War crimes by Soviet armed forces against civilians and prisoners of war in the territories occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941 in regions including
Eastern Poland, the
Baltic states, Finland and
Bessarabia, along with other war crimes in 1944–1945, have been ongoing issues within these countries. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, a more systematic, locally controlled discussion of these events has taken place. Targets of Soviet atrocities included not only
Axis collaborators (after 1941), but also members of anti-communist resistance movements in
Eastern Europe, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (
UPA) in
Ukraine, the
Forest Brothers in the Baltic States, the
Armia Krajowa in Poland and the
Goryani in Bulgaria (as well as several
Romanian and
Chechen partisan groups). The NKVD also conducted the
Katyn massacre, summarily executing over 20,000
Polish prisoners (which included both military, gendarme and police officers, but also many civilians, such as government officials, landowners, and
intelligentsia) between April and May 1940.
Poland 1939–1941 in occupied Poland in June 1941 where the
NKVD massacred thousands of Polish Officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war. In September 1939, the Red Army invaded
eastern Poland and occupied it in accordance with the secret protocols of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviets later forcefully
occupied the Baltic States and parts of Romania, including
Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. German historian
Thomas Urban writes that the Soviet policy towards the people who fell under their control in occupied areas was harsh, showing strong elements of
ethnic cleansing. The NKVD task forces followed the Red Army to remove 'hostile elements' from the conquered territories in what was known as the 'revolution by hanging'. Many civilians tried to escape from the Soviet NKVD
round-ups; those who failed were taken into custody and afterwards they were deported to
Siberia and vanished in the
Gulags. Torture was used on a wide scale in various prisons, especially in those prisons that were located in small towns. Prisoners were scalded with boiling water in
Bobrka; in
Przemyślany, people's noses, ears, and fingers were cut off and their eyes were also cut out; in
Czortków, the breasts of female inmates were cut off; and in
Drohobycz, victims were bound together with barbed wire. According to historian, Prof.
Jan T. Gross: According to sociologist, Prof.
Tadeusz Piotrowski, during the years from 1939 to 1941, nearly 1.5 million persons (including both local inhabitants and refugees from
German-occupied Poland) were deported from the
Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland deep into the Soviet Union, of whom 58.0% were
Poles, 19.4%
Jews and the remainder other ethnic nationalities. Only a small number of these deportees returned to their homes after the war, when their homelands were annexed by the Soviet Union. According to American professor
Carroll Quigley, at least one third of the 320,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army in 1939 were murdered. It's estimated that between 10,000-35,000 prisoners were killed either in prisons or on prison trails to the Soviet Union in the few days after the 22 June 1941 German attack on the Soviets (prisons:
Brygidki,
Złoczów,
Dubno,
Drohobycz, and so on), with many more having already been killed before 1941 (such as in
Grodno,
Husynne and
Mokrany).
1944–1945 In Poland, German
Nazi atrocities ended by 1945, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Red Army forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in
plunder, rape and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the regime. Soldiers of the
Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) were persecuted and imprisoned by Soviet forces as a matter of course. Most victims were deported to the gulags in the
Donetsk region. In 1945 alone, the number of members of the
Polish Underground State who were deported to Siberia and various labor camps in the Soviet Union reached 50,000. Units of the Red Army carried out campaigns against Polish partisans and civilians. During the
Augustów chase in 1945, more than 2,000 Poles were captured and about 600 of them are presumed to have died in Soviet custody. It was a common Soviet practice to accuse their victims of being fascists in order to justify their death sentences. The perversion of this Soviet tactic lay in the fact that practically all of the accused had in reality been fighting against the forces of Nazi Germany since September 1939. At that time the Soviets were still collaborating with Nazi Germany for more than 20 months before
Operation Barbarossa started. Precisely therefore these kinds of Poles were judged capable of resisting the Soviets, in the same way that they had resisted the Nazis. After the War, a more elaborate appearance of justice was given under the jurisdiction of the
Polish People's Republic orchestrated by the Soviets in the form of
mock trials. These were organized after victims had been arrested under false charges by the NKVD or other Soviet controlled security organisations such as the
Ministry of Public Security. At least 6,000 political death sentences were issued, and the majority of them were carried out. It is estimated that over 20,000 people died in Soviet prisons . Famous examples include
Witold Pilecki or
Emil August Fieldorf. The attitude of Soviet servicemen towards ethnic Poles was better than their attitude towards the Germans, but it was not entirely better. The
scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a
pandemic of
sexually transmitted diseases. Although the total number of victims remains a matter of guessing, the
Polish state archives and statistics of the
Ministry of Health indicate that it might have exceeded 100,000. In
Kraków, the Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by mass rapes of Polish women and girls, as well as the plunder of private property by Red Army soldiers. The Red Army was also involved in
mass-scale looting in liberated territories.
