The Meskhetians

The Meskhetians.

The Meskhetian Turks were among the peoples deported by Stalin in 1944 — uprooted from their Georgian homeland and scattered across Central Asia on charges of Nazi collaboration. Unlike the Chechens and other exiled peoples, they were not permitted to return when Khrushchev rehabilitated the deportees in 1957. Their long displacement came to a violent head in June 1989, when ethnic pogroms in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley killed hundreds and left over 100,000 Meskhetians fleeing once again, stateless and homeless in their own country.

Original Source: «Хроника текущих событий» (вып. 1-15), Амстердам, Фонд им. Герцена, 1979, вып. 7, стр. 131.

One of the small nations of whom Kosterin wrote are the Meskhetians, or Meskhi. As the Ukrainians and Jews belong to a different category, the Meskhi are the only small nation, apart from the Tatars, about whose national movement much is known. Such movements evidently exist also among the Volga Germans and the Soviet Greeks, but very little evidence about them has yet reached the outside world in documented form.

As will be seen, remarkable parallels exist between the Meskhetians and the Tatars, regarding both their fates and their movements' tactics. In some ways the Meskhetians - with up to seven thousand people assembling for national conferences -have even outdone the numerically stronger Tatars. Indeed, how Stalin would turn in his grave if he heard of unauthorized meetings of this size : in his day - when order reigned! - three people chatting about the weather were a potential conspiracy to be quickly dispersed by the police.

The Meskhetians differ, however, from the Tatars in that they suffered deportation six months later, in November 1944, and moreover not as `traitors,' for the Germans had never occupied their lands. The explanation of their tragedy lies elsewhere. With the war nearly over, Stalin's eyes were already fixed covetously on north-east Turkey. That being so, and Stalin being Stalin, he evidently preferred to anticipate possible complications by removing from the frontier area people who, like the Meskhetians, might have had pro- Turkish sympathies. The Meskhetians' misfortune thus stemmed from the chance fact that their home lay along the Soviet-Turkish border, in an area not far from the Black Sea.

The Meskhetians also differ from the Tatars and almost all the other deported peoples in that their deportation was never reported. Indeed it remained totally unknown to the outside world for a quarter of a century. As Robert Conquest has written: "It is as if, roughly speaking, the population of Iceland or Swaziland, of Kuwait or Alaska, should disappear without trace."

What, then, of the possibility of a restoration of justice to the Meskhetians? Presumably the Kremlin is inhibited here by the same considerations as in the case of the Tatars. The return home of the now embittered Meskhetians might, it may think, jeopardize military security. Second, and probably more important, to yield to one aggrieved lobby would risk encouraging a myriad others.

The Chronicle brought the world its first detailed report on the Meskhetians' fate in 1969 with these two articles:

THE MOVEMENT OF THE PEOPLE OF MESKHETIA FOR A RETURN TO THE HOMELAND

On November 15, 1944, the forcible deportation from Meskhetia (a southern part of Georgia) of the indigenous population took place. This population was mainly formed when, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Meskhi Georgians gradually adopted the Turkish language and became converted to Islam. The all-union census of 1929 officially described them as Turks, and schools using Turkish were opened in the province.

In 1935-6 the people were suddenly renamed Azerbaijanis, and teaching was transferred to the Azerbaijani language. But on November 15th, 1944, they were once again stated to be Turks and deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Apart from the Meskhi Georgians, the following were deported from Meskhetia: the Karapapakhi Azerbaijanis, the Islamicized Khemshinli Armenians, the Turkicized Kurds and the Meskhetian Turkmens, who also called themselves Turks. Common misfortune brought these varying ethnic groups together and welded them into one people.

The deportation took place on the pretext that evacuation to safe areas was necessary because of the supposedly advancing Germans. It was promised that the people would be returned to their homelands after the war. The tragic circumstances of this deportation are similar to those surrounding the history of the Crimean Tatars and the peoples of the north Caucasus. A few months after the deportation the regime for deported exiles -the same as that for peoples accused of being 'traitors'- was imposed upon all areas where the 'temporarily deported peoples' had been put. The deported, who had left their homes, property and livestock behind, perished in the alien climate from starvation and cold. In Uzbekistan alone 50,000 People died. A particularly large number of Turks died while transforming the Hungry Steppe [south of Tashkent] into the flowering region of Gulistan. Those Meskhetians returning from the front, including Heroes of the Soviet Union and those with medals, were not allowed back to their homeland.

