according to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, Greco-Gothic blood does not matter, or the blood of steppe nomads flows in the veins of the Crimean Tatars.
Why could this be the case?
Great-power chauvinist tendencies have always been tenacious in Crimea. In explaining all the negative phenomena of life, representatives of these tendencies always took the Crimean Tatars as a target. Even the blame for the brutal execution in 1918 by the White Guards with the participation of the Beketov brothers (who had a large estate in Ai-Gurzuf) and bourgeois-nationalist elements, members of the Council of People's Commissars of the Republic of Taurida, they tried to blame on the local population.
It is well known that L. 3. Mekhlis was a prominent party and statesman, but he was distinguished by bias. One of the reasons for the defeat in 1942 of our armies on the Kerch Peninsula, where Mekhlis L. Z. was a representative of the Headquarters, he attributed to the complicity of the local population to the enemy.
3. The command of the partisan detachments of the Crimea in the first period after the occupation of the Germans, represented by Mokrousov (commander) and Martynov (commissar), did not guess the tactics of the invaders, when the Nazis, in order to create enmity between the partisans and the local population, under the force of arms drove groups of people to the defeat of food bases and ammunition depots prepared for the partisans. The Germans forced the plundered to be delivered to their warehouses. Thus, the Nazis achieved at least two goals: the partisans were left without food and ammunition supplies; they were incited and set up hostile to the population of nearby villages.
The latter circumstance created such an acute and complicated situation that the leadership partisan movement instructed to oust the Crimean Tatars from the detachments, to organize raids on the near-forest Crimean Tatar villages as enemy centers, to shoot people who appeared in the forest when it was found out that they were Crimean Tatars. In addition, it sent radio messages to Sevastopol with a request to allocate aircraft for the bombing of the villages of Kovush, Korbek, Beshui and other aircraft. In view of such perversions of the national policy, Mokrousov and Martynov were recalled by the Crimean regional party committee from the Crimean forest to the rear of the Red Army in Sochi, where, after a discussion at the bureau of the regional committee of their activities in November 1942, they were removed from command and subjected to party punishment.
In order to eliminate the perversions that took place and noted above, the Bureau of the regional party committee decided to additionally send large groups of workers from among the party-Soviet activists to the Crimean Forest, in particular, Crimean Tatars to act in partisan detachments and conduct underground work behind enemy lines. These groups have launched a very large work. Suffice it to say that on the basis of the Bakhchisarai detachment, where only 82 partisans remained in June 1943, 11 partisan detachments were formed within 5-6 months, which are part of the Southern Formation with a combat strength of more than 2,000 people. In the rear of these detachments there were more than 5 thousand civilians, mainly from adjacent villages, of which at least 80% were Crimean Tatars. As a result of the intensification of the combat and political work of underground patriotic groups, "volunteer" formations disintegrated, which included Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Greeks, Azerbaijanis, etc. During this period, the Nazi invaders especially fierce their fight against partisans and supporters their population. They burned to the ground the Crimean Tatar villages of Stilya, Kovush, Bukzh-Ozenbash, Kuchuk Ozenbash, Ulusala, Avdjikoy, and others, where many of the local population died in the fire; publicly shot in the village of Tavbadrak 67 Crimean Tatars for the murder of a gendarmerie chief from Bakhchisaray near the village; in the basement of a house in the village of Avdzhikoy, 27 Crimean Tatars, civilians, were burned alive. A similar situation was in many villages in the zones of action of the Southern and other formations of the partisan detachments of the Crimea. These facts characterize the typical relationship between the Nazis and the local population during the period of occupation. Not without reason, the fascist leaders, as can be seen from the top secret correspondence between Ditman and Tippelskirt, published by the USSR Foreign Ministry in 1946, raised the question: “As for the Crimean Tatars, it was decided: they should not represent self-government. Moreover, two weeks ago there was an opinion about the eviction of the Tatars from the Crimea and the transformation of this region into a purely German one. Practical implementation was refrained from due to the technical difficulty of implementation.
Describing the work of this period at the first meeting of the party and Soviet activists of the liberated Crimea, the then first secretary of the regional committee Bulatov V.S. in his report noted that from the asset "from the chairman of the village council to the chairman of the Supreme Council during the occupation period there was not a single traitor."
After the liberation of Crimea from the fascist invaders, when the whole people rejoiced, and most of the combat-ready Crimean Tatar population fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the joy was overshadowed by the fact of gross arbitrariness - the eviction of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea. It was the greatest injustice when the guilty were severely punished without guilt. The 20th Congress of the CPSU correctly assessed this fact. In its materials we read: “In the minds of not only a Marxist-Leninist, but also any sane person, such a situation does not fit how it was possible to accuse entire peoples for the hostile actions of individuals and groups, including women, children, the elderly, communists, Komsomol members and subject them to deprivation and suffering."
The consequences of this act were the death of many thousands of innocent people, the poisoning of the souls of the living with the poison of chauvinism, and most importantly, the bleak situation of every Crimean Tatar that lasted for decades.
Only those who experience this can understand this. In all cases of life, when two or more Crimean Tatars get together, the main topic of conversation is longing for their native land, a conversation about a sad situation and a dream of returning to their homeland. Is it possible that such a share will go to the third generation of Crimean Tatars - for example, to my grandchildren? Who needs it? Where is the meaning and justification of these actions? Where is the logic? The gravity of this situation is well understood by all sane people.
Over the past thirty-seven years after the deportation, in a conversation, only one person was able to tell me: “You were deported correctly,” this person was a photojournalist Kapustyansky, who was immediately called a fool by those present at
conversation with his brother. I did not hear any more approval from Soviet citizens in a private conversation. But chauvinistic would-be writers constantly poisoned the atmosphere with their rotten ideas. For example, A.
Perventsev, in the sixth, Perm edition of the book “Honor from a Young Age”, in the words of a fictional character, agreed to the point that “in the forest, be afraid of the German, and even more of the Tatar.” And when they asked him why he wrote such nonsense in his book, he did not find anything else but to answer: "Stalin ordered it."
If you try to forget and not take into account the whole past: the actual facts of eviction, the opportunity to get 20 years of hard labor for violating the ban on crossing the border of the territory of your commandant's office, etc., then the current situation of the Crimean Tatars is far from proper equality. I will list only a few facts of restrictions, persecution, humiliation and insults that are well known to me:
1. During the first period of expulsion, if you did not immediately admit that you were a Crimean Tatar, you were accused of harboring. Then a term appeared - a Tatar from the Crimea, now just a Tatar. The words “Crimean Tatar” are forbidden, and even “scientists” were found to prove the absence of such a nationality. Since 1982, a bastard, by phone call to the editorial office of the Lenin Bairagy newspaper, has changed the name of a whole 500,000 people who have native language, literature, art, its own history and recently had its own statehood.
In Tashkent, in 1982, some kind of event was held and the secretary of the party bureau of the Uzgiprovodkhoz institute, where I work, gathers communists, Komsomol members and reports: the city is divided into sections, we have our own, we must monitor it so that there are no incidents from the side of the Crimean Tatars and Pentecostals”, how should the Crimean Tatars be treated and what can people think about them if similar meetings were held throughout the city?
A man tries to break into my house at night. He knocks with his hands and feet on the door and calls me a traitor. It was Deryabin, the secretary of the party organization, where I was on the party record.
They call me to the city police and force me to sign a printed sheet, where the signer gives an obligation not to participate in such and such demonstrations of the Crimean Tatars, where I have never participated and, of course, did not sign anything.
For many years in Crimea, obstacles were artificially created in the registration of residence of the Crimean Tatars with very gross facts of lawlessness, which drove people to despair.
In Crimea, all literature in the Crimean Tatar language was liquidated, including the works of Marx, Lenin, materials of party congresses.
Many monuments of Crimean Tatar culture have been razed to the ground, all settlements have been renamed, and Crimean Tatar cemeteries have been liquidated. The historical reality is distorted in the Crimean museums.
The Crimean Communist Tatars are completely cut off from the masses of the people by their nationality.