Finland and Ingria in Finnish Lapland, 1942 Between 1941 and 1944,
Soviet partisan units conducted raids deep inside Finnish territory, attacking villages and other civilian targets. In November 2006, photographs showing Soviet atrocities were declassified by the
Finnish authorities. These include images of slain women and children. The partisans usually executed their military and civilian prisoners after a minor interrogation. Around 3,500
Finnish prisoners of war, of whom five were women, were captured by the Red Army. Their mortality rate is estimated to have been about 40 percent. The most common causes of death were hunger, cold and oppressive transportation.
Deportation of the Ingrian Finns By 1939 the
Ingrian Finnish population had decreased to about 50,000, which was about 43% of 1928 population figures, and the
Ingrian Finn national district was abolished., Following the
German invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the
Leningrad Blockade, in early 1942 all 20,000 Ingrian Finns remaining in Soviet-controlled territory were deported to
Siberia. Most of the Ingrian Finns together with
Votes and
Izhorians living in German-occupied territory were evacuated to Finland in 1943–1944. Finland was forced to return the evacuees per the
Moscow Armistice. The main regions of
Ingrian Finns forced settlement were the interior areas of Siberia,
Central Russia, and
Tajikistan.
Baltic states 1940–1941 On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in which, among the clauses, included the division of Eastern Europe, with the Baltic States being given to the
Soviet sphere of influence. On 15 June 1940, Lithuania was invaded by the
Red Army, with Latvia and Estonia being invaded and occupied between 16–17 June. The invasions occurred in only a matter of days, as around 500,000 Soviet troops entered the Baltic states virtually unopposed (except for a few incidents in
Tallinn and one
border skirmish in which Soviet troops exchanged fire with Latvian guards near the village of Maslenki), the occupations also coincided with a series of communist coup d'états in each country, supported by Soviet troops and the NKVD. Soon after, the governments of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were removed (with some politicians like
Kārlis Ulmanis even being imprisoned and later deported to Siberia), as communist-majority governments took power with Soviet backing. A series of
show elections were held on the Baltics between June and July 1940, where only the Soviet-approved Communist parties (such as the
Latvian Working People's Bloc) were allowed to participate, electing
rubber stamp "
People's Parliaments" which soon drafted resolutions to join the Soviet Union. The local standing armies were also broken up and replaced with "People's Self Defense" paramilitaries, as most of the officers were imprisoned, executed or deported. The ministries of foreign relations of all three countries were also closed, effectively isolating them from the rest of the world. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were soon annexed by the Soviet Union between 3 and 6 August 1940, each of them being renamed as "Soviet Socialist Republics" (
Estonian SSR,
Lithuanian SSR,
Latvian SSR), and by 25 August all citizens of these states had already been declared citizens of the Soviet Union. In addition to the expected human and material losses suffered due to the fighting, over time this conflict led to the deportation of tens of thousands of people, along with hundreds of political prisoners and thousands of civilians died.
Mass deportations On 14 June 1941, and the following two days, 9,254 to 10,861 people, mostly urban residents, of them over 5,000 women and over 2,500 children under 16, 439 Jews (more than 10% of the
Estonian Jewish population) were deported, mostly to
Kirov Oblast,
Novosibirsk Oblast or prisons. Deportations were predominantly to Siberia and
Kazakhstan by means of railroad cattle cars, without prior announcement, while the deported were given a few night hours at best to pack their belongings and separated from their families, usually also sent to the east. The procedure was established by the
Serov Instructions. Estonians in
Leningrad Oblast had already been subject to deportation since 1935. In August 1941, all residents of the village of
Viru-Kabala were killed including a two-year-old child and a six-day-old infant, the battalions also occasionally burned people alive, according to survivors of the massacres. A partisan war broke out in response to the atrocities of the destruction battalions, with tens of thousands of men forming the
Forest Brothers to protect the local population from these battalions; in general, the destruction battalions murdered ~1,850 people in Estonia, almost all of them partisans or unarmed civilians. Another example of the destruction battalions' actions is the
Kautla massacre, where twenty civilians were murdered and tens of farms and houses looted, burned down or destroyed, with many of the people killed after being
tortured and beaten by Soviet troops. The low toll of human deaths in comparison with the number of burned farms is due to the
Erna long-range reconnaissance group breaking the Red Army blockade on the area, allowing many civilians to escape.
Latvia In the 1941
June deportation, tens of thousands of Latvians, including whole families with women, children and old people, were taken from their homes, loaded onto freight trains and taken to
Gulag correctional labour camps or
forced settlements in Siberia by the Soviet occupation regime on the orders of high authorities in Moscow. Prior to the deportation, the
People's Commissariat established operational groups who performed arrests, and search and seizure of property. Arrests took place in all parts in Latvia including rural areas. The estimated death toll in Soviet prisons and camps between 1944 and 1953 was at least 14,000. The estimated death toll among deportees between 1945 and 1958 was 20,000, including 5,000 children.
