Soviet deportations from Lithuania
At least 130,000 people, 70% of them women and children,[2] were forcibly transported to labor camps and other forced settlements in remote parts of the Soviet Union, particularly in the Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai.
[5] In August 1939, Nazi Germany and Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact whereby dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
First, it imposed mutual assistance treaties by which the Baltic states agreed to allow military bases for Soviet soldiers within their territory.
By spring 1940, the war was over and Soviet Union increased its rhetoric accusing the Baltics of anti-Soviet conspiracy.
They rapidly implemented various sovietization policies: nationalization of private enterprises, land reform in preparation for collectivization, suppression of political, cultural, and religious organizations.
Even when the Lithuanians became disillusioned with the Nazi regime and organized resistance, notably the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, the Soviet Union remained "Public Enemy Number One".
Anticipating return of the Soviet terror, some 70,000[citation needed] Lithuanians retreated into Germany ahead of the advancing Red Army.
Spending the first post-war years as displaced persons, they eventually settled in other countries, most often United States, forming culturally active Lithuanian diaspora.
Armed resistance inspired civil and political disobedience, to which the Soviets responded with persecutions: massacres, executions, arrests, deportations, etc.
Everyone inside, including newborns and the elderly, would be ordered to pack food and other necessities (the exact list of what should or could be taken varied between deportations and depended on the generosity of the soldiers).
Often families would be separated and there were cases when parents, children, or spouses voluntarily reported to the train station to be deported with their captured relatives.
Already in late summer 1940, high-ranking Soviet officials began hinting at planned mass arrests and deportations.
[15] The operation began during the Friday night of 13 June and was carried out by NKVD and NKGB troops from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
[18] According to the official instructions, signed by Mečislovas Gedvilas and Icikas Meskupas, property left by the deportees was to be divided into personal property (clothes, linens, furniture, tableware) and other (art, investments, trade inventory, real estate, farm animals, agricultural tools and machinery).
[24] By 1944, Nazi Germany was retreating along the Eastern Front and Soviet forces reached the territory of Lithuania by mid-1944.
In October 1944, Soviet officials, including Sergei Kruglov who had experience deporting the Chechen and Ingush people, began circulating ideas about deporting families of "bandits" – men who avoided conscription into the Red Army and joined the Lithuanian partisans.
[28] After World War II ended, Mikhail Suslov, chairman of the Bureau for Lithuanian Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, approved a decision to deport 50–60 families from each county.
Lavrentiy Beria approved the plan and sent Bogdan Zaharovich Kobulov and Arkady Apollonov to assist.
The main method of oppression were individual arrests of "enemies of the people" and subsequent mass deportations of the prisoners.
Officially, this new wave of political repression continued to target families and supporters of the resistance fighters.
[36] As people had witnessed previous deportations and knew the warning signs (e.g. the arrival of fresh troops and transport vehicles), many residents attempted to hide.
[42] The deportees could not leave the location of their settlement or change work; their deportations had no expiration date and were for their lifetime.
[46] Due to poor living conditions, demanding physical labor, lack of food and medical care, the mortality rates were high, especially among the young and the elderly.
Based on the incomplete and inaccurate records kept by MVD and MGB, Arvydas Anušauskas estimated that some 16,500 and 3,500 Lithuanians died in 1945–1952 and 1953–1958 respectively;[47] this number does not include 8,000 deaths among the deportees of 1941.
When in 1954 an amnesty was announced for people older than 55–60, disabled, or incurably ill, a special provision excluded the Lithuanians or members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists due to matters of "public security".
[51] In Lithuania, the deportee files were slowly reviewed on case-by-case basis by the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR.
Soviet apparatchiks regarded the deportees as a threat, especially when they wanted to claim their property confiscated at the time of the deportation.
Soviet Lithuanian officials, including Antanas Sniečkus, drafted local administrative measures prohibiting deportee return and petitioned Moscow to enact national policies to that effect.
[53] In May 1958, the Soviet Union revised its policy regarding the remaining deportees: all those who were not involved with the Lithuanian partisans were released, but without the right to return to Lithuania.
When, during Gorbachev-introduced glastnost, Lithuanians were allowed a greater freedom of speech, honoring the memory of the deportees was one of their first demands.