Unfortunately, this list could be continued.
On the background intensive development national culture of the peoples of the Soviet Union, leaving the Crimean Tatar people in this position is deeply unfair. And it is impossible to resolve its issues by adopting decrees or resolutions on the indiscriminate accusation and innocence, or by allocating any part of the land in any separate corner of the Union. Such a situation would further aggravate the already unenviable condition of the people. There are millions of cultured and educated people in Crimea. Their demand cannot be satisfied with anti-Crimean Tatar statements. The Crimean Tatar people are in no way an exception. Like all nations Soviet Union He honestly, diligently works for the good of our Motherland.
Based on the motives of justice and the instructions of Yu.V. Andropov, take concrete and deeper into account national specifics, show more concern for the comprehensive development of all nations and nationalities, especially small peoples, persistently eliminate any deviations from the Leninist national policy from practice, consistently ensure the equality of Soviet people of all nationalities, as a communist and a citizen, and seeing in This is good for my people and our entire multinational state, I ask the Central Committee of the CPSU to restore in force the decrees signed by the leader of the revolution and the world proletariat V. I. Lenin:
Repeal laws restricting the national equality of the Crimean Tatar people;
Restore his constitutional rights and return to motherland- Crimea.
SELIMOV Mustafa Veysovich,
Member of the CPSU since 1931, former
Southern Union Commissioner
partisan detachments of the Crimea,
head of the underground center.
(Mektyup biraz kyskartyldy).
Crimea during German occupation[National relations, collaborationism and partisan movement, 1941-1944] Romanko Oleg Valentinovich
Soviet partisans and the Crimean Tatar population
Soviet propaganda during the war and Soviet historians in the post-war period, they inspired the people that the vast majority of the population in the occupied territories fully supported the partisans and was waiting for the return of "native people's power." However, no matter how seditious it may seem to many, when considering the history of the partisan movement, the position of the population seems to be the most ambiguous factor. Now it is no secret that this population was not always loyal or even neutral towards the Soviet partisans. There were also cases of outright hostility. For example, such a situation developed in the newly annexed territories (the Baltic States, Western Ukraine or Western Belarus) or in territories where the non-Russian population was either predominant or equal in number to the Russian (Caucasus). It was here that collaborationism took its most extreme forms, and the Soviet partisan movement numbered several thousand people (and there were negligibly few locals among them). Although one cannot discount the fact that in a number of cases Soviet partisans did not behave better than the Germans if it was believed that the population supported the invaders. Naturally, the population answered them the same.
The German historian B. Bonwetsch argued that "the question of the support of partisans by the population is, in fact, the flip side of the question of readiness for collaborationism". It's hard to disagree with him. In the case of relations between the partisans and the Tatar population on the territory of Crimea, this thesis is the best illustration of the current situation. But why?
Crimean Tatars were not the predominant ethnic group in this region. Moreover, they were not even equal in number to the Slavic population of the peninsula. Nevertheless, the Crimean Tatar factor was the reason that until the middle of 1943 the partisan movement on the territory of Crimea was, in fact, paralyzed. Of course, this was not the only factor, but it should not be taken into account either.
In general, the problem of relations between the Soviet partisans and the Crimean Tatar population should be considered from three interrelated aspects:
1. The attitude of the Tatar population towards the Soviet partisans under the conditions of the German occupation regime and the evolution of this attitude;
2. The attitude of partisans towards the Tatar population in the conditions of the crisis of the latter's loyalty to the Soviet government and the evolution of this attitude;
3. And finally, the role of the Crimean Tatars in the partisan movement on the territory of the peninsula.
What were the Tatar-partisan relations in the initial period of the occupation of Crimea and how did they develop in the future? On October 23, 1941, the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved the top leadership of the partisan movement on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. A. Mokrousov, who had been a partisan here during the Civil War, was appointed its commander, and S. Martynov, the first secretary of the Simferopol City Party Committee, was appointed its commissar. And already on October 31, the leadership of the partisan movement issued its first order, according to which Crimea was divided into five partisan regions, each of which was subordinate to 2 to 11 detachments with a total number of about 5 thousand people.
The Crimean party leadership was counting on the Crimean Tatars. As you know, a significant number of them were included in partisan detachments - about 1000 people, which amounted to more than 20% of the total number of partisans at that time. Thus, the Kuibyshev and Albat partisan detachments were organized exclusively from them. In the Balaklava, Leninsky and Alushta detachments there were an overwhelming majority of them (for example, in the latter up to 100 people). In other detachments, the percentage of Crimean Tatars was also very significant. Naturally, the commanders and commissars in these partisan units were also Tatars. They were also in the top leadership of the movement. For example, A. Osmanov and M. Selimov, who had held high positions in the Crimean party nomenclature before the war, were appointed commissars of the 1st and 4th districts, respectively. In addition, the Tatar population of the mountainous and foothill regions was involved in the laying of partisan bases and the arrangement of future places for the deployment of detachments.
As you know, with the arrival of the Germans, a significant part of the Crimean Tatar population experienced a "crisis of loyalty" in relation to the Soviet government. This affected the partisan movement in the following way: the Tatars began to leave it both separately and in whole detachments. For example, the entire Kuibyshev partisan detachment went home: 115 people led by their commander Ibragimov (by the way, this deserter was later hanged by the Germans, since it turned out that he did not indicate all the places where the food supplies of his detachment were located). Similar cases occurred in the Albatsky and other partisan detachments. Moreover, these former partisans often returned, sometimes with the Germans, sometimes with their fellow villagers, and plundered the partisan food bases.
For example, on December 18, 1941, the reconnaissance of the Feodosiya partisan detachment discovered in the forest 40 carts with armed Tatars, who, as it turned out, had come for the food of the partisans. This group was led by a deserter from the Sudak partisan detachment, a former lieutenant of the Red Army and member of the Communist Party Memetov.
Another example of such actions. The commanders of partisan detachments in the Zuya forests reported to the “mainland” that more than 10 tons of flour, 6.5 tons of wheat, 1.85 tons of corn, 9.6 tons of oats, 1 ton of beans and 6.5 t corned beef. As you can see, the numbers are very significant.
The inhabitants of the Tatar villages of Baksan, Tau-Kipchak, Mosque-Eli, Veyrat, Konrat, Eurtluk, Yeni-Sala, Molbay, Kamyshlyk, Argin, Yeni-Saray, Ulu-Uzen, Kazanly, Korbek, Koush, Biyuk were also engaged in the robbery of partisan food bases. -Uzenbash, Kuchuk-Uzenbash, Uskut. Together with the occupiers, they plundered the stocks of food and equipment, designed to supply 5-6 thousand partisans during the year. As a result, out of 28 partisan detachments operating in the Crimea in the winter of 1941, 25 were left without supply bases at all. The famine that followed and the actual defeat of the partisan movement on the peninsula is the result of the activities of these collaborators. In parentheses, we note that another result of the autumn-winter campaign of 1941 to plunder partisan food bases was that the spontaneous Tatar detachments formed for this purpose were then transformed into local self-defense units.
All this led to the fact that in the winter of 1941/42, the vast majority of the "people's avengers" were simply without means of subsistence and were forced to extract them in nearby villages. As a rule, such campaigns ended with requisitions of food or livestock, and in some cases, unjustified extrajudicial reprisals against real or imaginary collaborators. Similar events, for example, took place in the village of Markur. Its inhabitants helped the Sevastopol partisan detachment in every possible way. However, in the winter of 1942, on the orders of one of the leaders of the partisan movement, this detachment raided, in general, “their own” village. It is not known what the partisans were doing there. Nevertheless, the very next day the Germans were able to form a self-defense detachment in the village and send it against the Sevastopol detachment. It should be noted that the detachment was soon completely defeated, and the role of the "self-defenders" from the village of Markur in these events was far from the last.
The head of Task Force D, SS-Standartenführer O. Ohlendorf, noted that the Tatars were much more restrained in relation to cooperation with the invaders in those areas where partisan detachments were nearby. Although at the same time, if any danger arose (for example, an attack by partisans), they were immediately ready to take up arms. Yes, and German propaganda very skillfully used such facts, presenting the Crimean partisans in an unfavorable light and comparing their actions with ordinary banditry. This policy, together with the so-called "cunning tricks" of the occupying authorities, indeed contributed, and to no small extent, to the growth of collaborationist sentiments among the Crimean Tatars. In turn, the command of the partisan movement and the majority of ordinary partisans began to believe that the Crimean Tatar population was entirely hostile to the Soviet regime. Moreover, they soon began to inform the “mainland” about this. So, already in March 1942, Mokrousov and Martynov reported the following: “The vast majority of the Tatar population in the foothill and mountain villages is pro-fascist, from among the inhabitants of which the Gestapo created volunteer detachments, which are currently used to fight partisans ... The activity of partisan detachments is complicated by the need for armed struggle on two fronts: against the fascist invaders, on the one side, and against the armed gangs of the mountain-forest Tatar villages ".
It must be said that the leadership of the Crimean ASSR, located in Krasnodar, at first refused to believe in the total collaborationism of the Crimean Tatars. I especially doubted it. People's Commissar Internal Affairs of the Republic G. Karanadze, who even sent a special memorandum addressed to L. Beria. The note was dated March 1942 and was, in fact, a response to the previous document. “According to the information we have, Karanadze wrote in this note, - it can be judged that, although a small, but still a certain part of the Tatar population of the Crimea remains on the side of the Soviet government ... which cannot be ignored when carrying out certain events in the Crimea. According to the agents, it was established that the majority of the Tatar population of the steppe part of the Crimea does not show hostility to the Soviet regime, on the contrary, there are reverse facts when they treat it with sympathy. It is known that a significant part settlements Steppe Tatars refused to take up arms "for self-defense and protection from partisans," as the Germans suggested. As a result, in these villages armed mountain Tatars “protect the population from partisans”. Moreover, among the settlements of the South Bank there are such villages that provided great assistance to partisan detachments, as a result of which both Germans and armed Tatars dealt with their population. For example, the Tatars of the villages of Aylyanma, Chermalyk, and others provided great assistance to the partisans with food on difficult days, when the partisans experienced difficulties with supplies. The above-mentioned (Tatars) organized flocks of sheep of 50-100 heads to the partisans. In addition, the partisans were always hospitably received, giving them all possible assistance. For all this assistance that was provided to the partisans, the Germans and volunteer detachments destroyed and burned such villages as Aylyanma, Chermalyk, Beshui (in the Karasubazar region), Chair and Tarnair. Most of the population of these villages was shot, and those who remained were evicted from the South Bank. In addition, from these villages ... many families who did not want to arm themselves and serve the Germans were evicted. It should be noted that the attitude of the German invaders towards the Tatars, who refuse to take up arms, is the same as towards the Russians, Ukrainians and Greeks... These Tatars, like the other population, are taken to Germany. As a result of the foregoing, the indicated part (Tatars) is hostile both against the armed Tatars and against the Germans..
Karanadze was in favor of a differentiated approach to the Tatar population, as he believed that with their sweeping policy of Mokrousov and Martynov, they could only alienate the last supporters of Soviet power on the peninsula, or, even worse, force the previously neutral Crimean Tatars to side with the Germans. His memorandum did not go unnoticed by the top military-political leadership of the country. First, in June 1942, Mokrousov and Martynov were removed from their posts. And five months later, on November 18, a resolution of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which has now become so famous, was adopted, entitled “On the mistakes made in assessing the attitude of the Crimean Tatars towards the partisans, measures to eliminate these mistakes and strengthen work among the Tatar population ". In this very remarkable document, the causes of collaborationism among the Crimean Tatars were analyzed for the first time. And it must be said that, to the credit of the party workers, these reasons were not explained by "manifestations of bourgeois nationalism" or "intrigues of the German occupiers." Thus, the command of the partisan movement was pointed out that not all units behaved in a worthy manner. There were also attacks on Tatar villages, and extrajudicial reprisals, and "drunken pogroms", which "extremely aggravated the relationship between partisans and the population." In addition, it was recognized that the party leadership made serious mistakes in recruiting partisan detachments, since not a single Crimean Tatar member of the regional committee was left “in the forest”. Was not "ignored" and the local NKVD. Its leadership, for example, was accused of "not promptly clearing the villages of the Tatar bourgeoisie, especially in the southern part of Crimea, of the remnants of nationalist, kulak and other counter-revolutionary elements that lurked there."
In general, recognizing all the mistakes, the party leadership of the Crimea made the following conclusion: “The analysis of the facts, the reports of the commanders and commissars of the partisan detachments, the verification carried out on the spot, indicate that the allegations about the hostile attitude of the majority of the Crimean Tatars towards the partisans, as well as the fact that the majority of the Tatars went over to the service of the enemy, are incorrect, unfounded and politically harmful statements".
And in order to correct these errors as soon as possible, it was necessary to carry out the following measures:
1. To condemn as incorrect and politically harmful the assertion of the leadership of the partisans about the hostile attitude of the Crimean Tatars and to explain to all the partisans that the Crimean Tatars, for the most part, are just as hostile to the German-Romanian occupiers as all the working people of Crimea;
2. Ask the Military Council of the Transcaucasian Front and Black Sea Fleet to select and transfer to the disposal of the Crimean Regional Committee of the Communist Party a group of communists from the Crimean Tatars, tested in battles for the Motherland, for sending them to partisan detachments and to work in the rear;
3. To oblige the editors of the newspapers "Krasny Krym" and "Kyzyl Kyrym" (supplement to the first newspaper in the Tatar language) to direct the main content of printed propaganda to expose the fascist demagogy regarding the Tatar population, their flirting with national-religious feelings, to show that Hitlerism brings the Tatar heavy misfortunes for the people;
4. To make it the duty of the command of the partisan movement in Crimea to systematically destroy fascist mercenaries, traitors to the Tatar people, to mobilize the population itself for this. Establish regular contact with the Tatar villages, explain to the population the meaning of the events taking place, and involve them in an active struggle against the Nazi occupiers.
The ruling concluded: “The Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks believes that if our commanders and political workers of partisan detachments, as well as all partisan fighters, draw the right conclusions from this decision, there is every reason to believe that we will not only correct the mistakes made, but also help the majority our comrades from the Tatar part of the population to join the ranks of fighters for the common cause against the fascist reptiles".
The Soviet military-political leadership correctly analyzed the causes of collaborationism among the Crimean Tatar population, on the whole correctly pointed out mistakes and outlined really constructive ways to solve them. So, already in November 1942, the third secretary of the Crimean regional committee, R. Mustafaev, was sent “to the forest”, who headed the underground party center here. In the same month, he prepared a series of letters in the Crimean Tatar language. These letters were distributed among the population of the Tatar mountain villages and called for an end to cooperation with the occupiers. In parallel with this, radio and print propaganda were significantly strengthened, both from the "mainland" and in the Crimea itself. However, as subsequent events showed, the Soviet military-political leadership was at least half a year late: this period was the peak of the development of Crimean Tatar collaborationism and its consolidation with the occupation regime. Moreover, the desertion of Tatars from partisan detachments continued. As a result, on June 1, 1943, among the 262 Crimean partisans, there were only six (!) Crimean Tatars.
Of course, such a number of Crimean Tatars among the partisans during this period does not mean that all the rest served in volunteer formations. It is known that many of them participated in the Crimean underground. So, in September 1942, the communist A. Dagdzhi (nicknamed "Uncle Volodya"), sent from the Yalta partisan detachment, created an underground patriotic organization in Simferopol, uniting about 80 people. 2 / 3 of its composition were Tatars, including the mother and sister of the head of the organization. The rest are people of other nationalities. The underground workers were engaged in the distribution of newspapers and leaflets brought from the partisans from the forest, organized the escape of prisoners of war from the concentration camp, carried out economic sabotage. In June 1943, due to poor secrecy, the organization was uncovered. Most of its members (including the leader) were captured and executed.
