Translated material
The right to the house
The right to the house
What is the European history of population movements to understand about the forced migration today?
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According to Vladimir Zelensky and according to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, about two million people were forcibly taken to Russia from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. About five million, according to the UN from mid -June, they were forced to flee from Ukraine to the European Union. Is it possible to consider a situation in which hundreds of thousands of people are forced to leave their homes as an extraordinary?
Editor
Editor
AnastasiaIllustrator
Illustrator
PgchurchPublication
September 22, 2022
In European history, forced resettlements are rather a rule than an exception. Over the past hundred years, international organizations have repeatedly formalized compulsory relocations in the legal field, calling them the neutral term “population movement” (or “population transfer”) and arguing the need for this by the fact that such a preventive measure is better than a potential war.
The history of movements of the population allows you to demistify the modern policy of Europe, similar to data on the supply of French military equipment to suppress rallies or compare the amount of financial assistance to the Ukrainian army with Russian revenues from energy supplies. Analyzing now cases of resettlement that occurred several decades ago, we can observe their long -term consequences - from new stress turns in regions where problems were considered solved due to the transfer to the appearance of cultural projects for working with memory and difficult heritage. And finally, the number of cases of moving the population - as well as forced migration in general - shows that any convincing political program today should offer ways to ensure that fewer people are forced to leave their homes and at the same time more and more people could easily find new houses.
Is the population transfer a way to prevent a war?
The first legally formalized movement of the population took place in 1923. It is often called great success in international politics. The movement affected about two million people: Muslims from the Greek territory were sent to the then formed Republic, and the Greeks from Turkish territory to Greece; The exchange also affected some Bulgarian territories. The idea of moving appeared during the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire, which was accompanied by the Balkan wars By the beginning of hostilities, a significant part of the Balkan Peninsula belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Both supporters of the creation or expansion of the borders of national states in the Balkans, as well as other imperial forces (the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, etc.), acted against it (the movement of national borders, the collapse and the emergence of new interstate unions) were important for the future World War I. In 1912-1913, the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922.
Seven years after the transfer of Greece and Türkiye, which, before that on the threshold of another war, signed a friendship agreement. It is believed that it was then both sides - as it turns out later, only for a while - ceased to use ethnic and religious minorities in their territories in order to achieve their own political goals in international relations. The economic well -being and influence of both states also grew: from the weak units that were just formed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, they turned into forces noticeable at the pan -European level.
In the thirties and forties, they actively referred to the experience of the population between Greece and Turkey as a successful one - and this justified the need for a whole wave of forced migrations in Europe.
“Between 1913 and 1946, each large European force and each state in continental Europe east of the Rhine (except for the Netherlands, Denmark and Albania) became the signator of at least one agreement on the movement of the population; Some states are Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, the USSR and Czechoslovakia by the signatures of several, ”writes the British historian Matthew Frank in the book of Making Minorities History about the transfers of the population in Europe in the XX century, the name of which can be translated in two ways:“ Creating the history of minorities ”and“ turning the minorities in History " () The main cases in the book: Greek Turazik, the exchange of the population of 1923 and the accompanying movements in the Balkans from 1913 to 1925; Heim Insach of Nazi Germany, according to which citizens of the USSR and Italy were repatriated in 1939-1941; Transfers in East European states under the direction of the USSR in 1944-1947; the expulsion of Germans from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in 1945-1947; movements between Hungary and Slovakia in 1946-1948. The Turkish researcher of Asly Isz (ASLı Iğsız) notes that the experience of the Greco-Turkish exchange also referred to the experience of the territory and movements of the population in India (1947) and Palestine (1948).
By the end of the last century, the movement of populations came out of the running tools of international policy in connection with the legal consolidation of the idea of human rights. Despite this, already realized cases are still often described as successful
Now, “success stories” about transfers of the population requires a revision that would take into account the consequences of this measure in a longer term, as well as the effectiveness and restriction of different methods of working with these consequences. Revision will also help to predict-to prevent or soften-the effects of forced resettlements due to Russian military aggression.
How do the parties agree on the transfer of the population?
The Lausanne Conference (1922–1923), at which documents on the Greco-Turkish exchange were signed, lasted about six months. For another two months, preliminary negotiations were held between Greece and the Turkish side (within five years after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the forces, led by Mustafa Kemale, there was already a decorated idea of the Turkish national state, but it was not recognized). Representatives of the League of Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, in particular, Fridtjof Nansen, the Supreme Commissar of the Refugee League and the future Nobel Prize Prize, acted as intermediaries.
When both parties potentially agreed on the previously marginal idea of the organized population, it was necessary to resolve issues about:
- Forcedness: will only those who wish or all people who fall under a certain criterion be involved in the exchange program?