Romania The Soviet Union also committed war crimes in
Romania or against
Romanians from the beginning of the occupation of
Bessarabia and
Northern Bukovina in 1940 all the way to the German invasion in 1941, and later from the expulsion of the Germans in the region until 1958.
Massacres One infamous example of a Soviet massacre against Romanian civilians was the
Fântâna Albă massacre, in which between 1-3 thousand civilians were killed by the NKVD and Soviet Border Troops while attempting to escape to Romania. Such event has been referred to as the "Romanian Katyn". Another massacre committed by Soviet troops was the
Lunca massacre, where
Soviet border troops opened fire against several Romanian civilians attempting to escape into Romania, killing 600 of them, only 57 managed to escape, with another 44 being arrested and tried as "members of a counter-revolutionary organization". 12 of them were sentenced to death, with the rest being sentenced to 10 years forced labour and 5 years loss of civil rights, the family members of those arrested and shot would later also be arrested and sent to Siberia and
Central Asia.
Religious persecution and deportations During the occupation, the
Soviet government and army deported thousands of Romanian civilians from the occupied regions into "special settlements". According to a secret
Soviet Ministry of Interior report dated December 1965, 46,000 people were deported from the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic for the period 1940−1953. On June 12–13 alone, around 29,839 members of families of "counter-revolutionaries and nationalists" from the Moldavian SSR (as well as the
Chernivtsi and
Izmail oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR) were deported to Kazakhstan,
Komi,
Krasnoyarsk,
Omsk Oblast and
Novosibirsk. Between 1940 and 1941, around 53,356 people from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were mobilized for labour across the territory of the Soviet Union; though the mobilization was presented as "voluntary", refusal to work could result in penal punishment, while living and working conditions were also generally poor. Thousands of
Transylvanian Saxons would later be deported from 1944 to 1949 under Soviet occupation, with hundreds or even thousands dying on their way to camps in Siberia and Central Asia before being able to come back to their home country. Religious persecution was also widespread, the Soviet government sought to exterminate all forms of organized religion in its occupied territories, often persecuting the Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish communities present, the Soviet
political police arrested numerous
priests, with others being arrested and interrogated by the Soviet NKVD itself, then deported to the interior of the
USSR, and sometimes even killed.
Soviet Union )
NKVD prisoner massacres Deportations, summary executions of political prisoners and the burning of foodstocks and villages took place when the Red Army retreated before the advancing Axis forces in 1941. In the Baltic States,
Belarus, Ukraine, and Bessarabia, the
NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents before fleeing from the advancing Axis forces.
Crimea Deportation of the Pontic Greeks The prosecution of Greeks in the USSR was gradual: at first the authorities shut down the Greek schools, cultural centres, and publishing houses. Then, in 1942, 1944 and 1949, the NKVD indiscriminately arrested all Greek men 16 years old or older. All Greeks who were wealthy or self-employed professionals were sought for prosecution first. This affected mostly
Pontic Greeks and other Minorities in the
Krasnodar Krai and along the
Black Sea coast. By one estimate, around 50,000 Greeks were deported. On 25 September 1956, MVD Order N 0402 was adopted and defined the removal of restrictions towards the deported peoples in the special settlements. Afterward, many Soviet Greeks started returning to their homes, or emigrating towards Greece.
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars After the retreat of the
Wehrmacht from Crimea, the NKVD deported around 200,000
Crimean Tatars from the peninsula on 18 May 1944. 109,956 of them died, which represents 46% of the entire Crimean Tatar population.
Volga Deportation of the Kalmyks During the
Kalmyk deportations of 1943, codenamed
Operation Ulussy (Операция "Улусы"), the
deportation of most people of the
Kalmyk nationality (as well as Russian women married to Kalmyks, but not Kalmyk women married to people of other nationalities) in the Soviet Union (USSR), around half of all (97–98,000) Kalmyk people deported to Siberia died before being allowed to return home in 1957.
Northern Caucasus Between 1943 and 1944, the Soviet government accused several ethnic groups in the
North Caucasus of Axis collaboration. As "punishment", entire ethnic groups were deported, mostly to Central Asia and Siberia into
labor camps.
