The Repatriation of Cossacks or "Betrayal of the Cossacks" occurred when Cossacks, ethnic Russians and Ukrainians who were opposed to the Soviet Union (such as by fighting for Germany) were handed over by British and US forces to the Soviet Union after World War II. Near the end of the war, many Cossacks fled to western Europe, fearing the Red Army, in hopes of surrendering instead to the military forces of the United States or the UK. Once they were arrested by the Allies, they were packed into small trains and were promised to be sent to the West. Unbeknownst to them, they were instead being sent to the Soviet Union. Many men, women, and children were sent to the Gulag camps, and many were worked to death. The repatriations were agreed to in the Yalta Conference; Joseph Stalin claimed the prisoners were Soviet citizens as of 1939, although many of them had left Russia before or soon after the end of the Russian Civil War or had been born abroad, hence never holding Soviet citizenship. Most of those Cossacks and Russians fought the Allies, specifically the Soviets, in service to the Axis powers, yet the repatriations included non-combatant civilians as well. Motivations varied, but the primary reasons were the brutal repression of Cossacks by the Soviet government, e.g., the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation and, ultimately, the Soviet famine of 1932–33. General Poliakov and Colonel Chereshneff referred to it as the "massacre of Cossacks at Lienz". Background During the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Cossack leaders and their governments generally sided with the White movement. As a result, the majority of Cossack soldiers were mobilized against the Red Army. As the Soviets emerged victorious in the civil war, many Cossack veterans, fearing reprisals and the Bolsheviks’ de-Cossackization policies, fled abroad to countries in Central and Western Europe. In exile, they formed their own anti-communist organisations or joined other Russian émigré groups such as the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS). The Cossacks who remained in Russia endured more than a decade of continual repression, e.g., the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation and, ultimately, the Soviet famine of 1932–33. The repressions ceased and some privileges were restored after publication