Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag system of labor camps, resettling of entire categories of population was another method of political repression. At the same time, it played a role in the colonization of remote areas of the Soviet Union. The latter role was specifically mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps.

Unlike the Gulag camps, the involuntary settlements had the appearance of "normal" settlements: people lived in families, and there was a significant degree of freedom of travel. However the travel was permitted only within the specified area and all settlers were under the monitoring of NKVD (под надзором НКВД), i.e., once a month a person had to visit a local law enforcement office, at a selsoviet in rural areas or at a militsiya department in urban settlements).

Exile settlements

Exile settlements (ссыльное поселение, ssylnoye poselenie) were a kind of internal exile. The system of political and administrative exile existed in the Imperial Russia as well. The most notable category of exile settlers in the Soviet Union (ссыльнопоселенцы, ssylnoposelentsy) were the whole nationalities resettled during the Joseph Stalin rule (1928–1953). At various times, a number of other terms were used for this category: special settlement (спецпоселение), special resettlement (спецпереселение), administrative exile (административная высылка, a term which refers to an extrajudicial way of deciding the fates of people "by administrative means".

Exiles were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union: Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Russian Far East.

The population of the settlements

The major source of the population in exile settlements were victims of what is now called ethnic cleansing. The Soviet government feared that people of certain nationalities would act as "fifth column" subversives during the expected war, and took drastic measures to prevent this perceived threat. There were various destinations of the deported: prisons, labor camps, exile settlements, and "supervised residence" (residence in usual settlements, but under the monitoring of the NKVD.

Deportations from border territories in 1939–1941

Several waves of forced resettlement occurred from the territories on the Western borders that were on the direction of the potential strike by the most probable aggressor. These included Murmansk Oblast and the recently annexed lands: parts of Poland and Romania, and the Baltic States.

In territories annexed from Poland (the Kresy territories and the Bialystok Voivodship), the initial wave of repression of 1939 was in a way a continuation of the Polish operation of the NKVD and was rationalized as conviction of "social enemies", or "enemies of the people": military, police and administrative personnel, large landowners, industrialists, merchants. They were usually sentenced to 8–20 years of labor camps. In addition, Polish population from the whole Eastern border, as well as forest-guards and railroad workers were interned. Massive deportations of Polish population into remote areas of the Soviet Union were performed in 1940–1941.

Estimates of the total number of resettled Poles vary between 400,000 and 1.6 million people.

On 23 June 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD, ordered the Murmansk Oblast to be cleaned of "foreign nationals", both Scandinavians and all other nationalities. People of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian (see also "Kola Norwegians") ethnicities were moved to Karelo-Finnish SSR. Germans, Koreans, Chinese, and others were moved to Altai.

Deportations of "exiled settlers" from Baltic States (Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians) and annexed part of Romania (Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina) were carried out in May-June 1941.

In 1941 a significant number of Poles were amnestied and freed from "special settlement" (but still barred from border territories).

"Preventive" deportations of nationalities in 1941–1942

These deportations concerned Soviet citizens of "enemy nationality". The affected were ethnic Germans, Finns, Romanians, Italians, and Greeks. At the end of this period Crimean Tatars also joined this wave of deportation.

"Punitive" deportations of nationalities in 1943–1944

These deportations concerned ethnicities declared guilty of cooperation with Nazi occupants: a number of peoples of North Caucasus and Crimea: Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Crimean Bolgars, as well as Kalmyks.

Post-war deportations

Deportations after the end of the WWII were not particularly differentiated or classified by "NKVD operations". The affected were people from the territories that were under the administration of the Axis Powers: family members of persons accused of loyalty to this administration and of persons who continued resistance to Soviet power, which was clasified as "banditism". A significant number of former Ostarbeiters were "filtered" into exile as well. "Cleansing" of the annexed territories continued until early 1950s.

Labor settlements

Labor settlements (трудопоселение, trudoposelenie) were a method of internal exile that used settlers for obligatory labor. The main category of "labor settlers" (трудопоселенцы, trudoposelentsy) were kulaks and members of their families deported in 1930s before the Great Purge. Labor settlements were under the management of Gulag, but they must not be confused with labor camps.

The first official document that decreed wide-scale "dekulakization" was joint decree of Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom by February 1, 1930. Initially families of kulaks were deported into remote areas "for special settlement" without particular care about their occupation. In 1931-1932 the problems of dekulakization and territorial planning of the exile settlement was handled by a special Politburo commission known as Andreev-Rudzutak Commission (комиссия Андреева-Рудзутака) named after Andrey Andreev and Yan Rudzutak. The notions of "labor settlement"/"labor settlers" were introduced in 1934 and were in official use until 1945. Since 1945 the terminology was unified, and exiled kulaks were documented as "special resettlers — kulaks".

Free settlements

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