The amnesty was applied first for those who had been sentenced for a term of at most 5 years and had been prosecuted for non-political articles in the Soviet Criminal Code (for example, children of those repressed on political grounds were often prosecuted as "antisocial elements", i.e., on the same grounds as prostitutes). In 1954, the government began to release many [[political prisoner]]s from [[Gulag]] labor camps.

 

 

Several entire nationality groups had been deported to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia during [[population transfer in the Soviet Union|population transfer]]; these were also rehabilitated in the late 1950s. The government allowed many of those groups to return to their former homelands and restored their former autonomous regions. It did not restore territory to the [[Volga Germans]] and [[Crimean Tatars]].<ref>Robert Conquest, ''The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities'' (London: MacMillan, 1970) (ISBN 0-333-10575-3); S. Enders Wimbush and Ronald Wixman, "The Meskhetian Turks: A New Voice in Central Asia," ''Canadian Slavonic Papers'' 27, Nos. 2 and 3 (Summer and Fall, 1975): 320–340; and [[Alexander Nekrich]], ''The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978) (ISBN 0-393-00068-0).</ref>