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June deportation

The June deportation of 1941 (Estonian: juuniküüditamine, Latvian: jūnija deportācijas, Lithuanian: birželio trėmimai) was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940 – into the interior of the Soviet Union.

The June deportation was ordered by the Soviet dictator Stalin, and organized following formal guidelines set by the NKVD with the Soviet Interior People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria as the senior executor. 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”. The NKVD and Red Army units carried out the arrests, often in collaboration with the Soviet police and local Communist Party members.

Background

The June deportations were part of a much larger history of depopulation. The "Stalin deportations" from 1928-1953 targeted 13 different nationalities. The June Deportation marked the first industrialized deportations, using rail.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were invaded and occupied, and thereafter annexed, by the Soviet Union in June 1940, in less than a year after Poland and the Baltic countries had been divided into "spheres of influence" between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the 23 August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In June 1940 the three independent Baltic countries were occupied by the Soviet Red army and new pro-Soviet puppet governments were installed. Mass deportation campaigns began almost immediately and included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.

Deportations

Planning for mass deportations began as far back as 1939. The deportation took place from May 22 to June 20, 1941, just before the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. The operations began May 22 in Ukraine and Poland, June 12 and 13 in Moldova, June 14 in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, and June 19 and 20 in Belarus.

The goal of the deportations was to remove political opponents of the Soviet government, not to strengthen security in preparation for the German attack. The NKVD framed the deportees as anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionaries, and criminal elements. The fourth wave of mass deportations in occupied Poland and deportations in Ukraine were both intended to combat the "counter-revolutionary" Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The deportation program served three Soviet goals: to remove dissidents, to change composition of population through Russian migration, and to have cheap slave labor in Gulag camps.

The June deportation campaigns resulted in genocidal levels of depopulation. The goal of depopulation was often reflected by NKVD 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."

The procedure for the deportations was approved by Ivan Serov in the Serov Instructions. People were deported without trials in whole families, which were then split. Men were generally imprisoned and most of them died in Siberia in Gulag camps. Women and children were resettled in forced settlements in Omsk and Novosibirsk Oblasts, Krasnoyarsk, Tajikistan, Altai Krais, and Kazakhstan. Thousands of people were stuffed into cattle cars, usually 30–40 under unsanitary conditions leading to casualties, especially among elderly and children. 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%.

Following Stalin's death in 1953, Khrushchev began a program of limited return. In Lithuania, for example, 17,000 people returned by 1956 and 80,000 returned by 1970. Many people deemed nationalist or of non-white ethnic descent were not allowed to return until the 1980s. When survivors did return they faced discrimination and loss of property.

Number of deportees

The number of deported people include:

Remembrance

Baltic States hold a day of remembrance on June 14. In Latvia this is the Commemoration Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide.

The Day of Remembrance began following the National Awakening movement in the 1980s. On 14 June 1987, the human rights group Helsinki-86 organized a flower laying ceremony at the Freedom Monument to commemorate the victims of the 1941 deportations. In 1993 the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (LOM) was founded which organized efforts around Remembrance Days. In Estonia the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory leads vigils on June 14 and March 25.

In media

The June deportation has been the subject of several Baltic films from the 2010s. The 2013 Lithuanian film The Excursionist dramatised the events through the depiction of a 10-year-old girl who escapes from her camp. Estonia's 2014 In the Crosswind is an essay film based on the memoirs of a woman who was deported to Siberia, and is told through staged tableaux vivants filmed in black-and-white. Estonia's Ülo Pikkov also addressed the events in the animated short film Body Memory (Kehamälu) from 2012. Latvia's The Chronicles of Melanie was released in 2016 and is, just like In the Crosswind, based on the memoirs of a woman who experienced the deportation, but is told in a more conventional dramatic way.