Chapter 288
The long convoy moved forward slowly on the dilapidated country road. In the front were two GAZ military vehicles. The cargo boxes without sails were filled with soldiers with guns. Behind the GAZ military vehicles was an armored vehicle with a machine gun mounted on the roof.
The jeep Yuri was riding in was at the end of the convoy, and behind it were two GAZ military vehicles full of soldiers. In the Panevezys area, Lithuanian nationalist guerrillas were very active, so Romanenko attached great importance to Yuri's safety and specially arranged experienced soldiers to be responsible for his security.
On both sides of the dilapidated road are large tracts of farmland. A quick look reveals that these farmlands are basically planted with beets, and the green seedlings are pleasing to the eye.
Lithuania is not a place suitable for grain production. This is not only the case here, but also the three Baltic countries. After all, it is close to the Arctic Circle and the winter is too long. Early winter starts in mid-September and lasts until March of the following year. Therefore, the agricultural economy of the three Baltic countries is mainly based on animal husbandry, and even in the planting industry, it is mainly cash crops such as potatoes, flax and beets.
Comrade Snechikus is currently promoting the collective farm system throughout Lithuania and is also preparing for the relocation of “three categories of people”: nationalists, bandits and members of rich peasant families. This relocation has been named “Spring”.
Today, Panevezys is actually a huge migration camp, which not only concentrates Lithuania’s “three types of people”; members of the Forest Brothers, a nationalist guerrilla organization active in the three Baltic countries with a large number of members, but also the most powerful anti-Soviet guerrilla organization in the three Baltic countries; Vlasov elements and their family members, and so on.
The number of such migrants now detained in Panevezys has exceeded 60,000. They are being held in dozens of transit facilities of various sizes, waiting for their official relocation.
I don't know what Comrade Stalin was thinking, but he actually handed over the resettlement of the relocated soldiers and civilians to the Executive Bureau of the Disarmament Working Committee. It is obvious that he was preparing to hand over these different categories of personnel to the Executive Bureau for arrangement as if they were old people.
To be honest, although Yuri also hopes that the construction corps and secret cities under the Executive Bureau can have more labor, he absolutely does not want to include these people. After all, this kind of thing is too troublesome.
At present, there are already several migration orders that have been resolved, and the nationalities and groups involved are very complicated. Greeks, Germans, Italians, and Bulgarians are planned to be migrated from Crimea, Rostov, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc.; Meheste Turks and Kurds are planned to be migrated from the border area between Georgia and Turkey; Hemshens, that is, Muslims living in Armenia, and Dashnaks (Armenian nationalist organization) are planned to be migrated from Armenia, and so on.
This kind of administrative migration involving millions of people is very complicated, and different types of people have different migration destinations. Just like the Crimean Tatars, because of their independence movements before the Great Patriotic War and their support for German fascism during the Great Patriotic War, they were directly defined as "traitors", and the entire nation was. Therefore, the order issued by the People's Committee of Defense was to migrate all Tatars in the entire Crimean Peninsula to distant Central Asia. This migration involved nearly 200,000 people. Such a large population will be sent to different regions of Central Asia, their property will be confiscated, and they will all go to several regions in Central Asia to work.
The order of the People's Commissariat of Defense was that all the people to be relocated must be put on the train and sent to the relocation destination according to the list in the order. Obviously, this was a tedious and arduous task that required careful handling.
Of course, the main reason why Yuri was unwilling to take over this job was not this, but because he knew very well that getting involved in this job would leave an indelible stain on him in the history of the Soviet Union.
In Yuri's opinion, such migration work is indeed necessary to a certain extent. For example, in the three Baltic countries, the nationalist guerrillas here, with the support of local people, have developed their resistance operations very well. In just a few months, they have formed a trend of spreading like wildfire. If decisive measures are not taken, the situation here cannot be stabilized at all.
In addition, in the border area between Georgia and Turkey, residents whose ethnicity is more Turkish have always clamored to incorporate their territory into Turkey. Both the remnants of the Dashnak Party and the Meheste Turks seriously threaten the stability of the region.
