In addition to responsibilities of the state in international justice, we can also talk of criminal responsibilities of separate individuals who organised and implemented the deportations of June’41, and also of the responsibility of the criminal organisation. This approach can be compared to that employed at the Nuremberg Tribunal, where the Nazi Party, SS, SD and Gestapo were declared criminal organisations.

In the introduction to this book we cannot leave unmentioned the fact that during the German occupation (1941–1944) there was published information, according to which the Soviet regime planned to conduct two further deportations in 1941, and considerably more extensive than the first one. [3]. This view is shared by the authors of this book because the information presented in the next chapter states that for Estonia “Beria’s Plan” was to some extent left unfulfilled, while in Latvia and Lithuania it was exceeded to a large extent. At the same time, the new wave of deportations that began on July 1st, 1941, failed because German troops advanced quickly and interfered with previously drawn up plans.

2. The June 14, 1941, deportation and international law: thoughts on responsibility by Lauri Mälksoo, Research Fellow, Humboldt University of Berlin (14.06.2000, Tallinn). Collection of speeches p. 28-36.

3. Another Estonia. Rebirth of Estonian Independence 1986-1991. Tallinn, 1996. 851 p., p. 28.

This book tries to provide readers with general lists of names of all persons deported from Estonia during the Soviet occupation except for deportees of March’49 (their names are registered in ERRB’s another book of the same series, number 5).

First deportees were Johan Laidoner – July 19th, 1940, and Konstantin Päts – July 30th, 1940, both of them with the family members. These entries are separate from other lists and can be found before the name register of June’41 deportees.

In the June’41 deportees’ name register have also been included those deported from Estonian islands on July 1st, 1941. This is justified by the fact that this further operation was carried out in the manner identical to that of the deportation of June’41 and ERRB is not aware of any special guidelines for the July’41 deportation and the fate of these deportees was decided upon in the same way as their predecessors of a few weeks before that. There was just one small and one large exception: a small number of arrested men were sent from imprisonment in Tallinn directly to serve in the Red Army, and the families brought from Saaremaa to the mainland in July could no longer be transported onward from the place of detention at Harku and so they were released in August.

Some explanation is also needed for the “persons deported in intermediate years”. This continuous stream of deportations began in 1945 and ended in 1953, and sometimes just one family was deported, and sometimes several (dozens) families in one go. The authors did not see the need to divide these entries between other name lists.

Deportations of August 15th, 1945 (Germans), and April 1st, 1951 (Jehovah’s Witnesses) were not extensive, yet still they were “mass operations”, therefore presenting them in separate registers needs no further justification.

The current name lists are as complete as it has been possible to compile them, and do not claim to contain all relevant persons and/or their fates. We hope that readers shall be able to fill in some gaps. ERRB is grateful for every clarification, remark and amendment.

TIME SCHEDULE OF DOCUMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE JUNE’41 DEPORTATION

Below is presented an uncomplete list of the most essential and known documents, connected with and characterising the deportation of June, 1941. These documents clarify generalisations made about previous experiences in mass deporatation operations, the mechanism for planning and carrying out the June’41 deportation, and rendering accounts about orders implemented until September, 1941. The documents’ names vary – regulations, decrees, instructions, plans, reports, directives, budgets, special announcements, stipulations, etc. Their interconnectedness, mutual order and joint content line are unquestionable. These documents were compiled and signed by the persons who organised and carried out the deportation, who thus immortalised the perpetrators of this crime against humanity on the state, criminal organisations’, and also on the individual level.

The timeline of the documents commenced in Moscow – in All-Union Communist (Bolshevik) Party, USSR CPC, USSR PCSS, USSR PCIA, USSR PCIA’s GULAG and military structures and then branched off into Oblast’s, Kray’, Soviet Republics and their Region party, security, ministry of internal affairs and government lower-level organisations. The documents listed and described below mostly have the stamp “Top Secret” or some lower level of classified status. In Estonian archives one can find family case files and personal crime files for arrested heads of families for the majority of June’41 deportees, but there are few essential documents about planning, organisation and regulation of the deportation. Also in Moscow archives one very rarely succeeds in compiling copies of a full set of the main documents concerning the deportations of 1941. Often one has to do with copies of copies or draft versions of documents. Names and contents of some of the relevant documents are to be deduced only on the basis of them being mentioned or referred to in the derived, lower-level documents.

The documents with analogous characteristics appeared when the deportation of March, 1949, was carried out, but they were more evolved and had less “rough edges”. Concerning the order of documents about the June’41 deportation presented below, the following information is provided: the number of its order of appearance within the current chapter (D1-D27), the document’s date, name, who created and signed it and to whom it was sent, the document’s issuing register number and some essential data about the document’s content.

D. 1. 03.01.1923. USSR PCIA regulation “Instructions on use of the USSR Central Executive Committee’s regulation on administrative deportation (10.08.1922)”. [Sbornik zakonodatelnõh i normativnõh aktov. Compilation of legislative and normative acts on repressions and rehabilitation of their victims. Moscow, Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, 1993. 223 p, p. 105]. This document introduced relatively easy conditions for the deportees: settlement for up to 3 years, supervision at the place of settlement, removal of the active and passive right to vote and punishment of attempts to escape on the basis of the criminal law, §95.

D. 2. 30.01.1930. USSR C(b)P Central Committee regulation. On the liquidation of the kulaks’ households in the areas of direct collectivisation. [H. Ligi, Kleio 3, 1991].

D. 3. 02.02.1930. Joint State Political Administration (OGPU) order nr. 44/21. [Compilation ... 1993, p. 107-110 / USSR State Central Archive for National Economy, f. 9414, n.1, s.-ü. 1944, l. 17-25]. For the well-organised implementation of the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, the kulaks should be deported, along with the families whose heads have been arrested and executed, from the following areas of the USSR: from the Ukrainian SSR up to 35000 families, from the Northern Caucuses and Dagestan 20000 families, from the Central Volga Kray up to 10000 families, from the Lower Volga Kray up to 12000 families, from Byelorussian SSR 7000 families, etc. – altogether 154000 families. For the remaining Oblasts and Republics projected calculations for deportations were planned to be made in the nearest future. As places of settlement for the 142000 deported families were designated the Ural Kray (23000), Kazakhstan (5000), the Northern Kray (70000) and Siberia (44000). This wide activity served well for obtaining criminal experience.

D. 4. 1.06.1939. USSR PCIA order nr. 0143. Instructions for transporting the deportees to their places of destination, dealing with them en route, accounting for and registering them at the places of settlement. [Sabbo. Võimatu vaikida, 1. Tallinn, 1996, 823 p., p. 757, document 249 point 9 contains reference to the Russian Federation State Archive, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 3-8]. Practical experiences of a colossal in size crime were generalised in the from of instructions.

D. 5. 11.10.1939. Instructions concerning implementation of operation nr. 001223 “Deportation of the anti-soviet elements from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia”, issued by Ivan Serov, security commissar of the 3d degree, deputy for the USSR state security people’s commissar. [Teabeleht “Memento”, nr. 2, 1989]. Detailed plan for implementation of previous repression experiences now in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which happened to have been supposedly dated.

D. 6. June 1940. A page from A. Ždanov’s Tallinn notes, on which it is written in bold letters: “Estontsev v Sibir” (Estonians to Siberia). [Kultuur ja Elu, 3/453, 1998, p.1 / RTsHIDNI, f.77, n. 3c, s.-ü. 164, l. 57]. Obviously Moscow’s high emissary A. Žda-nov knew how things were to develop far ahead. In June of 1940 the current issue was to organise a coup in Estonia.

D. 7. 24.11.1940. USSR PCIA Convoy Forces, 153. separate battalion’s letter nr. 0027 to EC(b)P Central Committee’s secretary Comrade Säre. Signature: PCIA Convoy Forces, 12. brigade commander Colonel Loskutov. [ERAF, f.1, n.1. s.-ü. 311, l. 45 / Kultuur ja Elu, 3/453 1998, p.8]. As demanded by the Moscow authorities, detailed preparations have been commenced for mass repressions of people in Estonia. In the autumn of 1940 for this purpose in Tallinn was established USSR PCIA Convoy Forces’ 153. separate battalion. It belonged to the 12. brigade of Convoy Forces, its headquarters located in Leningrad.

D. 8. 26.03.1941. With the legislative act passed by the ESSR Supreme Council’s Presidium, People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs was divided into two organisations – People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs lead by Andrei Murro and State Security People’s Commissariat lead by Boris Kumm. [ERAF, f.1, n.47, s.-ü. 38, l. 166-167 / Eesti NSV Teataja 1941, nr. 34, art 500]. Karl Säre, Boris Kumm and Andrei Murro along with their closest associates were undoubtedly the most important local perpetrators of the June’41 deportation – mass murder and genocide orchestrated from Moscow. Those following such orders are guilty as well as those who give them.

D. 9. 31.03.1941. USSR PCIA, Main Administration for Correctional Work Camps and Colonies regulation nr. 406 for ESSR PCIA Department of Correctional Work Colonies. Signatures: USSR PCIA MACWCC deputy head, state security Captain Kuznetsov and head of the second department of the Main Administration for Camps, state security Lieutenant Granovski. [ERAF, f.1., n.1, s.-ü. 311, l. 45/ Kultuur ja Elu nr. 3 1998]. First repressions followed soon enough.

This document from Moscow demanded sending 300 prisoners to the Komi Kray’s Petšorlag. The corresponding list was ready 15.05.1941 and given to the 153. Convoy Forces’ battalion for transporting the prisoners to the above mentioned location. Among these prisoners, 19 had been condemned during the time of the Estonian Republic, 133 received punishment from Soviet war tribunals, 148 – based on ESSR Supreme Court’s and people’s courts’ decisions. 34 men had been sentenced with the infamous §58. It is likely that families of many of these prisoners were then deported 14.06.1941. The document demanded that healthy, strong men fit for physical labour be sent, considering the conditions beyond the Polar Circle. Estonian men began perishing in forced labour camps with fatal existence conditions. This echelon of prisoners was followed by others – families were transported on deportation trains.

D. 10. 11.05.1941. Government direct communication line, a short message from PCIA administration in Krasnoyarsk, deputy head Hmarin, to USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar, Tšernõ-šov,1405 11.05.41 nr. 102. [Sabbo 1996, p. 781, dok. 258/ VFRA, f. 9479, n.1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 87]. In reply to your communication nr. 30/5516/016 we have to inform the following: the approximate sum of 600000 roubles needs to be transferred to the bank account number 1212529 for 6850 deported for forced settlement persons’ transportation, disinfection and registration form printing expenses.

D. 11. 14.05.1941. USSR C(b)P Central Committee and USSR Council of People’s Commissars’ decision nr. 1299 -526 “Concerning deportations of socially foreign elements from the Baltic republics, Western Ukraine, Western Byelorussia and Moldavia”. [ERAF, SM f. 17/2, n.1, s.-ü. 306, l. 2] (See the copy in the Chapter 4 “Dokumendid/Documents”.) Summary of the decision, which became the direct foundation for the mass deportation on June 14th, 1941.

Here we find the list of 9 categories of persons who are to be deported: 1) members and families of members of counterrevolutionary organisations; 2) rank policemen and prison guards, their leadership; 3) former owners of large estates, traders, factory owners and high officials of the bourgeois governments with their families; 4) former officers; 5) families of persons condemned to death; 6) persons that are in connection with Germany; 7) refugees from former Poland...

D. 12. 26.05.1941. USSR PCSS unit’s “Report on the anti-soviet and socially foreign elements accounted for by Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR PCSSs in 1941”. [Sabbo 1996, p. 761 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 189] (See the copy in the Chapter 4.) As of 26.05.1941, in Estonia 14471 such persons were accounted for, among them 4665 family heads, their family members 9115 and also 691 criminals and prostitutes. The number 9115 was continuously used in documents circulating between Moscow and Siberia for ordering and preparing places of settlement.

D. 13. 30.05.1941. USSR PCIA deputy of people’s commissar, Comrade Kruglov’s directive nr. 1684/b concerning locations for settlement, in this case for the Novosibirsk Oblast’s internal affairs’ and state security organs. [Sabbo 1996, p. 774, document reference]. Accounting for and registration of the deportees arrived and arriving from Western Ukraine should take place at the locations of settlement in accordance with the instructions introduced by the USSR PCIA order nr. 0143 01.06.1939. It meant preparatory work for meeting the June’41 deportees.

D. 14. 07.06.1941. Short message via the government direct communication line. From USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar, Comrade Tšer-nõšov to PCIA Krasnoyarsk administration, Comrade Losev. [Sabbo 1996, p. 781, dok. 256 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 71 ]. Contents of the document: 15.06.1941 (the date was already known) from the Estonian SSR 9115 forced settlers shall be sent to the Krasnoyarsk Kray; within 48 hours all the destination (unloading) railway stations, areas of settlement should be informed and the necessary means of local transportation and also food supplies should be provided. Actually, in 1941 from Estonia to Novosibirsk Oblast (in 1944 there was formed Tomsk Oblast) and Kirov Oblast a considerably smaller number of people was deported: most likely the war that broke out changed the plans. Deportees were not taken to Krasnoyarsk Kray.

D. 15. 10.06.1941. Short message via the government direct communication line. From USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar, Comrade Tšer-nõšov to PCIA Barnaul administration, Comrade Topolin. [Sabbo 1996, p. 781, dok. 257 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 83]. 15.06.1941 from the Estonian SSR 9000 forced settlers (seem to be the same people offered 07.06. to the Krasnoyarsk Kray) shall be sent to the Altai Kray. Within 24 hours is expected the reply via the telegraph concerning the areas for settlement, the unloading stations and the possibilities for using these person as labour force. This group of people shall consist mostly of women and children (several days ahead of the deportation this was known in Siberia). There was likely trouble with accepting and housing all the deportees in the Krasnoyarsk Kray.

D. 16. 12.06.1941. Government direct communication line, short messages: nr. 30/5695/016, 12.06.41; nr. 30/ 8696/016, 12.06.41 and nr. 41/ 1232 from USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar, Comrade Tšernõšov to PCIA Kirov administration head, PCIA Novosibirsk administration head and the joint short message for 6 recipients: Kazakh SSR PCIA, PCIA of Krasnoyarsk and Altai Krays and Novosibirsk, Omsk and Kirov Oblast administration heads. [Sabbo 1996, p. 782, documents 259-261 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l.95, 96 ja 148].

Kirov Oblast was informed that on June 15th 4000 people from Estonia (mostly women and children), forced settlers, shall arrive. Within 24 hours is expected the notification of unloading stations. Novosibirsk was told that in connection with the increase of the Oblast quota, the additional 3700 people (women, children) shall be sent there from Estonian SSR as forced settlers. Immediately notify via telegraph the unloading stations, also consider the possibility to divide these people between village councils, several families per village, so that it would be easier to house them and provide work for them.

The short memo sent to several recipients demands that by September 15th reports be presented concerning the distribution of, the locations and conditions of housing and labour arrangements for the special quota of forced settlers deported from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. Actually, from Estonia to Kirov Oblast only 2049 people were sent, according to the KGB data, as of 15.09.1941. [See Document 27.] On the basis of Memento’s ERRB personal data (as of may 2001), from Estonia to Kirov Oblast were taken 2149 and to Novosibirsk (later Tomsk) Oblast – 3680 family members.

D. 17. 11.06.1941 and 14.06.1941. USSR PCIA PLAN OF MEASURES concerning transportation, housing and labour usage of the special quotas of deportees from Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Moldavian SSR”. Signed by PCIA Main Administration for Camps’ head, state security Major Nasedkin, coordinated with USSR State Security deputy people’s commissar Kobulov and USSR PCIA deputy people’s commissar Tšernõšov; endorsed by USSR people’s commissar for internal affairs L. Beria 14.06.41. [Sabbo 1996, p. 762-768, dok. 251 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 37, 41, 45-49] (See the copy in the Chapter 4.) This Beria’s “plan of measures” oversaw sending of 4665 family heads from Estonia and 4450 family heads from Lithuania to the Starobelsk camp (in Eastern Ukraine, Vorošilovgrad Oblast, the Donets Coal Basin).

691 criminals deported from Estonia were to go to the Ussollag forest labour camp. And 9115 family members deported from Estonia were planned to be sent to Altai Kray and called “ssõlno-pereselentsõ” (exiled settlers). Settlement locations for 6000 persons in Kirov Oblast, according to this document, were left in reserve. Both from Lithuania and Latvia less people were to be deported (both family heads and members), than from Estonia, which had at the same time smaller population (see Conclusions 4^th).

From the 4 republics mentioned in the document, altogether were destined to be deported 46557 family members, 22885 family heads, 4159 criminals and 794 prostitutes – the total number of deportees thus being 74395 persons. For feeding them on the way, merely 3 roubles per person per day was issued (including 600 grams of bread). The standard budget for deporting and transporting 60000 persons was 13 million roubles.

D. 18. June 1941. USSR PCIA and PCSS – joint “Budget of expenses for resettlement of 85000 people from the Baltic and Moldavian territories”. Signed by PCIA departmental deputy head, intendant of the 2nd degree Volubujev; Konradov from the labour and special settlements department; and from PCSS – deputy head of the financial department, intendant of the 1st degree Gorjatšov. [Sabbo 1996, p. 777-778, dok. 253 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 42-43]. The sum total of the budget for resettlement of 85000 people was 18.5 million roubles. Seems that this detailed budget served as the example for the previous mentioned document’s authors (Beria’s “plan of measures”) to quote 13 million roubles as sufficient fro 60000 people – in both cases it makes 217-218 roubles per person.

D. 19. June 1941. “Plan for housing of the soon arriving forced settlers in Regions of Novosibirsk Oblast” in accordance with USSR Internal Affairs deputy people’s commissar Comrade Tšernõšov’s directive to send 9115 deported forced settlers to Novosibirsk Oblast. By PCIA Novosibirsk administration head, state security Major Kudinov. [Sabbo 1996, p. 769-771, dok. 251, document belonging to “Beria’s plan of measures”, D. 17 / VFRA f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 57-61]. In this document the number 9115=8900+195+20 is the number of family members for various categories of anti-soviet and socially foreign elements, who as of 26.05.41 have been taken into account by Estonian SSR PCSS (see D.12). The three-page detailed table-plan from this document is used in the section “About Estonians deported to Novosibirsk (Tomsk) Oblast”.

D. 20. June 1941. “Memo: places of destination for railway echelons departing from Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSRs”. From PCIA Main Administration for Camps’ head Konradov to PCSS, 3d administrative department. [Sabbo 1996, p. 783, dok. 262 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 185]. The document is unsigned and without a date. The numbers of the echelons departing from Estonia are 286, 287, 288 and 289, and they are all destined for Novosibirsk Oblast. From the list totalling 21 echelons only 4 are listed as departing from Estonia.

D. 21. 16.-21.06.1941. About the movement of the special echelons departed from the Baltic countries and Moldavia. [Sabbo 1996, p.784 ja 785, dok. 263-266 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 106, 132, 136-139]. From Estonia 8 echelons have departed, their numbers 286-290 and 292-294. In minimum 2 of them travelled also on the Moscow-Donbass railway in the direction of Starobelsk.

D. 22. 17.06.1941. USSR State Security people’s commissar Merkulov’s summary nr.... / 2288 m for USSR C(b)P Central Committee’s Comrade Stalin, USSR Council of People’s Commissars’ Comrade Molotov and USSR PCIA’s Comrade Beria. [Sabbo 1996, p. 818 ja 819, dok. 282 / CPCD (Centre for Preservation of Contemporary Documents) in Moscow, f. 89, n. 48, s.-ü. 6, l. 1-4].

In the magazine “Kultuur ja Elu” 3, 1998, p. 4 there is a reference that a confirmed copy of this document, on the basis of the information of the Archive Information Bulletin, 1993 – 3, is located in the Kremlin and Staraja Ploštšad archives; series 1, 2. edition, Moscow, 1.8. This document is a summary of “Results of the operations to arrest and deport anti-soviet, criminal and socially dangerous elements from Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR”.

This document contains information that as the result of the deportation operations in 1941 in Estonia 3173 persons were arrested, 5973 family members were deported, and altogether 9146 people were repressed.

D. 23. 18.06.1941. ESSR Council of People’s Commissars’ first regulation “To city and rural districts heads of executive committees concerning organisation of selling of the property left behind by the deported persons”. Signed by ESSR CPC deputy head O. Sepre. [Sabbo, 1996, p. 786-787, dok. 267 / ERAF, f. R-1, n. 1s, s.-ü. 12, p.11-12].

Some excerpts: Agricultural buildings are to be handed over to People’s Commissariat of Agricultural Labour. Dwellings in towns and freed flats are to be handed over to People’s Commissariat of Communal Economy. Personal property and the livestock and the mechanical inventory of agricultural labour should be sold by trustworthy individuals on the basis of lists, with the purchasers’ signatures against every item on the list, within 10 days. Selling should be conducted at moderate prices. The sums received are to be handed over to be sent to the owners of the property via the local PCSS organs together with lists of sold items and documents of purchase with signatures of purchasers. (No money was ever handed over.)

14.-19.06.1941. EC(b)P rural and city districts’ leading communists, secretaries and instructors of party committees and representatives of EC(b)P Central Committee compiled and sent to EC(b)P Central Committee’s Secretary Karl Säre reports about successful activities during the June’41 deportation, i.e. concerning their perpetration of crimes against humanity that have no expiration limit. [ERAF, f. 1, n.1, s.-ü. 45, 46, 48, 49,51, 52, 55,56,57, 59, 188]. These reports of crimes have been published by the magazine Kultuur ja Elu 3, 1998, p. 13-47.

22.06.1941 the war broke out between Soviet Union and Germany, and the latter armed forces progressed so speedily that prevented communists from finishing their second wave of deportations which began in Saaremaa and Hiiumaa on July 1st, 1941. The locations for receiving deported Estonians in Novosibirsk and Kirov Oblasts, agreed on and prepared already before the war, to great extent remained unfilled. (See D. 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 in this Chapter.)

D. 24. 03.09.1941. Letter from USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar, 3d degree commissar Tšernõšov to PCIA Novosibirsk Oblast administration head Comrade Kovšuk nr. /1585, 03.09.41. [Sabbo, 1996, p. 796, dok. 271 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 205]. The quotas that have been deported from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia, Byelorussia and Ukraine as administrative forced settlers (“administrativno-ssõlnõje”) cannot be considered equal to special resettlers (“spetspereselentsõ”) and therefore USSR CPC’s regulation nr. 2122/617-cc cannot be applicable to them.

D. 25. 10.09.1941. PCIA Novosibirsk Oblast administration head, state security Major Kovšuk-Bekman’s “Report concerning housing of and providing work for deported forced settlers in Regions of Novosibirsk Oblast”. This document nr. 166558 was sent 10.09.1941 to Moscow to USSR PCIA deputy of the people’s commissar Comrade Tšernõšov. [Sabbo, 1996, p.796-799, dok. 272 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1 c, s.-ü. 87, l. 232-237]. As of 05.09.41 in Novosibirsk Oblast’s Regions were housed and used for slave labour 19362 deported forced settlers from Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Moldavian republics and from western parts of Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs. Among forced settlers there were 6748 children below the age of 16 and among adults there were 3640 men and 8974 women. There is no separate data for the numbers of Estonians. These forced settlers reached their destinations in June and July of 1941.

D. 26. 15.09.1941. Letter nr. 5-1722 with signatures from PCIA Kirov Oblast administration head, state security captain Jegošin and head of the 1st special department, state security Captain Predein arrived in Moscow 15.09.41 at the desk of Comrade Tšernõšov of USSR PCIA, entitled “Report on the numbers of the special quotas deported from the western areas and housed in Kirov Oblast”. [Sabbo, 1996, p. 800-803, dok. 273 / VFRA, f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü.87, l. 220-223]. In Kirov Oblast were housed among many others also 2049 persons deported from Estonian SSR, living now in 18 Regions. Among them were 567 children younger than 16. The data from this document is used below in the separate part 1.7. “Kirov Oblast as a Settlement Location for Estonians”.

D. 27. 28.09.1941. Update on the numbers of forced settlers arrived from Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Moldavian republics and from western parts of Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs. Signed by USSR PCIA Main Administration for Camps, head of department of labour and special settlements, state security Captain Konradov. [Sabbo 1996, p. 810, dok. 275 / VFRA f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 224].

Arrived from 5 republics in May-June of 1941 forced settlers, altogether 85716 persons, were distributed between 7 republics, regions and oblasts, and those deported from Estonia were marked in 4 of them:

Väljasaatmise sihtkoht / Destination of deportation	Arvestuse aeg / Time of accounting for		Väljasaatmise lähtekoht / Source of deportation
Väljasaatmise sihtkoht / Destination of deportation	09.1941	02.1942	Väljasaatmise lähtekoht / Source of deportation
Altai krai / Altai Kray	17446	3600*	Leedu ja Eesti NSV-st / Lithuanian and Estonian SSRs
Kasahhi NSV / Kazakh SSR	15413	15464	4 NSV-d ilma Eestita / 4 SSRs without Estonia
Kirovi oblast / Kirov Oblast	2049	2049	Ainult Eestist** / Only from Estonia **
Komi ANSV / Komi Autonomous SSR	3109	2103	Ainult Leedust / Only from Lithuania
Krasnojarski krai / Krasnojarsk Kray	16784	8169	Lätist ja Ukrainast / From Latvia and Ukraine
Novosibirski obl. / Novosibirsk Oblast	19362	19362	Läti, Moldaavia, Eesti*, Ukraina NSV-st / Latvia, Moldavia, Estonia *, Ukrainian SSR
Omski oblast / Omsk Oblast	11556	11556	Moldaavia, Eesti, Ukraina NSV-st / Moldavia, Estonia, Ukrainian SSR
Kokku / Total	85716	62303

* time of taking into account is 15.09.42; some of the deportees were taken to Jakute Autonomous SSR to work as fish catchers [Sabbo 1996, p. 817].

** from 1944 became Tomsk Oblast.

*** On the basis of the data from the reviewed document, from Estonia to Novosibirsk (Tomsk) Oblast were deported only 1619 people. Memento (ERRB) has information than this number was actually 3680, among them a couple of hundred children born in settlement. Thus, the actual number of persons deported from Estonia was more than twice the number quoted in official reports.

**** Memento (ERRB) has information that from Estonia to Kirov Oblast 2149 people were deported, a couple of hundred children were born later. Thus, the report number of 2049 is about one hundred smaller than ERRB’s estimate of the initial number of deportees before deaths and births.

In 1941 from Estonia to Altai Kray and Omsk Oblast, on the basis of ERRB information, very few family members were deported. Considering the sum total of persons designated for repressions at that time in Estonia (10861), we can deduce that in Altai Kray and Omsk Oblast together there could have been no more than some hundred persons deported from Estonia: 10861-3344-468-512-3680-2149 ... - Chp. 5

In these calculations: 3344 is the number of deported family members whose heads of families were arrested, partly killed or sent to Russia in other railway echelons; 415 – persons undeported for various reasons (not found at home, escaped, etc.); 512 – designated for deportation and retrieved from their homes individuals who were then released in August, 1941, due to the speedy advance of German troops that made sending them to Russia impossible; 3680 and 2149 – the numbers of forced settlers sent to Novosibirsk and Kirov Oblast.

CONCLUSIONS

1. Both in content and size the experiences necessary for deportations in 1941 had been developed in Russia already beginning in the 1920-ies. What was new was the fact that in the case of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, also western parts of Ukraine and Byelorussia these deportations took place on the recently occupied, foreign territories, and forming of collective farms was not among the driving reasons. What was happening was liquidation of supposed political opponents together with their roots and the beginnings of re-population of the newly occupied border areas of Greater Russia.

2. Orders and guidelines for the deportations originated in the highest echelons of power in Moscow, branched off to Siberia and only then reached the Baltic republics. The role of the occupational authorities in Estonia and their local collaborators in the deportations was secondary yet highly inhuman:

aid was given in the occupied country with democratic traditions to foreign men of power perpetrating unexpectedly cruel deeds;

without investigations and court decisions 10 thousand people, mostly women, children and elderly people were violently removed from their homes in the dead of night;

their family heads arrested and separated from the families;

knowingly sending innocent people without preparations to camps with minimal chances for survival and to underdeveloped distant regions as forced labour, succumbing to freezing temperatures and hunger. To strengthen the resolve of collaborators, they were entrusted with the task of sharing the property of their deported fellow-countrymen.

3. Decisions of USSR State Defence Committee and Government concerning forceful re-population and long-term extermination of separate peoples in this list are missing, yet they deserve continuous attention despite the fact that USSR Supreme Council made these decisions public and 07.03.1991 also annulled them.

4. In Beria’s endorsed “Plan of measures” 11.-14.06.1941 (see D. 17) for the smallest in population among the Baltic states country – Estonia – was designated the largest number of arrested family heads and deported family members: Estonia 13780, Latvia 12620 and Lithuania 8050.

5. On the basis of the information in the report by USSR State Security highest official Comrade Merkulov, sent 17.06.1941 (see D.22) to Stalin, Molotov and Beria, of all the republics involved, Estonia, with the largest quota, filled it to the least degree. To explain, here are the total numbers of repressed (arrested and deported) people and in brackets the percentage of this number in comparison to Beria’s plan: Estonia 9146 (66,4%), Latvia 15171 (120,2%) and Lithuania 15851 (196,9%).

6. Memento’s Estonian Repressed Persons Records Bureau (ERRB) has clarified on the basis of personal data of the arrested and the deported their exact numbers, and it seem that still Estonia to a small extent surpassed the numbers quoted in Merkulov’s document for Stalin:

Allikas / Source	Arreteerituid Arrested	Väljasaadetuid Deported	Kokku represseerituid / Total number of repressed
Merkulov	3173	5973	9146
ERRB	3344*	7517**	10861 (78,8%)***

* From among these a couple of hundred were killed before deportation or were taken out of the country on other dates.

** From among these 415 succeeded to avoid being deported.

*** ERRB’s numbers contain those deported on July 1st, 1941, which changes the percentage of fulfilment of the June’41 operation.

See also explanations in the last part before “Conclusions”.