But, and this is the most important thing, the Soviet government lost the battle to the Germans for the majority of the Tatar population, which under any regime remains politically passive. No, this population did not begin to support the occupiers, but they were not going to help the partisans either. A radical change in the mood of these people occurred only in the summer of 1943. The reverse process began: only now the Tatars began to experience a "crisis of loyalty" in relation to the German occupiers. What are the reasons for this change of orientation? Each of the groups of the Crimean Tatar population had their own. For example, the intelligentsia was dissatisfied with the fact that the Germans did not give their people any political rights and freedoms. The peasantry began to experience the pressure of constant requisitions: other people who did not want to work in "white gloves" were already at the head of the occupation administration. The main reason for the hostility of the city dwellers towards the Germans was that any of them could at any moment go to Germany, where the sad fate of the "Ostarbeiter" awaited him. In addition, at the end of 1942, rumors about the resettlement plans of the Nazis leaked to the Crimea. And naturally, many Tatars immediately realized that there was no place for them in the future Gotenland. Finally, if until the middle of 1942 the Germans used selective repressions, now they could well deal with the Crimean Tatar and burn down the Tatar village. These sentiments took shape in the first half of 1943. Certainly they were important. However, it should be recognized that without a common background - the victories of the Red Army on the Soviet-German front - they would not have received such development. The general dissatisfaction of the population with the German occupation regime began to manifest itself in the second half of 1943: more and more Crimean Tatars began to desire the return of the former power. And this dissatisfaction was expressed, first of all, in the fact that they began to support her "long arm" on the peninsula - the partisans.
Members of the Crimean Tatar collaborationist formations were part of their people, and such a military-political situation also had a serious impact on them. Therefore, since the summer of 1943, both Soviet and German sources have noted a weakening of discipline and a drop in morale in parts of the "auxiliary order police." Under the influence of these reasons, underground organizations were created in many of them, the purpose of which was often to go over to the side of the partisans. So, according to the reports of Soviet agents, the commander of the 154th police battalion A. Kerimov was arrested by the SD as “unreliable”, and in the 147th battalion the Germans shot 76 policemen at once, considering them a “pro-Soviet element”. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1943, this process became irreversible. It was during this period that a massive influx of Crimean Tatars into partisan detachments began. It is known, for example, that by December 406 of them came there, and 219 of them had previously served in various parts of the "auxiliary order police."
As a result, according to the personnel department of the KShPD, there were 3,453 people in partisan detachments on the territory of Crimea, 598 of whom were Crimean Tatars.
The process of decomposition affected even, it seemed, the most reliable volunteer units. In the autumn of 1943, the most devoted to the Germans and the most combat-ready self-defense company from the village of Koush, headed by Major A. Raimov, went over to the side of the partisans. According to one of the partisan commanders, I. Vergasov, who was directly involved in this story, Raimov was an extreme collaborator and, at the same time, a good professional. Behind him was a special police school in Germany, two "Insignia for the Eastern Peoples" on his uniform and the personal patronage of the SS chief G. Himmler. The head of the German police on the peninsula appreciated him very much, since Raimov knew the Crimean forests well.
Nevertheless, in November 1943, he and his people (about 60 people), having previously killed a German instructor lieutenant, went over to the side of the partisans of the Southern Connection. It is interesting that his commander M. Makedonsky did not "spray" the volunteers into units, but allowed them to create their own separate detachment. For some time, the Raimovites, led by their commander, operated quite successfully near Bakhchisarai. However, soon he and his inner circle were secretly arrested and taken by plane to Moscow. Raimov was shot there. The ordinary soldiers of the company who remained in the forests were distributed among the detachments of the Southern Connection. Vergasov explains the reasons for this incident in the spirit of Soviet propaganda. According to him, Raimov planned to find out all the secrets and locations of the partisans and unexpectedly deliver a mortal blow to the entire movement. It was hardly true. The author himself writes a few pages above that Raimov was a coward and was looking for a way to atone for his guilt on the eve of the collapse of his German masters.
Probably, there was a usual reinsurance. Reinsurance, because of which many newly minted partisans preferred to return to their volunteer formations than to endure constant checks and sidelong glances of new comrades (by the way, there were such reverse “transitions”). In those circumstances, this was probably a justified measure. However, often this and similar cases led to the fact that the collaborationist formations that were already ready for the transition began to delay with him, losing precious time. We present only one characteristic example. In January 1944, the head of the Northern unit of the Crimean partisans, P. Yampolsky, established contact with the chief of staff of the 147th police battalion, Kemalov. Everything seemed to be ok. Nevertheless, the scout S. Useinov, sent to the meeting, brought some unexpected information.
"Your letter, - he reported to Yampolsky, - I personally handed over to the chief of staff of the 147th volunteer battalion Kemalov. He agreed to your proposal, but he is afraid that, they say, "even if the entire detachment completes this task, anyway, after the occupation of the city (Simferopol), we will all be punished one by one." I convinced him with my agent Komurdzhaev. However, he refused to give a subscription, saying that, they say, a piece of paper is a mere formality.
Since all volunteers have now been tacitly declared distrust, they are being monitored and a strict barracks regime has been established, we have outlined a plan of action in the following form. The detachment remains in the city and, when fleeing from the city of the enemy, occupies all posts at important objects: radio, bank, post office, bridges, the building of the regional party committee, theater, and also organizes the destruction of torchbearers. The detachment organizes a terrorist group that destroys and arrests enemies in the battalion itself, and also controls the Germans and SD agents. If the enemy demands an exit from the city in advance, Kemalov undertakes to turn the detachment into the mountains. The mood of the soldiers is anti-fascist. Kemalov even has to take individual guys under protection before the command. He also undertook to individually process individual company commanders and non-commissioned officers in order to create a consensus.
There are 240 people in the battalion, that is, four companies, the fighters are armed with Russian and German rifles, there are 20 machine guns..
As you can see, in this case, everything ended well. Most likely, an important role was played by the fact that Kemalov really wanted to earn indulgence from the "native Soviet authorities." However, the report of the partisan intelligence officer is interesting not only for this. From it we learn that "tacit distrust" has been declared to all volunteers. Well, it was a completely objective reaction of the Germans to the disloyalty of the Crimean Tatars. Only if with Tatar civilian population the occupiers fought with the destruction of villages supporting the partisans (only in December 1943 - January 1944, 128 of them were burned down), then they acted differently with demoralized volunteer units. Usually they were disbanded, and the personnel, at best, were sent to the auxiliary formations of the Wehrmacht. At worst, as we have seen, former policemen were either shot or sent to a concentration camp.
As a result, according to the report of the chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the 17th german army, on March 5, 1944, only five (out of eight) Tatar police battalions remained subordinate to the chief of police in Crimea: 147, 154, 150, 149 and 148th. Moreover, only the last three of them had full squad. In the first two, there were not even half of the personnel (in parentheses, we note that Kemalov probably partially succeeded in the transition plan: his 147th battalion is listed as half empty).
These remaining battalions, as well as other police units, in which, according to the Soviet leadership, "real volunteers, elements who were dissatisfied with the Soviet regime" served, continued to fight the partisans: some more, some less zealously. In April-May 1944, all of them took part in the battles against the units of the Red Army that liberated the Crimea. For example, according to the memoirs of the commissar of the 5th detachment of the Southern formation of the Crimean partisans I. Kupreev, volunteers from the Bakhchisaray police battalion fought very hard for the city. And after the end of the fighting, many Tatars hid the surviving Germans in their homes.
