Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the “Greek Operation” of the NKVD in Greece

In 1937-1938 In the USSR, repressions were carried out both against individuals and entire nations. Deportations of Kalmyks, Ossetians, Crimean Tatars, Germans, Kurds, Ingush and representatives of other ethnic groups were extrajudicial and forced. Forced relocation to an unusual, geographically remote and often life-threatening habitat led to massive deaths. In total, more than 6 million Soviet citizens were deported. The repressions of the Great Terror also affected people of Greek nationality. In the early 1930s, they were arrested en masse and sent to camps. A few years later, a second round of repression began, which was designed to combat those suspected of sabotage, espionage and rebel anti-Soviet work. The thirteenth of the “national” operations of the NKVD, led by N. Yezhov, began on December 15, 1937 and ended in March 1938. During this time, more than 15,000 Greeks living in the Donbass, in the Stavropol Territory, were arrested. Zaporozhye and Odessa regions, Abkhazia and Adjara. The result of ethnic cleansing was mass executions and transfers to places of imprisonment in Kolyma, Arkhangelsk and Kazakh camps. Of these, only half of the convicts returned; the rest died between 1938 and 1941. During the repressions, the Greek intelligentsia and clergy, veterans of cultural movements were shot, schools, theaters, publishing houses and newspapers were closed. The years that have passed since the tragedy have not been able to drown out the pain caused by the loss of the best representatives of the nation. Since 2015, every year on December 15, events are held in honor of the Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Greek NKVD operation. Today, those repressed have been posthumously rehabilitated. However, this procedure was not carried out for the entire Greek nation. In 1991, the Russian Federation adopted the law “Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples.” According to it, in different years, unfounded accusations were canceled and the rights of Germans, Koreans, Finns, Kalmyks, Balkars and Karachais were restored. In 2005, entrepreneur Ivan Savvidi submitted a draft law “On the rehabilitation of Soviet Greeks” to the State Duma for consideration. Its adoption would not only allow the charges against an entire nation to be dropped, but also help the descendants of people deported to other republics of the USSR obtain Russian citizenship. In memory of the victims of repression in 2016, a memorial in the form of a white marble cross was erected in Krasnodar. Every year on December 15, descendants of the Hellenes living in different countries of the world light candles at home and in Greek Orthodox churches in memory of their innocent ancestors. The burial sites of victims of one of Stalin's many ethnic cleansings are still unknown. The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Greek Operation of the NKVD encourages us not to forget about this tragedy, which should never be repeated.