Leo Õispuu

USED ABBREVATIONS AND TERMS

Lühendid / Abbreviations
ÜK(b)P / USSR C(b)P	Üleliiduline kommunistlik (bolševike) Partei	All-Union Communist (bolshevik) Party
NSVL RKN / USSR CPC	Nõukogude Sotsialistlik Vabariikide Liidu Rahvakomissaride Nõukogu (praeguses mõistes valitsus)	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ Council of People’s Commissars /as in: government/
NSVL RJRK / USSR PCSS	NSVL Riikliku Julgeoleku Rahvakomissariaat (ministeerium)	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ People’s Commissariat /ministry/ for State Security
NSVL SaRK / USSR PCIA	NSVL Siseasjade Rahvakomissariaat (siseministeerium)	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs /ministry of internal affairs/
NSVL SaRK GULAG	NSVL Siseasjade Rahvakomissariaadi Laagrite (vangilaagrite) Peavalitsus	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ PCIA’s GULAG – Main Administration for (prison) Camps
SaRK / Kirovi obl. Valitsus	Siseasjade Rahvakomissariaadi Kirovi oblastivalitsus	PCIA’s Kirov Oblast administration
Kommunaalmajanduse Rahkomaat	Kommunaalmajanduse Rahvakomissariaat (ametkondlik släng)	PCCE – People’s Commissariat for Communal Economy
VFRA / RFSA	Vene Föderatsiooni Riigiarhiiv	Russian Federation State Archive
ZEV	Vt. “Saateks” V. Salolt	See “Foreword” of V. Salo

Terminid* / Terms*
küüditama / to deport	sunniviisil ümber asustama	to forcefully send to a new place of permanent residence
administratiivne väljasaatmine / administrative deportation	administrativnaja võsõlka	“administrativnaja võsõlka” in Russian
väljasaadetu / deportee	ssõlnõi	“ssõlnõi” in Russian
väljasaadetav inimene / deported person	võsõlajemõi tšelovek	“võsõlajemõi tšelovek” in Russian
väljasaatmine / deportation	võsõlenije	“võsõlenije” in Russian
väljasaadetu-sundasunik / deported forced settler	ssõlno-poselenets	“ssõlno-poselenets” in Russian
administratiiv-sundasunik / administrative forced settler	administrativno-ssõlnõi	“administrativno-ssõlnõi” in Russian
eriümberasustatu / special resettled person	spetspereselenets	“spetspereselenets” in Russian
erisundasustatu / special settler	spetsposelenets	“spetsposelenets” in Russian
ümberasustatu / resettled person	pereselenets	“pereselenets” in Russian
sundasunik, asumisele väljasaadetu / forced settler, sent for settlement	ssõlnõi	“ssõlnõi” in Russian
sundasumisele määratu / designated for forced settlement	poselents	“poselenets” in Russian

* Terms used in Russian-language documents and their translation into the Estonian and English languages in this book.

Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, S. Kruglov, in October, 1948, gave more detailed definitions to many of the above mentioned terms on the last pages of his extensive instructions.

For example: What is sending into exile (ssõlka)? What is administrative exile (võsõlka)? What is sending into settlement exile (ssõlka na poselenie)? What does public supervision mean (glasnõi nadzor)?

Sending into settlement from Rayons: What do special settlement and special settlement locations mean (spetsposelenie i spetsposjolki)?

In 1948 there were 53,370 subjected to the status of exiled and administratively exiled persons, and an additional 30,000 was about to join them. Over 2 million people were in the special settlement regime. [Sabbo 1996, lk. 1158-1160, dok. 412]

Leo Õispuu

WHO BELONG TO THE PEOPLE DEPORTED IN JUNE IN THIS BOOK?

Only the families of Konstantin Päts and Johan Laidoner are known as deported before 14 June. Although the Estonian statesmen, police officers and military men had been imprisoned all the time, deportation of their families was not known before June deportation.

The people deported with the whole family at the turn of 13 June to 14 June 1941 and on the following days, before the sending off of the deportation trains have been first entered into the Name Register. Only those military men, imprisoned in the Red Army according to a special order, were joined together with the officers imprisoned in the military camps of Babõnino and were taken to Norilsk. In case their families were deported at the same time, they were included in the list of the deported people in June. In case some members of the families were not deported, no deportation documents of them have been found.

It is difficult to estimate the number of the deported people. The family heads imprisoned earlier since 1940 have not been included in the list. Unfortunately due to an outdated computer program we did not succeed in excluding all of them from the Name Register. Their entries have been marked with a note “Avaldatud uuesti” (Republished). Their families were deported on 14 June.

The war, which broke out only a week after the deportation, did not interrupt imprisonment, but these families were left out of it either due to the fast attack of the German troops or the next deportation had not been on the schedule on the continent. But on the islands the Red power managed to arrange the second deportation. On 30 June lists were compiled and within the first 4 days about 1,000 people were deported from the islands of Estonia. Men were separated on boarding the trains after getting off the boats and they were taken to Tallinn Central Prison, interrogated and taken to Irkutsk. All of them could not be taken away in one train, so some of them were transported by boats. A small part of people was taken from Tallinn Central Prison back to Haapsalu, where they were announced mobilised. According to recollections evacuated people were in labour battalions in Hanko or Kroonlinn.

Women, children and the elderly collected from the islands during the second deportation were taken to Harku prison, from where they were liberated in August 1941. Deportation documentation concerning those liberated people has not been found.

During the calculation of the people deported from the islands during the second deportation a lot of questions have arisen.

Were the men imprisoned after 14 June deportation taken from the islands to the continent together with their families or not?

In the criminal file there is an order for arrest of a later date than 4 July as the basis for the arrest document irrespective of its compilation either in Estonia or somewhere else. Were some of those people, whose files include such documents actually imprisoned after the deportation days in the beginning of July?

As there are no records concerning the families deported from the islands in the beginning of July, their data has been collected from the deported people, their relatives, neighbours and acquaintances starting already from ZEV activities.

The compilers of the lists of the deported from the islands and people in their recollections have expressed their opinion that the Communist regime had planned also the third deportation from the islands. Documents concerning this intention have not been found.

Only very few people succeeded to escape June deportation at least in the beginning. Some people were imprisoned already in 1941, some of them not until the second Soviet occupation. A note ”not deported”, further details of their fate (either from the documents or the other notes) have been put down. But observation of the further details of the fate of the escaped people has not been the task of the compilers of this list. In the conclusion we assume that they belonged to freedom fighters in 1941 and killed at the German side during the fight against the Red Army, the people mobilized to the Red Army by force, people fled to the West in 1944 and the imprisoned and deported people during the second Soviet occupation.

Also children born in the deportation places have been inserted to the lists. Their data are limited. Information has been received both from the recollections and data collectors in country study and Memento.

Ülo Ojatalu

FILES OF THE DEPORTED PEOPLE IN JUNE

All the files concerned are in the Estonian State Archive (Party Archive) at 16 Tõnismägi in Tallinn. The numbers of the funds and depositary units originate from the Information Centre of the ESSR (later the Republic of Estonia) Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the ESSR Security Committee, from where they have been transferred to the Archive of the public law. Totally the ERRB has used besides approximately 2,000 family dossiers and approx. 3,500 criminal dossiers also hundreds of dossiers from the other funds in case of the people deported in June.

The number of the general documents concerning June deportation and the fate of the deported: decisions of the Communist Party, acts and decrees of the state authorities, decrees and instructions of the repressive organs should exceed half a hundred. Less than 20 texts are known, but little by little more and more of the texts are being discovered and hopefully in the future all of them will be at the disposal of historians.

Nowadays we know that instructions and documents of the high authorities concerning deportation in 1941 from Estonia (as well as from Latvia and Lithuania) existed in the Soviet Union already long ago as the families of ”the public enemies” of the 1920-ies and 1930-ies were punished by imprisonment or deportation. There was also a category called ”estontsõ” (Estonians in Russian). By the way, in the beginning of 1941 there were more than 7,500 of them sentenced guilty in the camps. It is another thing how much has been learnt about the specific treatment of different categories. For example, at a simple observation of the list it is clear that the Jews formed an essential part of the people deported in June. In case of the same number of Russians more severe punishments are obvious. To tell the truth, there were many officers of the Tsarist Russia, who had fought against the red power during the Civil War in Estonia. There were also Russian organizations friendly to the Soviets. These nuances of the repressive policy will be left for the research of historians. The truth is that Communist repressive policy was not free from rassism.

Several kinds of files, collections of documents concerning repression, were compiled for the people deported in June.

The data concerning the deported in June are included in the 4 funds of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).

Actually most of the family heads as well as some women were arrested. Criminal files concerning the imprisoned people were compiled. Some children (e.g. from the Lamps family) belonged to the imprisoned people in the prisons and camps, but their criminal files were not initiated. The documents concerning children are in the criminal files of their parents. The files of the imprisoned people were collected in funds 129 and 130 together with all the others imprisoned for political reasons. Talking about the people deported in June, we have to note that many fathers of the families, deported on 14 June, had already been punished before 14 June 1941.

Some of the criminal files concerning the imprisoned people got lost, some of them forever. New files were compiled in the imprisonment places instead of the lost ones. Some files, which had been lost, were later found and so some people have got two investigation files. Those, who had been fabricatedly accused of preparing an uprising in a camp during their imprisonment, have also got two files. Some of them have received capital sentences twice at a special meeting. A form with the short data concerning the parents, brothers and sisters and other family members of the imprisoned person is usually included in the file of the imprisoned person. Also that data of the deported from the islands on 1 July 1941 has been used by the ERRB.

The files of the people separated from their family was often initiated only in Siberia. There are a few people, whose files include so-called compromising documents since autumn 1940.

In fund 2-M/O there are family files according to which the majority of the data concerning the people deported in June can be found today. The total number of the depositary units in this fund is 1,898, but not all of them concern the people deported in June.

In the registration file of the head of the family there are some documents concerning the imprisoned family members, because according to the Soviet repression system in case the head of the family or any other family member had been sentenced to a punishment for political reasons all the other family members were incriminated as having complicity in the crime against the state of the working people. No legal case by a court decision after preliminary investigation is known. ”County troikas” or the Special meeting of the USSR MIA People’s Commissariat sentenced women, children and elderly people to deportation.

But family files of the people deported in June have not always been opened before the deportation, even not during deportation or at the arrival to the deportation destination. The majority of the files have been opened only at filing an application by the deported person which they had started to write already since autumn 1944. Very often the sole direct document concerning deportation was a hand-written copy of the decision of the county troika, which had been made after filing a liberation application with the centre of the residing region by the deported person (evidently all the existing documents concerning the deported were kept there) in the years after the war.

All the other documents, according to which the ERRB has collected the data, are also copies made during the years after the war, mostly notes, i.e. secondary documents, summaries based on them, conclusions and regulations. The originals, mainly frequent decisions on refusal of liberation, were added later. Liberation decisions (primary documents) achieved only after tough work during many years from the end of the 40-ies were added later.

The only dubious conclusion to be drawn from the above-mentioned is the following: they could not manage to make a registration file of the family concerning all the future deported persons before the deportation. But it is also possible that many files got lost during the evacuation of the NKVD documents. Neither of the presumptions is confirmed by the following circumstances:

Deportation documents of the families, who received a capital sentence during the war or later are included in the investigation file or a separate file has been compiled and it is located in the same fund with the criminal files of the imprisoned people until now. It apples only those families, which were not deported.

Very few of the persons of German nationality, who were deported on 15 August 1945, have got a separate family file, although actually the whole families were deported. The majority of their documentation has been included in the volumes under two numbers of depositary units (1735 and 1736), which are kept in the same fund with the files of the people deported in June (2 M/O).

Files of the families of the people, who received a capital decision and whose families had not been deported according to the decisions made during the Soviet occupation for different reasons, are in the same fund with the criminal files. The registration files of these families are not known.

Personal files of the special deported persons compiled in the deportation place are located in the fourth fund No 8. The underage people were not registered as special deported persons. Therefore the data concerning the children of the deported or the children born in deportation are incomplete. As the elderly people died on the way and during the first months of deportation their personal files could not have been compiled and therefore research now after more than 50 years later is rather complicated. Although data concerning the children born in deportation places are mainly in their mother’s files, it is not complete either. Many personal files of the deported in June from fund No 8 were put to the files of the heads of the families probably after the return of these people alive in Estonia.

Some of the family files of the deported in June are in fund 6-R. The title of the fund “Registration Files of the Rehabilitated People by the Law of 1956” tells something about its contents. But like the fund of personal files it does not comprise of only collections of documents concerning the deported in June.

Minority of the family files of the deported in June is in fund 3-N “Registration Files of the Nationalists Sent Out of the Estonian SSR in the 1940-ies and 1950-ies”. Documents of those, who had been deported as children and returned Estonia due to different circumstances. Then the children, who had returned back to their grandparents or relatives in 1946–47, were deported as either “kulaks” or “nationalists” together with the families, who had taken care of them. Therefore some data concerning the people deported in June can also be found in fund 4-K.

The second deportation affected also single grownups, who managed to survive in prison camps during the years of war and return back to Estonia liberated after a short term of punishment.

Usually all people, who had returned Estonia, either children or grown-ups, either with passport or without, were declared wanted all over the Soviet Union. In case they were discovered they were specially registered and put under prosecution and they were sent back to settlement either by the decision of a special meeting, a court or conveyed as convicts. Some of such fates are revealed in fund No 16, where relevant reports are kept.

Actually all the above mentioned files, except only personal files, are collections of files in the Archives.

The file of the imprisoned person is almost always accompanied by the prosecution file of the prosecutor’s office and very seldom by a personal file of the imprisoned person or some other files, which had not been compiled for every prisoner (e.g. a file concerning the return of property in case of a rehabilitated person).

Proceeding from that we may draw a conclusion that in addition to the family file of the deported person there are also their personal files. Prosecution files can be found in all the complexes. These exceptions provide the compilers of the lists a few valuable data for the research of the living conditions of the deported people.

The majority of the prisoners’ personal files must have been left in Russia, because during the Savisaar-Bakatin agreement the former political prisoners were not asked about the types of files concerning them and the location thereof. The “specialists” of the ESSR opened their mouths neither then nor until now and the team of Bakatin had no reason for causing themselves any trouble. Therefore there are very few documents concerning the three minor categories of the repressed people: deported as Germans, tens of deported families deported during decades of years and people not deported due to several reasons.

The files of the prisoners will be left out, because although the amount of them is approximately the same as the number of family files, the criminal files are similar as to their documental composition and these are known a lot more than the documents concerning the family members of the deported people. People, who are interested in them can learn about them in the Name Register Books (“Political Arrests in Estonia 1940–1988”, 2 volumes have been published, the 3^rd is being prepared) compiled by the ERRB.

Now there is documental proof that the data concerning shooting by the decision of a special meeting have been systematically falsified until the final months of 1989 in the majority of documents. Therefore the Estonian Office of Records of Personal Status full of incorrect dates of death. Since 1989 corrective notes instead of the falsified data have been sent, but doubtfully instead of all the falsifications. Those false data are probably also in the so-called special fund of deaths. Several people dealing with county study still refuse to believe it. Still clear falsifications can be seen in many files. A lot of people have received up to 3 documents concerning the death of a wife or a husband or a father.

