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The deportation of Pontic (Black Sea) Greeks from the Krasnodar region (1942)

In 1912-1915 many Greeks took flight from Anatolia in order to save themselves from the genocide and set off for Russia and settled in the southern Kuban region. They had Greek nationality and remained Greek citizens.

In May of 1942 the Greek population was hit by deportations. In all probability two transports with exiles from the Krasnodar region were directed to our region: one of them from the districts west of Krasnodar, the other from the Apsheronsk district.

The deported Greeks were at first taken to Baku by train. There all of them were loaded on board a steamship, transported to Krasnovodsk and again put on a train. These transports started to go in a roundabout way through Middle Asia: from Chiva back to the Ural, to Chelyabinsk, from there to Omsk, from Omsk back again to Middle Asia. Via Kzyl-Orda they were directed to Tashkent, where they refused to accept them and sent them back to Alma-Ata instead, and from there back to Siberia. The trains passed Novosibirsk and finally arrived in Krasnoyarsk in August 1942.

From here the Greeks from the districts of Abinsk and Seversk had to continue their way on the Yenissey River and were partly taken to the district of Udereysk on the Lower Angara (to Motygino, Razdolinsk and other places), partly to places yet further to the north, to the district of Turukhansk. They also sent many deportees from the Apsheronsk district to settlements in the district of Turukhansk, for "fishing." Other Greeks from the Apsheronsk district were crowded together on cattle wagons and transported to Kamarchaga station, Mana district, or to Uyar. From Kamarchaga the Greeks were driven to timber-processing industries along the Mana River: to Narva, Pimiya, Bol'shoy and Maly Ungut. Those Greeks who had been unloaded in Uyar were sent to the district of Partizanskoye. Some were taken to Vilisty on the upper course of the Mana, others remained in the villages of Solonechno-Taloye and Vershino-Rybnoye in the district of Partizanskoye. After the war the Greeks from Vilisty were also transferred to Vershino-Rybnoye, and early in the 1950s they allowed many Greeks from the northern settlements on the Yenissey Riverto go there, too. Just as in case of the Finns, the NKVD did not issue and keep any "personal files" on the Greeks.

The exiled Pontic (Black Sea) Greeks were released in 1955-1956. After the release many of them returned to the Kuban region. 


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