It should be recognized that the figure of 15,000–20,000 Crimean Tatar volunteers, although impressive, explains little on its own. As you know, everything is known in comparison. So here are a few other numbers:
At the beginning of hostilities for the Crimea (autumn 1941), about 20 thousand Crimean Tatars were serving in the Red Army. However, only a fifth of them were located outside the peninsula. The rest did not leave its borders, being concentrated in units intended for the defense of the Crimea. For example, in the 51st Army, where there were about 10 thousand Crimean Tatars. During the autumn battles of 1941, this army was defeated - it lost more than a third of its personnel only as prisoners and missing in action. An insignificant part managed to escape and cross to the Taman Peninsula;
During the period from 1941 to 1944, more than 12 thousand people of different nationalities fought in the partisan detachments of the Crimea. According to official figures, there were 1,130 Crimean Tatars in their ranks. Of these, 96 people died, 103 went missing and 177 deserted;
In the underground organizations on the territory of the peninsula for the period from 1941 to 1944 there were about 2,500 people. Less than 100 of them were Crimean Tatars;
The total number of Crimean Tatar volunteers in the German armed forces was 7-9% of the population of this people. At the same time, about 10 thousand Crimean Tatars, or about 5% of their total number, served in the Red Army during the war years.
The Soviet military-political leadership undoubtedly knew all these facts. Therefore, on April 13, 1944, when, in fact, the fighting for the peninsula was still going on and there was almost a month before its liberation, the people's commissars of internal affairs and state security adopted a joint resolution entitled "On measures to clear the territory of the Crimean ASSR from anti-Soviet elements." According to this decree, the local leadership of the relevant people's commissariats was entrusted with the task of identifying and detaining on the territory of the peninsula "agents of espionage residencies of German and Romanian intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, traitors to the Motherland and traitors, active accomplices and proteges of the Nazi occupiers, members of anti-Soviet organizations, bandit formations and other anti-Soviet elements assisting the occupiers".
"Cleansing" was to be carried out throughout the Crimea, as it was liberated. In order to better organize these events, the peninsula was divided into seven operational sectors: Staro-Krymsky, Yalta, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Kerch, Evpatoria and Dzhankoy, where 5 thousand people of the operational staff of the NKVD and the NKGB were sent. The duties of these employees included the development of plans and the implementation of operational and investigative actions during the “cleansing”. In addition, they were supposed to strengthen the personnel of local law enforcement and security agencies. For the military support of all the proposed activities, 20 thousand people were allocated from the internal troops of the NKVD.
As you can see, in general, this decree applied to the entire population of Crimea, without taking into account the nationality of its individual groups. However, already the first two weeks of the “cleansing” led to the fact that the Soviet state security agencies were forced to pay attention to the Crimean Tatar issue and its role during the period of German occupation. So, on April 25, 1944, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria filed a State Committee Defense (GKO) memorandum in which the Crimean Tatar collaborators were first singled out from other German accomplices. This document specifically stated:
The “Tatar National Committee” (Jemil Abdureshid), having its branches in all the Tatar regions of Crimea, recruited spy agents to be sent to the rear, mobilized volunteers for the Tatar division created by the Germans, sent the local, non-Tatar population to work in Germany, etc. ” Thus, while schematically, the main areas of activity of the Crimean Tatar collaborators were named.
This Beria memorandum summed up the first two weeks of operational and investigative measures on the Crimean Peninsula and was in many ways far from exhaustive. Therefore, already on May 10, 1944, the day after the complete liberation of the Crimea, he prepared another one. This memorandum was markedly different from the previous document, since all of its informative part was based on more detailed and verified facts. Another feature of this note was its final part. If in the first document Beria only informed the GKO about the facts of collaborationism among the Crimean Tatars, then in the second he already proposed punishment for them. Thus, the People's Commissar emphasized: “The NKVD and NKGB authorities are carrying out work in Crimea to identify and seize enemy agents, traitors to the Motherland, accomplices of the Nazi invaders and other anti-Soviet elements. As of May 7 this year, 5,381 such persons have been arrested. Weapons illegally stored by the population were confiscated: 5995 rifles, 337 machine guns, 250 machine guns, 31 mortars and a large number of grenades and rifle cartridges ... Over 20 thousand Tatars deserted from the Red Army in 1944, who betrayed their Motherland, went to serve the Germans and they fought with weapons in their hands against the Red Army ... Considering the treacherous actions of the Crimean Tatars against the Soviet people and proceeding from the undesirability of the further residence of the Crimean Tatars on the border outskirts of the Soviet Union, the NKVD of the USSR submits for your consideration a draft decision of the State Defense Committee on the eviction of all Tatars from the territory of Crimea ".
Stalin fully agreed with the opinion of Beria. As a result, the next day, the GKO decree appeared, which indicated the following reasons for the deportation of the Crimean Tatars:
“During the Great Patriotic War, many Crimean Tatars betrayed their homeland, deserted from the units of the Red Army defending the Crimea, and went over to the side of the enemy, joined the volunteer Tatar military units formed by the Germans, who fought against the Red Army; during the occupation of Crimea Nazi German troops, participating in the German punitive detachments, the Crimean Tatars especially distinguished themselves by their brutal reprisals against Soviet partisans, and also helped the German invaders in organizing the forcible deportation of Soviet citizens into German slavery and the mass extermination of Soviet people.
The Crimean Tatars actively cooperated with the German occupation authorities, participating in the so-called “Tatar National Committees” organized by German intelligence, and were widely used by the Germans to send spies and saboteurs to the rear of the Red Army. "Tatar National Committees", in which the White Guard-Tatar emigrants played the main role, with the support of the Crimean Tatars, directed their activities to the persecution and oppression of the non-Tatar population of Crimea and carried out work to prepare for the forcible secession of Crimea from the Soviet Union with the help of the German armed forces ".
As you know, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars began on May 18, 1944 and lasted three days. In total, 191,044 representatives of this people were evicted from Crimea during the specified period. Most of them were settled on the territory of the Uzbek SSR, a smaller part - in other republics of Central Asia and in Russia. This, in general, was the sad result of the cooperation of a part of the Crimean Tatar people with Nazi Germany.
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Soviet propaganda during the war and Soviet historians in the post-war period claimed that the vast majority of the population in the occupied territories fully supported the partisans and was waiting for the return of "native people's power." However, it is no longer a secret that not everywhere the population treated the partisans loyally or even neutrally - there were cases of outright hostility. This situation developed in the newly annexed territories (the Baltic states, Western Ukraine) and in places where the non-Russian population was either predominant or slightly inferior in number to the Russian one - for example, in the Crimea. It was here that collaborationism took its extreme forms, and the partisan movement numbered only a few thousand people, and there were negligibly few locals among them.
The German historian B. Bonwetsch wrote that "the question of the support of the partisans by the population is, in fact, the reverse side of the question of readiness for collaborationism." Crimean Tatars did not quantitatively predominate on the peninsula. Moreover, they were not even equal in number to the Slavic population of the Crimea. Nevertheless, the Crimean Tatar factor was one of the reasons that until the middle of 1943 the partisan movement in the Crimea was actually paralyzed.
What was the relationship between the Crimean Tatars and the partisans in the initial period of the occupation of Crimea, and how did they evolve in the future? On October 23, 1941, the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved the top leadership of the partisan movement on the territory of the peninsula. A.V. was appointed its commander. Mokrousov, who partisaned here back in the Civil War, and S.V. Martynov, First Secretary of the Simferopol City Party Committee. Already on October 31, they issued their first order, according to which the Crimea was divided into five partisan regions, each of which was subordinate to 2 to 11 detachments with a total number of about 5 thousand people.
The party leadership was counting on the Crimean Tatars. A significant number of them were included in the partisan detachments - about 1000 people, which accounted for more than 20% of the total number of Crimean partisans during this period. So, only from them formed the Kuibyshev and Albat detachments. In the Balaklava, Leninsky and Alushta detachments of the Crimean Tatars there was an overwhelming majority. Naturally, the commanders and commissars in these partisan detachments were also representatives of this ethnic group. They were also in the top leadership of the movement. For example, A. Osmanov and M. Selimov, who had held high positions in the Crimean party nomenclature before the war, were appointed commissars of the 1st and 4th districts. In addition, the Crimean Tatar population of the mountainous and foothill regions was involved in the laying of partisan bases and the arrangement of future places for the deployment of detachments.
