In May 1944 by order of Stalin Crimean Tatars were declared outlaw and were accused in the «aiding» fascists. During the operation which lasted for 60 hours about 200 thousand people were taken out in a 71 echelon from the Crimea. Echelons were re-formed during transit so families were forcedly divided into 2—3 parts and sent to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia. Because of a terrible conditions of transportation about 47 percents of migrants perished from a stuffiness and thirst. Most of them were the old, women and children. Those who offered resistance and who was seriously ill were liquidated on the spot.
According to results of All-Union national census of population of 1939 Crimean Tatars made up 26 percent of all population of Crimea. They almost disappeared after war and deportation. Tatars returned to Crimea only after the disintegration of the USSR.
A human right activist and fighter for renewing rights for Crimean Tatars, the native of the Zaporizhya oblast Petro Hryhorenko (1907—1987) died in banishment. A Military and an engineer, chief of division staff of the 4th Ukrainian front, soviet general which believed in the Leninism, a founder of the Moscow Helsinki union (HU) and a co-founder of Ukrainian HU, in autumn 1963 he organized an underground «Fight for the revival of Leninism union» (Hryhorenko’s sons and a few of their friends — students and officers entered it). He wrote and spread leaflets, where was told about the bureaucratic regeneration of the soviet state, its punitive policy in relation to its workers (disturbances suppression in towns Novocherkassk, Temirtau and Tbilisi) the reasons of a food crisis in a country.
For the first time Hryhorenko was arrested in February 1964. After turning down the government’s offer to «confess» in an anti-soviet agitation and propaganda he was direct to the forced «treatment» to the Leningrad special mental hospital. And later he was deprived his rank, rewards and pension. A disgraced general was discharged after Mykyta Khruschov retirement but his title not title was not renewed that is why he forcedly worked as a loader in a vegetable shop. In 1968 he wrote work «About the special mental hospitals » which became the documentary evidence of the punitive psychiatry system in the USSR. The new repressions of the Soviet regime were entailed by Hryhorenko’s active participation in the fight of Crimean-Tatar people for returning to their historical motherland. He was imprisoned for «an anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda» on May 7, 1969 in Tashkent where he arrived as a defender in a trial over the participants of mass protests of Crimean Tatars in a city Chirchiku.
The day before visit of the USA president Richard Nixon to Soviet Union of Hryhorenko was discharged In November, 1977 an unshakable dissident together with his wife got permission on a temporal departure in the USA for conducting of surgical operation. In a few months of former general was deprived his citizenships and rights for returning to the USSR.
Crimean Tatars remember and hold P. Hryhorenko in high respect. In 1999 in the center of Simferopol on the Soviet square bronze bust of brave rights defender was set and in 2004 the territory round him was renamed on the public garden of the name of Hryhorenko.
Svitlana FILONENKO
Українська редакція