The general order for falsifications has finally been published in the reference book in Russian: GULAG: Glavnoje upravlenije lagerei. 1918–1960. Akad. A. J. Jakovlev, compiled by A. I. Kokurin, N. V. Petrov. M.: MFD, 2000, 888 pages. Detailed instructions for falsification have not been found, but there are some references and orders of use

It is notable that many deported people had legal proceedings initiated against them and were sentenced to imprisonment. The special meeting sentenced a person for escape (departure from the deportation place without a permission) to prison for 20 years. A person was sentenced 3–5 years for this guilt at the Peoples’ Court. Obviously later the prescribed punishments were not so severe anymore: a special council simply sentenced return to the deportation. The Peoples’ Court punished also for robbery of the property of the collective farm, in most cases for taking potatoes, some handfuls of grain or other food to escape death due to famine, by sentencing these people to 5-8 years of prison camp. 10 or 25 years of prison camp was given for anti Soviet conversation or songs. District or Oblast Court as well as the War Tribunal were the decision makers. The data concerning their punishment are insufficient, because the criminal files of all these cases are in the Archives of Russia without any exceptions.

Principally the family files of the deported people in June and in March do not differ much from each other. The procedures of the deporters before deportation were not different either.

Compilation of the lists of imprisonment started obviously already before the occupation of Estonia. A lot of publications informing of the elite of whatever class of the free state were published: Riigi Teataja, an encyclopedia, biographical lexicons, reports, magazines, and newspapers. All of them were available both in homeland and in the other states. Whatever date is on Serov’s decree, the data dangerous to the foreign power about the true to Estonia citizens could be collected by the Estonian citizens having contractual work relations with the Soviet Embassy. Anyway, this was the case in the public economic life. Why should it have been different in the Police, Defence Forces or the Kaitseliit?

A note about the property of one person, who had been deported from Valgamaa, was asked from the Government of the County already in September 1940 and there was no accusation of the earlier date in the file. It is known that at the same time or together with Ždanov a special group of the USSR NKVD arrived in Estonia.

Probably they did not take only revolvers with them. Several investigators from Russia have shown better knowledge of the society of Estonia and its functioning in the interrogation protocols than the paid collaborants in Estonia. Training had been arranged in due time and information had been collected from the lexicons, reference books and newspapers.

We may firmly assume that some of the imprisonment files had been started before 13 June 1940, because the dates of many documents (e.g. the above mentioned notes from the Archives) refer to this fact. But some of the criminal files of the imprisoned people (especially of those deported from the islands) have been started only in the imprisonment places of Russia. The dates of the arrest documents dating from the first half of July, which were compiled later, refer to it.

The presented random data should initiate the research of the fate of about 1/10 of the Estonian nation in the future. Unfortunately I do not know a single professional historian dedicated to the research of deportation in June. It is a pity, because the documents and recollections confirm that a special subculture was created in the prison camps and in settlement, where besides suffering there was a tough fight for staying an Estonian with numerous victims, for bringing up the children as Estonians and to return to homeland. All of that has become the basis for the independence and freedom of Estonia today.

The experience of the work of the ERRB data recorders during long years has been used in compilation of this review. The real research of the files will follow.

Hopefully an argument based on the facts in the files is in its place.

The Estonian Association of Illegally Repressed Persons Memento was established in the time, when the legal order of the Soviet Union was in force. The terms “illegally” and “repressed concerning the people, who had resided and worked in the economy, state agencies or self-administration agencies of the independent Republic of Estonia and whom the occupation power tried to destroy either by or without court, date back to this period of time. Despite of the nationality or citizenship, education or profession, confession of fate or political views they were keepers, developers and protectors of their homeland, culture and language. And they stayed themselves despite of the tortures, sufferings and misery they had been taken to. They should not be called the repressed, but the fighters for the independence and freedom of Estonia and therefore sufferers instead.

Their legal rehabilitation should be marked by a certificate for fighting for the succession and continuance of the Republic of Estonia, not by a note of rehabilitation (like in the case of termination of a criminal accusation).

If the state and nation of Estonia, who have fought for and regained their independence twice, needs a positive myth, it comprises in the fates of those, who have suffered in the deep caves of the Communist hell, but preserved humanity and desire for freedom

Ülo Ojatalu

OTHER DATA SOURCES

We can consider the data collected by the Zentralstelle zur Erfassung der versleppten und molbilisierten Esten, ZEV in short, as one of the sources, for it was used in two issues of Vello Salo’s register book “Deported in 1941”.

During the German occupation it was possible to ascertain about 90% of the names of deportees. There was some information about the fate of the deported people, about the separation of the families and their final destination in Siberia. Some letters from deportees reached even Estonia. The 22^nd Territorial Army of the Red Army and later on the prisoners of the Estonian Army who had reached home gave some information about their meetings with deportees. We do not know if the members of the destroyer battalion who were imprisoned in Estonia during the German occupation or the members of the communist party gave any data about their crimes

More extensive correspondence with the people who had put up with the severest years and survived started only in Autumn 1944. The next year the men, who had been mobilised into the Red Army at their deportation places and had stayed alive, returned to Estonia. In 1946 some people, who had served their 5-year punishment in prison camps, also returned home.

The next who returned were children and there were a lot of them. Some mothers also returned together with their children but very soon they were deported back. Everything that was connected with deportation was as dangerous as helping forest brothers. New deportation had started.

Although the deportees themselves had started to draw up the registers in railway cars and continued doing it in Siberia, mostly in order to find separated relatives, there was nothing left of these registers by the early 1990s. At any rate ERRB did not have any of them. Probably one of the reasons was that the most active people at their places of deportation were punished. The data about their fate might be written down in criminal files somewhere in Russia.

So the information and history committee of the Association of Illegally Repressed People MEMENTO had to start from the very beginning. All the units of MEMENTO started to collect data.

They received letters and sent around questionnaires. Besides the committee there was Elmar Joosep’s group which managed to work with files. When the Register Bureau of Estonian Repressed People was established there was a chance to join the two most important working groups for a period of time. Both groups shared their data with Vello Salo to help him with the preparation of the second edition. The Information Centre of the MIA gave one list of deportees to the groups.

Most of the writings of that time were fragmentary and did not give a full picture about the fate of deportees, especially about the people who had died in Siberia. We still do not have the whole information about a lot of elderly people and children and about the people who were taken to different camps although by now a lot of memoirs have been published.
It is no good mentioning all the sources given in “Bibliography” because in a few of them the sources are not precisely analysed.

The Register Bureau of Estonian Repressed people has also failed to analyse several sources. They are as follows:

Hundreds of deportees themselves have given and made thousands of specifications about the deportees of 1941. They have sent letters, specified their data with the members of Memento at the meetings of former political prisoners and fighters for freedom and also in the rooms of Memento. This kind of collection started even before the Memento Association was formed. In 1988 the initiative group got a lot of data from the letters about the fate of deported people. The relatives of the perished people have collected and forwarded data to ERRB.

Companions in misfortune have given information about people who died in prison camps.

Researchers of their native place and family historians have submitted a lot of material.

Some of the data comes from the Memento questionnaires that were delivered in the early 1990s. Unfortunately less filled-in questionnaire forms came back than were expected.

There is a lot of data that comes from the published memoirs and from the manuscripts that are in possession of ERRB. ERRB has been in co-operation with the State Research Commission of the Repressive Policy of the Occupants and has received data from the commission.

Every single list, questionnaire form and pieces of memoirs have been preserved and will be a source for the future historians interested in the facts of deportation.

The fact that the register book of 1941 was published does not mean that ERRB and Memento have finished their work. Quite to the contrary there is hope that the book will be a stimulus for new, more specified register books. As long as Memento exists, the data collection will continue.

Ülo Ojatalu

DEATHS FROM STARVATION

Peep Varju
Active Chairman of the Estonian Sate Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression Investigation

The first massive deportation from Estonia to Russia on 14 June 1941 is the crime of genocide against the Estonian nation, which will never lapse. The extent and inhumanity of the military operation shocked people and determined the fate of hundreds and thousands of people for the next 50 years of the Soviet occupation. According to the international convention about prevention of genocide and punishment for it, two of the five kinds of crimes exactly correspond to the crimes committed by communists in 1941. They are:

Article c: Intentionally forced upon living conditions, which cause total or partial genocide of a unit.

Article e: Forced upon relocation of children from one unit to another.

The highest leadership of the Soviet Union planned the crime. They had carried out a lot of similar operations in their own territory since 1929 when during the foundation of collective farms hundreds and thousands of farmers were sent to the deserted areas in Siberia. The joint regulation of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party that was issued on 14 May 1941 finally approved a long-planned deportation in the Baltic States. [D. 11, 1.1]

Such usual violence in the communist empire was quite a surprise for the citizens of the democratic Estonian Republic. People refused to believe that in addition to being deprived of their homes the power leaders openly told lies about their future and did not allow taking along necessary tools, not to mention everyday articles and clothes. The deporting authorities were chasing after every single family member and people were put into cattle railway cars dressed in summer clothes, just as they were at the moment of their capture.

At the places the Soviet deporting authorities lied to the victims of deportation that they would be transported to the neighbouring areas for a short period of some days. They lied about the future of the families, their property and money that was supposed to be sent to their new home through a special trustee. Only a month and a half later the local authorities informed Estonians that in the name of the Soviet Government they had deliberately been told lies because that was necessary!

A few people, who tried to protest against the forcible deportation to Siberia, were put in trucks and railway cars by force with the help of armed soldiers. In the station in Rakvere parents tried to give a 4-month-old boy Peeter Falk who was ill over to his relatives but because of a very attentive soldier the baby was thrown back into the railway car. The baby died in the railway car on the way on 02 July 1941. Everyone who ignored the orders of the deporting authorities or tried to escape was shot on the spot. That happened to the grandmother of the infants Enn and Harald Saarse in Võisiku Parish. 58-year-old Kata Sepp died of the wounds in a hospital in Viljandi on 15 June 1941. The constable of Mäetaguse Parish Hans Karussaar was killed at his own home on the day of deportation.

Most victims, having grown up in the state of justice, hoped that their repression was ungrounded and sooner or later legally everything would be cleared up. Harsh reality put an end to these hopes already in the first Siberian months and the deported children, women and elderly people started to understand that in reality they had been sentenced to death through starvation. The village commandants, who had been nominated to guard, forced people to sign the documents, which said that they were socially “dangerous element” and therefore were sent out to a predetermined living area for 20 years. Leaving without a permission of the commandant was considered a crime and punished with a 20-year imprisonment. When women, who had been deprived of elementary human rights, tried to protest or ask questions, they got a rude and later many-times repeated reply: “you will kick the bucket anyway, so there’s no need to waste a bullet on you”.

The deaths of deported infants caused by different illnesses and starvation started already on en route because of the inhuman conditions in the hot wagons there was no water, food or medical aid. The innocent people, who were deported to Novosibirsk Oblast and traveled for more than three weeks, suffered most. On the journey that continued across the Ob River on an overcrowded barge, the living conditions became even worse and death cases became more frequent. 790 people from Virumaa were on the same barge with 1100 people from Latvia, sharing the same fate. The memories of these people give a terrible picture of the happening. The children died and they were buried in the ground on the riverbank. At the same time mothers gave birth to new babies and very soon they meet their death together with their mothers. We know now that the worst conditions were in Vasjugan Region where people from Virumaa were deported, and in Kargasok Region where people from Tartu, Võru and Petseri Counties were deported.

On 10 July 1941, when sick and tortured people from Virumaa were ordered to leave the barge at Aipolovo, they were met by an awfully stormy weather. Wet to the skin, the deportees were taken to the club building where the storm had broken all the windows. Children started to die in large numbers and more than 30 died before they reached their destination of deportation. Many dates of peoples’ death will stay a secret forever because nobody registered them. Half of the families starved to death during the following year and only some exact dates of deaths have reached us through the memories of their companions in fortune and misfortune. The commandants of Vasjugan Region drew up the lists of arrivals only in September of 1941, and they have luckily survived in the archives of Tomsk and one can see that at least 36 children had died before the lists were drawn up. In addition to the perished children some elderly people had died, e.g. 69-year-old Mari Tank from Kunda Parish died on 11 August 1941 and 71-year-old Toomas Tank died in September the same year in the village of Vesjolõi.

Death from starvation began to grow in numbers in Vasjugan and Kargassok Regions from the winter to the end of the summer of 1942. Local people were starving too because the harvest of the last year had failed and on the pretence of the war the state power deprived the collective farms of their crops, leaving only a part for seed grain. Starving and desperate people tried to force themselves into granaries or take home some handfuls of grain to their starving children to keep them alive, but as a rule they were caught and were sentenced to hard labour where they perished or disappeared without a trace. Mothers who were about to starve to death sometimes consciously acted like this, knowing that after their imprisonment children might be taken to children’s homes and stay alive. Therefore hundreds of Siberian orphans are alive due to their mothers who sacrificed their lives.

When the orphans could reach home years later in spite of all the difficulties, people would get some information about the fate of other families but a lot of Estonian families perished and their fate would be unclear for years or forever. The Kuutma family of six people from Palmse Parish died in Siberia so did the Madar family of four from Tudulinna, the Brjunins from Narva, and the Laanemets’ from Narva Parish. In July of 1942 the Kalviste family of 3 members from Rakvere dies during 9 days and the Enn family from Kunda of 3 dies during 3 weeks in August.

1941. aasta suvel Novo-Vasjugani kalmistule maetud eesti lapsed (esimene rida vasakult paremale).			In the summer of 1941 these children were buried in Novo-Vasjugan cemetery (from left to right)
Kirsti-Mall Küüra	Tauno Küüra	Merike Tuulik		Aino Hermans	Gustav Hermans
Palmse v. *08.07.38	*18.04.1936	Narva ,*14.03.1938		Mahu v., *1936	*09.09.1938
s. 19.07.1941	s. 15.08.1941	s. 08.1941		s. 08. 1941	s. 08.1941
Tagareas võivad olla maetud: Rein-Erik Kultas Narvast, 31.12.1939, ja Palmse vallast pärit Pear Varju, 20.02.1939, Malle Kuutma, 17.09.1940, ja Kalle Kuutma, 01.04.1939. Nad kõik surid juulikuus 1941.			In the back row Rein-Erik Kultas from Narva, born 31.12.39; Pear Varju from Palmse Parish, born 20.02.39; Malle Kuutma born 17.09.40 and Kalle Kuutma born 01.04.1939 might be buried there too because they all died in July 1941.

In the village of Ognev Jar 20 people out of 30, in Jersovka village 11 out of 23 and in Vesjolõi village 66 out of 146 deportees died. The number of victims in Medveži Tšvor village was 42 and one should add 7 children who either died on the way or in the village. So the number of deaths would be 49 out of 92 people who should have lived, according to the plans of KGB, under strict control until the end of their days in that village of starvation. 56 people were banished to Kamennõi Village but Ahti Tuulik from Narva, who was half a year old, did not reach there. He died on the way on 27 July 1941 and was buried in Malinovka. The others reached their final destination on 29 July. Two days later there was the first funeral in Kamennõi because Liis Tammaru, who was 4 months old, died.

Toguri Infant Home in Tomski Region Kolpashevo District in the summer of 1942.