As you know, with the arrival of the Germans, a significant part of the Crimean Tatar population experienced a "crisis of loyalty" in relation to the Soviet government. The Crimean Tatars began to leave the partisan units both separately and in whole detachments. For example, the entire Kuibyshev partisan detachment went home - 115 people led by their commander Ibragimov (by the way, he was later hanged by the Germans when it turned out that he did not indicate all the places where food supplies were located). Similar cases occurred in the Albatsky and other partisan detachments. Moreover, former partisans often returned - sometimes with the Germans, sometimes with their fellow villagers - and plundered the partisan food bases. As a result, out of 28 partisan detachments operating in the winter of 1941 in the Crimea, 25 completely lost their supply bases.
In the future, the situation only worsened. The defeats of the Red Army in the Crimea, German propaganda, and in some places the rash actions of the partisans themselves did not have the best effect on the attitude of the Crimean Tatars towards the Soviet government. To change this situation, on November 18, 1942, a resolution of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was adopted, entitled "On the mistakes made in assessing the attitude of the Crimean Tatars towards the partisans, measures to eliminate these mistakes and strengthen work among the Tatar population." The document suggested:
- “To condemn as incorrect and politically harmful the assertion of the leadership of the partisans about the hostile attitude of the Crimean Tatars and explain to all the partisans that for the most part they are also hostile to the German-Romanian occupiers, like all the working people of Crimea;
- Ask the Military Council of the Transcaucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet to select and place at the disposal of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks a group of communists from the Crimean Tatars, tested in battles for their homeland, to be sent to partisan detachments and to work in the rear;
- To oblige the editors of the newspapers "Krasny Krym" and "Kyzyl Kyrym" (supplement to the first newspaper in the Crimean Tatar language) to direct the main content of printed propaganda to expose the "fascist demagogy" regarding the Crimean Tatar population, their flirting with national-religious feelings, to show that Hitlerism brings severe misfortunes to the Crimean Tatar people;
- Make it the duty of the command of the partisan movement in the Crimea to systematically destroy "fascist mercenaries, traitors to the Tatar people", to mobilize the population itself for this. Establish regular contact with the Crimean Tatar villages, explain to the population the meaning of the ongoing events, involve them in an active struggle against the Nazi invaders.
Already in November 1942, the third secretary of the Crimean regional committee, R. Mustafaev, was sent "into the forest", who headed the underground party center here. In the same month, he prepared a series of letters in the Crimean Tatar language. They were distributed among the population of mountain villages and called for the termination of cooperation with the invaders. In parallel with this, radio and print propaganda were significantly strengthened, both from the “mainland” and in Crimea itself. However, as subsequent events showed, the Soviet military-political leadership was at least half a year late: this period was the peak of the Crimean Tatar collaborationism and its consolidation with the occupation regime. Moreover, the desertion of the Crimean Tatars from partisan detachments continued. As a result, on June 1, 1943, among the 262 Crimean partisans, there were only six (!) Crimean Tatars.
This does not mean that everyone else served in collaborationist formations. It is known that many of them participated in the Crimean underground. So, in September 1942, the communist A. Dagdzhi (nicknamed "Uncle Volodya"), sent from the Yalta partisan detachment, created a patriotic organization in Simferopol that united about 80 people. 2/3 of its composition were Tatars, including the mother and sister of the head of the organization. The rest are people of other nationalities. The underground workers were engaged in the distribution of newspapers and leaflets received from the partisans, organized the escape of prisoners of war from the concentration camp, carried out economic sabotage. In June 1943, due to poor secrecy, the organization was uncovered. Most of its members, including the leader, were captured and executed.
But the main thing remains that the Soviet government lost the battle to the Germans for the majority of the Crimean Tatar population. A radical change in the mood of these people occurred only in the summer of 1943. The reverse process began: now the Crimean Tatars began to experience a "crisis of loyalty" in relation to the German occupiers. What are the reasons for this change in orientation? Each of the groups of the Crimean Tatar population had their own. For example, the intelligentsia was dissatisfied with the fact that the Germans did not give their people any political rights and freedoms. The peasantry began to experience the pressure of constant requisitions: other people who did not want to work in "white gloves" were already at the head of the occupation administration. The main reason for the hostility of the city dwellers towards the Germans was that any of them could be sent to Germany, where the sad fate of the "Ostarbeiters" awaited them. In addition, at the end of 1942, rumors about the resettlement plans of the Nazis leaked to the Crimea. And of course, many Crimean Tatars immediately realized that there was no place for them in the future Gotenland. Finally, if until the middle of 1942 the Germans used selective repressions, now they could well deal with the Crimean Tatar, burn the Crimean Tatar village.
Dissatisfaction with the Germans on the part of the Crimean Tatars increases in the first half of 1943. It should be recognized that without a common background - the victories of the Red Army at the front - it would not have received such development. In the second half of 1943, more and more Crimean Tatars began to desire the return of the former government and began to support its "long arm" on the peninsula - the partisans.
As the Soviet troops approached the Crimea, partisan attacks on the invaders intensified. The Soviet command began to provide more and more tangible assistance to them. Established a permanent connection with the population. Residents of many villages took refuge in the forest, hundreds of them joined the detachments. By January 1944, the number of Crimean partisans had grown to 3,973. In January-February 1944, seven partisan brigades, later united into three formations - Northern (commander P.R. Yampolsky), Southern (commander M.A. Makedonsky) and Eastern (commander V.S. Kuznetsov). The general leadership was carried out by the Crimean headquarters of the partisan movement (KShPD), headed by V.S. Bulatov, who at the same time was the secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The KShPD itself was created in October 1943 and was located outside the Crimea.
Members of the Crimean Tatar collaborationist formations were part of their people, and such a military-political situation also had a serious impact on them. Therefore, since the summer of 1943, both Soviet and German sources have noted a weakening of discipline and a drop in morale in the so-called noise battalions (auxiliary police). Under the influence of these reasons, underground organizations were created in many of them, the purpose of which was often to go over to the side of the partisans. So, according to the reports of Soviet agents, the commander of the 154th battalion A. Kerimov was arrested by the SD as "unreliable", and in the 147th battalion the Germans shot 76 policemen at once, considering them a "pro-Soviet element". However, by the winter of 1943, this process became irreversible. It was during this period that a massive influx of Crimean Tatars into partisan detachments began. By December, 406 people had come there, and 219 of them had previously served in various parts of the police. As a result, according to the personnel department of the KShPD, there were 3,453 people in partisan detachments on the territory of Crimea, 598 of whom were Crimean Tatars.
The process of decomposition affected even, it seemed, the most reliable volunteer units. In the fall of 1943, the most devoted to the Germans and most combat-ready self-defense company from the village of Koush, headed by Major A. Raimov, went over to the side of the partisans. According to one of the partisan commanders I.Z. Vergasov, Raimov was an extreme collaborator and at the same time a good professional. Behind him was a special police school in Germany, two "Insignia for the Eastern Peoples" on his uniform and the personal patronage of the SS chief G. Himmler. The head of the German police on the peninsula appreciated him very much, since Raimov knew the Crimean forests well.
Nevertheless, in November 1943, he, along with his people (about 60 people), went over to the side of the partisans of the Southern Connection. Interestingly, its commander M.A. Macedonian did not "spread" volunteers into units, but allowed them to create their own separate detachment. For some time, the Raimovites, led by their commander, operated quite successfully near Bakhchisarai. However, soon he and his inner circle were secretly arrested and taken by plane to Moscow. Raimov was shot there. The ordinary soldiers of the company who remained in the forests were distributed among the detachments of the Southern Connection. Vergasov explains the reasons for this incident in the spirit of Soviet propaganda. According to him, Raimov planned to find out all the secrets and locations of the partisans and unexpectedly deliver a mortal blow to the entire movement. It was hardly true. The author himself writes a few pages above that Raimov was looking for a way to atone for his guilt in anticipation of the collapse of his masters.
