A series of mass deportations from Soviet-occupied Estonia was carried out in 1941 and 1945–1953 by Joseph Stalin's government. The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three occupied Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In addition, there were Soviet deportations from Estonia based on the victims' ethnicity (Germans in 1945 and Ingrian Finns in 1947–1950) and religion (Jehovah's Witnesses in 1951). Ethnic Estonians who had been residing in Soviet Russia (mostly in the Leningrad Oblast) had already been subjected to deportation since 1935.The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies Oxford University Press Inc. 2010; retrieved 9 May 2013.
People were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union, predominantly to Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, by means of railroad cattle cars. Entire families, including children and the elderly, were deported without trial or prior announcement. Of March 1949 deportees, over 70% of people were women and children under the age of 16.
In total, over 35,000 of "enemies of the people", individual persons and whole families, were deported during 1945-1953, of which 33,000 were deported during the March deportation of 1949 (Operation Priboi). Their names were compiled into lists by the Estonian Repressed Persons' Records Bureau.NAME LIST OF PERSONS DEPORTED FROM ESTONIA 1945–1953, p. 12
The Estonian Internal Security Service has brought to justice several organizers of these events. The deportations have been repeatedly declared to constitute a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Estonia and acknowledged as such by the European Court of Human Rights.
June deportation of 1941
In Estonia, as well as in other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939–40, the first large-scale deportation of ordinary citizens was carried out by the local operational headquarters of the NKGB of the Estonian SSR under Boris Kumm (chairman), Andres Murro, Aleksei Shkurin, Veniamin Gulst, and Rudolf James, according to the top secret joint decree No 1299-526ss Directive on the Deportation of the Socially Alien Element from the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and MoldaviaПостановление ЦК ВКП(б) и СНК СССР от 14 мая 1941 г. за N 1299-526сс «Директива о выселении социально-чуждого элемента из республик Прибалтики, Западной Украины и Западной Белоруссии и Молдавии». Published in Николай Бугай (ред., 2005) Народы стран Балтии в условиях сталинизма (1940-е – 1950-е годы). Документированная история [Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 11]. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag. pp. 103-04; .According to this decree, the following categories should be transferred: (1) active members of so-called counterrevolutionary organisations and members of their families; (2) former leading officials of the police and prisons, as well as ordinary policemen and prison guards involved in anti-soviet activity or espionage; (3) former significant landowners, merchants, factory owners and leading officials of former governments – all with the members of their families; (4) compromised former officers; (5) the family members of the sentenced to death and of members of counterrevolutionary organisations gone into hiding; (6) individuals repatriated from Germany and subject to resettlement in Germany; (7) refugees from the annexed Polish areas who refused to accept Soviet citizenship; (8) active criminals; (9) prostitutes. by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union of 14 May 1941.Conclusions of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity , historycommission.ee; accessed 13 December 2016. The deportation procedure was established by the Serov Instructions.
The first repressions in Estonia affected Estonia's national elite. On 17 July 1940, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces Johan Laidoner (died 1953, Vladimir prison) and his family, and on 30 July 1940, President Konstantin Päts (died 1956, Kalinin Oblast) and his family were deported to Penza and Ufa, respectively. In 1941 they were arrested. The country's political and military leadership was deported almost entirely, including 10 of 11 ministers and 68 of 120 members of parliament.
On 14 June 1941, and the following two days, 9,254 to 10,861 people, mostly urban residents, of them over 5,000 women and over 2,500 children under 16,Kareda, Endel (1949). Estonia in the Soviet Grip: Life and Conditions under Soviet Occupation 1947–1949. London: Boreas.Uustalu, Evald (1952). The History of Estonian People, London: Boreas.Laar, Mart (2006). Deportation from Estonia in 1941 and 1949 , Estonia Today: Fact Sheet of the Press and Information Department, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (June 2006).70th anniversary of deportation and uprising of 1941, The Baltic Times, 29 June 2011; retrieved 6 May 2013.The Soviet Occupation of Estonia in 1940-1941 , mnemosyne.ee; retrieved 6 May 2013. 439 Jews (more than 10% of the Estonian Jewish population) were deported, mostly to Kirov Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast or to prisons.
Only 4,331 persons returned to Estonia. 11,102 people were to be deported from Estonia according to the order of 13 June but some managed to escape. Identical deportations were carried out in Latvia and Lithuania at the same time. A few weeks later, approximately 1,000 people were arrested on Saaremaa for deportation, but this was interrupted as Nazi Germany launched a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Union and a considerable number of the prisoners were freed by the advancing German forces.
The first wave of deportation has always been well documented, as many witnesses were subsequently able to flee abroad during the Second World War. Deportations after 1944 were, however, much harder to document.
