June deportation

The June deportation (Estonian: juuniküüditamine, Latvian: jūnija deportācijas, Lithuanian: birželio trėmimai) was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people from the territories which were occupied in 1940–1941: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, occupied Ukraine, and occupied Poland (mostly present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine), and Moldavia by the Soviet Union.^[1]

This mass deportation was organized following the guidelines set by the NKVD^[2] with the USSR Interior People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria as the senior executor.^[3] The official name of the top secret operation was “Resolution On the Eviction of the Socially Foreign Elements from the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldova”.^[4] The Soviet police, called "militsya", carried out the arrests with the collaboration of local Communist Party members.^[5]

Background

The June Deportations were a campaign in a much larger history of depopulation.^[6] The "Stalin Deportations" from 1928-1953 lead to genocide of 13 different nationalities.^[7]

The Baltic States were annexed into the Soviet Union in 1940 following an invasion after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany.^[8] In June 1940 the Baltic States were forced into accepting Soviet Rule and puppet regimes were installed.^[9] Mass deportation campaigns began almost immediately and included the Baltic States, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova.^[10]

The colonization of occupied Ukraine and Poland began in modern times with the First Partition of Poland in 1791 ^[11] and the Annexation of the Crimean Khanate by the Russian Empire in 1783.^[12] The Russian Empire had carried out depopulation and resttlement efforts in the past such as the Emigration of Christians from the Crimea in 1778.^[13] The June Deportation marked the first industrialized deportations using rail.^[14]

The deportations

The deportation took place from May 22 to June 20, 1941,^[15] just before the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and involved close to a half million people being relocated to interior Soviet Union.^[16] The goal of the deportations was to remove political opponents of the Soviet government, not to strengthen security in preparation for the German attack.^[17] The NKVD framed the deportees as anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionaries, and criminal elements.^[18][19] In fact in occupied Poland, the fourth wave of mass deportations^[20] and in Ukraine, both intended to combat the "counter-revolutionary" Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.^[19][21] The deportation program served three Soviet goals: removal of dissident, change composition of population through Russian migration, and getting access to cheap slave labor in Gulags.^[22] The Operations began May 22 in Ukraine and Poland, June 12 and 13 in Moldova, June 14th in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, and June 19th and 20 in Belarus.^[23]

The June Deportation campaigns resulted in genocidal levels of depopulation.^[24] but planning for mass deportations began as far back as 1939.^[25] 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."^[26] The deportation took place a year after the occupation and annexation of the Baltic states and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina^[19]

The procedure for the deportations was approved by Ivan Serov in the Serov Instructions. People were deported without trials in whole families who were then split.^[20] In fact the instructions instructions included paragraphs on how to "separate deportees from a head of a family."^[27] Thousands of people were stuffed into Cattle Cars, usually 30-40 under unsanitary conditions leading to massive casualties, especially among elderly and children.^[28] Men were generally imprisoned and most of them died in Siberia in labor and prison camps referred to as a Gulag. Women and children were resettled in forced settlements^[17] in Omsk and Novosibirsk Oblasts, Krasnoyarsk, Tajikistan,Altai Krais, and Kazakhstan.^[15] The mortality rate among the Estonian deportees was estimated at 60%.^[17]

Following Stalin's death in 1953 Khrushchev began a program of limited return.^[29] In Lithuania, for example, 17,000 people returned by 1956 and 80,000 returned by 1970.^[30]Many people deemed Nationalist or of non-white ethnic descent were not allowed to return until 1980s.^[31] When survivors did return they faced discrimination and loss of property.^[32]

Number of deportees

The number of deported people include:

Pre-war country	Number of deportees
	To forced settlements^[33] (from official NKVD reports)	To prison camps and forced settlements	Upper Boundary
Estonia	5,978	10,000 to 11,000^[17]
Latvia	9,546^[34]	15,000^[34]
Lithuania	10,187	17,500^[35]
Poland	11,329 (Western Ukraine) 22,353 (Western Belarus)	24,412 (Western Belarus)^[36]	200,000 to 300,000^[33]^[20]
Romania^a	24,360		300,000^[37]
^a Moldavia as well as Chernivtsi Oblast and Izmail Oblast of Ukraine

Remembrance

 

Memorial event in Tallinn in 1989

 

2023 June Deportation Remembrance Day Lithuania

Baltic States hold a day of remembrance on June 14.^[38][39] In Latvia this is the Commemoration Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide.^[40]

The Day of Remembrance began following the National Awakening movement in the 1980s.^[41] 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.^[42] In 1993 the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (LOM) was founded which organized efforts around Remembrance Days.^[43] In Estonia the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory leads vigils on June 14 and March 25.^[44]

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.^[45]

See also

• Soviet deportations from Estonia
• Soviet deportations from Latvia
• Soviet deportations from Lithuania
• Commemoration Day for the Victims of Communist Genocide

References

1. Švedas, Aurimas (2020-12-09). "Narratives of Exile and Identity: Soviet Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States, eds. Violeta Davoliūtė, Tomas Balkelis, Budapest-New York: Central European University Press, 2018. 220 pp. ISBN 978-963-386-183-7". Lithuanian Historical Studies. 24 (1): 262–264. doi:10.30965/25386565-02401021. ISSN 1392-2343. S2CID 230572283.
2. Иванов, Александр (2020). "Narratives of Exile and Identity: Soviet Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States ed. by Violeta Davoliūtė and Tomas Balkelis". Ab Imperio. 2020 (2): 289–295. doi:10.1353/imp.2020.0047. ISSN 2164-9731. S2CID 226516659.
3. Vardys, V. Stanley (1966). "How the Baltic Republics Fare in the Soviet Union". Foreign Affairs. 44 (3): 512–517. doi:10.2307/20039184. ISSN 0015-7120. JSTOR 20039184.
4. Kašauskienė, Vanda (1998-11-30). "Deporatations From Lithuania Under Stalin. 1940-1953". Lithuanian Historical Studies. 3 (1): 73–82. doi:10.30965/25386565-00301004. ISSN 1392-2343.
5. 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. ISSN 2228-3897.
6. Kohut, Andriy (2020-06-19). "Soviet deportations of OUN family members from Western Ukraine in 1940–1952". Acta Historica Neosoliensia. 23 (1): 72–90. doi:10.24040/ahn.2020.23.01.72-90. ISSN 1336-9148. S2CID 225706844.
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