The appearance of this myth is owed to a memorandum written by Deputy State Security Commissar of the USSR Bogdan Kobulov and the Deputy Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Ivan Serov on behalf of Lavrentiy Beria:

“…All conscripts into the Red Army made up of 90,000 people, including 20,000 Crimean Tatars…20 thousand Crimean Tatars deserted in 1941 from the 51st Army during the retreat from Crimea…”

However, the note was created on 22 April 1944, a long time after the described events but close to the date of the deportation of Crimean Tatars. Its contents justified the forced relocation of an entire people.

The above mentioned 20,000 Crimean deserters migrated to another memorandum from 10 May 1944 from Beria to Stalin, which proposed the deportation of the Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR (more on this in Myths 36 and 37).

At the beginning of the German-Soviet war, 21,000 thousand inhabitants of Crimea joined the ranks of the Red Army. Several new waves of conscriptions added to the amount another 72,000 Crimeans. That is the 90,000 residents of Crimea that is referred to in the first note above, who were drafted in 1941.

The mobilization potential of the local population was 10– 12 percent. The total number of Crimean Tatars in the summer of 1941 who could join was around 18–20 thousand. Two-thirds of those bravely fought in the Soviet army and often outside of the Crimea. This is evident, for example, with the help of the German General Army Command from 20 March 1942, which dealt with the 10 thousand Crimean Tatars serving in the Red Army.

In August 1941, the 51st Army began to be formed on the peninsula, which mostly consisted of inhabitants from other regions, and only 29,000 Crimeans. The Crimean Tatars numbered slightly more than 5,000 people in this total. Therefore, desertion from the 51st Army by the Tatars was four times less than what Beria reported to Stalin.

Taking into account the total defeat which was committed by the troops of Erich von Manstein against the Soviet defenders of the Peninsula, any special or mass desertion of only one nation cannot be discussed. Undisciplined and fresh recruits of all nationalities scattered equally and were defeated under the blow of the Wehrmacht. Therefore, there is no such thing as 20,000 Crimean Tatar “traitors.”

Instead, it is clear that in 1944 the decision was made to send 8,995 Crimean Tatars who participated in the war directly to special settlements under military supervisions. Among them were 524 officers and 1,392 non-commissioned officers who all served in the war.

In other words, the number of Tatars who deserted in the summer of 1941 from Soviet troops, were proportionally no more than the other national representatives of the USSR who were in similar conditions. And thus, no more than the number of Crimeans who continued to fight in the Red Army under the end of the war.

Under these accusations of treason from May 1944, more than 190,000 Crimean Tatars were deported from the Crimea. These included those who surrendered and those who continued to fight during the war.

This figure also included those who could not even take up arms: children, women, and elderly people.