- scale: by what criteria (territorial, religious, linguistic, ethnic) people will be included in the exchange program?
- Compensations: what will the participants in the program receive instead of property, which will be forced (or decide) leave?
Thanks to archival sources, we can make an idea of the atmosphere in which these issues were resolved. Having access to personal diaries, letters and declassified official protocols, the modern reader is able to live the events of international politics in the first person “... The Turkish side did not get in contact. They said to Nansen again and again that he would soon be able to go to Ankara or Bursa to talk with Kemal [Ataturk]. But the invitation was never received. <...> When on November 1, the sausage, de rover and Bernier visited [???] Hamida Bey and handed him a list of questions that Nansen wanted to discuss, Hamid Bey took him, “without even opening the envelope,” and was constantly distracted from the conversation to answer the phone calls, and stated that he was too busy to meet with Nansen again. When the sausage returned on November 2 (as it later turns out, for the last time), to present a draft of an agreement on a voluntary exchange of the population, Hamid Bey did not even go out to meet him. Hamid Bay neglected diplomatic courtesies and did not bother himself with an expression of respect for Nansen until he went to Lausanne, ”Frank, M. (2017). MAKING Minorities History: Population Transfer in Twentieth-Century Europe. Oxford University Press. P. 55. , While, for example, recent negotiations between the Ukrainian and Russian sides in the same Turkish territory we could observe mainly on the outside: according to official reports and photographs, evaluating the length of the tables and the choice of costumes, as well as fragmentary information from anonymous sources.
How is the exchange of the population?
“Ordinate and Human” (Orderly and Humane). This is a wording from Article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, which secured an agreement on the relocation of several million Germans from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Exactly the same wording is found more than once and in the notes of contemporaries about the Greek-Turkish exchange. "On the style!" (In Great Style!)-this is already from a letter from the 26-year-old Philip Brike, the president of one of the units of the mixed commission responsible for the Greco-Turkish exchange of the population.
In the event that the Greco-Turkish exchange and the eviction of the Germans under the Potsdam agreement, the legalized transfer of the population only followed the spontaneous flows of forced migration. And against the background of these spontaneous flows, he really looked organized
The Greco-Turkish exchange was preceded by the attack of Turkish forces in Asia Minor (Anatoly), a city fire and military violence over civilians in Smirna (now Izmir). The Christian population of these territories - the Greeks and the Armenians - had to go around the sea to escape from violent death or deportation.
The Potsdam Agreement was a response to the migration crisis of a pan-European scale: by the beginning of the war, the German population also lived in the territories that used to belong to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and, not even being involved in the Nazi state, was forced to escape from the aggression of the retreating Nazi army and from the Union forces; Then the Central European states, which were no longer ready to share the territory with the Germans, expelled them.
In both cases, international commissions were responsible for the logistics of relocation. Their tasks were to follow:
- The schedule of trains or ships that took out the population (about two million people in the first case, about six and a half in the second),
- an assessment of property, which were forced to leave the immigrants and documentary certificates of which were to be taken away with them,
- resettlement, providing a subsistence minimum in new places or in temporary camps.
Finally, members of the commissions also were responsible for coercion to evict those who tried to resist.
The Greco-Turkish exchange also involved compensation payments. “Perennial studies in Greece and Turkey have not revealed a single case when the immigrants, whether they are from the Greek or Turkish side, would receive a real cash payment on the expense of the left property,” the Turkish historian Onor Jaildimit wrote in 2006. “The mixed commission spent eighteen months on evictions, and then nine years-nowhere,” concludes Matthew Frank in the chapter on the Greco-Turkish exchange in the Making Minorities History. The reason for this, according to him, was a decrease in attention to the process from the public. And this already raises the status of the population movements as “success stories” under the big question.
What were alternatives to transfers of the population?
The source of the danger that were called to neutralize the population transfers is “minorities”. The Greco-Turkish exchange of the population was preceded by “Minority Treaties”-a series of agreements on the basis of the League of Nations. The agreements were signed in the midst of the formation of national states, and it was assumed that these agreements would protect “racial”, linguistic and religious minorities. In addition, states received the right to apply to the League of Nations if they become aware of cases of violation of agreements, which, in turn, will require international intervention. If the appeal came not from the state, but from the representatives of the “minority”, then it was regarded as “unofficial” and could not be considered, and in addition, there was a ban on proposals for the separation of “minorities” from the state into which they entered at the time of filing a petition. There were many petitions, including Russian -language studies of how exactly the League of Nations reacted to them ( in general and on the example of Transcarpathian Rusyns in Czechoslovakia).
The first series of “minorities agreements” regulated the actions of fourteen states, including just formed. None of the largest European forces fell under the proclaimed obligations. So in the legal field the status of the Central European and Balkan states formed after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires: their politics turned out to be the subject of control by Western European forces.