Chechnya-Ingushetia On 23 February 1944,
Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the NKVD, ordered the deportation of the entire
Chechen and
Ingush population of the
Checheno-Ingush ASSR by freight trains to remote areas of the Soviet Union (such as Siberia, the Urals and Central Asia). The operation was called "Chechevitsa" (Operation Lentil), (its first two syllables pointing at its intended targets), and is often referred to by Chechens as the "Aardakh" (the Exodus). The operation was started following complaints by the NKVD of "low level of discipline, prevalence of banditry and terrorism, disloyalty of the Chechens to the Communist party" and alleged "collaboration with the occupying German forces", citing an alleged confession of a German agent where he supposedly claimed that the German forces had "major support among the Ingush". The Chechen-Ingush Republic was never occupied by the
German army, but the repressions were officially justified by "an armed resistance to Soviet power", although the charges of local collaboration with the Nazis were never subsequently proven in any Soviet court. NKVD troops went systematically from house to house to collect individuals, the inhabitants were rounded up and imprisoned in
Studebaker US6 trucks, before being packed into unheated and uninsulated
freight cars, with the locals being given only about 15 to 30 minutes to pack for the surprise transfer. According to a correspondence dated 3 March 1944, at least 19,000 officers and 100,000 NKVD soldiers from all over the USSR were sent to implement this operation. The plan envisaged that 300,000 people were to be deported from the lowland in the first three days, while the remaining 150,000 people living in the mountain regions would be deported by the next days; some 500 people were also deported by mistake, even though they were not Chechens or Ingush. Through the initial deportations, ~478,479 people were forcibly resettled in the Aardakh: 387,229 Chechens and 91,250 Ingush; in May 1944, Beria issued a directive ordering the NKVD to browse the entire USSR in search for any remaining members of these ethnic groups, as a result, an additional 4,146 Chechens and Ingush were found in
Dagestan,
Azerbaijan,
Georgia,
Krasnodar,
Rostov and
Astrakhan, with the total number of deportees being reported by the NKVD as around 493,269 by May and ~496,460 by July. They were loaded onto 180 special trains, about 40 to 45 persons into each
freight car, each family was allowed to carry up to 500 kg of personal belongings on the trip, Some 40% to 50% of the deportees were children.; 333,739 people were evicted, of which 176,950 were sent to trains already on the first day of the operation, with Beriya reporting that there were only about six "cases of resistance", while 842 were "subject to isolation" and another 94,741 were removed from their homes by 11 PM, Much of the
livestock owned by locals was later sent to
kolkhozes in
Ukrainian SSR,
Stavropol Krai,
Voronezh and
Orel Oblasts, many of these animals perished from exhaustion during the following months. The people were transported in cattle trains that were not appropriate for human transfer, lacking electricity, heating or
running water. The exiles inside endured many
epidemics (such as
typhus), which lead to deaths from
infections or hunger, survivors recall that the wagons were so full of people that there was barely any space to move inside them, and that the deportees were given food only sporadically during the transit and were not told where they would be taken to. The wagons did not even stop for
bathroom breaks, with the passengers being forced to make holes in the floor to relieve themselves. The transit to Central Asia lasted for almost a month, with the special trains traveling almost 2,000 miles to reach their destinations. 239,768 Chechens and 78,479 Ingush were sent to the Kazakh SSR, whereas 70,089 Chechens and 2,278 Ingush arrived in
Kirgiz SSR. Smaller numbers of the remaining deportees were sent to
Uzbek SSR,
Russian SFSR and
Tajik SSR, the deportees arrived at the regions without shelter or food, and were in many occasions taken to
special settlements, where all prisoners aged 16–45 would be forced to work in mines, farms, factories or construction in return for food stamps (with the threat of severe punishment if non-compliant), as well as report monthly to the NKVD office at the camp. Those that attempted to escape would be sent to
gulags, and the children of the prisoners would inherit their "exile" status. Malnutrition (caused by the negligence of the authorities to provide food for the prisoners), alongside exhaustion (from overworking) and mistreatment from Soviet forces led to high death rates among the local population. Many deported children were beaten by the local guards for "disobedience", and many families were left without proper housing: only 5,000 out of the 31,000 families in Kirgiz SSR were provided with housing, with one district having prepared only 18 apartments for over 900 families, the Chechen and Ingush children also had to attend school in the local language, not their own. On many occasions, resistance was met with slaughter, and in one such instance, in the
aul of Khaibakh, about
700 people were locked in a barn and burned to death by NKVD General Mikheil Gveshiani, who was praised for this and promised a medal by Beria. Many people from remote villages were executed per Beria's verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush deemed 'untransportable should be liquidated' on the spot. This meant that those deemed too old or weak were to either be shot or left to starve in their beds alone. The soldiers would also sometimes rob from the empty homes. Those who resisted, protested or "walked too slow" were shot on the spot; in one incident, NKVD soldiers climbed up the Moysty mountain and found 60 villagers there, even though their commander ordered the soldiers to shoot the villagers, many soldiers instead fired in the air, the commander then ordered many of these soldiers to join the villagers while another platoon fired at all of them.
