Deportation from Estonia

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Tallinn athletes demand "spontaneously" to join the Soviet Union. Beginning of the Soviet occupation of Estonia (Tallinn, Freedom Square, July 17, 1940)

With the Soviet occupation of Estonia from the summer of 1940, the Stalinist terror also reached the country. As in other Soviet-occupied areas, a major feature of the regime was the forcible resettlement of population groups. The main goals were the elimination of actual or supposed opponents of the regime, the intimidation of the population, the enforcement of forced collectivization and the Russification of the occupied territories. The deportations of large parts of the Estonian population to the inner areas of the Soviet Union from 1940 until the death of Stalin have left deep traces in the historical memory of Estonia to this day.

prehistory

In the secret additional protocol of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, Hitler and Stalin defined their spheres of interest in Central Europe and divided the continent among themselves. Estonia, like eastern Poland, Latvia , Lithuania and Finland, was added to the Soviet Union. On June 17, 1940, Soviet troops occupied Estonia , Latvia, and Lithuania. In Tallinn , the Soviet party leader from Leningrad , Andrei Zhdanov , de facto took power.

The new Stalinist rulers immediately tried to consolidate their rule with coercive measures. The Estonian political organizations were banned, associations and the media were brought into line and a puppet government was set up under the communist Johannes Vares .

The Soviet terror was directed primarily against the country's previous political, military, economic and cultural elite, but also against national minorities such as Jews and exiled Russians who had fled to western countries after the October Revolution . The Soviet security organs, together with their local accomplices, had been compiling lists of names of potentially anti-Soviet people since the early 1930s.

Occupation of Estonia and Soviet Terror

As early as June 1940, the first Estonians were arrested on the basis of these lists and subjected to reprisals. On July 17, 1940, the Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian Armed Forces , Johan Laidoner , and his wife were deported to Penza in the interior of the Soviet Union . On July 30, 1940, the Estonian President Konstantin Päts and his family were deported to Ufa .

On August 6, 1940, Estonia became part of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1940, the Soviet rulers had more than 1,000 Estonians arrested or executed. Shortly afterwards, concrete preparations began for the planned mass deportations of the leading classes in Estonia. The Soviet authorities had already used this method in Ukraine and Belarus . With the top secret directive of the Central Committee of the CPSU No. 1299-526 of May 14, 1941, the deportations from the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were “legally” ordered.

June 1941

On the night of June 13-14, 1941, the first Soviet mass deportation rolled into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bukovina and Bessarabia. According to prepared lists, armed arrest teams abducted people from their homes without warning or charge. In the Estonian SSR , 11,102 people were scheduled for deportation; they were given an hour to pack their essentials. They were brought in trucks to collection points at train stations in Tallinn-Kopli , Pääsküla , Haapsalu , Keila , Tamsalu , Narva , Petseri , Valga , Tartu and Jõgeva , where 490 cattle wagons were already ready for transport.

Most of the families were separated at the assembly points. The adult men were "loaded" into wagons marked A, and women and children into wagons marked B, as it was called in Soviet jargon. According to NKVD records, 9,156 people were transported into the interior of the Soviet Union between June 14 and 17, 1941 ; however, the exact number is likely to be higher. Among the deportees were around 7,000 women, children or the elderly; a quarter of those displaced were children under the age of 16. The Estonian Jews were hit harder than the average, of whom 400 were deported; this corresponds to around 10% of the then Jewish population of Estonia.

July 1941

From June 30 to July 1, 1941, deportations also took place on the West Estonian islands. 654 residents of Saaremaa alone fell victim to the measures.

Fate of the deportees

At the end of 1941, the men deported to the Soviet prison camps were brought before investigative committees. Hundreds of them were sentenced to death and shot. Most of the women and children were deported to Kirov Oblast and Novosibirsk Oblast , where many died from malnutrition, the cold and from forced labor . According to Estonian information, only 4,311 of the deportees returned to Estonia.

The total number of those deported by the Soviet authorities from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Bessarabia in 1941 was 95,000.

German occupation 1941–1944

In 1941 the German Wehrmacht occupied the Baltic States during the war against the Soviet Union. The German troops established a terror regime there against alleged Soviet collaborators, opponents of the German occupation regime, Jews, Russians, Roma and other groups.

August 1945

With the looming defeat of Germany in World War II , the Red Army recaptured all of Estonia in 1944 and began retaliatory measures and consolidation of their power. On August 15, 1945, the Soviet security forces deported 407 people to the Komi ASSR in northwestern Russia, most of them of Baltic German origin.

March 1949

In 1946 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia (EKP) again called for the removal of communist opponents of the regime out of the country. This should also consolidate collectivizations in economic life and eliminate “ kulaks ”. The secret preparations for the action lasted over two years. On March 25, 1949, a new wave of deportations passed through the country. Within a few days, 20,722 Estonians (around 3% of the population at the time) were surprisingly arrested and deported to Siberia. As in 1941, the chief organizer of the great wave of deportations in 1949 was the Estonian communist Boris Kumm (1897–1958), who until 1950 directed the Soviet security authorities in Estonia.

Due to poor preparation and chaotic execution, around a third of the Estonians on the deportation lists could not be arrested at the end of March 1949 and initially go into hiding. “In order to fill the quota” (EKP party leader Nikolai Karotamm ), other people were arbitrarily picked up and deported.

The majority of the deportees were women (49.4%) and children (29.8%). About 5,000 Estonians were brought to the Krasnoyarsk Territory and Omsk Oblast , where the Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons test site had been located since 1949 . Numerous deportees were irradiated there or gave birth to disabled children.

April 1951

The last wave of deportations in the Estonian SSR took place in April 1951. 353 Estonian Jehovah's Witnesses and their families were deported to Siberia by the Soviet security forces.

Return and work up

Memorial in Paldiski for those deported in 1941 and 1949

It was not until the end of the 1950s that the survivors of the deportations from Siberia were able to return to Estonia in the course of de-Stalinization . Most of them remained in the crosshairs of the security authorities. The property seized in the 1940s has not been returned. The deportees were not rehabilitated until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonian independence was regained.

In 1998 the Estonian President Lennart Meri , himself a survivor of the 1941 deportation with his father Georg Meri , set up a historical commission ( Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity ) under the leadership of the Finnish diplomat Max Jakobson , which investigated crimes against humanity should investigate the Soviet and German occupation of Estonia.

On February 18, 2002, the Estonian Parliament ( Riigikogu ) declared deportation a crime against humanity . June 14 (1941) and March 25 (1949) are officially recognized days of remembrance and mourning in Estonia.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Mart Laar : Eesti iseseisvus ja selle häving. I osa. Tallinn 2000, p. 178.
  2. ↑ Sulev Vahtre (ed.): Eesti Ajalugu VI. Tartu 2005, p. 177.
  3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vm.ee
  4. ↑ Sulev Vahtre (ed.): Eesti Ajalugu VI. Tartu 2005, p. 276.
  5. ↑ Zigmantas Kiaupa, Ain Mäesalu, Ago Pajur, Guido Straube: History of the Baltic States. Tallinn 2002², p. 181.
  6. ↑ Mart Laar: Eesti iseseisvus ja selle häving. I osa. Tallinn 2000, p. 165.
  7. ↑ Tõnu Tannberg, Ain Mäesalu, Mati Laur, Ago Pajur: History of Estonia. Tallinn 2000², p. 283.
  8. ↑ Lennart Meri describes his own experiences in: Andreas Oplatka : Lennart Meri - A life for Estonia. Dialogue with the President . Zurich 1999, pp. 68–114.