Alternate History Ultra-Evil USSR

[sillygoose]

Interesting. In regards to the UPA, what ultimately helped the USSR successfully crush them was having their own agents inflitate the movement by posing as aspiring UPA fighters and then betraying the UPA to the USSR by giving them their locations, names, et cetera, I would presume.

There were several tactics that were needed to defeat the UPA, infiltration was only one of them. Mass deportations did happen as well.

Areas of UPA activity were depopulated. The estimates on numbers deported vary; officially Soviet archives state that between 1944 and 1952 a total of 182,543 people[94][95] were deported while other sources indicate the number may have been as high as to 500,000.[96]

Mass arrests of suspected UPA informants or family members were conducted; between February 1944 and May 1946 over 250,000 people were arrested in Western Ukraine.[97] Those arrested typically experienced beatings or other violence. Those suspected of being UPA members underwent torture; reports exist of some prisoners being burned alive. The many arrested women believed to be affiliating with the UPA were subjected to torture, deprivation, and rape at the hands of Soviet security in order to "break" them and get them to reveal UPA members' identities and locations or to turn them into Soviet double-agents.[63] Mutilated corpses of captured rebels were put on public display.[73] Ultimately, between 1944 and 1952 alone as many as 600,000 people may have been arrested in Western Ukraine, with about one third executed and the rest imprisoned or exiled.[98]

From December 1945 to 1946, 15,562 operations were carried out in which 4,200 were killed and more than 9,400 were arrested. From 1944 to 1953, the Soviets killed 153,000 and arrested 134,000 members of the UPA. 66,000 families (204,000 people) were forcibly deported to Siberia, and half a million people were subject to repressions. In the same period Polish communist authorities deported 450,000 people.[103]

Either as bad or worse than what the Germans did in Belarus to fight the partisans during the war, which was the focal point of the Soviet partisan movement.

 

[WolfBear]

There were several tactics that were needed to defeat the UPA, infiltration was only one of them. Mass deportations did happen as well.



Either as bad or worse than what the Germans did in Belarus to fight the partisans during the war, which was the focal point of the Soviet partisan movement.

Yeah, that makes sense. I know that a sizable number of western Ukrainians were deported to Poland's Recovered Territories to start new lives there:

Operation Vistula - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ironically, in the long(er)-run, incorporating western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR was the best thing ever that happened to Ukrainian nationalists because it allowed them to spread their ideology to the rest of Ukraine. But they couldn't actually foresee this ahead of time, of course. Though Pyotr Durnovo did warn Russian Tsar Nicholas II about this (specifically the dangers of annexing Galicia, with its nationalistic Ukrainian population) back in early 1914.

 

[sillygoose]

Yeah, that makes sense. I know that a sizable number of western Ukrainians were deported to Poland's Recovered Territories to start new lives there:

Operation Vistula - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That sounds like outright mass murder given that they deported everyone to virtual wilderness and gave them zero support on arrival.

 

[WolfBear]

That sounds like outright mass murder given that they deported everyone to virtual wilderness and gave them zero support on arrival.

They apparently gave them farms and houses that were abandoned by their previous German owners:

The deported farmers received financial help from the Polish government and took over homes and farms left behind by the Germans, in some cases experiencing an improvement in their living conditions as a result of the increased size of the newly acquired properties, their brick construction, and the provision of running water. In the years 1956 to 1958 they received mostly non-repayable credits totalling 170 million PLN which was a considerable amount of money in the Polish national budget.[8] At exactly the same time the Soviet Union carried out a parallel operation, dubbed "Operation West", in the Ukrainian SSR. Although both operations were coordinated from Moscow, there was a shocking difference between their outcomes.[4] Operation West was conducted in West Ukraine by the Soviet NKVD and targeted the families of suspected UPA members. Over 114,000 individuals, mostly women and children, were deported to the Kazakh SSR and Siberia and forced into extreme poverty.[4] Of the 19,000 adult males deported by the NKVD deportees,[4] most were sent to coal mines and stone quarries in the north. None of the people deported by the NKVD received any farms or empty homes to live in.[4]

I'm talking about the ones deported to Poland's Recovered Territories, not the ones deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The latter groups really did have to fend for themselves on their own, apparently.

 

[sillygoose]

They apparently gave them farms and houses that were abandoned by their previous German owners:
I'm talking about the ones deported to Poland's Recovered Territories, not the ones deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. The latter groups really did have to fend for themselves on their own, apparently.

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

 

[WolfBear]

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

Yeah, apparently the ones who got deported to Poland got off relatively easy.

Anyway, off-topic, but could you please respond to this thread of mine? :

https://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?threads/germanys-foreign-policy-and-military-strategy-in-the-event-that-wwi-will-not-occur-at-all-in-the-1910s.7205/