Motivations and Goals of Soviet Deportations in the Western Borderlands

Abstract

After the Soviet Union expanded westwards in 1939–40, its government began weeding out real or imagined opposition in its new lands (these areas are termed ‘the western borderlands’, and the regions within pre-1939 frontiers ‘the old territories’). Deportation was a major tool in the Soviet counterinsurgency kit. This paper analyses the motivations behind each type of deportation, as well as the effectiveness of this and other similar measures in attaining their desired ends. Unlike the indiscriminate and illogical ethnic cleansing in the old territories, deportations in the western borderlands remained selective; most were arguably a rational means for enforcing planned policies, and the ethnic criterion played no role in targeting members of non-diaspora nationalities. However, ideological dogma caused communists to downplay nationalism and inflate class affiliation as factors of anti-Soviet opposition. The inaccurate concept of the enemy and sweeping deportations of prosperous peasants prolonged insurgency because their only alternative to exile was armed resistance.