With the [unpublished] decrees of April 28, 1956, and 4 October 31, 1957, promulgated by the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, the regime for deported exiles was lifted, but the right to return home and compensation for confiscated property were not accorded to them. At the end of 1956 and beginning of 1957, delegates went to Moscow to obtain permission for their people to return home. In answer the Meskhi were announced to be Azerbaijani and were (given permission' to 'return' to Azerbaijan: they were recruited for the cultivation of the Mugan Steppe 1300 miles east of Meskhetia]. Many went there, hoping to be nearer their homeland and to return to it in the end.

A letter from the people as a whole, demanding permission to return to their homeland and sent to the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, was handed over to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian Republic and from there to the Georgian K.G.B. The K.G.B. is a body which in no way has the right to decide this question; nevertheless, the head of the K.G.B., [Aleksei] Inauri, wrote that, according to the decrees of April 28, 1956, and October 31, 1957 promulgated by the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, the people had not been granted permission to return to the area from which they had been deported in 1944.

Over a period of a few years, the people's delegates, who had formed a Temporary Committee for the Return of the People to their Homeland, traveled to Moscow and Tbilisi [the capital of Georgia] and obtained interviews with the highest party and government authorities. In 1963 they encountered understanding and humanity in the Second Secretary to the Central Committee of the Georgian Party, Zemlyansky, who said that he had known nothing about this terrible mistake and would immediately exert pressure to obtain permission for their people to return home. He also said that conditions should be created so as to make them forget their suffering. But this single defender of the Meskhi died a few months later.5 Further visits by delegates to the reception rooms of Moscow and Tbilisi were fruitless, or indefinite answers were given to get rid of them, or they received an answer such as the following from Sklyarov, head of the reception room of the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet: 'I will not give your documents to Comrade Brezhnev, nor will he receive you; go home and get on with some work.' The Meskhi appealed to Georgian writers, journalists and cultural figures and found moral support, but none of them could give any real help; moreover, those who took up the cause of the persecuted people were frequently subjected to censure by official bodies.

On February 15, 1964, the First Meeting of the People took place at the 'Leninist Path' collective farm in the Bukinsky District of Tashkent Region. Representatives of the all-union and republican Central Committees of the party, of the all-union and republican governments, and of regional and district party committees were invited to attend, but only some unidentified people in mufti appeared, who tried to prevent the delegates from assembling. Nevertheless, more than 600 delegates from Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, with mandates from the local assemblies of the people and representing the whole 200,000-strong people, took part in the meeting. Speeches were made on the early history of the people, on their present situation and on the organization of work. A petition to the party and government was drawn up. A Temporary Organizing Committee for the Return of the People to the Homeland was elected. The historian Enver Odabashev (Khozravanadze) was chosen as president. One hundred and twenty-five delegates were chosen to go to Moscow. A complete record of the meeting was sent to party and government leaders. Up to now, twenty-six meetings of representatives of the whole people have been held.

On the occasions when the people's delegates visited Moscow, they were informed that it would be far better to get the question settled in Tbilisi. In Tbilisi they were told that only the U.S.S.R. government could make the decision. In the autumn of 1964 the delegates were summoned to the Georgian K.G.B. building, and an unidentified lieutenant-colonel announced that the question would be decided at the beginning of 1965. The sole purpose of this announcement was to send the delegates back to Central Asia.

In the following period the K.G.B. organs of the Central Asian republics took their own measures: house arrests of delegates when they should have been leaving for meetings; talks with participants of the movement when alternately bribes were offered and threats made. In the offices of the party committee of the Kantsky District [in Kirgizia] Polikanov, the party district secretary, Kurmanov, deputy president of the Kirgiz K.G.B., and four unnamed men talked to Alles Izatov, a candidate member of the party and secretary of the Komsomol committee of the agricultural college in Frunze [the Kirgiz capital]. As a result of refusing to dissuade the people from writing to and visiting Moscow, Izatov was not made a party member. K.G.B. officials also tried every method of wrecking the people's regular meetings.

