For the first time, Stalin had decided to eliminate not just members of particular, suspect nationalities, or categories of political “enemies,” but entire nations—men, women, children, grandparents—and wipe them off the map. Perhaps “genocide” is not the proper term for these deportations, since there were no mass executions. In later years, Stalin would also seek collaborators and allies among these “enemy” groups, so his hatred was not purely racial. “Cultural genocide,” however, is not inappropriate. After they had gone, the names of all of the deported peoples were eliminated from
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