J. Otto Pohl has researched and written on Soviet nationality policies since 1996. He earned his PhD in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 2004. He has taught at
universities in Kyrgyzstan, Ghana, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His latest book is The Years of Great Silence: The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941-1955. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2022.
Abstract
Soviet policy towards its Kurdish minority shifted from supporting their cultural development during the 1920s and early 1930s to a more repressive policy from 1937-1956 and then back again to a more favorable position. Soviet repression of its Kurdish population reached its height in November 1944 with the deportation of a significant number of them from the areas again to a more favorable position. Soviet repression of its Kurdish population reached its height in November 1944 with the deportation of a significant number of them from the areas of Georgia bordering Turkey to Central Asia. Here they were placed under special settlement restrictions limiting their movement and suffered from material deprivations resulting in a significant number of deaths. This article focuses on Soviet policy towards its Kurdish minority from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until several years after the death of Stalin in 1956 when the Kurds in Central Asia were released from the special settlement restrictions.
Kurds in the Soviet Union represent an interesting case study in the changing nationality policies pursued by the Soviet government from 1917 to 1956. The Soviet policy towards the the USSR experienced different treatment at different times. The fluctuating and inconsistent Soviet policies towards the Kurds in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan meant that not all Kurds in the USSR were treated the same. Not only did the policies change over time but, the different republics in the Soviet Union were able to greatly influence local treatment of the Kurds along national lines.[1]