In March 1966 Alles Izatov and Enver Odabashev were about to fly to Tbilisi. After fruitless talks with them and attempts to prevent them reaching the airport, a provocation was organized. After they had checked in at the airport, some lieutenant-colonel or other advanced upon them and tore up their tickets and boarding cards, thus arousing the indignation of the surrounding people. The police detained a few members of the angry crowd as well as Izatov and Odabashev, who remained calm. On the following day all the rest were released, but these two were tried for 'petty hooliganism' and given fifteen days in prison: at the people's court of the Lenin District [of Frunze] the judge was Turin, and the case was heard without assessors [of whom two are required by law].

In 1967 the people's delegates were promised that their question would be considered after the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.

In April 1968 the 22nd national meeting, with over 6000 delegates taking part, was held in Yangiyul [near Tashkent].

The meeting took place with army detachments, police with truncheons, and fire-engines surrounding it, but was conducted without any disorders. On the delegates' return journey, the police began detaining them and dispatching them to Tashkent. Thirty of them spent two to six months in preventive detention cells.

On May 30, 1968, a resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. was promulgated to the effect that citizens of Turkish, Kurdish and Azerbaijani nationality who had been deported from the Akhaltsikhsky, Aspindzsky, Akhalkalaksky and Adigensky Districts and from the Adzhar Autonomous Republic [i.e. from Meskhetia] benefited from the same rights as all other citizens of the U.S.S.R.; but these people had by now put down roots in those republics where they now lived, and needed to have created for them there conditions which took into consideration their national peculiarities.

After the promulgation of the resolution, the people once again sent their representatives to Moscow in order to gain permission for an organized resettlement in their home country. No one would receive them. On July 24, 1968, 7000 delegates converged on Tbilisi and gathered at Government House demanding an interview. They were met by volunteer police, by police with truncheons, and by army detachments. The delegates, including even women, were beaten up. They were searched for weapons. The delegates refused to be provoked: they did not get involved in fights but neither did they disperse. Finally, on July 26, the first secretary of the Georgian Central Committee, Mzhavanadze, received a few of them and said that there was no room in Meskhetia for its indigenous population, that other districts in Georgia could accept them, but then only a hundred families per year; however, if they insisted on having their way, then they must apply to Moscow.

In August 1968 B. P. Yakovlev received delegates in the Moscow Central Committee reception room, saying that the leadership was at present engaged in more serious matters and would only be able to examine their question in two months' time; when this happened they would be informed. When they heard nothing, the delegates arrived in Moscow in November, and then once again they were sent from one reception room to another, while the following type of argument started being repeated more and more often: 'The Soviet Union is your homeland; the place where you live is your home; live and get on with some work.'

The exiled people cannot agree with this false argument. The people's movement for the restoration of historical justice continues.

NEW PERSECUTION OF THE MESKHI

'The people's movement for the restoration of historical justice continues'- those were the final words of the report in No. 7 of the Chronicle on the tragic fate of the small Meskhi people. Also continuing is the persecution of the Meskhi by the authorities.

The Meskhi are an ethnic mixture of Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Kurds and Turkmenians. What they have in common has been created by their past experience of Turkish influence and their Muslim religion, and the persecutions they have suffered during the last twenty-five years have strengthened their unity as a nation The unique culture of the Meskhi has attracted the attention of scholars. On May 23 and 24, 1968, the Georgian Academy of Sciences held a scholarly seminar on the history and ethnography of Meskhetia. At that time the indigenous population of Meskhetia was trying in vain to obtain permission to return to its homeland.

On November 18, 1968, B. P. Yakovlev, an official of the Central Committee of the party, received [once again] a delegation of Meskhi representatives in Moscow--the twenty-fourth of its kind. During his talk with them, Yakovlev granted the Meskhi permission to settle in various regions of Georgia, and fifteen to thirty families were even allowed to settle in Meskhetia. Although this permission was not confirmed in writing, the Meskhi people decided at their meetings to trust this indefinite form of permission. However, those who were prepared to get up and go have met with persistent opposition: they are refused references from the places of work releasing them, they are not removed from the military service register, and no transport is provided for them.

Eight families from the kolkhoz 'Ady-Gyun' in the Saatly District of Azerbaijan left for Georgia, abandoning their homes and belongings because they had been refused transport.

They were given work at a state farm in the Makharadze District of Georgia, but were very soon dismissed, and deported back to Saady District by the police. The Saatly District is in the Mugan steppe, and many Meskhi settled there after the decrees of April 28, 1956 and October 31, 1957, which relieved them of the regime for deported exiles. Refusing to allow them to return to Georgia, the authorities tried to enthuse them with the idea of cultivating the Mugan steppe, an area with severe extremes of climate, and with almost no water fit for drinking-the water there is either bitter and salty or turbid and rather muddy. But the Meskhi moved there from Central Asia simply to be a little nearer their homeland.