Kabardino-Balkaria Lavrentiy Beria arrived in
Nalchik on 2 March 1944, and on the early morning of 8 March 1944 (two days earlier than planned), Balkar's population was ordered to get ready to leave their homes. The entire operation lasted about two hours, with the entire Balkar population of the region being evicted. Around 17,000 NKVD troops and 4,000 local agents participated in the operation, which also saw many Balkar soldiers of the red army discharged (and, in some cases, even deported themselves) on charges of collaboration with the occupiers. By 9 March, 37,713 Balkars were deported in 14 train convoys, they arrived at their destinations in the Kazakh and Kyrgiz socialist republics by 23 March. Official Soviet documents reveal that 562 people died during the deportation. Many more died during the harsh years in exile and in labor camps: in total, it is estimated that between 7,600 and 11,000 Balkars died as a consequence of the deportation, amounting to at least 19.82 percent of their entire ethnic group (though it could be as high as 20 or 25 percent).
Hungary According to researcher and author
Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000 civilians were killed during the
Siege of Budapest: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by
Nazi SS and
Arrow Cross Party death squads. Ungváry writes that when the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. Estimates of the number of rape victims vary from 5,000 to 200,000. According to
Norman Naimark, Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered. Even embassy staff from neutral countries were captured and raped, as was documented when Soviet soldiers attacked the Swedish legation in Germany. A report by the Swiss legation in
Budapest describes the Red Army's entry into the city: According to historian James Mark, memories and opinions of the Red Army in Hungary are mixed. Some historians dispute this, referring to an order issued on 19 January 1945, which required the prevention of mistreatment of civilians. An order of the military council of the
1st Belorussian Front, signed by
Marshal Rokossovsky, ordered the shooting of looters and rapists at the scene of the crime. An order issued by Stavka on 20 April 1945 said that there was a need to maintain good relations with German civilians in order to decrease resistance and bring a quicker end to hostilities.
Murders of civilians On several occasions during World War II, Soviet soldiers set fire to buildings, villages, or parts of cities, and they used deadly force against locals who attempted to put out the fires. Most Red Army atrocities took place only in what was regarded as hostile territory, however, there were several massacres committed in Poland, e.g. the
Przyszowice massacre. Soldiers of the Red Army, together with members of the NKVD, frequently looted German transport trains in Poland in 1944 and 1945. For the Germans, the organized
evacuation of civilians before the advancing Red Army was delayed by the Nazi government, so as not to demoralize the troops, who were by now fighting in their own country.
Nazi propaganda—originally meant to stiffen civil resistance by describing in gory and embellished detail Red Army atrocities such as the
Nemmersdorf massacre—often backfired and created panic. Whenever possible, as soon as the Wehrmacht retreated, local civilians began to flee westward on their own initiative. Fleeing before the advancing Red Army, large numbers of the inhabitants of the German provinces of
East Prussia,
Silesia, and
Pomerania died during the evacuations, some from cold and starvation, some during combat operations. A significant percentage of this death toll, however, occurred when evacuation columns encountered units of the Red Army. Civilians were run over by tanks, shot, or otherwise murdered. Women and young girls were raped and left to die. In addition,
fighter bombers of the Soviet air force flew bombing and strafing missions that targeted columns of refugees. The first mayor of the
Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Walter Kilian, appointed by the Soviets after the war ended, reported extensive looting by Red Army soldiers in the area: "Individuals, department stores, shops, apartments ... all were robbed blind." In the
Soviet occupation zone, members of the
SED reported to
Joseph Stalin that looting and rape by Soviet soldiers could result in a negative reaction by the German population towards the Soviet Union and the future of socialism in
East Germany. Stalin is said to have angrily reacted: "I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honour of the Red Army through the mud." Accordingly, all evidence—such as reports, photos and other documents of looting, rape, the burning down of farms and villages by the Red Army—was deleted from all archives in the future
GDR. These figures do not include up to 125,000 civilian deaths in the
Battle of Berlin. About 22,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed during the fighting in Berlin only.
Mass rapes As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany. Scholars agree that the majority of the rapes were committed by
Soviet occupation troops. Western estimates of the traceable number of rape victims range from tens of thousands to two million. Following the
Winter Offensive of 1945, mass rape by Soviet males occurred in all major cities taken by the Red Army. Women were gang raped by as many as several dozen soldiers
during the occupation of Poland. In some cases victims who did not hide in the basements all day were raped up to 15 times. According to historian
Antony Beevor, following the Red Army's capture of Berlin in 1945, Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as eight years old. The explanation of "revenge" is disputed by Beevor, at least with regard to the mass rapes. Beevor has written that Red Army soldiers also raped Soviet and
Polish women liberated from
concentration camps, and he contends that this undermines the revenge explanation, they were often committed by rear echelon units. According to Norman Naimark, after the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians usually received punishments ranging from arrest to execution. However, Naimark contends that the rapes continued until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined troops to strictly guarded posts and camps. Naimark concluded that "The social psychology of women and men in the Soviet zone of occupation was marked by the crime of rape from the first days of occupation, through the founding of the GDR in the fall of 1949, until, one could argue, the present." According to
Richard Overy, the Russians refused to acknowledge Soviet war crimes, partly "because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history."
