Saw a lot of people call the deportations of Tatars in the USSR a genocide. I know that the Tatars collaborated with the Axis but was it necessary to deport so many of them? Many of them not having directly collaborated with the Axis. Im on board with punishing those who actively collaborated with the Nazis but from what i have heard of, this was unnecessary
I can't say that the deportations were necessary, nor can I say that they were unnecessary. But what I can say is that if you see lots of people that you know and love collaborating with the Axis, the probability of you being convinced to collaborate too may increase.
However, deporting innocent people just for the possibility of them collaborating with nazis in the future is pretty bad.
Though I do understand the soviet government of the time. They were losing the war and if they lost their whole people would be enslaved/genocided. As such, they couldn't take any chances.
edit: since the deportations were not made with the intention of decimating the deported, they were clearly not a genocide by any good definition.
The tragedy with the Crimean Tartars was that they were deported based on heritage, even those who were loyal red army combatants. I'm not saying the situations are a perfect equivalence, but it's the same rationale the US used to intern Japanese-Americans, which communists have always rightfully criticized. Whether it was necessary or not is debatable but it always troubles me whenever I encounter blanket apologism for the action or communists embracing the reasoning.
In addition, those deported were not allowed to resettle in Crimea for 2 decades after the war. We can still support the legacy of the USSR while still acknowledging that this is a blemish.