One of the alternatives to the logic of national states, which eventually became the main unit of European policy, were ideas of federalization. Matthew Frank transfers the following proposals of the beginning and mid-20th century: Brian’s plan about the European Federal Union, the Paneuropa Kudenhov-Callergs movement (on the history of these projects can be read in more detail on the website of the Panevropei Union of Russia ), ideas about the Danube Confederation (this concept during the collapse of the Gabsburg Empire, including politicians Oscar Yasi, has been published, its works have been published. In Russian), the idea of non-war federal federalization of the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer (his articles are available in the pre-revolutionary Russian), the Balkan Union (see the history of the Balkan wars), the World Federalist Movement (itincluded , including the Tatarstan and Bashkir federalists, and the federal Volga region was even released in the 90s). Each of them, however, is noteworthy of the same hierarchization of Western European and Central/East European units. Since the ideas about the Confederation were used mainly to the second, their potential power was limited and their status “immature”, “second -rate” ones were assigned to them.
Finally, in addition to the transfer of the population, the guarantees of rights at the international level and federalization Frank identifies another noticeable approach to the “minority problem” - the movement of borders. This refers to the redistribution of the territory so that the boundaries of states coincide with the boundaries of the resettlement of different ethnic groups. Such proposals are often taken out for discussion, but usually one of the parties does not agree, finding the transfer of its territories unacceptable. However, there are cases when the state is ready to transfer part of the lands: this was, for example, in Czechoslovakia shortly before the outbreak of World War II, when the country agreed to convey the region of Sudet, hoping to prevent Nazi military aggression.
But from an analytical point of view, population transfer and alternatives can be considered not only in the context of the discourse about “minorities”, but also as cases of “management of differences”. The Turkish interdisciplinary researcher of Asly Isz addresses this wider and productive concept. The management of differences can be carried out by both military and bureaucratic methods. That is why such an analytical category makes it possible to put in one series of phenomena, which are more often considered as opposing each other: for example, wars and international measures that are aimed at preventing wars.
We talk about Russia's military invasion of Ukraine, protests and repression. We believe that now, when dozens of media have closed or ceased to cover the war, access to independent information is more important than ever.
How are the movements of the population and human rights related?
According to the British historian Matthew Frank, the era of the population transfers in international politics ended precisely because the idea of “human rights” took shape and was fixed at the united nations, which replaced the failed League of Nations. The proposals to use the tested mechanism were voiced in several difficult cases, but were not accepted. In international documents, forced resettlements are now really enshrined as practices that violate human rights.
On the other hand, Asly Isz claims that the idea of human rights is based on exactly the same prerequisites as the idea of a population of the population. It proves the problematicity of modern “humanism”, analyzing key international agreements and large cultural projects of international organizations, as well as Turkish state programs formulated by relying on international politics. The prerequisites on which they are based can be roughly called racism, or it is possible - more analytically accurately - segregation biopolitics.
Segregation biopolitics is also a form of management of differences. The radical types of segregation include the construction of walls on the borders, imprisonment in camps (for example, filtration ), a ban on moving. Visa modes are also a type of segregation. The characteristic of these measures as biopolitical implies that segregation, that is, separation in space, is based on the categorization of bodies. Many categories are racialized - for example, the origin, which is proved by turning to the pedigree. Also, biopolitical categories include ability to work, health, and crime indicators “in the family”.
As Madina Tlostanova and her colleagues in decolonial thought call the coloniality of the “revolutionary (dark) side of modernity”, so Isz writes that segregation biopolitics is the flip side of the liberal cultural policy. Isz considers three manifestations of the latter: liberal humanism, historicist humanism (or, in other words, a liberal approach to cultural identification) and liberal multiculturalism.
Attention to local particularities is priceless when describing local dynamics. However, in order to pose historically reasonable questions about the present, it is just as important to consider cases and the political history of transnational consents and collaborations
Liberal humanism appeals to the “universal essence” in order to form “unity in diversity”. Isz explains the logic of liberal humanism and its hidden contradictions on the example of the world -famous photo exhibition “Human Rod”. Pictures from 68 countries were distributed into 32 sections, which, according to the organizers, represented the most common components of human experience: birth, love, labor, laughter, dancing, sleep, singing, death, etc.
The "human race" opened in 1955 and toured around the world. In the same year, the Greek quarters in Istanbul were subjected to pogroms: the Istanbul Greeks did not fall under the exchange agreement, but after the pogroms they themselves massively fled from the city. According to the version recognized in the research environment, the pogroms were directed and sponsored by the government under the leadership of Adnan Menderes. Menderes was the first Turkish Prime Minister, who was chosen in direct elections after the transition to the multi-party system. The only photograph from Turkey at the “Human Rod” exhibition shows these same elections: a woman lowers the ballot into the urn. Thus, the exhibition has democratic structures among the “universal experience” (images of women in elections in France, Japan and China are also presented), but is silent about the fact that they can be associated with violence, whose history is rooted in the work of international organizations. In addition, in Turkey, women could vote already in the 1930s. True, the party was only one then.
