Ran out of room so I'm posting the rest here:

Another ethnic group that suffered mass expulsion was the Russaki, or Russian-Germans. The population transfer was triggered by Nazi Germany's violation of Molotov-Ribbentrop in 1941. A decree from the Supreme Soviet Presidium precipitated the removal of 1.2 million Russian-Germans; most were relocated in Siberia and parts of Central Asia. Obviously the driving force behind Soviet actions in this case was the fear of a so-called "fifth column" in the country. In 1943 and 1944 Karachays, a Turkic-speaking people of the North Caucasus region, were accused of collaborating with the occupying German army. In November 1943, 68,938 persons were transferred to Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. Were these charges baseless? Not in the least. In his excellent biography of the Man of Steel, New Zealand-born historian Ian Grey writes that along with other Russian Muslims, the Karachai displayed pro-German sympathies, at least to some degree. Alexander Dallin recounts in German Rule in Russia: 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies; London; 1981; pages 244, 246, 258 that early in the Soviet-German war: "...Revolts broke out among some of the Caucasian Mountaineers. Most widespread in the Muslim areas, particularly among the Chechens and Karachai, these rebellions prepared the ground for a change of regime....Faced with a concentrated German onslaught and a lack of support from the indigenous population, the Red Army retreated from Rostov to the Greater Caucasus Mountains without giving battle....In the Karachai region the bulk of the Muslim Mountaineers accorded the Germans a more genuine welcome than in most other occupied areas. The Germans...announced the formation of a Karachai voluntary squadron of horsemen to fight with the German army....During the entire occupation, there was no evidence of anti-German activity in the Karachai area".

On December 27, 1943, NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria commenced the deportation of Kalmyks, a Buddhist people living in southern Russia near the Volga river basin. Around half deported to Siberia died before being allowed to return home in 1957. Their situation was analogous to the Karachays. Ephemerally under German occupation, they were accused of collaborated with the Nazis by the Soviet leadership. The decree was signed by Kalinin and reads as follows:

In the period of occupation of the territory of the Kalmyk ASSR by German- Fascist invaders, many Kalmyks betrayed their Motherland, joined military detachments organized by the Germans for fighting against the Red Army, handed over to the Germans honest Soviet citizens, seized and handed over to the Germans livestock evacuated from collective farms in the Rostov oblast and the Ukraine, and, after the expulsion of the invaders by the Red Army, organized bands and actively opposed organs of Soviet power in the restoration of the economy destroyed by the Germans, perpetrated bandit raids on collective farms and terrorized the surrounding population.

The German army often made the clichéd promise of independence to the ethnic groups it presided over. Sometimes the people were persuaded; other times they were not. Edvard Radzinsky writes in his 1996 Stalin that "During their occupation of the Caucasus the Germans had promised independence to the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, and the Kalmyks. Members of these ethnic groups did sometimes collaborate with the Germans. The same was true of the Crimean Tartars".

In 1943 there were about 450,000 Chechens and Ingush in the Chechen Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an artificial merger of the two groups established in 1936. Furr writes of "massive collaboration" with German forces and quotes a February 2000 Radio Svoboda interview with Chechen nationalists who brag of a "pro-German" anti-Soviet rebellion in February 1943, "when the Nazi penetration towards the Caucasus was at its greatest".

In March of 1944, the deportation of 38,000 Balkars (Turkish people in the Northern Caucasus near Elbruz Mountain) began. Sent to Central Asia, between 20% and 40% of the Balkars transferred died from 1944 to 1956. Alexander Werth notes in Russia at War: 1941-1945 (1964) that "the Muslim Balkars were more outspokenly pro-German than the mostly non-Muslim (Christian) Kabardinians."

In May of 1944, the deportation of Crimean Tartars began. The forced removal began only one month after the German army withdrew from the Crimean Peninsula. Furr writes that in 1939 there were 218,000 Crimean Tartars and estimates that the proportional amount of military-aged men should be about 22,000, or 10% of the population. He says that by 1944, "20,000 Crimean Tartars had joined Nazi Forces and were fighting against the Red Army". Furr's source for the claim is researcher J. Otto Pohl, who is also cited in a 2002 article by Greta Lynn Uehling for International Committee for Crimea. Interestingly, Uehling asserts that Crimean Tartar participation in "German self-defense battalions" was not entirely voluntary, in that it was often "secured at gunpoint". Nevertheless, Uehling admits that there was a great deal of collaboration between Crimean Tartars and Nazi Forces.

I think I've covered the main deportations of the WWII era. As you can probably tell, in most cases the State had a good reason for its population transfers. The ethnic groups often contained many elements tied to foreign enemies like Germany and Japan. But I do want to make it clear that the USSR was collectively punishing these groups. As Furr says, it was not following the Enlightenment views of individual, as opposed to collective, punishment. Therefore, in some sense of the word, the deportations can be construed as "barbaric". Did the Party at this point in time really care much for the diverse groups of people in the Far East? I'm not sure. Again, WWII was going on in the background, so maybe some of us can excuse the excesses. I, for one, believe that this was a very dark time in Soviet history.

Sources:

Khruschev Lied - Grover Furr

The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s - Hiroaki Kuromiya

The Crimean Tartars - Greta Lynn Uehling http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/krimtatars.html

Deportation of the Kalmyks (1943–1956): Stigmatized Ethnicity - Eliza Bair Guchinova

Stalin, Man of History - Ian Grey

Russia at War: 1941-1945 - Alexander Werth

Molotov Remembers - Felix Chuev

Probably the best book on the population transfers.