Katyn massacre
The
Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out
by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret
police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was
prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive
members of the Polish Officer Corps, dated 5 March 1940,
approved by the Soviet Politburo, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. The
number of victims is estimated at about 22,000. The victims were executed in the Katyn
Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. Of the total
killed, about 8,000 were officers
taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police
officers, and the rest were arrested Polish intelligentsia that the
Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners,
saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests".
Uprising of 1953 in East
Germany
The
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany started with a strike by East Berlin
construction workers on 16 June 1953. It turned
into a widespread uprising against the German Democratic Republic government
the next day. The uprising in East Berlin was violently suppressed by tanks of
the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and the Volkspolizei. In spite of the
intervention of Soviet troops, the wave of strikes and protests was not easily
brought under control. Even after 17 June, there were demonstrations in more
than 500 towns and villages. Death toll: 513 people
(including 116 "functionaries of the SED regime") were killed in the uprising, 106 people were executed under
martial law or later condemned to death, 1,838 were injured, and 5,100 were arrested (1,200
of these were later sentenced to an average of 5 years in penal camps).
Hungarian Revolution of
1956
The
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising
of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of
the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. The revolt
began as a student demonstration, which attracted thousands as they marched through
central Budapest to the Parliament building, calling out on the streets using a
van with loudspeakers via Radio Free Europe. The revolt spread quickly across
Hungary and the government collapsed. Thousands organized into militias,
battling the ÁVH and Soviet troops. After announcing a willingness to negotiate
a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to
crush the revolution. On 4 November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and
other regions of the country. The Hungarian resistance continued until 10
November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700
Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as
refugees. Mass arrests and denunciations continued for months thereafter. By
January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public
opposition.
Soviets Invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968
On
the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade
Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring”–a brief period of liberalization in
the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public
demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the
Soviet tanks. The liberal reforms of First Secretary Alexander Dubcek were
repealed and “normalization” began under his successor Gustav Husak. At Radio
Prague, journalists refused to give up the station and some 20 people were killed before
it was captured. Other stations went underground and succeeded in broadcasting
for several days before their locations were discovered. Dubcek and other
government leaders were detained and taken to Moscow. Meanwhile, widespread
demonstrations continued on the street, and more than 100 protesters were shot to death by Warsaw Pact troops.
Poznań 1956 protests
The
Poznań 1956 protests, also known as the Poznań 1956 uprising were the first of
several massive protests against the government of the People's Republic of
Poland. Demonstrations by workers demanding better conditions began on June 28, 1956 at Poznań's Cegielski Factories and were
met with violent repression. A crowd of approximately 100,000 gathered in the
city centre near the local Ministry of Public Security building. About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the People's Army of Poland
and the Internal Security Corps under Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky
were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification
fired at the protesting civilians. The death toll was
placed between 57 and over a hundred people, including a 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzałkowski.
Hundreds of people sustained injuries. The Poznań protests were an
important milestone on the way to the installation of a less Soviet-controlled
government in Poland in October.
The Volga Germans tragedy in the Soviet Union
The
Volga Germans are ethnic Germans who historically lived along the River Volga
in the region. Recruited as immigrants to Russia in the 18th century, they were
allowed to maintain their German culture, language, traditions, and churches. Between 1930 and 1937, Russian Germans lost quarter of their population through
murder, engineered famines or deportation. In 1939, 60,000 of the 1.1 million
inhabitants of Crimea were Germans. There were virtually none left there.
In 1941, Moscow announced the mass “evacuation” of approximately 440,000 Volga German farmers to remote regions of Siberia. With
the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, at least 900,000 ethnic Germans were deported from the autonomous Volga German
Republic and other parts of the Soviet Union to Siberia, the
Urals and Kazakhstan. 40% of Germans died as a result
of massacres or during and after transportation. By 1949, over a million ethnic Germans had perished in Russia.
Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union
Deportation
of Koreans in the Soviet Union, originally conceived in 1926, initiated in 1930, and carried
through in 1937, was the first mass transfer of
an entire nationality in the Soviet Union. The deportation was preceded by a
typical Soviet scenario of political repression: falsified trials of local
party leaders accused of insurrection, accusations of plans of the secession of
the Far Eastern Krai, local party purges, and articles in Pravda about the
Japanese espionage in the Far East. The deportation was executed by NKVD
under strict monitoring of deadlines. The deportees
were transported by railway trains of about 50 carriages each, with 25–30
people per carriage. Travel to the destination took between 30 and 40 days.
It was reported the completion of the deportation of Koreans from Far Eastern
Krai on October 25, 1937. In total, 36,442 families counting 171,781 persons were reported to be resettled. Many Koreans were
placed far from each other in isolation to prevent contact with each with no food and no shelter and were forced to survive on
their own for almost three years. Thousands died of
starvation, sickness and exposure during the first few years in Central Asia.
The world remembers all Soviet Union Dictatorship
victims.
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