According to the report of the chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the 17th German army, as a result of the transition of collaborators to the side of the partisans on March 5, 1944, only five of the eight Crimean Tatar noise battalions remained subordinate to the chief of police in Crimea: 147-150th and 154th. Moreover, only the 148th-150th had a full complement - in the rest, there were not even half.
These remaining battalions, as well as other police units, in which, according to the Soviet leadership, "real volunteers, elements who were dissatisfied with the Soviet regime" served, continued to fight the partisans: some more, some less zealously. In April-May 1944, all of them took part in the battles against the units of the Red Army that liberated the Crimea. According to the memoirs of the commissar of the 5th detachment of the Southern formation of the Crimean partisans I.I. Kupreev, volunteers from the Bakhchisaray noise battalion fought very hard for the city. And after the end of the fighting, many Crimean Tatars hid the surviving Germans in their homes.
The relationship between the population of the occupied territories and Soviet partisans is one of the most controversial and tragic episodes in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, it should be stated that in the occupied Soviet territories there was not just a struggle against the invaders. In most cases, it took on the character civil war, with all the elements inherent in this war. The change in the mood of the population under the influence of certain factors is just one of these elements. And to deny this objective fact means to deliberately hide an unsightly, but nonetheless very important page in the history of our past.
Unsuccessful leadership led to the failure of the partisan movement in the Crimea already initial stage. On July 19, 1942, the Front Headquarters radioed to the Crimea that “Mokrousov and Martynov would not return again,” Colonel Mikhail Lobov was appointed commander of the partisan movement in Crimea.
On July 24, 1942, in the new military conditions - the complete occupation of the Crimea - the "Plan for the leadership of the partisan movement, the intensification of military activity, the deployment of new partisan detachments in the Crimea" was approved.
On August 16, 1942, the head of the 4th department of the NKVD of the USSR, Pavel Sudoplatov, forwarded the message to the head of the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement (TSSHPD) Panteleimon Ponomarenko from the leadership of the partisan movement of Crimea:
“Please pass Comrade. STALIN and comrade. BERIA: Thousands of Crimean partisans are fighting fierce battles with large enemy forces. In one month, we destroyed 10,000 Nazis, more than a thousand vehicles, a lot of weapons and equipment. For the last 20 days we have not received answers and assistance from the North Caucasian Front and the Crimean Regional Party Committee. More than 500 sick and wounded people are starving and doomed to death. We cannot get food on the spot due to crop failure and the complete robbery of the population by the Germans.
We ask you to resume assistance and evacuate the sick and wounded by air and sea.”
The situation became critical. A few weeks later, the new command of the partisan movement of Crimea came to the conclusion that there were no prospects for the development of the movement in Crimea, which Colonel of the Southern Headquarters of the partisan movement Khadzhiumar Mamsurov told Ponomarenko: “22 partisan detachments are operating in Crimea. The number of detachments decreased due to the removal of a significant part of the wounded, sick, and emaciated from there. The leadership of the detachments (Lobov, Lugovoi, and others) is determined in essence to leave the Crimea in connection with the unbearable situation.”
However, this opinion was not supported by either the Central Headquarters or the leadership of the regional committee. As the head of one of the detachments, Ivan Genov, secretary of the Crimean regional committee, Yampolsky, recalls, “I went with the decision of the regional underground committee and the opinion of the absolute majority that the fight must be continued”: “Sick, wounded and exhausted partisans should be taken to the mainland, treated, after rest, return to the forest again to continue the fight.
As a result, the line pursued by the Crimean Regional Committee - under no circumstances to stop the activities of the partisan movement - prevailed. On October 18, 1942, the Decree of the Bureau of the Crimean Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On measures to strengthen partisan detachments and further develop the partisan movement in Crimea” was adopted. To lead the partisan detachments of Crimea, an “operational center was created consisting of Comrade Seversky (commander of the partisan movement), Comrade Yampolsky (Secretary of the OK All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), Comrade Mustafaeva (Secretary of the OK All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks)”, the existing central headquarters at the same time liquidated.
The Operations Center is committed to:
- complete the work of evacuating sick and wounded partisans from the forest for treatment (approximately 250-300 people);
- from the remaining parts of the partisans after the evacuation, form 6 detachments, each consisting of 60-70 people, instructing the operational center to determine the areas of their activity on the spot;
- plant small detachments and partisan groups in the steppe part of the Crimea, primarily: Evpatoria, Akmonai, Kamysh-Burun, Adzhimushkay quarries, as well as in cities;
- to ask the Military Council of the Black Sea Fleet to provide assistance with watercraft for the evacuation of the remaining sick and wounded partisans.
The following tasks of the Crimean partisan detachments for the next period were formulated: a) to strengthen military intelligence and military work on communications (“not to allow the enemy to take out the loot from the Crimea”); b) keep the enemy in a state of alarm: attack small garrisons, commandant's offices, headquarters, self-defense units; c) destroy local traitors, elders, policemen, burgomasters; d) to avenge every act of violence committed against the local population.
The chairman of the Crimean government, Ismail Seyfulaev, pledged by December 1, 1942 "to throw 90-100 tons of food for partisan detachments at the rate of 500 people for 6 months, winter uniforms and other items of material allowance, and also to replenish food supplies in a timely manner."
It was proposed to “plant new agents in cities and villages, especially Tatar ones” and “to throw a group of fresh Chekist workers
In addition, it was decided to ask the TsShPD to issue 4 “North” type radios for the Crimean partisan detachments, and the Military Council of the Black Sea Group of Forces of the Transcaucasian Front to allocate one radio for the Crimean Regional Committee of the CPSU (b). A request was also formulated to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Beria: "To send one of the employees of the former People's Commissariat of the NKVD of Crimea to lead intelligence and agent work in the Crimea." At the same time, it was proposed "to plant new agents in cities and villages, especially Tatar ones" and "to abandon a group of fresh Chekist workers."
These were the measures for the next reorganization of the partisan movement. The results of the first stage of the movement's activities were summed up in the "Information on the state of the partisan movement of Crimea for the period from 11/15/41 to 11/15/42", preserved in the fund of the permanent head of the TsSHPD Panteleymon Ponomarenko in RGASPI.
According to the document, the losses for the first year were: out of 3098 partisans, 450 people died of starvation, 400 deserted or went missing, 848 people died in battle, 556 people were taken out sick, wounded and exhausted (of which: civilians - 230 , military personnel - 211, border guards - 58, sailors - 30, cavalrymen - 27). “In connection with the hunger strike” 400 people were sent to the forests, to the steppe part for underground and sabotage work.
The number of partisans who died of starvation is only 2 times less than those who died during the fighting
The document draws attention to the figures of human losses. Thus, it cannot but be surprising that the number of partisans who died of starvation (450 people) is only 2 times less than those who died during the hostilities. Even if the numbers are not 100% accurate, the fact that every seventh fighter died from starvation is still impressive. At the same time, taking into account the clearly failed nature of the partisan movement at the first stage, there are certain doubts about the number of “exterminated soldiers and officers and the enemy during the year of partisan work” - 12 thousand people.
As of November 1942, 480 people remained in the forest as part of 6 partisan detachments.
In November 1942, a very remarkable resolution was adopted by the Crimean regional party committee "On the mistakes made in assessing the behavior of the Crimean Tatars in relation to the partisans, on measures to eliminate these mistakes and intensify work among the Tatar population." In fact, it was the rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar people, accused by the former leadership of the movement - Mokrousov and Martynov - of treason.
In the village Koush a group of partisans of the former 4th district drunkenly staged a pogrom, not understanding who is theirs, who is strangers
In its preamble, it was stated that “an analysis of the facts, reports of commanders and commissars of partisan detachments, carried out on the spot, indicate that the allegations of an allegedly hostile attitude of the majority of the Tatar population of Crimea towards the partisans and that the majority of the Tatars went over to the service of the enemy are unfounded and politically harmful." It was recognized that wrong actions were taken against the local population, and the conflict between the population and the partisans was largely the result of the attitude of “individual partisan groups to the local population”: “For example, Comrade Zinchenko’s group on one of the roads took away the products of passing citizens. In the village Koush, a group of partisans of the former 4th district, in a drunken state, staged a pogrom, not understanding who was theirs, who was strangers. The robbery of food bases by the Nazis was regarded as looting by the local population, and any citizen who got into the forest was shot.”
