Russification and the removal of ethnic minorities

• Fitzroy Maclean: went to Moscow to take up a posting at the British Embassy.

  Wanted to go to parts of Central Asia, which at that time foreigners were forbidden from going to.

  He boarded a train going 1700km south from Moscow to Baku on the Caspian sea - then illegally boarded a boat taking him further south to the port of Lenkoran.

  Witnessed a line of trucks awakening him, driving toward the town port filled with 'depressed looking Turko-Tartar peasants' under the escort of NKVD troops.

  Did not realise at the time that they were peasants being deported by Stalin to Central Asia.
• Russification described the process of smaller nations and groups of the Russian empire being forced to abide to the Russian culture and language.
• • In 1937, Stalin forcefully removed 171000 ethnic Koreans from the Soviet Union's far east, to central Asia.
  • In 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, all the Volga Germans were arrested and exiled to Siberia and Central Asia
  • When Finland joined the invasion, 89000 ethnic Finns were similarly deported