Yugoslavia According to Yugoslav politician
Milovan Djilas, at least 121 cases of rape were documented, 111 of which also involved murder. A total of 1,204 cases of looting with assault were also documented. Djilas described these figures as, "hardly insignificant if it is borne in mind that the Red Army crossed only the northeastern corner of Yugoslavia". This caused concern to the Yugoslav communist partisans, who feared that stories of crimes committed by their Soviet allies would weaken their standing among the population. Djilas writes that in response,
Yugoslav partisan leader
Joseph Broz Tito summoned the chief of the Soviet military mission, General Korneev, and formally protested. Despite having been invited "as a comrade", Korneev exploded at them for offering "such insinuations" against the Red Army. Djilas, who was present at the meeting, spoke up and explained the
British Army had never engaged in "such excesses" while liberating the other regions of Yugoslavia. General Korneev responded by screaming, "I protest most sharply at this insult given to the Red Army by comparing it with the armies of capitalist countries." The meeting with Korneev not only "ended without results", it also caused Stalin to personally attack Djilas during his next visit to
the Kremlin. In tears, Stalin denounced "the
Yugoslav Army and how it was administered." He then "spoke agitatedly about the sufferings of the Red Army and the horrors that it was forced to endure while it was fighting through thousands of kilometers of devastated country." Stalin climaxed with the words, "And such an Army was insulted by no one else but Djilas! Djilas, of whom I could least have expected such a thing, a man whom I received so well! And an Army which did not spare its blood for you! Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?" According to Djilas, the Soviet refusal to address protests against Red Army war crimes in Yugoslavia enraged Tito's government and it was a contributing factor in Yugoslavia's subsequent exit from the
Soviet Bloc.
Czechoslovakia Slovak communist leader
Vlado Clementis complained to Marshal
Ivan Konev about the behavior of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Konev's response was to claim it was done mainly by Red Army deserters. One of the most well-known cases is that of the
First Czechoslovak Republic legionnaire
Sergei Nikolayevich Vojcechovsky, who was arrested by an NKVD unit in Prague on 12 May 1945 and deported to the
Soviet Gulag, where he died in 1951. A similar fate befell approximately 500 people from the Czech lands (of whom about 300 perished), and around 6,000 people were abducted from Slovakia. In total, it is estimated that between 60,000 and 120,000 people were abducted from Slovakia. A similar fate also befell persons considered undesirable by the Soviet Union—mostly individuals of Russian origin or children of
Russian émigrés—in other states liberated by the Red Army, including
German prisoners of war.
China During the
invasion of Manchuria, Soviet and
Mongolian soldiers attacked and raped Japanese civilians, often encouraged by the local Chinese population who were resentful of Japanese rule. The local Chinese population sometimes even joined in these attacks against the Japanese population with the Soviet soldiers. In one famous example, during the
Gegenmiao massacre, Soviet soldiers, encouraged by the local Chinese population, raped and massacred over one thousand Japanese women and children. Property of the Japanese were also looted by the Soviet soldiers and Chinese. Many Japanese women married themselves to local Manchurian men to protect themselves from persecution by Soviet soldiers. These Japanese women mostly married Chinese men and became known as "stranded war wives" (zanryu fujin). A foreigner witnessed Soviet troops, formerly stationed in Berlin, who were allowed by the Soviet military to go at the city "for three days of rape and pillage." Most of
Mukden was gone. Convict soldiers were then used to replace them; it was testified that they "stole everything in sight, broke up bathtubs and toilets with hammers, pulled electric-light wiring out of the plaster, built fires on the floor and either burned down the house or at least a big hole in the floor, and in general behaved completely like savages." According to some British and American sources, the Soviets made it a policy to loot and rape civilians in Manchuria. In
Harbin, the Chinese posted slogans such as "Down with Red Imperialism!" Soviet forces faced some protests by
Chinese communist party leaders against the looting and rapes committed by troops in Manchuria. There were several instances where Chinese police forces in Manchuria arrested or even killed Soviet troops for various crimes, leading to some conflicts between the Soviet and Chinese authorities in Manchuria. Japanese women in Manchukuo were repeatedly raped by Russian soldiers every day including underage girls from the families of Japanese who worked for the military and the Manchukuo rail at
Beian airport and Japanese military nurses. The Russians seized Japanese civilian girls at Beian airport where there were a total of 1000 Japanese civilians, repeatedly raping 10 girls each day as recalled by Yoshida Reiko and repeatedly raped 75 Japanese nurses at the Sunwu military hospital in Manchukuo during the occupation. The Russians rejected all the pleading by the Japanese officers to stop the rapes. The Japanese were told by the Russians that they had to give their women for rape as war spoils. Soviet soldiers raped Japanese women from a group of Japanese families that were with Yamada Tami that attempted to flee their settlements on 14 August and go to
Mudanjiang. Another group of Japanese women that were with Ikeda Hiroko that on 15 August tried to flee to Harbin but returned to their settlements were raped by Soviet soldiers.