The Meskhi from the kolkhoz '21 st Congress of the Party', ,also in the Saatly District, managed to procure seven vehicles for their journey, but they were stopped by the police and forced to escape into Georgia on foot, leaving behind their belongings as trophies for the Saatly District police. There are many similar stories. Georgian railway stations and terminuses have become crowded with homeless people, deprived of their belongings and their work, with no roof over their heads, systematically driven out of their homeland the moment they set foot in it. Whole families with small children, old men and invalids are involved.

On April 19, 1969, the President of the Temporary Organizing Committee for the Return of the Meskhi to their Homeland was arrested in Saatly. He is Enver Odabashev (Khozrevanadze), an officer in the reserve, who took part in the Great Patriotic War. Odabashev was attending a teachers' conference, during which he was called outside. Waiting for him on the street was the district Procurator Kadirov, with two unknown men. The Procurator then lured Odabashev to the police station under false pretences, and left him there. Odabashev was held there until one o'clock in the morning, with no explanations and no food, and then summoned for interrogation by an investigator of the district Procuracy, Farzaliyev. The interrogation lasted until 3:30 in the morning, thus violating the statute of Soviet law which states that interrogations may not be held at night, except in urgent cases which cannot be delayed. Then Odabashev was put into an unheated room, where he soon caught a chill, dressed as he was in light clothing. In protest at his arrest by force and deception, and at the arbitrariness of the whole affair, Odabashev began a hunger-strike.

After Odabashev had been detained, a search was carried out in his house. Local police inspector Ummatov, Procuracy investigator Farzaliyev and others made the search, during which they took away from an archive copies of documents addressed to the party, the government and the people.

When they found out about Odabashev's arrest, on the morning of April 21, the Meskhi left their work and came from all the village settlements in the area to gather in Saatly at the district party committee building, where they demanded the immediate release of their teacher of the people. When they met with refusal, the hard-working Meskhi sent express telegrams to L. I. Brezhnev and V. Iu. Akhundov. The crowd did not disperse. Late in the evening of April 21, the secretary of the district party committee, Babayev, who had been in Baku, returned in great haste, probably sent by the republican party organs. After lengthy deliberations with representatives of the Meskhi, the district committee secretary ordered Odabashev to be released.

Odabashev was brought in for interrogation, already prepared and photographed for deportation the next morning, and told: 'Sign here, we're releasing you.' The district police chief Mirzoyev, and the Procurator Kadirov, who had finally appeared, began shouting and threatening and demanding that Odabashev should not travel anywhere or participate in any meetings. That night, after his spell in a cold cell, and hungry from his strike, Odabashev signed a blank sheet of paper which the investigator, Farzaliyev, handed to him, as well as the record of his interrogation. No one can tell how this blank sheet will be used.

When the old teacher was let out into the street, he was met by the crowd of Meskhi, who had not dispersed although it was now late at night. They shouted: 'Freedom! Equality! Homeland or death! Our teacher lives!

Reports began to circulate to the effect that Odabashev's arrest was to have been the first of a series of arrests of other activists. For the moment, however, the people's reaction has put a stop to the unlawful actions of the authorities. Still, the threat of arrest has, as before, come to hang over active 'Participants in the movement for a return to the homeland.

The Georgian government suggested earlier to the Meskhi that they settle in other areas of Georgia, in particular in Kolkhida [i.e. Colchis, in west Georgia]. By June 1969, 505 Meskhi families had arrived in Georgia. The Georgian population welcomed them as brothers, and helped them settle in. But on June 7th there was a round-up of Meskhi who had already arrived and found work, as a result of which they were lent off by train in various different directions. The fate of many of the victims of this round-up, or their whereabouts, are not known.

In 1970 the patience of the Meskhetians began to run out. As Chronicles 19 and 20 reported, they started to seek emigration to Turkey. In this they may well have been influenced by the success of several thousand Soviet Zionists in gaining permission to leave for Israel from 1968 on.

Source: Peter Reddaway, comp. Uncensored Russia: protest and dissent in the Soviet Union; the unofficial Moscow journal, a Chronicle of current events (New York: American Heritage Press, 1972), pp. 269-279.