Word: volgas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first victims of Stalin's expulsions were the Koreans who peopled the Soviet Far East. In 1937 they were herded to the snow-blown steppes of Kazakhstan to prevent them from "collaborating" with the Japanese. Later Stalin deemed the Volga Germans "saboteurs and spies" and in 1941 banished them to Siberia. The Crimean Tatars followed in 1944. Other exiled nationalities included the Kalmucks, Chechens, Ingush and the Balkars. By the 1960s, some of these groups had been rehabilitated and given back their autonomous regions. But "lost" peoples remain, among them the Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks...
Today Russians occupy the grain-growing Volga, Ukrainians the Crimea's sunny coast, and Georgians the stone houses built long ago by Turks. These relative newcomers are loath to make way for returning natives, especially in these tough times. Says Igor Krupnik, a researcher at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences Institute of Ethnography: "The Crimeans can't let the Tatars come back and have houses when there is a waiting list years long...
While many officials are apathetic toward the displaced peoples, others have been openly hostile, perhaps in an effort to shore up their own declining popularity. According to Genrikh Grout, spokesman for Renewal, a society devoted to returning Germans to the Volga, authorities in the Saratov area along the Volga River have publicly denounced would-be German returnees as "fascists." Says Grout: "There is no soap, milk, sausage or order here, and this ((name-calling)) is a channel to siphon off resentment...
...streetlamps we see the damage: smashed storefront windows, the charred, upturned carcass of a municipal Volga sedan and, farther off, burned- out city buses. Alexandra takes a picture of a trashed photography store...
While common folk have to wait as long as ten years for a private automobile, party officials are whisked around in chauffeur-driven black Volga sedans and Chaika limousines. A separate lane is reserved for them on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a major Moscow artery. Those within the charmed circle are allotted spacious apartments and can loll about at weekend dachas in the countryside. They even have exclusive hospitals, where the care is far superior to that in ordinary institutions...