What did Moscow do to the Kalmyk people? [1954]

Since February 1954 marks the tenth anniversary of the Moscow-Bolshevik Genocide against the Kalmyk people, the Kalmyk National Association in Germany sent a letter to the US Secretary of State, J.F. Dulles, which clarified that on December 27, 1943, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the liquidation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic and the exile of the entire Kalmyk nation to forced labour, allegedly for sympathizing with the Nazi occupation regime. This decision was carried out in February 1944 by two Soviet armies specially withdrawn from the front. At that time, all combat-ready Kalmyks were at the front. Only women, children, and old men remained at home and tried to avoid eviction by fleeing to the mountains and ghettos, but they were bombed from the air and the ghettos were burned. Russians settled in the vacated Kalmyk houses.

The Kalmyk National Association requests that Dulles ask Molotov whether it is possible in the freest, most democratic country to liquidate an entire nation by an ordinary government decree, and also for whose and what crime has an entire nation been subjected to such a terrible punishment, and where and under what conditions are around 250,000 Kalmyk exiles now living?

The letter was signed by the head of the Kalmyk National Association Shamba Balinov.