At the same time, Turkestan, which was disintegrated through the ethnic demarcation policy in 1924, also showed signs of instability due to the impact of the Soviet-German War. The former Turkestan, with an area of more than 4 million square kilometers and a Muslim population of more than 80 million, was like a huge powder keg that could blow the entire Soviet Union to pieces at any time.
Therefore, from the perspective of national stability, it is indeed necessary to implement large-scale ethnic migration at this time, taking advantage of the country's strong military power and the heyday of centralization.
Once it involves the macro-issue of national stability, there is no need to discuss issues such as human rights and democracy, because once such issues are involved, the rulers of any country will take the toughest measures.
In recent times, Americans have begun to criticize Moscow's policies on this issue, but they themselves are not much better. Not to mention the blood type policy towards Indians, the forced migration of Japanese Americans during World War II alone is enough to illustrate the problem.
The convoy stopped at the entrance of the farm. Yuri got out of the car and joined the members of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Lithuania and the members of the 48th Army's Field Command Organization who got out of the cars in front of them. They conducted a detailed inspection of the newly built collective farm.
At this time, the collective farm system in Lithuania had just begun to be fully implemented. This collective farm named "Daldupé" was just established a week ago. Today is the day when the farm holds a general meeting of members and elects the farm management committee.
The scale of this farm is not very large. There are only 19 farmers in the whole farm. The farm land covers 103 hectares. Excluding residential land and road traffic, there are 4 hectares of so-called "land beside the house".
The land near the house refers to the private economy retained within the collective farm. These lands belong to the farmers on the farm and can be used to raise cattle and sheep, or to grow some cash crops. The income and output belong to the farmers themselves.
At present, because Lithuania has just begun to implement the collective farm system, there are preferential policies for farmers who actively join, and the area of "house edge land" allocated is also very large. At the same time, the annual compulsory labor time is relatively short, but the daily wage is relatively high, averaging about 4 rubles a day.
Around "Daldupe", there are three farms of similar size. They form a farm union and share an agricultural machinery station equipped with a large number of agricultural machinery. In addition, there is a workers' annihilation battalion that is specifically responsible for the defense of collective farms.
The Workers' Annihilation Battalion was reorganized from the former Workers' Militia Division. Because the Daldupe Farm was located in a hotspot of Lithuanian nationalist guerrilla activities, the Workers' Annihilation Battalion was relatively large in size. It was an understaffed infantry regiment equipped with a certain number of tanks, artillery and self-propelled artillery. Their mission was to guard the collective farm, prevent the class enemy from destroying the farm, and at the same time, clear out the saboteurs in the surrounding areas.
At this time, the Lithuanian guerrilla zone was still implementing wartime policies. These workers' guerrilla battalions had great power and had the power to execute saboteurs they captured without a court trial or approval from superiors.
As the first First Secretary of the Central Committee of Lithuania after the war, Snechikus's policy of suppressing the nationalist guerrillas was extremely cruel. He abolished all the original villages in areas where guerrilla activities were frequent, and replaced them with this kind of collective farms connected one after another, gradually squeezing the guerrillas' living space.
At the same time, by encouraging reporting, the families, relatives of the guerrilla members, and "traitors" who sympathized with the guerrillas were identified little by little, and then they were gathered together and all moved to the far east.
In Yuri's opinion, the policy adopted by Snechikus was undoubtedly effective and killed two birds with one stone. During the entire operation, not only the nationalist guerrillas were wiped out, but also the collective farm policy implementation work in Lithuania was completed. If nothing unexpected happens, it is estimated that it will not take long before the troublesome nationalist guerrillas in Lithuania will be completely resolved.
After finishing the inspection of Dardupe and several neighboring farms, the group went to Migration Camp No. 1003, less than 13 kilometers away from the farm. There were 13 similar migration camps nearby, which detained various people waiting to migrate, with a total number of nearly 8,000.
The specific migration work was arranged by the executive bureau headed by Yuri. He needed to clear all 47 migration camps set up in the three Baltic countries within a week and relocate all the people here to the east.
According to the order of the People's Commissariat of Defense, this group of relocated people will be transferred to the surrounding areas of Magadan City in the Khabarovsk Krai. At that time, there was no Magadan Oblast in later generations, and the northern coastal area of the Sea of Okhotsk was a truly old, young, remote and poor area.
