The June deportation was ordered by the Soviet dictatorStalin, and organized following formal guidelines set by theNKVD[2] with the Soviet Interior People's CommissarLavrentiy Beria as the senior executor.[3] The official title of the top secret document was “Resolution On the Eviction of the Socially Foreign Elements from the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldova”.[4] TheNKVD andRed Army units carried out the arrests, often in collaboration with the Soviet police and local Communist Party members.[5]
The June deportations were part of a much larger history of depopulation.[6] The "Stalin deportations" from 1928-1953 targeted 13 different nationalities.[7] The June Deportation marked the first industrialized deportations, using rail.[8]
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were invaded and occupied, and thereafter annexed, by the Soviet Union in June 1940, less than a year after Poland and theBaltic countries had been divided into "spheres of influence" between the Soviet Union andNazi Germany in the 23 August 1939Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[9] In June 1940, the three independent Baltic countries were occupied by the SovietRed army and new pro-Soviet puppet governments were installed.[10] Mass deportation campaigns began almost immediately and included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.[4]
Planning for mass deportations began as far back as 1939.[4] The deportation took place from 22 May to 20 June 1941,[11] just before theinvasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.[12] The operations began 22 May in Ukraine and Poland, 12-13 June in Moldova, 14 June in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, and 19-20 June in Belarus.[2]
The goal of the deportations was to remove political opponents of the Soviet government, not to strengthen security in preparation for the German attack.[13] The NKVD framed the deportees as anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionaries, and criminal elements.[4][14] The fourth wave of mass deportations in occupiedPoland[15] and deportations inUkraine were both intended to combat the "counter-revolutionary"Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.[14][16] The deportation program served three Soviet goals: to remove dissidents, to change composition of population through Russian migration, and to have cheap slave labor inGulag camps.[4]
The June deportation campaigns resulted in genocidal levels of depopulation.[17] The goal of depopulation was often reflected byNKVD officials carrying out deportations. For example, in Lithuania, the Lutherans, wealthy, academics, and Nationalists were targeted. Lithuanian affairs commissioner Mikhail Suslov declared "There will be Lithuania – but without Lithuanians."[18][unreliable source?]
The procedure for the deportations was approved byIvan Serov in theSerov Instructions. People were deported without trials in whole families, which were then split.[15][19] Men were generally imprisoned and most of them died inSiberia in Gulag camps. Women and children were resettled inforced settlements[13] inOmsk andNovosibirsk Oblasts,Krasnoyarsk,Tajikistan,Altai Krais, andKazakhstan.[11] Thousands of people were stuffed into cattle cars, usually 30–40 under unsanitary conditions, leading to casualties, especially among the elderly and children.[20] Due to poor living conditions at the destination, the mortality rate was very high. For example, the mortality rate among the Estonian deportees was estimated at 60%.[13]
FollowingStalin's death in 1953,Khrushchev began a program of limited return.[7] In Lithuania, for example, 17,000 people returned by 1956 and 80,000 returned by 1970.[21] Many people deemed nationalist or of non-white ethnic descent were not allowed to return until the 1980s.[22] When survivors did return, they faced discrimination and loss of property.[23]
The Day of Remembrance began following the National Awakening movement in the 1980s.[31] On 14 June 1987, the human rights groupHelsinki-86 organized a flower laying ceremony at the Freedom Monument to commemorate the victims of the 1941 deportations.[31] In 1993, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (LOM) was founded, which organized efforts around Remembrance Days.[30] In Estonia, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory leads vigils on 14 June and 25 March.[23]
The June deportation has been the subject of several Baltic films from the 2010s. The 2013 Lithuanian filmThe Excursionist dramatised the events through the depiction of a 10-year-old girl who escapes from her camp. Estonia's 2014In the Crosswind is an essay film based on the memoirs of a woman who was deported to Siberia, and is told through stagedtableaux vivants filmed in black-and-white. Estonia'sÜlo Pikkov also addressed the events in the animated short filmBody Memory (Kehamälu) from 2012. Latvia'sThe Chronicles of Melanie was released in 2016 and is, just likeIn the Crosswind, based on the memoirs of a woman who experienced the deportation, but is told in a more conventional dramatic way.[32]
^Saueauk, Meelis (2015-12-21). ""Erikaader": nomenklatuur ja julgeolekuorganid Eesti NSV-s 1940–1953 [Abstract: "Special cadre": the nomenklatura system and the state security organs in the era of Stalinist rule in the Estonian SSR 1940–1953]". Ajalooline Ajakiri. The Estonian Historical Journal (4): 407.doi:10.12697/aa.2015.4.04.ISSN2228-3897.
^Hiden, John; Salmon, Patrick (1994).The Baltic nations and Europe: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the twentieth century (rev. ed.). London New York: Longman.ISBN978-0-582-25650-7.
^Pohl, J.O. (2012). "Soviet apartheid: Stalin's ethnic deportations, special settlement restrictions, and the labor army: The case of the ethnic Germans in the USSR".Human Rights Review.13 (2):205–224.doi:10.1007/s12142-011-0215-x.S2CID255519700.
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