Special Settlers

Definition and legal status

Special settlers (spetspereselentsy) were a category of persons resettled from their place of residence, mainly to remote regions of the country, without judicial or quasi-judicial procedure, and formed an administrative category of the repressed population of the USSR. They were sent to special settlements, which were guarded, fenced and otherwise isolated regime sites, and leaving them was forbidden. Unauthorized departure was equated with escape from places of detention and punished by 25 years of hard labor. Special settlements could not be established within 200 kilometers of the border or near railways, cities, factories and collective farms, and appointed commandants controlled movement.

Deportation under dekulakization

The Politburo resolution of 30 January 1930 divided kulaks into three categories: the first, "counter-revolutionary kulak activists," was to be sent to concentration camps, the second was to be exiled to remote localities of the USSR, and the third was to be resettled on new plots outside collective farms. Kulaks of the second category, together with the families of the first, were sent to special settlements, which were also called "kulak exile" or "labor exile." In 1930 and 1931, 381,026 families, or 1,803,392 people, were sent to special settlements. Until 1934 the peasants sent into "kulak exile" were called spetspereselentsy, in 1934-1944 trudposelentsy, and from 1944 spetsposelentsy. The settlements served the labor needs of remote regions: they were organized where manpower was scarce for timber, fishing and other industry. Unlike camp prisoners, special settlers lived in families and could move within the settlement, but they had to register monthly, and they were second-class citizens barred from many jobs, from prestigious schools and from returning home.

Labor, conditions and resistance

The settlements were part of a state policy of "special colonization," the development of unpopulated and sparsely populated regions through forced resettlement. Deportees included peasants classified as kulaks, entire ethnic groups, such groups as Vlasovites, and religious minorities. Special settlements supplied labor for timber, mining and construction; special settlers built the White Sea-Baltic Canal and were the main labor force of the Kuzbass coal and metal industry. Conditions were harsh and thousands died. During the war and after it the category widened to take in deported Poles, Germans, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks and other peoples, members of religious groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, and persons suspected of collaboration.

Abolition and aftermath

The system existed until 1954: a decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of 13 August 1954 removed the special settlement restrictions from former kulaks and other persons, and most deported peoples were allowed to return to their homelands. Several peoples, however, such as the Crimean Tatars and Germans, were denied return; Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea de facto only in 1989-1990.