59 ETHNIC COMMUNITIES WERE DEPORTED IN STALIN-ERA USSR








MOSCOW, March 13. /Natalia Byrkina, RIA Novosti Correspondent/. During the era of political repression, 59 ethnic communities of the former USSR saw some or all of their members subjected to forceful deportation on the ground of their ethnic identity, Yelena Tanenberg, deputy head of the Interior Ministry's Center for the Rehabilitation of Political Repression Victims, told reporters at a briefing held in the Interior Ministry on Tuesday.


	According to her, 11 ethnic communities of the former USSR were deported en masse, with the remaining 48 seeing many of their individual members deported.


	Tanenberg said Russia's ethnic Germans made two-thirds of the rehabilitated. Other rehabilitated victims include Kalmyks, Karachayevs, Chechens, Ingushs and Crimean Tatars.