The cover of the book called "Istoriomor, or The Drilling into the Brain of Memory: Battles for the Truth about the GULAG, Deportations, the War and the Holocaust" by geographer and historian Pavel Polyan. “'Istoriomor' is a necessary “neologism and metaphor” to cover “the triumph of politicized mythology and anti-historicism over what is really history and memory.” It involves making certain themes and sources taboo, falsifying and mythologizing events, and both denial of the obvious and relativism about anything negative.
A new book documents the way that the peoples whom Stalin deported are seeking to preserve the memory of that crime by erecting monuments in the face of Vladimir Putin’s effort to kill such recollections via a new crime for which the author Pavel Polyan suggests a neologism, “historiomor” — or a war on history for current purposes.
Today, the Polit.ru portal publishes a chapter of this book, Istoriomor, or The Drilling into the Brain of Memory: Battles for the Truth about the GULAG, Deportations, the War and the Holocaust (in Russian; Moscow: AST, 2016, 624 pp.; ISBN: 978-5-17-098145-8) by geographer and historian Pavel Polyan.
Polyan argues,
“’Istoriomor’” is a necessary “neologism and metaphor” to cover “the triumph of politicized mythology and anti-historicism over what is really history and memory.” It involves making certain themes and sources taboo, falsifying and mythologizing events, and both denial of the obvious and relativism about anything negative.
In the chapter Polit.ru posts today, he discusses the ways in which those who were deported in Stalin’s time have sought to recover their past in various ways. (Other chapters cover World War II, individual heroes in the struggle in the defense of historical memory, and Holocaust deniers.)
The deportation of peoples either whole or in part remains one of the most contentious issues in Russian historiography, Polyan argues. While it was not always a death sentence for those involved, “you wouldn’t call deportation one of the easier forms of repression.” And he discusses its extra-judicial character and its treatment of entire peoples as collectively guilty.
According to Polyan, ten peoples were deported en masse with seven of them – the Germans, the Karachays, the Kalmyks, the Ingush, the Chechens, the Balkars, and the Crimean Tatars — losing their ethnic territory as a result. Three others — the Finns, the Koreans and the Meskhetian Turks — did not have such structures to lose.
In addition to these, many other peoples were deported in part, including most prominently portions of the three Baltic republics following their annexation, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Moldovans.
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- Crimean Tatars deported family
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- Crimean Tatars deported family
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- Crimean Tatars deportation
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- Crimean Tatars deportation
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- Stalin’s deportation of Russian Germans to forced labor camps in the Urals and Siberia in 1941 (Image: rusdeutsch.ru)
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- Memorial to the victims of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean peoples in the city of Yevpatoria in Putin-occupied Crimea.
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- The entire population of Crimean Tatars who survived the German occupation of the peninsula (up to 200 000) were deported by Stalin just in two days to remote rural locations in Central Asia and Siberia. A year later, after the end of the WW2, when the Soviet Army was demobilizing, Crimean Tatar soldiers were sent into exile too.
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- “Highlanders Leaving Their Village” by Petr Gruzinsky shows the deportation by the Russian Empire of Circassians, the indigenous peoples of North Caucasus from their homeland at the end of the Russo-Circassian War. Russia started the expulsion before the end of the war in 1864 and mostly completed it by 1867. The peoples exiled were mainly the Circassians (Adyghe), Ubykhs, Abkhaz, and Abaza. (Image: Wikimedia)
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- Deportation of Crimean Tartars, May 1944 (Image: cidct.org.ua)
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- Deportation of Crimean Tartars, May 1944. The entire population of Crimean Tatars who survived the German occupation of the peninsula (up to 200 000) were deported by Stalin just in two days to remote rural locations in Central Asia and Siberia. A year later, after the end of the WW2, when the Soviet Army was demobilizing, Crimean Tatar soldiers were sent into exile too. (Photo: cidct.org.ua)
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- Deportation of Crimean Tartars, May 1944 (Image: cidct.org.ua)
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- A memorial cross to deported Cossacks at a cemetery in Kotlas in the Russian Far North
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- Memorial in the Komi Republic in honor of the Lithuanians who were deported there after the illegal annexation of their country.
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- Monument to the deported Russian Germans in Karelia
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- Monument to the deported Poles, erected in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1993
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- Monument to Ingush and Chechen people who perished during the deportation by Stalin to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Erected in Nazran in 1997.
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- Monument to the deported Kalmyks. Erected in Kalmyk capital Elista in 1996.
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- Monument to the deported Karachays. Erected in 2014 in an aul in the Karachay-Circassian Republic.
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- Memorial cross to the Estonians who perished after deportation to Russian Far North. Erected in Norilsk in 1991.
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- Memorial to the Jews who died not only in 1937-1938 but throughout the Soviet period, erected in Medvezhegorsk in Karelia in 2005.
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- Memorial to the deported Ukrainians, erected in Khakassia to which many of them were deported. It was dedicated in August 2000.
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- Monument to Latvians who died in deportation in the Komi Republic, erected in 1989.
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- Monument to the repressed Greeks, erected in Krasnodar in 2011.
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- Monument to the repressed Koreans in Shcherbinka, near Moscow.
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- Monument to the repressed Mongolians in Moscow oblast.
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- Monument to the repressed Yakuts (Sakha), erected in Arkhangelsk in 2009
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- Memorial to the Assyrians who lost their lives in the GULAG, eerected in St. Petersburg in 2000.
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- Monument to the repressed Ingermanland Finns, erected in St. Petersburg in 1994.
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- Memorial the deported and killed Balkars, erected in Balkaria