Ask Lemmygrad

I can't recall whether this applies to Tatars.

According to Grover Furr, some mass deportations in the USSR during WWII were intended to prevent genocide.

The logic being that if you only relocate the young men who are liable to e.g. fight for the Axis powers or sabotage the Allied effort, you would effectively destroy the people. The young women would not be able to have children or marry, etc, unless they partnered with young men from a different ethnicity, tribe, culture, etc, which may involves abandoning or changing traditions, languages, practices, cuisine.

To keep a way of life alive, so to speak, the only way is to keep those people together. If one or two of the group need to be relocated, fine. What do you do when e.g. 10,000 young men out of 100,000 total population need to be kept away from Nazi influence? Just relocating the 10,000 likely means a massively reduced birthrate for however long. And if the timing is misjudged, no more group. I.e. they've become victims of genocide.