The famine of 1942 mercilessly played havoc among the people. During four months 14 people died one after the another in Kamennõi. The first was on 20 March 1942. It was the 5-month-old Helle Püss who was born in 1941 at harvest time when Estonian women were forced to work 20 hours a day. The last death of the year was on 26 July. It was Marie Raudsepp from Kunda. Women who were fighting with hunger wanted their message about their fate to reach home, to Estonia, and therefore several of them kept a diary. Sometimes they had to replace paper by birch bark. Thanks to M. Raudsepp’s diary we know now the exact dates of death of other victims in Kamennõi village as well as from other villages. The last entry in her diary is on 26 July 1942, which is the date of her death. Uno Mell from Narva, who was 12, also kept a diary. His mother died from starvation on 15 July 1942 with the last wish that her husband’s photo would be put into her coffin. Five days later died the 7-year-old Helju Mell died and Uno, who was an orphan then, was sent to Aipolovo children’s home. It is unbelievably difficult to read the lines in that diary for the people who were there but miraculously survived. Having got a second chance to live in this world, they feel a sense of gratitude towards the people who died. Everybody who died somehow helped the others to survive.

The truth of the recollections of the fallen is confirmed by official documents in the Tomsk archives. 12 year-old Heino Luuka from Haljala, who died of hunger on June 19th, 1942, in the village of Kamennõi, for his work at the collective farm received 100 grams of bread per day, which then was the norm for children up to 16 years of age. Lack of any other food caused death from hunger, writes Jaroslavtsev, commandant of Šmakovka, in his report to the Region party committee. (Tomsk Oblast archive ????, fund 102, list 1, case file 42, page 55)

There is a confidential report from 11 January 1944 written by a NKVD chief in Vasjugan region about the people who were brought there. It says that out of so called special contingent brought from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldavia in 1941, 358 people died during the first two years and there were living only 135 people in a very critical condition of famine at that moment. (Archieve of the Tomsk Oblast ????, f. 102, n. 1, s. 104, p. 16.) According to the latest data the factual number of victims was more than 500 already. The village commandants did not keep correct account on it and even in the years 1951-53 KGB of Tomski region was looking for the whole families who appeared to be missing but in reality had died in the first year of famine.

The statistics about Kargassok region shows that 88 people out of those 394, who had been deported from Estonia, died. Most of them were either babies or elderly people. 11 out of 13 babies younger than one year died (which makes 85%) and 14 out of 16 elderly people older than 61 died (which make 90%). We have included 9 babies who were born in this region in 1941, of which 8 died of hunger.

We know nearly 4250 people as dead or missing out of these who were deported from Estonia to Russia in cattle cars on 14 June 1941. We may claim without doubt that they died of hunger.

THE DEPORTED WROTE

Elfriide Kulgver

My husband, lieutenant colonel Aleksander Kulgver, disbanded since 1 January 1941 and me – Elfriide Kulgver, a teacher of Vigala basic school.

Juta Kaju-Vessik

My father was a state official, my mother died in 1937, when I was 12. Since 1940 we had a stepmother. I had three brothers, one of them was 5 years older, and the others were younger than I was. Our stepmother was a housewife and organised sewing courses for the town women at our home. Our living standard was average, we got along well with our neighbors. Our father was a board member of Kuressaare Esperanto Society and took part in the activities the Defense Union. He had been in the War of Independence.

Lembit Üksti

My father Anton Üksti, the headmaster of Haapsalu Gymnasium and Haapsalu Swedish Gymnasium.

Veera Pitka (Kasak)

My husband (Stanley) was an airman, I was a housewife. None of our relatives was politically active. One uncle served in the Defense Union. My husband’s father was Admiral Johannes Pitka, everybody knows about him and his life.

Uuno Tomasson

My father Johannes Tomasson was a successful manufacturer. Ha had a small factory in Tallinn with 40 employees. They produced aluminum dishes.

Tiia Luberg

My father Heinrich Luberg was a shareholder of the stock company “Savi”. He was a member of the Defence Union, a vaps, and a wearer of the Cross-of Freedom. My mother was a housewife. We lived in Kadaka Road in our own house next to the “Savi” factory.
Erich Klaas

My father Ernst Klaas worked as a bus driver, my mother was a housewife. We had an average living standard, father had a good salary. Our father was a vaps and that was our only connection with politics.

Elfriide Kulgver

On Friday, 13 June 1941 at 11 p.m. some captors came to us in Koostri. After several hours of search they declared that our family were to be taken to Russia. Our family consisted of my husband the children and me: Ülo was 19, Lembit was 13, Jüri was 3 years and 11 months old and Arvo was 11 months old.

Juta Kaju-Vessik

The deporting officials came in the night of June the 14^th, at about 3 a.m. There were four men, one of them was an Estonian and 3 military men, all of them were strangers to us.

Lembit Üksti

There were 7 people from our class who were deported to Russia on 14 June 1941. They were Vilma, Albert, Eve, Meeme, Georgi Kisseljov, Hans Medell and me.

Veera Pitka (Kasak)

My husband, his two brothers and me were deported to Russia on 14 June 1941. The men were arrested at once and were executed in 1942, two younger brothers at Solikamsk prison on 1 September, the older brother in Butõrka prison in July.

Uuno Tomasson

The deportation took place like this: My mother was at work, where she was arrested and brought home. We were given a short period of time to pack some things. A truck was waiting outside, guarded by some soldiers. Father was arrested separately... It happened in Kopli at granny Johanna’s place where father had come to have lunch.

Minu mälestused 1941. aasta 14. juunist on 4,5-aastase lapse mälestused, kes ei saa aru, miks teda nii vara äratatakse ja ruttu riidesse pannakse, miks seisab lastetoa uksel vene sõdur, püss käes?

Tiia Luberg

My memories of the 14^th of June 1941 are those of a 4 and a half- year child who didn’t understand why she was woken up so early, why she was dressed in such a hurry and why a Russian soldier with a gun in his hand was standing at the door.

Erich Klaas

We had a very small flat with a few pieces of furniture in Liivalaia Street. We lived economically and sparingly but we didn’t miss anything. Life went on quietly, suspecting nothing bad like deportation. But then, on 14 June at 5 in the morning 4 came to our flat in Liivalaia Street to tell us that we should leave Tallinn and go as far as 100 kilometers... A truck was waiting outside, guarded by two armed soldiers.

Mall Pool

A heavy banging at the window at 3 at night of the 14 June woke the Theodor Pool’s family up. Three civilians and one Russian soldier with a gun entered the house. The other was standing outside. The whole family was ordered downstairs into the living room and nobody was allowed to leave or use the phone. Mother and grabby were told to pack in haste all the necessary things and bed linen, to take some food for a couple of days. Father and two men were drawing up a property conveyance statement. The eldest farmhand, who was crying hard, was ap-pointed to take care of the property while we were climbing into the truck. My father Theodor Pool was executed in Sverdlovsk in 1942.

Veera Pitka (Kasak)

We were taken to Pääsküla, I was put into a cattle wagon, and he was put into another... That was the last time I saw my husband. There were bunk beds in the wagon. The wagon had barred windows. There was no toilet, only a hole in the floor. There were about 41-42 people in the wagon. The youngest was a three year-old girl, the other children were aged from 7 to 18.

Uuno Tomasson

The whole family was taken to the railway station...There we were separated from each other – the men were taken away, the women stayed there with their children. We were told to take our things at random because we would meet in Russia anyway. So it happened that father’s clothes were left with mother.

Mall Pool

At Papiniidu Station barred wagons were already waiting for us. There the families were separated and that was the last time I saw my father. Four of us, my mum, granny, my brother and me were put into another wagon. So we started our way to an unknown destination. We had 300 grams of bread per day, a ladle of porridge or some soup-like liquid or just water.

Our final station was Kotelnitša on 23 June. There we were informed that the war had started. We were put on a ship and taken along the Vjatka River and at every harbour some people were sent ashore. We were taken to Lebjažje Village and our new living place was Okunevo state farm. The place shocked us with its dirtiness. It was so antisanitary, there were no lavatories. The “residence” meant for us was a one-storied wooden building that had been used as a summer club. There were no stoves and all people had to go in into the hall and on the stage.

We did different things on the farm: we worked in the woods, in the field etc. It was physically hard and many of us were not used to this kind of work, but we managed although there wasn’t enough food.

I was arrested on 25 December 1944. Before me two young men from our neighbouring collective farm had been taken away. On the way to Kirov I was the only political prisoner. There were 64 men, quite awful blokes and three women – they were criminals-recidivists. That 140-kilometre long journey was awfully difficult. First of all physically. It was cold and stormy. We had to walk in the morning and in the evening darkness. We walked in a close group guarded by soldiers and dogs. We were told every now and then: one step aside was considered the attempt to escape and the person who happened to make it was shot. We suffered morally and psychically.

This is only one example of it: it was really so terrible for me that I was longing for death – the only time during these difficult 18 and a half years that I spent in Russia.

Veera Pitka (Kasak)

We reached a place where there was a prison and the administration agreed to put us up but he insisted on heat processing our clothes. We were stripped naked in one of the storerooms. The clothes were tied into a bundle, put on a sledge that was waiting outside and taken away. 68 people were sitting naked in the cold room and waiting. After two hour our clothes were brought back and poured into the snow. We were ushered out to pick up our own clothes. Can you imagine 68 people, frozen to the bone, looking for their clothes in the deep snow.

You could find such offensive cases everywhere.

Finally we were handed over to a prison in Kirov. I was accused for anti-Soviet propaganda (§58–10) and was given 10+5 years of labour camp.

Our final destination was Striž Station near Kirov. There was a peat bog where we were sent to work. We got a living place in a schoolhouse. The classrooms were full of beds, 14 in our room.

Our family seemed to be in the most difficult condition because my husband had all our money and we were separated. The two younger kids fell ill with bronchitis on the way and it was accompanied with diarrhoea. I had to carry the children to the polyclinic in order to get the right to stay away from work for 3 days. Seeing that it didn’t get better by using castor oil and cupping glasses, the doctor sent me to the hospital of the neighbouring station Oritš. The kids gradually started to get better. As the war had started, the hospital was emptied for the wounded and we were taken to a country hospital that was 16 km off. Instead of doctors there were two young girls with plaits from Leningrad undergoing their practical training. On 30 July these two, so called doctors, came to our ward to give an injection to Arvo who was one year old. The first injection was with glucose and it worked well. Instinctively I asked them not to give another injection. But they gave it and the child started to hover between life and death. He died in half an hour’s time. Later I heard that it had been camphor injection.

By the time Germany had occupied Estonia and closed the borders, I had received 2160 roubles from my homeland.

I hired a gravedigger. He carried the dead child to the graveyard and the two of us said prayers at the grave.

Elfriide Kulgver

On 27 February 1942 I had a horrible surprise at home – my son Jüri was apathetic and didn’t rush to eat soup as usual. He lost consciousness in the evening and this situation lasted until the 6^th of March when he died. In such a cold weather it was impossible to take the child to the hospital that was 7 kilometres far from our place

Our family was deported to Tomsk Oblast in Siberia. At once a struggle with hunger started to stay alive. The most difficult years were 1942–1943. Mother and brother worked on the collective farm for 12 hours a day. In the evenings mother made sailor’s blouses for Russian ladies for 1.5 liters of milk. My brother learned how to make wooden spoons and earned some slices of bread with his work. The collective farm gave mother and brother 0.3 kg of pea meal and 0.3 kg of bread for one workday unit. I went to school but I had to stop going there because I had neither warm clothes nor footwear (the schoolhouse was 4 km away). Our granny crocheted towy pairs of “pastels” for everybody so that they could go to work and to the forest to supply us with firewood.

Mall Pool

In the first years in Siberia our main food was pea gruel. Sometimes we had bread and sometimes milk as additional payment. In spring we used nettle for food but there was not enough of it as all Estonians used it. In 1942 our potato crop failed and starvation continued. We had sold our clothes we taken with by 1943. Our severest problems during these years were always connected with food. It became easier in 1945 when we had established the contact with Estonia.

The living place for our family became Vahruševo in Kirov Oblast. There was a big oil factory. Estonians lived together – in a schoolhouse or a hostel. Life was hard. We were starving. We were usually given about 200 grams of bread for a coupon. Every single grown-up had to work. They got some money for salary, that they couldn’t use, and food coupons. The coupons were the main currency that gave you the ration of bread.

Uuno Tomasson

We went to school and the students were given 100 grams of bread in the long break. It was an important stimulus. At school there was a real pest – lice. There were so many of them that they were, literally speaking, hanging on our clothes. One break at school was used for killing them: The students had to take off their clothes and kill the lice between their fingernails. We didn’t have lice caps with a fivecorner like soldiers did. A teacher was always present and gave the instructions.

The living place for our family became Borovskoi State Farm in Kirov Oblast. There were all in all about 160 Estonians. Our first living room was the club where people had to sleep (live) on the benches that were pushed together in the hall or on the stage. Besides the club we lived in the schoolhouse or out in the tents until in the autumn of 1942 we were put in a room which was meant for washing and was as big as 25–30 square meters. 7 families with 14 people shared the room. There we lived for 4 years. Every family had their own bunk bed where people had to sleep, have their meals, do their homework for school. Under every bunk there were the scanty belongings.

Tiia Luberg

Since the very first summer we had only one thought – how to get food. The children had a special game: “when we get back to Estonia, what will we eat?” My dream was porridge of pearl barley and bread. In the summer of 1942 I remember myself investigating my tummy and wondering why it was so hard, big and heavy. I remember myself sitting in the cold room on my bunk and thinking of food, only of food. Every house had a latrine about 50 metres from the building. The path to it was usually covered with frozen waste and stool. Once, going to the latrine, I found a big potato at the dumping place but unfortunately it was rotten. I went there every day to see if it had changed for better so that I could bake it on the range plate. It was the time when bread was given only to our mother for her work – 300 grams – but there were three of us.

We were taken to Slobodskoi Region in Kirov Oblast and were scattered into different villages. We didn’t have any work until spring. We got 400 grams of bread per day and nothing else. In a situation, where human life wasn’t worth a penny, hunger, illnesses and indescribable homesickness broke us down. Everybody died in the Viilma Family from Taebla. First it was the mother and then the three children died one after another. By the spring half of us were dead. My sister Eha had a fever and was taken to the hospital where we got a nameless message about her death. Mother was ill with high fever for a week and I had to go and bury my sister although I had just recovered from typhoid fever and was very week yet. Marta Aren gave her helping hand and mother gave her all her bread. We had to walk 7 kilometres on foot through the snowdrifts and then take the train for two stops. Finally we found a carpenter who made us a simple coffin for a day’s ration of bread. We could borrow a sledge for our last roubles but it wasn’t strong enough to carry the coffin and we had some troubles with it. There was a passer-by who refused to help us lift the coffin back onto the sledge. When we reached the graveyard it was getting dark already.

Lembit Üksti

The gravedigger demanded two glasses full of tobacco from us. Where would we get it... It was cold, about minus 35 degrees. I was wearing a coat that I had borrowed and my hands were freezing. I put my hand into the pocket and found a half box of Russian Cigarettes “Maret”. We buried my sister in one grave with a young girl from Haapsalu. Her name was Lehte Jakobson.

Veera Pitka (Kasak)

I was at Vjatka forest camp for four years. It was a hard work – we had to cut down trees and finally load the ready-made timber onto wagons. In 1948 an order came that saved me. All the political prisoners of Kirov were brought together and taken to Komi prison camp. Women were taken to Inta because of the men’s camps was empty and we, about 3000 women, were settled there. At nights we cleaned the railroad from the snow or repaired the barracks of soldiers.