Japan On 20 August 1945, Soviet forces carried out fierce naval bombardment and artillery strikes against Japanese defences in
Maoka. Nearly 1,000 civilians awaiting evacuation were killed by the invading forces. During the evacuation of the
Kuriles and
Karafuto, civilian convoys
were attacked by Soviet submarines in the
Aniva Gulf. Soviet
Leninets-class submarine L-12 and
L-19 sank two Japanese refugee transport ships
Ogasawara Maru and
Taito Maru while also damaging
No.2 Shinko Maru on 22 August, 7 days after
Hirohito had announced Japan's unconditional surrender. Over 2,400 civilians were killed. Soviet soldiers also looted the property of both Japanese and Koreans living in northern Korea. The full extent of the misconduct was revealed to Soviet experts sent to assess
North Korea's economic situation in late 1945. The situation was so severe that they reported it directly to the
Primorsky Military District. A report from the Soviet military command at the end of 1945 on the political attitudes of North Korean residents highlited the widespread issue of Soviet soldiers committing rape against local women. According to the report, in September 1945, less than a month after the Soviet army entered
Pyongyang, an elderly Korean resident approached the Soviet military command and made the following plea: It was reported that the Soviet military tolerated the rape of Japanese women residing in North Korea more than that of Korean women. At the time of the Soviet army's entry, approximately 215,000 Japanese civilians were residing in North Korea. As residents of an "occupied territory," Japanese women were openly subjected to mass rape by Soviet soldiers in broad daylight, while assaults on Korean women, considered residents of a "liberated area", were committed more discreetly, often in concealed locations or at night. This phenomenon was seen as similar to Norman Naimark's claim that, in Eastern Europe, Slavic women, such as Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, and Serbian women, who were considered "liberated" were relatively spared from rape by Soviet troops compared to non-Slavic women, such as German and Hungarian women, who were considered "occupied." By October 1945, the frequency and severity of misconduct by Soviet soldiers had significantly decreased, likely due to a direct order issued by
Stalin on September 20, 1945, to the authorities of the
Soviet 25th Army stationed in North Korea, including the commander of the
Far Eastern Front. Issued about a month after the Soviet Army's entry into North Korea, the order's sixth provision stated: "The
military in North Korea must strictly observe discipline, avoid harming residents, and behave courteously." As a result, stricter enforcement by the Soviet military command led to a noticeable decline in misconduct by Soviet soldiers in the following month. Crackdowns on misconduct by Soviet soldiers reportedly intensified from early 1946, and measures taken by the Soviet military command contributed to a reduction in such incidents. Jeong Ryul, a
Koryoin Soviet officer and interpreter for
Ivan Chistyakov, testified that in January 1946, Stalin issued a secret directive to the
Soviet Civil Administration ordering the immediate execution of soldiers who harmed the North Korean population. He stated that in
Wonsan, ten Soviet soldiers charged with robbery and rape were shot, and a similar number were also executed in
Hamhung. According to
Bruce Cumings, a report from the
United States Army Military Government in Korea stated that "by January 1946, the Soviet Union had introduced military police to enforce strict control over its soldiers." However, looting and violence by Soviet soldiers were only relatively reduced, not completely eradicated. According to a Japanese resident in Namsi,
North Pyongan Province, rapes by Soviet soldiers began occurring in late October, with sexual violence against Japanese women becoming particularly severe. In response, some North Korean security forces reportedly evacuated Japanese women to the mountains or local Korean homes for protection. Soviet soldiers who had exhausted their military currency freely engaged in looting. Officers also committed offenses and were arrested as a result. For example, between May 13 and May 25, 1946, a total of 229 Soviet soldiers were arrested in
Haeju,
Hwanghae Province, including six officers. Despite several official measures and arbitrary attempts to enforce discipline, misconduct, including assault, harassment, looting, and murder, by both Soviet soldiers and officers continued until the end of 1946.
Treatment of prisoners of war Although the Soviet Union had not formally signed the
Hague Convention, it declared itself bound by the convention's provisions as well as by its own "Regulations for the Treatment of PoWs". However, in practice, it often ignored the convention as well as its own rules.
