THE FATE OF THE SOVIET KURDS 1 The article examines the fate of Kurds who lived in the USSR and now live in the Russian Federation. The Russian authorities were able to legalize residence in the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories. Tambov region and other regions of the country of Kurd refugees from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia and create normal conditions for their life and activities. Today, Russian Kurds are one of the most socially and politically active diasporas, they have their own public organizations, media outlets, including in the Kurdish language, and maintain contacts with their fellow tribesmen abroad. Keywords: Soviet Kurds, Yezidis, Turkey, Iran, Transcaucasia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, assimilation, repressed peoples, Central Asia. The appearance of the first Kurdish tribes in Russia dates back to the XIII-XIV centuries. The well-known Soviet ethnographer T. F. Aristova in her historical and ethnographic essay "Kurds of Transcaucasia" cites interesting evidence from various sources [Aristova, 1966, p. 37] 2. Thus, at the end of 1807, Makhmad Sefi-sultan crossed the Russian-Iranian border with 600 Kurdish families and settled in the Karabakh Khanate (Averyanov, 1900, p. 24). The ancestor of the Chelabias Kurds who lived in Karadag appealed to the Russian authorities with a request to allow about a thousand Kurdish families to settle on the territory of Transcaucasia [ibid., p. 31]. In 1855, several Kurdish tribes crossed the Russian-Turkish border and accepted Russian citizenship [Makhmudov, 1959, p. 214]. Many Kurdish families moved from Iran to Nakhchivan and Surmali counties (Khalfin, 1963, p. 114). With the annexation of Georgia to the Russian Empire (1801) and the predominantly Kurdish khanates of Ganja, Karabakh, and Sheki, "Russia began to have Kurds among its peoples" (Averyanov, 1900, p.24). Separate Kurdish families and tribal groups found themselves on the territory of Transcaucasia during the two Russo-Persian wars (1 ... Read more