In November 1954 I was free from prison but was banished at Inta for another 5 years. We returned to Tallinn on 19 October 1959. Then it turned out that we couldn’t get a living permission in the place where we had been sent off. We had to find a place not nearer than 100 km off. We went to live to Ahtme.

Uuno Tomasson

Every grown-up deportee had to show up once a month on a certain day to make sure that he or she had not escaped and was alive. Where could a woman with small children escape! There was a war everywhere and there was no transport!

It was not enough for the deporting official to use physical violence on us, they wanted to own our souls! They didn’t succeed though they tried to find traitors and sleuths among Estonians who would report to the surveillance officials about the mood and topics.

My baby brother Mati already died at Christmas time in 1941.

Lembit Üksti

In February 1947 I got a temporary passport from the security office in my region and a permission to go to Estonia because I had been sent out as an infant. We had information that young people who had gone to Estonia we deported back to Siberia again. I was arrested on 19 June 1950. At first I was at Lasnamäe prison (two months of school of life). There were 28 young people. Then I was taken to the historic prison of Krestõ in Leningrad and then to Kirov. I reached Vahruš, where my mother was waiting, again in August. We were both freed in 1954, the first people in this group of Estonians, and we left for our dream country – Estonia.

Erich Klaas

I went to Estonia to my mother’s knowing. The carriage roofs of the train were all full of boys dressed in wadded jackets. I didn’t feel suspicious. We got tea in the wagon and we had our own bread. There was not enough money to go from Narva to Tallinn, so I had to sell half of my bread. I reached Tallinn on 16 July 146 and stopped at my great aunt because my home had been destroyed in the war. I had to go to school because there was no way I could attend school in Siberia.

Uuno Tomasson

In 1947 my sister Milvi went back to Estonia, without permission. I went a year later, in 1948. When I reached Estonia, I was weak with fatigue and starvation, small in my body. During a year and a half I gained weight and grew so that I was the second or third in the line of our class. The difference between nourishment in Russia and Estonia was so big that many of us fell ill because of that.

In 1951 I had to leave Estonia because my sister Milvi was arrested. They came to us to arrest me but I wasn’t at home. I decided to go to Russia on my own. I hoped to get a clean passport there because on February 9 I was 16. If I had been arrested and sent there, I would not have got it. But I didn’t get the passport. I got a form on a white sheet of paper instead. That certificate was without a photo.

Tiia Luberg

After finishing secondary school I studied in the town of Gorki for one year. I got my freedom there in the summer of 1956. I started my journey back to Estonia in September. Nobody was waiting for me in Tallinn, because my mother was on Borovskoi state farm, my sister studied in Molotov. My grannies and aunts in Estonia had died meanwhile. Our house was full of Russians and despoiled. I was still happy and felt like a heroine who had suffered for her homeland and was now coming back to her dreamland. While I was waiting for the train to Tallinn in the station in Leningrad, I saw a group of Estonian young people. I had lived among Russians during my last year and now it was the first time to hear my own language. It was like greeting from my homeland. I went to them, of course, and tried to say that I was an Estonian. I was laughed at and nobody wanted to speak to me. That was my first “greeting” from home. It wasn’t easy to start my studies in an Estonian group of TPI and take in the chuckles because of my lack of knowledge in the Estonian Language.

Juta Kaju-Vessik

We started back home in February 1957 in an awful blizzard. I started first and my brother had to follow me later. Everyone had to have his or her own fare for traveling. First of all I took a bus to Kirov and there I got on a train. It took 5 days to reach home. The strangest thing at home was to listen to my own native language. From Tallinn I went to Virtsu and from there to Kuressaare. I had some difficulties to get work because we, who had been to Siberia, were looked upon as strangers.

/ Excerpts from written recollections collected in Memento were selected Tiia Luberg-Nurmis.

KIROV OBLAST AS A SETTLEMENT LOCATION FOR ESTONIANS

Kirov Oblast already in the 1920–1930-ies became a location where Russian kulaks and other “enemies of the people” were forcefully sent to settle. For example, in Nagorsk Region, special settlement nr. 4, when Estonians were taken there in 1943, already lived people who once had been sent there, “to the taiga under a fir-tree”. There they had established the best agricultural cooperative (collective farm) in the Region, with fields ranging several hectares and graveyards of their less lucky comrades in fate – far away from local villages, in the middle of the taiga, near the border of Komi (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). To the north – towards the Komi land – one could only go by foot, on forest paths and bear trails. Towards the south – moving in the direction of the Region enter – during some months, depending on the season, it was possible to hitch a ride on rare horse wagons that were used for transporting goods and packages. Special settlement nr. 3 was in Nagorsk Region. There were two special settlements marked with number 2: in Polom and Upper-Kama (former Kai) Regions. There is no information about special settlement no. 1.

On the basis of the so-called “Beria’s plan of measures”, confirmed by him 14.06.1941 (D.17, see Chpt. 1.1.), in June of 1941 there were 6000 places designated for deported family members in Kirov Oblast, but at first these places were left in reserve. On June 12^th, 1941, Moscow informed PCIA’s Kirov Oblast Administration that on June 15^th, 1941, from Estonia 4000 persons, mainly women with children, would be sent to Kirov Oblast as forced settlers. Within the next 24 hours was expected a reply with names of railway station where the deportees would be unloaded from railway (cattle) cars. At the same time it was considered expedient that families be sent to various village councils so that they would be guaranteed places to live and work without any problems. In the next message from Moscow, USSR Internal Affairs People’s Commissar’s (Beria) deputy, 3d degree commissar Tšernõšov demanded by September 15^th, 1941, reports from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia, Ukraine and Belorussia about the special contingent of deported persons with the following information: the number of people housed in every Region, their housing locations, conditions of work and life [D.16].

The movement of the trains with the special contingent from Estonia to Kirov Oblast and elsewhere was overseen from June 16^th to 21^st, 1941, by USSR PCIA Department of Transportation head, State Security Captain Zikejev, who compiled reports on this issue [D.21]. And on June 22^nd the war broke out.

PCIA Kirov Oblast Administration was briefed that until they receive a special regulation, accounting for and registration of the special contingent on the basis of their places of residence should take place according to USSR PCIA order nr. 0143, of June 1^st, 1939. It was done by USSR PCIA GULAG’s head, State Security Lieutenant Colonel Nasedkin [Sabbo 1996, p. 793]. Actually, every adult deportee had to personally go to the commandant’s office 1-3 times each month and to give the signature of proof that also all the underage family members were alive and had not escaped from the place of settlement. In order to prolong the personal document for freedom of movement in settlement, the commandant had to write the corresponding entry in it every time.

With the next top secret document, USSR PCIA GULAG’s Department Work and Special Settlements head, State Security Captain Konradov informs all concerned that in Kirov Oblast it is intended to house 4000 people of the special contingent in village councils of Kotelnitši, Pinjuga, Luzski, Oparino, Slobotskoi, Kirov, Oritši and Taine-Kamski (obviously Verhne-Kamski) Regions in small groups, using these people for different kinds of work; also it was planned to use the special contingent at state farms [Sabbo 1996, pp. 794-795].

Despite the existing wide network of institutions engaged in repressions and detailed plans, the actual situation turned out to be somewhat different from what had been expected. Deputy head of PCIA Kirov Oblast Administration (city of Kirov, Lenin street), State Security Captain Jegošin and head of the 1^st special department, State Security Lieutenant Predein wrote in their report 15.09.41 to Beria’s deputy Tšernõšov the following.

In Kirov Oblast have been housed deportees only from Estonian SSR (i.e. from Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, etc., no one was at first brought to Kirov Oblast), altogether 2049 persons. As of 15.09.41, they are residing in 18 Regions:

Rajoon / Region	Andmed / Data from		Rajoon / Region	Andmed / Data from
Rajoon / Region	SaRK PCIA	ERRB ERPRB	Rajoon / Region	SaRK PCIA	ERRB ERPRB
Nagorski	198	227	Nema	51	42
Belaja Holunitsa	99	97	Oritši	373	266
Verhošižemje	50	48	Polomi	49	54
Darovskoi	54	63	Slobotskoi	118	177
Kotelnitši	134	160	Sovetski	68	45
Kilmezi	55	66	Uržumi	123	130
Kõrtšanõ	51	37	Šurma	59	52
Lebjažje	133	112	Šestakovo	21	12
Malmõži	289	311	Muud / Other	-	137
Molotovi	124	113	Kokku / Total	2049	2149

ERPRB’s data, collected 60 years later, contains names, includes born children and does not exclude those who died during transportation and in settlement. On the basis of ERPRB’s data, deported Estonians lived in 8 more Regions than it was reported (18), for example, in Zujevo Region – 91 people, in Oparino Region – 11, etc., altogether 137 persons. Thus, ERPRB’s date testifies to the fact that 2149 deportees from Estonia were sent to Kirov Oblast. If we take into account, that the majority of 151 children, born in settlement in Kirov Oblast and immediately assumed to be deported family members, were born after September, 1941, then PCIA Kirov Oblast Administration’s and ERPRB’s (as of May, 2001) numbers of deportees are quite reassuringly similar. It should be also noted here, that only a limited number of forced settlers were transferred from one Region to another, even from one settlement to another, and such transfers were always strictly justified. For example, during the first months and years some Estonians were transferred from Karinstroi to Sinegorje (approximately 150 km), from Sinegorje people were taken to Belaja Retška (about 12 km into the taiga), to village of Lipovka (25 km), to special settlement nr. 4 (50 km), etc., and this was always arranged by supervisory organs.

Later people settled in southern Regions were transferred to Muhino state farm, which was under PCIA’s jurisdiction. When the war ended, construction workers from among the deportees were brought from Regions to the city of Kirov to work on the building site of the Dynamo stadium, belonging to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

On the basis of PCIA Kirov Oblast Administration’s data, as of 15.09.41 out of 2049 deported Estonians 1482 were 16 years or older. 1145 of them worked – 360 in collective and state farms, 240 in the lumber industry, 234 in peat industry and stone quarries, 109 in Region centres in various enterprises and 202 in Region organisations. 337 adults did not work – they were elderly people who were no longer able to work, mothers with small children and a very small number of materially secure people who did not wish to work.

The security organs were irritated by the large number (90) of applications for receiving winter clothing and getting families re-united. During the deportation families were mostly separated and later members of one family often lived in different Regions, even in different Oblasts. Also articles of clothing often got separated and were stored elsewhere. The Oblast officials turned to Moscow for information that could be used when replying to the applicants concerning possibilities for families getting re-united [D.26].

Deported inhabitants of the western parts of Ukraine (Carpathian Mountains’ regions) and Germans from the Volga River enclave appeared in Kirov Oblast towards the end of the war, in 1944–1945, and were sent to the same places of settlement where Estonians lived. The Volga Germans were brought or came themselves from distant Siberian settlements with severe climate to Kirov Oblast, where weather conditions were somewhat better. Well-educated and intact German families (men from these families were not mobilised into the Red Army) got along well with the local Estonians.

During the most difficult years – 1942-1943 – in Nagorsk Region, near special settlement nr. 3, in empty woodcutters’ barracks was opened a branch office of the American Red Cross for distributing aid. This was done to save lives of the Poles who had escaped from the occupied Polish territories or Poland proper and were then sent to the Komi land to die. These Poles came during winter months along the forest paths strewn with fallen trees from Komi ASSR, directly through the taiga that had no roads, up to their chests in snow and dragging children and the sick in sleighs behind them. They moved through Sinegorje in the direction of special settlement nr. 3. American aid – foodstuffs, egg powder and beautiful, like out of a fairytale, tins cans and clothes – was also shared with the local officials. The American Red Cross did not provide aid for starving Estonian deportees in Nagorsk Region, as they were considered to be citizens of the Soviet Union.

The main transportation artery in Kirov Oblast was Vjatka, a branch river of the Kama River, and its own branches. Also there were 3 railway lines: from the west to the east was running the Siberian Railway – through Vologda, Kirov, Perm (to Molotov), in the northern direction was functioning the Kirov-Kotlas-Vorkuta railway line and a branch railway line to Omutninsk-Kirs-Rudnitšnõi Kray prison camps. There were only about 75 km of hard surface highways (obviously constructed during the time of the monarchy) in the northern part of the Oblast – from Kirov through Slobotskoi Belaja to Holunitsa. There were more highways in the southern parts of the Kirov Oblast.

Vjatka was navigable all of the time from its mouth until the city of Kirov, i.e. for 700 km. In springtime the river was shipworthy even further, up to the river ports of Polom, Nagorsk and Kirs, which makes 300 km more from the city of Kirov to the north-east (see the provided map of Kirov Oblast). In the mouth of River Kobra, 130 km away from Kirov in Nagorsk Region, was situated the intermediate port for transportation of large quantities of logs tied into light and heavy rafts. On the branch of the Vjatka River – Kobra with Soz – up until special settlement nr. 4 only log rafts were on the move, along with some fishing boats and a few times every year also some ships were dragged upstream by rope by groups of special workers on the river bank. These were used for transporting salt and other merchandise.

To the south of the city of Kirov are situated the largest river ports on the Vjatka River – in Halturin (now Orlov), Kotelnitš, Lebjažje, Uržum (Uržumka branch river), Malmõž and Vjatskije Poljanõ. All these river ports are also Region centres and in all the Regions (except for the latter, the southernmost one) lived people deported from Estonia in June, 1941. The more to the south, the more there were villages and sown acreage, and the less – forests and mosquitoes.

Populated points in Kirov Oblast are classified into cities (in 1972 there were 19 of them), towns (53), among these 23 Region centres, villages, special settlements for deportees and prison camps. Special settlements (camps) were never put on the map and they often even did not have official names. What were called towns were until 1958 mostly just large villages, with streets greatly suffering from humid weather conditions and the main type of pavement being that made of wood planks.

Kirov Oblast is 120,800 km² in size, thus being about 2.7 times the size of Estonia (45,200 km²), and is divided into 29 Regions. Its population totalled 1,688,000 in 1972 and the number of people per square kilometre was the smallest in the northern part of the Oblast, for example, in Nagorsk Region it was 3 persons/km². The most heavily populated was Vjatsko-Poljanski Region in the south: 78 persons/km². Kirov Oblast is 550 km wide from the north to the south and 440 km – from the west to the east. For comparison: the straight line distance between Tallinn and Vilnius is 540 km.

Leo Õispuu

Map of the Kirov Oblast, October 1993.

NOVOSIBIRSK (TOMSK) OBLAST AS A SETTLEMENT LOCATION FOR ESTONIANS

On the basis of the data from archive documents, the majority of the Estonians deported in 1941 was sent to Novosibirsk Oblast, but to that part of it which from 1944 was called Tomsk Oblast. The latter is situated in Russia, in a distant part of Western Siberia, to the north-east of the contemporary Novosibirsk Oblast. It is 316,900 km² in size, which is seven times the size of Estonia and considerably larger than the rump Novosibirsk Oblast (175,200 km²). Almost 30% of the territory of Tomsk Oblast consists of marshes, 2.5% – open water reservoirs and rivers, 56% – woods and under 10% – agricultural lands. In 1975 824,000 people lived in Tomsk oblast, its territory divided into 20 Regions.