George Sanford wrote that Soviet public declarations and laws on the humane treatment of PoWs were "part of the Soviet 'big lie' for
propaganda". Throughout the Second World War, the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau collected and investigated reports of crimes against the Axis POWs. According to Cuban-American writer
Alfred de Zayas, "For the entire duration of the Russian campaign, reports of torture and murder of German prisoners did not cease. The War Crimes Bureau had five major sources of information: (1) captured enemy papers, especially orders, reports of operations, and propaganda leaflets; (2) intercepted radio and wireless messages; (3) testimony of Soviet prisoners of war; (4) testimony of captured Germans who had escaped; and (5) testimony of Germans who saw the corpses or mutilated bodies of executed prisoners of war. From 1941 to 1945 the Bureau compiled several thousand depositions, reports, and captured papers which, if nothing else, indicate that the killing of German prisoners of war upon capture or shortly after their interrogation was not an isolated occurrence. Documents relating to the war in France, Italy, and North Africa contain some reports on the deliberate killing of German prisoners of war, but there can be no comparison with the events on the Eastern Front." In a November 1941 report, the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau accused the Red Army of employing "a terror policy... against defenseless German soldiers that have fallen into its hands and against members of the German medical corps. At the same time... it has made use of the following means of camouflage: in a Red Army order that bears the approval of the
Council of People's Commissars, dated 1 July 1941, the norms of international law are made public, which the Red Army in the spirit of the
Hague Regulations on Land Warfare are supposed to follow... This... Russian order probably had very little distribution, and surely it has not been followed at all. Otherwise the unspeakable crimes would not have occurred." According to the depositions, Soviet massacres of German, Italian, Spanish, and other Axis POWs were often incited by unit
Commissars, who claimed to be acting under orders from Stalin and the
Politburo. Other evidence cemented the War Crimes Bureau's belief that Stalin had given secret orders about the massacre of POWs. During the winter of 1941–42, the Red Army captured approximately 10,000 German soldiers each month, but the death rate became so high that the absolute number of prisoners decreased (or was bureaucratically reduced). Soviet sources list the deaths of 474,967 of the 2,652,672 German Armed Forces taken prisoner in the war.
Dr. Rüdiger Overmans believes that it seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that additional German military personnel listed as missing actually died in Soviet custody as POWs, putting the estimates of the actual death toll of German POW in the USSR at about 1.0 million.
Massacre of Feodosia Soviet soldiers rarely bothered to treat wounded German POWs. A
particularly infamous example took place after the Crimean city of
Feodosia was briefly recaptured by Soviet forces on 29 December 1942. 160 wounded soldiers had been left in military hospitals by the retreating Wehrmacht. After the Germans retook Feodosia, it was learned that every wounded soldier had been massacred by Red Army, Navy, and
NKVD personnel. Some had been shot in their hospital beds, others repeatedly bludgeoned to death, still others were found to have been thrown from hospital windows before being repeatedly drenched with freezing water until they died of
hypothermia.
Massacre of Grishchino The
Massacre of Grischino was committed by an armoured division of the Red Army in February 1943 in the
eastern Ukrainian towns of
Krasnoarmeyskoye, Postyschevo and Grischino. The
Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle also known as WuSt (Wehrmacht criminal investigating authority), announced that among the victims were 406 soldiers of the Wehrmacht, 58 members of the
Organisation Todt (including two
Danish nationals), 89
Italian soldiers, 9 Romanian soldiers, 4
Hungarian soldiers, 15 German civil officials, 7 German civilian workers and 8 Ukrainian volunteers. The places were overrun by the
Soviet 4th Guards Tank Corps on the night of 10 and 11 February 1943. After the reconquest by the
5th SS Panzer Division Wiking with the support of 333 Infantry Division and the
7th Panzer Division on 18 February 1943 the Wehrmacht soldiers discovered numerous deaths. Many of the bodies were horribly mutilated, ears and noses cut off and genital organs amputated and stuffed into their mouths. Breasts of some of the nurses were cut off, the women being brutally raped. A German military judge who was at the scene stated in an interview during the 1970s that he saw a female body with her legs spread-eagled and a broomstick rammed into her genitals. In the cellar of the main train station around 120 Germans were herded into a large storage room and then mowed down with machine guns.
Postwar Some German prisoners were released soon after the war. Many others, however, remained in the
GULAG long after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Among the most famous German POWs to die in Soviet captivity was Captain
Wilm Hosenfeld, who died of injuries, sustained possibly under torture, in a concentration camp near
Stalingrad in 1952. In 2009, Captain Hosenfeld was posthumously honored by the
State of Israel for his role in saving Jewish lives during
The Holocaust. Similar was the fate of Swedish diplomat and
OSS operative
Raoul Wallenberg. ==After World War II==