In July 1941 Estonia was conquered by Nazi Germany, who were forced out by the Soviet troops in 1944. As soon as the Soviets had returned the deportations resumed. In August 1945, 407 persons, most of them of German descent, were transferred from Estonia to Perm Oblast. 18 families (51 persons) were transferred to Tyumen Oblast in October (51 persons), 37 families (87 persons) in November and other 37 families (91 persons) in December 1945 as "traitors".Estonia's Occupations Revisited: Accounts of an Era (compiled by Heiki Ahonen) . Tallinn: Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation, 2004; .
March deportation of 1949
During the collectivization period in the Baltic republics, on 29 January 1949, the Council of Ministers issued top secret decree No. 390–138ss,Постановление Совета Министров СССР от 29 января 1949 г. №390-138сс «О выселении с территории Литвы, Латвии и Эстонии кулаков с семьями, семей бандитов и националистов, находящихся на нелегальном положении, убитых при вооруженных столкновениях и осужденных, легализованных бандитов, продолжающих вести вражескую работу, и их семей, а также семей репрессированных пособников бандитов». which obligated the Ministry for State Security (MGB) to exile the kulaks and the people's enemies from the three Baltic Republics forever.
In the early morning of 25 March 1949, the second major wave of deportation from the Baltic Republics, operation "Priboi", carried out by MGB began, which was planned to affect 30,000 in Estonia, including peasants. Lieutenant General Pyotr Burmak, commander of the MGB Internal Troops, was in generally charge for the operation. In Estonia the deportations were coordinated by Boris Kumm, Minister of Security of the Estonian SSR, and Major General Ivan Yermolin, MGB representative to Estonia. Over 8,000 managed to escape, but 20,722 (7,500 families, over 2.5 percent of the Estonian population, half of them women, over 6,000 children under the age of 16, and 4,300 men) were sent to Siberia during three days. Slightly more than 10 percent were men of working age. The deported included disabled people, pregnant women, newborns and children separated from their parents. The youngest deportee was one-day-old Virve Eliste from Hiiumaa island, who died a year later in Siberia; the oldest was 95-year-old Maria Raagel. Nine trainloads of people were directed to Novosibirsk Oblast, six to Krasnoyarsk Krai, two to Omsk Oblast, and two to Irkutsk Oblast.
Many perished, most have never returned home. This second wave of the large-scale deportations was aimed to facilitate collectivization, which was implemented with great difficulties in the Baltic republics. As a result, by the end of April 1949, half of the remaining individual farmers in Estonia had joined kolkhozes.Misiunas, Romuald J. & Rein Taagepera.Collectivization of Estonian Agriculture Estonica; retrieved 9 May 2013."The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940-1990" (1993), estonica.org; retrieved 9 May 2013.
From 1948–50, a number of Ingrian Finns were also deported from Estonian SSR. The last large-scale campaign of deportations from Estonia took place in 1951, when members of prohibited religious groups from the Baltic countries, Moldavia, Western Ukraine and Belarus were subject to forced resettlement.
Continuous deportation
Outside the main waves, individuals and families were continually deported on smaller scale from the start of the first occupation in 1940 up to the Khrushchev Thaw of 1956. The Soviet deportations only stopped for three years in 1941–1944 when Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany.
Estonians' experience with the first year of Soviet occupation, which included the June deportation, led to two significant developments: It motivated a major wave of refugees leaving Estonia, mostly by ships over the Baltic Sea in late 1944, after the news about Nazi Germany's withdrawal became public. Some 70,000 people are known to have arrived in their destination; an unknown number perished due to the autumn storms and naval warfare.The Estonian State Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression The White Book p. 30, Parliament; accessed 13 December 2016. It incentivised many Estonians, who had previously been rather skeptical about joining German army (between January 1943 and February 1944, about 4000 people, mostly male, over half of them below 24 years old, i.e. draftable, had fled to FinlandThe Estonian State Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression The White Book p. 29, Parliament; accessed 13 December 2016.) to join the recently created foreign legions of Waffen-SS, to still try to keep Red Army off Estonian soil and thus, avoid a new Soviet occupation.
Only in 1956, during Khrushchev Thaw, were some survived deportees allowed to return to Estonia.
Legal status
On 27 July 1950, diplomats-in-exile of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania appealed to the United States to support a United Nations investigation of "genocidal mass deportations" they said were being carried out in their countries by the Soviet Union.GENOCIDE IN BALTIC BY SOVIET CHARGED; Envoys of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia Call on U.S. to Urge U.N. Investigation, The New York Times, 28 July 1950, pg. 7
Soviet acknowledgment of Stalin's deportations Stalin's deportation of peoples was criticized in the closed section of Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as "monstrous acts" and "rude violations of the basic Leninist principles of the nationality policy of the Soviet state."Nikita KhrushchevSpecial Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956), trussel.com; accessed 13 December 2016.