Just as Kirov Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast in the 1920–1930-ies also became a location where Russian kulaks and other “enemies of the people” were sent to. Hilda Orn, June’41 deportee from Narva, who was sent to Vasjugan Region, settlement of Maisk, later wrote in her book of recollections “This was life too” the following.

Parents of the local inhabitants had been deported here earlier – to the completely uninhabited taiga with an occasional ostjak’s hut or tent... That which the local people said about their settling in Siberia and starvation casing mass deaths to us sounded like some horror story and not the reality of the 20^th century. Yet unfortunately this was the living truth... From Altai Kray and the shores of the Black Sea Germans were brought here, they are said to have a village of their own out in the marshes, in a very poor place, Berezovka. On the map it is 15-20 km south of Maisk.)

USSR PCIA already 07.06.1941, that is 7 days before the actual deportation, suggested that 9115 family members deported from Estonia be sent to Krasnoyarsk Kray [D.14, Chpt.1.1.]. A few days later, 10.06.1941, the highest official of this very same PCIA, Beria’s deputy Tšernõšov suggested that the 9000 family members deported from Estonia be sent to Altai Kray [D.15].

Tow days later, 12.06.1941, Tšernõšov suggested that 3700 of the deportees from Estonia be sent to Novosibirsk Oblast instead [D.16]. That was the first instance when Novosibirsk Oblast was mentioned as a location for settlement for Estonians. 3700 people instead of 9115 was also a more or less realistic number for Estonia. On the basis of “Beria’s plan of measures”, confirmed by him 14.06.1941 [D.17], from Estonia it was planned to deport 9115 family members and take them to Altai Kray. The same plan stated that 10,000 family members deported from Moldavia should be sent to Novosibirsk Oblast.

Just as in the case of Kirov Oblast (see Chpt. 1.7.), filling Novosibirsk Oblast with forced settlers and turning it into “paradise for enemies of the people” was implemented differently from the original design. A considerably smaller amount of persons was deported from Estonia than Beria had planned. Arrested family heads were sent to prison camps. Over 2 thousand of the deported family members were sent to Kirov Oblast, on the basis of the reports issued by the repressive organs, some Estonians were also sent to Altai Kray and Omsk Oblast. Almost 3.5 thousand family members remained to be sent to Novosibirsk Oblast.

Head of PCIA’s Novosibirsk Oblast administration, State Security Major Kovšuk-Bekman’s report [D.25] contains data that as of 05.09.41 altogether 19,362 forced settlers were transported into the Oblast and located all over it for settlement. These people were marked as deported from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldavia and western areas of Ukrainian and Belorussian SSRs. Major confirms that the arrived settlers were located for settlement in the Narõm District’s 14 northern Regions (in Tomsk Oblast there were 20 Regions). There is no separate data concerning Estonians in this document. Kovšuk-Bekman’s stated number of 19,362 forced settlers was later repeatedly used in other documents.

The total number of 19,362 persons was 09.09.1941 divided into categories based on the settlement locations, as we can see in the document signed by two departmental heads of PCIA’s Novosibirsk Oblast administration – Bassov and Mitjušov [Sabbo 1996, p. 812, doc. 277 / VFRA f. 9479, n. 1c, s.-ü. 87, l. 238]. From it becomes known that from Estonia to Novosibirsk Oblast 564 families arrived, altogether 1619 people. Among them were 663 children below the age of 16, 269 adult males and 687 adult females. This total number of 1619 persons arrived from Estonia was then used 15.09.41, 28.09.41 and in all the later compiled documents. It is hard to explain how this relatively small total number was derived. It is likely that Estonians who arrived in some Regions were not summed up with this total number, or maybe some Estonians were accounted for as Latvians, Lithuanians or Moldavians – there were almost 12 thousand of them in Novosibirsk Oblast.

Both Estonian Repressed Persons Records Bureau’s (ERPRB) data and that received from Vadim Makšejev through Peep Varju testifies to the fact that there were many more Estonians in Tomsk Oblast than 1619 persons. V. Makšejev’s data was taken in 2000 from preserved archive materials and from books touching upon the subject of deportees from Estonia. He has collected three types of numerical data: about persons accounted for in 1948, about persons removed from records in 1941–1948 (i.e. dead or escaped back to Estonia and wanted by the state) and about children born in settlement in 1941–1948.

ERPRB’s data comes predominantly from family case files, criminal case files for family heads still preserved in the National Archive and to some lesser extent from questionnaires filled by and letters received from former deportees, their children, relatives, neighbours, etc. In the table “Estonians contingent in Tomsk Oblast” is presented the comparison of various data about the number of our people in Regions.

ESTONIANS IN TOMSK OBLAST

Rajoon / Region	1941		1948	1941–1948****
	ERRB / ERPRB	Makšejev ja teised Makšejev and others	Arvel Accounted for	Väljalangenud Removed	Sündinud Born

Vasjugani	789	787* 781=743+38	743	38 (1941)	1 (1941)
Kargassoki	396	394** 480	368	88** 137	25
Aleksandrovskoje	344	313	290	46	23
Baktšari	309	215	174	41
Tšainski	1377	705	580	162	37
Krivošeino	397
Parbigi	33
Kolpaševo	29
Muud rajoonid / Other regions	6
Kokku / Alltogether	3680***	2408-2500

* There were two young men on the barge counting Estonian deportees in early July, 1941. Robert Koppel’s data (born in 1920, Narva).

** Voldemar Rannaste’s data (born in 1925, Petserimaa).

*** ERRB’s data includes children born in settlement in Tomsk Oblast in 1941–1958, at least 202 children.

**** Data concerning deceased and born in settlement here is fragmentary; the corresponding general data can be found in tables in the statistics Chapter.

The numbers in the table show that: 1) ERPRB’s data and the numbers that private researchers R. Koppel and V. Rannaste came up with concerning deported Estonians in Vasjugan and Kargassok Regions coincide almost exactly; 2) V. Makšejev’s numbers of deported Estonians researched in Russian archives for year 1941 by Regions are significantly smaller than ERPRB’s data with the exception of that for Kargassok Region (480), which according to P. Varju contains also the numbers of Estonians settled in the neighbouring Regions.

Obviously, V. Makšejev has not succeeded in finding in Russian archives all information about Estonians deported to Novosibirsk, or to be more exact Tomsk, Oblast. And this is understandable because there the total number of forced settlers reached 19,362, including those brought there earlier or later. Nevertheless, V. Makšejev’s work deserves extraordinary recognition and endows our actions with the feeling of certainty.

For transportation of the special contingent on the railway from Lithuania 8, from Latvia 9, and from Estonia 8 trains were used, 4 of them reached Novosibirsk Oblast. Nine echelons were used to transport deportees from Moldavia to their new destinations. The budget foresaw the average of 15 days for transportation and 3 roubles per deportee per day for feeding on the way. Transportation from the terminus to the locations for settlement was to last the average of 5 days and 200 kilometres, and for that also was designated 3 roubles of food money per person per day. In the opinions of those transported, at least half of that money was never used to provide them with food on the road.

The Regions for settling the deportees and using them as labour force were designated by the decision of Novosibirsk Oblast (Communist Party) Executive Committee even before the deportation was initiated in Estonia. The numbers of families and persons allocated for this or that institution were also previously designated after discussing that with their directors and others eager to use slave labour.

The special evaluation of different Regions of Novosibirsk Oblast by the repressive organs was demonstrated at first by the fact that the means and distances of transportation for people loaded out of the railway cars upon their arrival to the Oblast for taking them to their designated Region centres were appalling.

For example, transportation to Vasjugan Region took 1700 km, to Parbig – 700 km, to Kolpaševo – 558 km, to Kargassok – 177 km, etc. Transportation to Vasjugan Region began in the Novosibirsk river port on barges. On one barge were placed 787 family members from Estonia and 1100 from Latvia. The barge travelled for 10 days, 1^st-10^th of July. On the way, a couple of small children died and at least one child was born (P. Varju’s data). They travelled at first in the northern direction, down the river Ob, then up the river Vasjugan, at first in the western, and then in the southern direction, seemingly backwards. The largest marshes in Siberia and the taiga without roads negated direct movement from one point to another. The Vasjugan plain, on the border of Tomsk Oblast and the current Novosibirsk Oblast, full of swamps, marshes and woods, is not directly traversable from south to north.

Head of the GULAG, State Security Captain Konradov 15.09.41 wrote critically of the situation with deportees in Novosibirsk Oblast. The housing and living conditions are extremely unsatisfactory because housing was arranged without taking into consideration the existing living-space, without preparation of the houses. The deportees are partially housed in summer barracks, mud huts, club houses, “red corners”, collective farms’ offices, etc. At some places there is danger of epidemics breaking out, especially in the settlements where many deportees were sent into; there are no saunas and laundries (even simple washing facilities are lacking).

The deportees are not capable of engaging in manual labour, work poorly, do not fulfil the worknorms and live on the supplies and means they took with them from Estonia. Among them there are families who cannot go on living without help because their family heads were repressed. (These families died of starvation - L.Õ.) The economy in the areas of settlement consisted of widening the sown acreage by means of rooting out the forests, wood production, fishing and hunting. The deportees had neither the means, the skills, nor the freedom of movement for catching fish or hunting.

In this Chapter was used data from documents D.1...D.27 that are described in Chapter 1.1. “Time schedule of documents connected with the June’41 deportation”.

Leo Õispuu

Map of the Tomsk Oblast. For people deported from Estonia in 1941 banishment places were Tšainsk (centre on the map Podgornoje), Vasjugan (Nowy Wasjugan), Aleksandrovskoje (Alexandrowskoje), Kargassok (Kargassok), Baktšar (centre on the map Baktschar) and other Regions.

DIARY ON THE BLANK MARGINS OF MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOK

The author of the text and drawings in the diary is Vaike Kask, who was born on 15 May 1928 in Muhu parish. She was deported at the age of 13 together with her mother Juuli (b. 1902), brother Tervo (b. 1935) and sister Külli (b. 1936) to the work in the woods of the taiga of Nagorsk Region in Kirov Oblast. Her father Vassili Kask (b. on 31 Dec. 1896) was shot in Ussollag in Molotov (Perm) Oblast on 7 Feb. 1942. Vaike Kask was in deportation for about a month in Slobodskoi Region from 22 June until 17 July 1941, then in Belaja Retška in Nagorsk Region from 23 July 1941 until 1943, in Sinegorje from 1943 until April 1944 and in a separate village (posjolka) No 4 since April 1944.

A short summary of the diary is as follows: written laconic remarks of a starving child, her activities for keeping her younger brother and sister alive, her longings for homeland and parents as well as preservance of national identity. All the three children and their mother stayed alive thanks to steadiness, good knowledge of nature and handicraft skills. More than a quarter of the fellows also deported during the same time died in difficult circumstances in Nagorsk Region. According to the data in the report of the Military Tribunal of the Soviet Union People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs in Kirov Oblast to Moscow on 15 Spetember 1941 the total number of Estonians living in Nagorsk Region, i.e. in Sinegorje and Belaja Retška was 198 deported Estonians. Only 2-3 Estonians learnt in Sinegorje primary school (4 forms) for a short period of time, because of the lack of shoes and clothes and the parents’ anti-russification attitude.

The original text of the diary has been changed a little: some explanations by Leo Õispuu, the compiler, have been added in the brackets. L. Õispuu lived also in Sinegorje, Belaja Retška, Lipovka and settlement No. 4 before making escape to Estonia. Diary or Mathematics textbook for form 4 or 5 without title pages with a remark FOR MAINTAINING is in the hands of Külli Kask-Väli as Vaike Kask is dead.

1941

Today I am in a bad mood: I am thinking only of my home and daddy.

Today the morning and whole day it has been thundery. I do not know what it means, maybe the warmth will end and we will be let home.

Today we were allowed to buy ½ kg of salt according to a card or the list.

Yesterday the Jew (a shopkeeper) took Mum’s coupons away and did not give bread.

We are short of money. I am very worried.

1942

I have heard that the Estonians will be taken away from Sinegorje to three places.

Irja (Varest, b. 1926 and d. 10 Jan. 1943) sent Vaike a picture (a drawing depicting 7 ballerinas with a subscription L. van Beethoven, Mondschein Sonate) as a memory from Belaja Retška. (I. Varest, a lawyer’s daughter from Kuressaare arranged barrack life of the Estonian children in the light of a pine splinter or in total darkness near the hot stove in winter. Even ”dancing courses” were arranged. Vicar’s wife Leonida Janno told stories about visiting the world exhibition in Paris for several evenings, opera, ballet, animals etc. In the end of the same corridor there was a cold room, where the dead were kept before the burial.)

Today is the 1^st anniversary of our sufferings

Belaja Retška. Today is the Midsummer Day. Yesterday was Victory Day. My Estonia, my birthplace, how dear you are to me! When will we get home?

Tomorrow in the morning after receiving bread I will go toghter with Saima (Koppel) to Sinegorje.

We got home tired (the room of the barrack in Belaja Retška. It is possible to cover the distance between Belaja and Sinegorje (12 km) by horse only during some dry summer weeks and in cold weater in winter. There were only ways of beers and Komi ASSR further in the north).

Today on Mum’s 15^th wedding anniversary we are still in Belaja Retška in Russia. We made some flour cakes and biscuits. Hopefully we will be at home this time next year.

Today in the morning I came from Sinegorje and brought 4 litres of milk. Now we have to walk 24 km (one way is 12 km) to fetch a litre of milk.

Today in the morning Mum went to Sinegorje. Today I brought first bilberries and we made bilberry soup.

Early in the morning Mum went to Sinegorje to fetch some milk and butter.

We lost our way in the forest. Some foolish women shouted in the forest as if the beer were fighting them.

Now we go to forest to pick berries every day. Today we are without bread already for the second day and probably we have to be without bread also the next three days. We eat only berries, mushrooms and nettles.

In 1942 we picked 234 litres of berries, in 1943 120 litres (The berries were picked for the state. The pickers were given coupons of bread and a symbolic sum of money for picking berries)

Today 5 Estonians have lost their way in the forest since morning... When will be get back home in Estonia? Oh, how I would like to be at home!

Today they went to Sinegorje to get Anderson’s letter. It is a nice letter (Probably it is a letter of Lembit Anderson, b. 1918, dep. to Malmõž in Kirov Oblast, an optimistic letter, which was rewritten to make copies and distributed by post among the deported. L. Anderson was arrested for that and he died in Vjatlag).

Tomorrow in the morning Mum will have to go to the hospital.

I am waiting for Mum. What is she doing in the hospital and how is she getting on there?

Today it is a windy day. We need wood, but it is prohibited to take them. We have to steal them. Life is terrible! Mum has been in the hospital for more than two weeks already.

Today is Christmas Eve. We have to only think of Christmas food. We are hungry. Mum is in the hospital. It is terrible to think about it. There is no sign of Dad.

1943

Today we spent without bread. Good God! We hope that this year would be better than the previous one and we could celebrate the New Year at home.

Maybe Mum will come home from the hospital soon.

Now there are tremendous snowstorms, The wind is strong. I am looking forward to the time when Mum will come home. In 5 months and 8 days Dad will have to be in prison for 2 years. (Her father was shot on 7 May 1942 as it was told after 20 years.)

Sinegorje. Children do not have coupons of bread yet. We have been without bread for another 3 days. Then we got some bread. Now we do not know if children will get 300 g or 400 g of bread.