The document cited the facts of assistance and sympathetic attitude of the Crimean Tatars to the partisans (“A number of villages and villages of the mountainous and foothill part of Crimea provided active assistance to the partisans for a long time (the village of Koktash, Chermalyk, Aylyanma, Beshui, Ayserez, Shah-Murza, etc.), and the landing units that arrived in Sudak in January 1942 were entirely supplied with food by the surrounding Tatar villages of this region.In the village of Koktash, a partisan detachment lived and fed for half a month, until the Germans ravaged this village. detachments of the 2nd district. A detachment of comrade Seleznev stood for 4 months in the village of Beshui and was supplied with food").
The Bureau of the Crimean Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) decided:
"1. Condemn as incorrect and politically harmful the statement about the hostile attitude of the majority of Crimean Tatars towards the partisans and explain that the Crimean Tatars in general are just as hostile to the German-Romanian occupiers as all the working people of Crimea.
2. To ask the Military Council of the Transcaucasian Front and the Black Sea Fleet to select and transfer to the disposal of the Crimean OK of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks a group of communists - a political composition of the Crimean Tatars, tested in battles for their homeland, to send them to partisan detachments and work in the rear.
The decision "on the Tatar question is absolutely correct
In July 1943 former leader of the Crimean partisan movement, Mokrousov tried to challenge this decision, but in response to his statement, the regional committee once again confirmed that the decision “on the Tatar issue is absolutely correct and no changes should be made to the wording that comrade Mokrousov requires.” After that, Mokrousov "admitted his mistakes" and withdrew the application.
It should be noted that after the decisions made, representatives of the Crimean Tatar party elite appeared among the new leadership of the partisan movement, who were absent at the initial stage, and, as it was officially recognized, this was one of the reasons for the failures of the first stage of the partisan resistance (“none of the leaders completely took into account that that the indigenous population of Crimea are Tatars and, therefore, it was necessary to leave authoritative figures from the Tatars in the forests for constant communication and work among the Tatar population, ”wrote Colonel Lobov in one of the reports to the center).
According to the “Information on the state of the partisan movement of Crimea for the period 11/15/41 to 11/15/42”, “sent to the forest” were Refat Mustafaev, the third secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and with him a group of Tatar workers, of which 6 people have already settled in the Tatar villages” (including the commissar, deputy for political affairs Nafe Belyalov, chairman of the Supreme Court of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Mustafa Selimov, secretary of the Yalta district party committee).
As follows from numerous official documents, the "Tatar question" was discussed at various meetings of the country's leadership.
Ismail Seyfulaev recalled: “In the second half of 1942 and early 1943, I was at the reception of Malenkov, Kalinin, Andreev, Zhdanov, Kosygin, Mikoyan, Ponomarev, as well as a number of top military figures. He reported on the state of the partisan movement, the necessary assistance to the people's avengers, who had endured a difficult winter, who had lost a significant number among their comrades. At the same time, Bulatov, the secretary of the regional committee, the chief of staff of the partisan movement in the Crimea, wrote several memorandums to the Central Committee. Everyone and everywhere listened attentively to us, but the alarm raised by Mokrousov worried and alerted the leaders. No one undertook to defend or refute the accusations against our people. The question is too serious, no one wanted to take risks. Everyone knew that this was beyond their competence, that such questions would be decided personally by Stalin.
In June 1943, Vladimir Bulatov again highlighted this issue - now at a meeting of the heads of intelligence departments of the headquarters of the partisan movement: “Based on some biased, unverified data coming from our comrades, we had the opinion that a good half of the Crimean Tatar population went along the line treacherous activity, on the occasion of the Germans. I must say that in fact the situation did not look the way we imagined it to ourselves and as informed by the leading comrades who remained on the territory of the Crimea ... In a number of villages in the mountainous and foothill parts, the Germans managed to create self-defense detachments, and what the motives for organizing these self-defense units? The Germans, when they occupied the Crimea, organized, first of all, the destruction of the food base of the partisan detachments, and we had a supply of food for all the partisan detachments, of which there were up to 3.5 thousand for about a year. Naturally, the Germans selected people from among hostile nationalist elements as guides to these partisan bases. And when at the head of any punitive group, either a German, or individual specimens from the Tatars, the impression was created, and our comrades made such a conclusion that the plundering of partisan detachments was carried out by the Tatars. And without understanding the essence of this phenomenon, without delving into the depths of the mood of the Tatar village, they embarked on a hostile path towards the partisans ...
For example, if we have up to 150 villages in the Crimea exclusively with a Tatar population, then the so-called self-defense units were organized in only 20-25 villages. Therefore, to say that the Tatar population took positions hostile to the Soviet regime is completely wrong ...
The Crimean regional party committee adopted a special resolution on this issue, where it gave a proper assessment of our mistakes of the initial and former partisan detachments on the ground by a number of leading comrades ... This is the decision of the regional party committee, comrade. Ponomarenko considers absolutely correct. And Comrade Stalin, when such rumors reached him, was literally indignant and said that there could be no such situation, apparently, they didn’t figure it out or went too far.”
It is hard to believe in the veracity of the phrase about the “indignation” of the leader
In the light of today's knowledge about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars that followed soon, it is hard to believe in the veracity of the phrase about the "outrage" of the leader. But what can be said with a high degree of certainty is that, despite the decisions made on the letter of rehabilitation, the “Tatar question” was constantly exaggerated at the top.
Ismail Seyfulaev recalled his meeting with Marshal Voroshilov of the USSR in December 1943: “I reported on the struggle of partisans against the Nazis, on sabotage on communications. Marshal listened carefully. When it came to the indiscriminate accusation of the Crimean Tatars, which was initiated by Mokrousov, Kliment Efremovich said the following: “The Crimean Tatars were and are traitors. During the war of 1854-1856, during the defense of Sevastopol, they refused to supply the military units of the Russian army with hay, read about this in Leo Tolstoy. To this I replied that I could not agree with this, the Tatars gave hay and fodder military units, and the army quartermasters wanted to get hay for free, and appropriated the money allocated from the State Treasury.
It seems that the position of GKO member Voroshilov on the eve of the decisive battles for the Crimea is indicative - let's assume that the eviction of the Crimean Tatars was only a matter of time...
Despite organizational and personnel changes and some stabilization, in the middle of 1943 the Crimean partisans continued to experience material difficulties.
For 18 months, the partisans exterminated 15,200 people of German-Romanian soldiers and officers
As of May 1, 1943, “in 18 months, the partisans exterminated 15,200 German-Romanian soldiers and officers. Destroyed 1500 vehicles with technicians and manpower of the enemy. 15 military railway echelons with equipment and manpower were derailed, of which only in 1943 11 echelons; according to incomplete data, up to 50 guns and more than 700 enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed during the crash. More than 50,000 meters of telegraph wires were cut. 3 large warehouses with ammunition, fodder, uniforms were blown up. Burnt out stable. In Simferopol, 1,500 heads of cattle and 100 horses of the enemy were poisoned, 10,000 mechanical molds were disabled at the bakery, and 3 wagons of leather materials were damaged. 48 tractors and trailers were destroyed, 35 bridges were blown up, 30 convoys were destroyed, and 5 enemy headquarters were destroyed. 300 traitors were exterminated.
As of December 14, 1943, there were 6 brigades from 29 detachments, as well as the Headquarters of the Central Operational Group. They numbered 3557 people (Russians - 2100, Crimean Tatars - 406, Ukrainians - 331, Belarusians - 23, other nationalities - 697). In the future, the number of partisan detachments began to increase.
During offensive operation in the spring of 1944 they performed together with Soviet troops who liberated the Crimea ...
Gulnara Bekirova, Crimean historian, member of the Ukrainian PEN Club
