Moscow: O. G. I.-Memorial Publ., 2001, 328 p. (c) 2002 The book by P. M. Polyana is devoted to the historical and geographical aspect of forced population movements in the USSR. It consists of an introduction, two sections, a conclusion, appendices containing extensive factual and documentary material, an afterword by A. Vishnevsky, a list of references, indexes of names and geographical names. In the introduction, the author defines the original key concept of " forced migration "as" the movement of significant masses of people undertaken by the state in relation to its own or foreign citizens through coercion... direct or indirect " (p. 11). Here, he examines archival and published sources, and also gives a very correct and balanced analysis of the literature on this issue. In the chapter devoted to the prehistory and classification of forced migrations, the author refers to a series of events in the Old Testament, mentions the migration of hundreds of thousands of families from north to south China under the Qing Emperor Shihuandi in the third century BC. He emphasizes that over these centuries, the driving motives for the use of forced migrations have remained the same: they are different combinations of political (preventing uprisings, easing discontent, protest, etc.) and economic (cheap, and sometimes almost free labor, transferred at the will of the subject of deportation to the right place and time) factors. As an example, the author cites the African slave trade, but here we can see some contradiction with the definition given in the introduction, since the organizers of the slave trade were not states, but private individuals. Noting that" the history of the Jewish people is very rich in deportations and forced relocations " (p.24), the author states that for a long time the leader in this was tsarist Russia, which pursued a strict state anti-Jewish policy, the components of which were periodic expulsions. But, as P. Polyan quite rightly points out, it wa ... Читать далее