We are queuing for a couple of times a day, but we do not get any bread: there are so many Russians.

Tervo fell ill yesterday. He is very ill and talking in sleep all the time. He has pain in the chest. He has probably pneumonia. His temperature is 39,4 now.

Sinegorje. Yesterday the children were given 300 g of bread, but today they were given 400 g (i.e. it was possible to buy bread for the coupons of bread). Tervo is almost well again. If only there was something to eat! Yesterday evening we got a letter from Altosaar’s husband. (Died in prison camp in 1943. Probably it included a list of the dead fathers and the mothers cried, but did not tell the children about it.)

Today it was equinox. Today in the morning we had 200 g of bread with butter and honey. We had pea and flour soup with potatoes for lunch.

It is nice weather today. I got a letter from Mum. Yesterday she had sent us soup powder. Today I will go to help the cook. Brother Tervo is well now.

Today we did not get lunch from the childrens’ dining house as there were no foodstuffs. Mum sent all of us a sandwich.

Today and tomorrow children will get only once a watery mushroom soup from the children’s’ dining house. Yesterday and the day before yesterday many Estonians went to Lipovka. (A small industry for the production of woolen products, skis and ropes was established there with the help of Estonians.)

Now the snow is melting everywhere. Soon it will be gone. Mum is still in the hospital. I am looking forward to seeing her back at home. Yesterday morning (10 April 1943) some of the Estonians went to Lipovka (there are more fields and less gnats).

Today it is sunny spring weather. Fine grain soup is served in the dining house. There is some control.

We moved from a small barrack to this large old barrack. Now the mood is so bad that I want to cry. I am longing for the time Mum will be back at home again. Hoping she will get back soon!

Today is Tervo’s birthday. Mrs. Kongats gave him half a loaf of bread and an onion for his birthday (he was 8 years old).

Mum is back home from the hospital.

Today we went to pick cranberries for the first time. I am so tired.

Today is the first day of Whitsuntide. Yesterday the Russians went to the cemetery. They took something to eat with them and then they give bread to the children. Many Estonians (incl. Tervo and Külli, b. 1936) have went there to ask for food.

Mum is spinning, Külli is carding in the evening. I watered the plants. Today it is 2 years, but our lives go still on. There is no hope.

Picture text: a little nice house with sheet iron roof with a garden and an Estonian flag on top of the flagpole. The heading in block letters: ESTONIAN FLAG: BLUE; BLACK AND WHITE. (We loved this picture and the text and hid it during the searches of the KGB.)

Sinegorje. Today is Victory Day. Tomorrow is Midsummer Day.

Now we have a lot of handicraft to do (weaving, carding, spinning, processing of the wool brought by the local people).

If we were at home today we would have gone to the cemetery for sure.

Sinegorje. Today is Midsummer Day. We eat the portion of our tomorrow’s bread and butter. We made 3 cutlets with sauce for each one for lunch. There was nettle soup for dinner. People are at work.

June The month will end and there is no change. The news are good (moving forward of the German troops is a realistic big hope), but it has brought nothing to our lives. Let us keep hoping.

Early in the morning we went with Mum to dig potatoes (re-picking after the harvest was already picked in the field of potatoes). An elderly lady came to chase us away and to abuse.

Now the children get 200 g and the workers 500 g of bread.

Now I would like to have bread and the children (the younger brother and sister) would like to have some too Starving is awful!

1944

Now we are in quarantine in the 4^th “posjolka” (village in Russian) under control. We get only 200 g of bread and nothing more.

We are in the big hall of the 4^th “posjolka”. Everything is packed and we are waiting for the commander to come and give an order to go the flats. We have been detained here in quarantine for 2 weeks. Everyone gets one’s norm of bread. All of us get 200 g of bread. Now we have come short of potatoes and there is only bread for 2 days. Today it is St. George Day.

We have been in our flat for a week already. Life is miserable and poor. Everyone was given 400 g of bread for two days.

Yesterday I went to look for potatoes (left behind after picking, decaying, frozen and then melt). These were so good as I was so hungry.

We are picking decayed potatoes and then we will make a cake of them. It is delicious! My thumb of the right hand is decaying near the bone. It hurts a lot.

Mum is making a cucumber bed.

Yesterday was Midsummer Day. We made ensilage in the forest and got 600 g of flour. We made porridge and we were given bread for 6 days and we ate all of it.

Today we are without bread for the second day. We have eaten only nettle soup and we are so weak that we cannot nearly walk.

The last entry is 18 April 1945. Today is Palm Sunday.

There are no later remarks in “Vaike Kask’s Mathematics textbook”.

Parcels of food from Estonia easened the economic situation of many deported people in 1944 and 1945. In 1947 Vaike ask returned Estonia from deportation on her own: as young people wanted to learn in the Estonian schools. She was arrested in Estonia. She was in prisons from January until April 1950 and sent back to deportation in special settlement No 4 in Kirov Oblast of Nagorsk Region. There was no danger of starving any more. V. Kask, who had been sent on deportation for the 2^nd time together with H. Koppel and H. Teär etc., arranged amateur activities of high quality among the deported people in settlement No 4. At the amateur competitions the people from Western Ukraine (former territories of Poland), Estonians and Volga Germans were on higher level than the local people.

Vaike Kask was liberated from the 2^nd deportation on 17 March 1958. Her brother and sister Külli were not sent to deportation for the second time as the prisons did not accept the underaged.

There were many families with the similar fate of the Kasks family deported to Kirov Oblast. In the report No 5-1722 of September 1941of Captain of the State Security Jegoshin, the assistant to the chief of the Oblast Administration of the Military Tribunal of the Soviet Union People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs in Kirov Oblast and Lieutenant Predein, Chief of the 1^st special department of the State Security to Comrade Tšernöshov, Vice Peoples’ Commissar of the USSR Internal Affairs according to his requirement of 6 July 1941 the following is announced: the total number of deported Estonians sent to live in Kirov Oblast is 2,049 and they are settled in 18 regions of Kirov Oblast. The largest number of Estonians was located in Oritš Region: – 373 people, 289 in Malmöž Region, 198 in Nagorsk Region, 134 in Kotelnitš Region, 133 in Lebjazje Region etc.

[H.Sabbo, ”It is Impossible to Be Silent” Part I, Tallinn 1996, p. 800-803/ State Archives of the Russian Federation, f. 9479, n.1.c, s.-ü. 87, p.220-223. In Estonian]

Leo Õispuu

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliography in Estonian

Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis, Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margoli, Jean-Louis et al. The Black Book of Communism. Crimes. Terror. Repressions, Tallinn, 2000, 975 pp.

Addendum: Mart Laar. Estonia and Communism.

Biographical Lexicon of Estonian Art and Architecture. Tallinn, 1998, 822. pp.

The year of Estonian people’s suffering. Compilation. 2. print, Tallinn, 1995. 839 pp.

The book of peoples of Estonia. National minorities, groups and factions. Compiled by Jüri Viikberg. Tallinn, 1999, 597 pp.

Compilation about the 140 nationalities residing in Estonia according to the latest census, about their fate in Estonia from first mentioning of them to the current time.

Jürjo, Indrek. Forced emigration and Soviet Estonia. Tallinn, 1996, 359 pp.

As viewed on the basis of the KGB, Estonian Communist Party and VEKSA archival documents. Also data about some June’41 deportees.

Criminal department policewoman Ida Inn and her companions in fate (story in letters). Compiled by Mai Krikk, Tallinn, 2000, 335 pp.

Letters by Estonian Republic’s policewoman Ida Inn, deported 14.06.41 and sent to a prison camp, written from the camp and from settlement to her sister and friends. As an addendum to the book, there is information about the fates of the approximately 350 persons named in these letters.

Merila-Lattik, Helbe. Estonian doctors, 1940 1960. Tallinn, 2000, 1200 pp.

Pp. 1141: Estonian doctors who were arrested or deported in 1940–1941.

Sabbo, Hilda. Impossible to keep quiet I. Tallinn, 1996, 842 pp., ill.

Salo, Vello. The fate of Estonian Republic’s regular army officers in 1938–1996. Tartu, 1996, 40 pp.

Salo, Vello. Deported in 1941. Canada, 1993, 236 pp.

General list on the basis of the data present in the Tartu Institute archive and archive library (Toronto) and in the Estonian Repressed Persons Records Bureau (Tallinn), as found on February 24th, 1993.

Sarv, Enn. No one can defeat justice. Estonia’s aspirations and the international law. Tartu, 1997, 336 pp.

Chapter. 4. Review of the occupants’ national policy in Estonia.

Umsieldung 60. Organised departure of the Baltic Germans from Estonia. Compiled by Sirje Kivimäe. Tallinn, 2000, 140 pp.

Jürjo, Indrek. Additions about the resettlement of the Baltic Germans and the fate of those who stayed in Estonia on the basis of NKVD archival sources.

The elected and the rulers. Lists of members of Estonian Parliaments and other representative bodies and governments in 1917–1999. Compiled by Jaan Toomla. Tallinn., 1999, 474 pp.

Varju, Peep. On the fate of the Estonian political elite. Tallinn, 1994, 11 pp.

Varju, Peep. Deportation of Estonian children on June 14th, 1941 as a crime of genocide. Tallinn, 1994. 16 pp.

Varju, Peep. Estonian people’s human losses during the Soviet and German occupations in 1940–1953. Tartu, 1997. 33 pp.

Vessik, Juta and Varju, Peep. Human losses in Saaremaa as a consequence of the first Soviet occupation. Tartu, 1995, 20 pp.

Bibliography in Russian

GULAG: Glavnoje upravlenije lagerei (The GULAG). 1918–1960. Edited by Akad. A. J Ja-kovlev, compiled by. A. I. Kokurin, N. V. Pet-rov. Moscow: MFD, 2000, 888 pp.

SISTEMA ispravitelno-trudovõh lagerei v SSSR (System of labour camps in USSR) 1923–1960. Reference source. Moscow, 1998, 600 pp.

Makšeev, Vadim. Narõmskaja hronika (The Narõm region chronicles) 1930–1945. The tragedy of the forced settlers. Documents and recollections. Moscow, 1997, 255 c.

Compilation of documents and recollections made by a person deported 14.06.41 from Kiviõli concerning the deportees sent to settle in the Vasjugan Region. Also data about Estonian deportees, their fates.

DEPORTATION OF JUNE, 1941 IN MEMOIRS AND FICTION

Balder-Nigol, Lehte. King’s daughter in a land of dreams. Biography of one Estonian woman. Tallinn, 2000, 138 pp., ill.

Deported from Narva when just a girl, sent to settlement to Tomsk Oblast, Vasjugan Region – story of eventual return to Estonia through and starvation and death.

Eliaser, Rutt. Without passport, without possessions. Lund, 1985, 236 pp.

Memoirs of a June’41 deportee.

Gross, Hans and Järvik, Alli. The beginning and the end of the Suurehaua (Large Grave) farm. Tartu, 1993, 170 pp., ill.

One Käru Rural District family’s fate.

Kaup, Johannes. Siberia. Maria Jürvetson’s life and death letters from the land of crucified life. New York, 1963. 320 pp., ill.

A June’41 deportee in Tomsk Oblast.

Kivikas, Albert. Home goer. Novel. Lund, 1963, 308 pp. II print – Tallinn, 2000, 263 pp.

Also about June’41 deportations.

Koppermann, Maria. My 12 years in Siberia. Stockholm, 1975, 116 pp., ill.

Arrest in 1941, Sverdlovsk and Novosibirsk Oblast prisons and prison camps. Settlement in Tomsk Oblast, Põškino-Troitski Region, village of the same name. Second deportation in 1949, settlement in Krasnojarsk Region, Nazarovo Region.

We came back. Tartu, 1999, 334 pp. (Estonian biographies).

Also 1941 deportations.

Mäelo, Helmi. Other winds. Novel. Lund, 1970, 270 pp.

June’41 deportations.

Recollections of the old Narva. Compilation, 1999, 88 pp. ill.

Also about June’41 deportations from Narva told both by the deported and by those who were left behind.

Müüripeal, Heili. Pihlaksaare’s Leida. Based on Leida Savi’s recollections. Tallinn, 1996, 318 pp.

June’41 deportations.

June 14th, 1941. Compiled by Mart Laar. Stokholm, 1990, 250 pp.

June 14th, 1941. Recollections and documents. Compiled by Mart Laar. Tallinn, 1990, 212 pp.

Neumann, Marie. Escape from the road to Siberia. Recollections about the Second World War. Vancouver, 1985, 99 pp. ill.

Orn, Hilda. This was life too. Tallinn, 2000, 180 pp., ill.

Recollections of a June’41 deportee.

Paju, Juhan. Grandmother’s estate. [1.-2. parts. Novel.]. Tallinn, 2000, 256 pp.

Peets, Peeter. Deep wounds. Tallinn, 1992, 207 pp.

Recollections of a June’41 deportee. In addendum there is a list of 264 persons deported for settlement in Tomsk Oblast, Tšainski Region, village of Kolo-minskije Grivõ.

Raamot, Mari. My recollections. Geislingen, 1962, 383 pp.

One chapter also dedicated to recollections of escape from terror and deportation days.

Raid, Robert. When the Soviets came ... 1.-2. vol. Toronto, 1954, 700 pp. 2.print. – Toronto, 1955, 700 pp. 3. print. – Tallinn, 1995, 608 pp.

Report novel. Also about June’41 deportations.

Sanden, Einar. Many faces, many names. Cardiff, 1978, 224pp.

Documentary about some aspects of life and activities of the June’41 deportee Juhan Tuldava.

Siberian stories. Estonians’ road to Siberia and the repercussions, 1940–1996.

Selection of biographies from the Culturological Archive of the Estonian Museum of Literature. Toronto, 1998, 415 pp., ill.

Silliksaar, Silver. Blue-eyed in Siberia. Book of recollections about the 1951deportation. Tallinn, 2001, 288 pp., ill.

Recollections, lists, documents of repressions and deportations of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their closest relatives.

Sirge, Rudolf. land and people. Novel. Tallinn, 1956, 639 pp.

An excerpt describing deportation of an owner of a large farm.

Sissas, Hans. Remembrances, 2. part. Võru, 1998, 347 pp., ill.

Deportations of 1945 in Võrumaa.

Bibliography in English

Lehtmets, Ann; Hoile, Douglas. Sentence: Siberia. Kent Town (South Australia), 1994, 375 pp., ill.

Recollections of a young guide leader deported from Rakvere in 1941.

Bibliography in German

Raid, Robert. When the Soviets came ... Frei-burg and Frankfurt am Main, 1953, 670 pp.

Raid, Robert. When the Soviets came ... Cardiff, 1983, 670 pp.

INTRODUCTION

TIME SCHEDULE OF DOCUMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE JUNE’41 DEPORTATION

WHO BELONG TO THE PEOPLE DEPORTED IN JUNE IN THIS BOOK?

FILES OF THE DEPORTED PEOPLE IN JUNE

OTHER DATA SOURCES

DEATHS FROM STARVATION

KIROV OBLAST AS A SETTLEMENT LOCATION FOR ESTONIANS

NOVOSIBIRSK (TOMSK) OBLAST AS A SETTLEMENT LOCATION FOR ESTONIANS

ESTONIANS IN TOMSK OBLAST