Soviet deportations from Estonia

Soviet deportations from Estonia were a series of mass deportations by the Soviet Union of approximately 33,000 people from Estonia in 1941 and 1945–1951.

The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). The deportations targeted various categories of anti-Soviet elements and "enemies of the people": nationalists (i.e. political elite, military officers, policemen of independent Estonia), bandits (i.e. Forest Brothers), kulaks, and others. There were deportations based on nationality (Germans in 1945 and Ingrian Finns in 1947–1950) and religion (Jehovah's Witnesses in 1951). Estonians residing in the Leningrad Oblast had already been subjected to deportation since 1935.

People were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union, predominantly to Siberia and Kazakhstan, by means of railroad cattle cars. Entire families, including children and the elderly, were deported without trial or prior announcement. Of March 1949 deportees, over 70% of people were women and children under the age of 16.

The Estonian Internal Security Service has brought to justice several past organizars of these events. The deportations have been repeatedly declared to constitute a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Estonia and also acknowledged to be so by the European Court of Human Rights.

In Estonia, as well as in other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940, the first large-scale deportation of ordinary citizens was carried out by the local operational headquarters of the NKGB of the Estonian SSR under Boris Kumm (chairman), Andres Murro, Aleksei Shkurin, Veniamin Gulst, and Rudolf James, according to the top secret joint decree No 1299-526ss "Directive on the Deportation of the Socially Alien Element from the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldavia'" by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union of 14 May 1941. The deportation procedure was established by the Serov Instructions.

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