Post by Sandhurst on Nov 16, 2021 17:30:19 GMT
Soviet repression and deportations in the Baltic states
Hundreds of thousands of innocent people became the victims of two Soviet occupations of the Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The two occasions on which the Baltic states were forcibly joined to the Soviet Union had an especially tragic impact on their inhabitants. Many were executed, imprisoned or sent to Gulag camps, though the largest number of victims comprised those deported from their homelands to inhospitable corners of Soviet Russia. Such deportations took place regularly. However, the biggest waves of deportation took place in 1941 (the so-called June deportations) and in 1949 (known as the March deportations, these occurred as part of Operation Priboi).
In the summer of 1940 after the war with Finland was over, the Soviet terror apparatus annexed the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; this was against the will of the people of those states.
A week before Barbarossa the NKVD purged the Baltic states of the most active anti Soviet forces. During that week, NKVD organs jailed or deported an estimated 34,000 men, women and children (often entire families) from Lithuania, 15,500 from Latvia (including 2,400 children under the age of 10) and 10,000 from Estonia.
Deportations continued until Reich forces pushed back the Soviets. Until that time the deportations were as follows:
34,000 in Latvia, 60,000 in Estonia and 75,000 in Lithuania. This is 169 000 people uprooted and sent to the Russian interior, where many perished.
The German attack on the Soviet Union showed that the Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries had brought their populations far more deprivation than benefit. Regardless of traditional anti-German sentiment in the three countries, the majority of the population initially viewed the advancing German army as liberators.
After the war the deportations continued once the Baltic states were again taken into Soviet custody. The total number of deportees in the period 1944โ1952 is estimated at 124,000 for Estonia, 136,000 for Latvia and 245,000 for Lithuania; 505 000 people.
The total deportations amount to 674 thousand people; this is just from the Baltic states. Poland and Belarus account for considerably more.