The operation was a dekulakization campaign specifically targeting peasants who resisted collectivisation and refused to join the kolkhozes (collective farms).
[2] Soviet authorities, striving to complete the forced collectivisation in Lithuania, initiated preparations for a mass deportation of peasants who refused to join newly established kolkhozes.
On September 5, 1951, the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union issued a decree number 3309-1568cc "On the deportation of kulaks and their families from the Lithuanian territory".
[3] The decree was signed by Joseph Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union, and Mikhail Pomaznev [ru], Administrator of Affairs of the Council of Ministers, and ordered "to eternally transfer 4000 anti-kolkhoz kulaks and their families to Krasnoyarsk Krai and Tomsk Oblast".
[5] The deportation in the autumn of 1951 was carried in several separate events: The operation was led by Piotr Kapralov, Minister of State Security of the Lithuanian SSR, and Yakov Yedunov [ru], head of the Third Chief Directorate of MGB.