Postwar Rebuilding and Resettlements in the Soviet Union: A Case of Azeri Migration

Abstract

Mass population movements of Soviet residents—deportees, evacuees, accused kulaks, refugees, soldiers, and others—are a characteristic feature of early Soviet history. Some of these forms of migratory violence peaked during the experience of total war in the 1940s, but others continued well past the cessation of wartime hostilities. This was the case in the South Caucasus, which narrowly avoided German occupation and the mass civilian upheaval that stalked other parts of the Soviet Union, but nonetheless hosted successive wartime and postwar migrations that disrupted local communities.