June 1941 Deportation
1941년 6월의 추방
The forced removal of tens of thousands of people into the interior of the Soviet Union, between 22 May and 20 June 1941, from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and from western Ukraine, western Belarus and Moldavia, all occupied by the USSR in 1939–1940. In the Baltic states it began simultaneously on the night of 13–14 June; whole families were taken without trial, the men sent to camps and the women and children to forced settlements.
In depth
Directed by the NKVD under a joint decree of 14 May 1941 of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party and the Council of People’s Commissars, the operation followed a procedure set by the Serov Instructions, signed by Ivan Serov. Its targets were former politicians and officials, officers, policemen, wealthier farmers and traders, leaders of organisations, and their families.
The numbers differ by source: for Estonia 9,156 to 10,861 (about 10,000), for Latvia 15,424, and for Lithuania 17,485 in an NKVD report against 16,246 traced by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. Mortality among those carried off in cattle cars was very high. Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union eight days later stopped further deportations, and the Baltic states keep 14 June as a day of remembrance.