Historical humanism turns to genealogy and archeology in order to build linear chains of continuity from "antiquity" to the present. In this logic, both projects at the level of entire nations-“heirs”, for example, antiquity, are unfolding-and the comprehension of family history with the help of genealogical ancients, the search for ancestors, etc. In the case of the consequences of the Greco-Turkish exchange, historicist humanism manifests itself, among other things among Turkish citizens of tourist trips to the alleged residence of the ancestors in the current Greek territory.
Liberal multiculturalism rearranges the emphasis from “unity” on “multipart”, while turning to a variety of cultural heritage (from art to meals), silenting its historical and political contexts. Multi -grinding is often close to the imperial model of cultural diversity: the empire does not strive for the complete equal of its components, but does not give out equal political rights to different groups.
An example of multiculturalism is the Mübadele Müzesi Museum, opened in 2010, when Istanbul received the status of one of the cultural capitals from the European Union. The museum is now working in a small tavern opened by Istanbul Greeks even before relocation, and for the project - restored. Long before its opening, at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s, in Turkey, a boom of interest in family history began, one of the driving forces of which was an organization called Foundation of Lausanne Treaty Emigrants (Emigrants of the Lausanne Treaty), which was later occupied by the museum. After the ultranationalist military dictatorship of the 1980s, Turkish citizens rejected their roots, studying the cultural heritage of different peoples that make up the Turkish society. Both the Turkish authorities (then more liberal than now) and European organizations sought using the Museum of Exchange and other projects in the status of the cultural capital of the European Union to present Istanbul as a space of diversity and tolerant coexistence.
Within the framework of liberal multiculturalism, it is assumed that the representation of the cultural heritage of different groups is enough for all they “forget about their injuries, history, experience of difficulties and violence <...> and cease to be lively evidence of political decisions and wounds that remained from them.” This is the characteristics of the anthropologist Elizabeth Provvylli, and Isz summarizes: roughly speaking, we need not only the holidays of food and dances, but also healing and construction work in those places that, after certain historical events, remained in the destroyed state. Now this is a rarity, and “success stories” about transfers of the population remain in the course - after all, if not for them, then there would be wars.
As Isz and other critics of European humanism writes, for a long time, international politics is largely determined by the logic of “choosing lesser evil”, which is justified by decisions in line with “segregation biopolitics” - if only there was no war
And what about Russia?
History - both manipulations with the past and the documentation of forgotten, not visible before events - also comes to the fore. Working with personal history and the pedigree, undoubtedly, is now gaining important - primarily in the context of the decolonial movement (see, for example, materials in the media launched after the start of the war about the Russian imperial project "trouble" ). Projecting projects with the focus on the return of historical heritage and even on the disclosure of Soviet policy of assimilation and forced resettlement - for example, in the field of art and theater, local history, etc. - you can not fall under the direct censorship, but at the same time confront state policy of “denacing” (unless, of course, such a project grows to the scale of the “memorial”).
But Icez is not in vain constantly returning to the difference between personal and collective, individual and group rights, as well as to the problematic of the idea of “visibility”.
The daily availability of cultural heritage, which is felt by its own , is a necessity, a need and even a source of pleasure. For people who still inhabit the territories controlled by Russia, the path to its heritage is often artificially elongated, and sometimes dangerous
On the other hand, the “visibility” or the availability of culture actually rarely directly leads to the expansion of economic capabilities or increase legal security, and sometimes, on the contrary, leads to the fact that many forms of collective rights are completely forgotten. For example, one of the forms in the spotlight today is territorial rights.
The movement of the population (like refugees from the war) is only a special case of forced migration. Since this mechanism was legalized, it is possible to write and study its history, but you should not focus only on it.
A conversation about the history of transfers of the population is needed to attract attention to other factors that make people leave their homes
Often they are less obvious, but also deeply rooted in structural relations between different social groups, as well as ideas about the “problem of minorities”, on the basis of which the practice of population transfers was formed and work with their consequences has now been organized.
The extreme conditions in which many resettlements occur are not comparable with the military. But who knows how many people would choose to leave the places where they were born and/or grew if structural relations allowed to remain without a threat to life or economic well -being?
In my opinion, Russian military aggression put forward the problem of forced migration into the center of attention. And if in the current reality to write a convincing unifying political program in wide strokes, it turns out what you need:
- neutralize factors that make people leave at home,
- Build systems that allow you to quickly gain new houses - with the least losses both in physical safety and at the level of emotions.
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