Newspaper Article

Stalin's Legacy of Statelessness

Arthur C. Helton. Arthur C. Helton, a lawyer, is director of migration programs at the Open Society Institute in New York

1996

Overview

The plight of southern Georgia's Meshketian minority illustrates the misery experienced by millions of displaced people in the former Soviet Union. Forcibly deported from Georgia to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin in 1944, they were subsequently evacuated from Uzbekistan by Soviet troops in 1989 when ethnic tension flared there. Today, hundreds of thousands of Meshketians reside unlawfully as \"stateless persons\" in other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, unable to secure basic rights despite the adoption of laws intended to protect them. And the Meshketians are not alone. More than 9 million refugees, internally displaced persons, repatriates, deported peoples, ecological migrants, and others from across the former Soviet Union have been uprooted since 1989, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This figure does not include millions of others in the region who have migrated for economic reasons.

• Publisher: The Christian Science Publishing Society (d/b/a \"The Christian Science Monitor\"), trusteeship under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts