Was the soviet regime from 1945 to 1947 brutal and expansionist?
1946–1947 Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Russians, Cossacks, and other nationalities and ethnicities were imprisoned or executed by the NKVD after having been forcibly repatriated by British, French, Canadian and American troops. Many of these were men who fought alongside the Axis forces in the vain expectation that they might secure their countries’ independence from Soviet rule although quite a number were also recruited under duress. Some of those eventually repatriated had not previously been Soviet citizens amongst them many women and children. These people were often deemed by the Soviets to be traitors and “Nazi collaborators,” and in many cases were shot immediately after being handed over by Allied troops, occurrences of which were reported at the time by British officers, protesting against having to take part. Further information may be found in Operation Keelhaul and in Nikolai Tolstoy’s Victims of Yalta. The above is just a sampling from the site below.
