SOVIET DEPORTATIONS FROM LITHUANIA

Soviet deportations Soviet deportations from Lithuaniafrom Lithuania

1941 and 1944-19531941 and 1944-1953

Beginning

This string of tragedies began in August 1939, when Hitler and Stalin concluded a cynical agreement that divided up Central Europe between the two totalitarian countries. According to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Lithuania was to fall into the Soviet zone of influence.

The total number of persons registered as “anti-Soviet elements” reached 320,000 entries. There were teachers and professors, school and college students, farmers, industry workers and craftsmen among them.

The first deportation In the June of 1941, about 17.6 thousand residents of

Lithuania were deported to the Komi Republic, the Altai and Krasnoyarsk territory and the Novosibirsk oblast. Forty percent these deportees were children below 16 years old. More than half of the deported died quickly. Pregnant women and babies born in the cattle cars were the first victims – they died in the trains.

The deportation process was interrupted by the German-Soviet war.

The largest deportations from Lithuania

• “Spring” (“Vesna”) – May 22-23rd, 1948

• “Surf” (“Priboj”) - March-April, 1949

• “Autumn” (“Osen”) - October 2-3, 1951

“Spring” In 1948, May 22-

23rd, a deportations operation called "Vesna" (“Spring”) took place. It was planned to deport 12 134 families (48 thousand people) to Yakutia (later changed into Buryat-Mongolia Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) and Krasnoyarsk area.

“Surf”

During the 1949 March-April deportations (operation "Priboj"), around 32 thousand people (10 thousand families) were deported from Lithuania. Its aim was to suppress the wealthy peasants' resistance to collectivization and to eliminate the supporters of guerrilla fighters.

1951 winterKrasnoyarsk territory, Kamenka village

This is a living place of deportees in a forestry in Taiga.

A funeral ceremony Ready for school

Last days in Siberia

“Autumn”

While carrying out the deportation operation called "Osen" (“Autumn”), on October 2-3, 1951, more than 16 thousand people (about 5.3 thousand children among them) were deported from Lithuania to the Krasnoyarsk area.

How did the typical deportation look?

The NKVD broke into an apartment or house and arrested all the family members.

In the railway station as far as the eye could see there were men and women, the elderly and the disabled searching for places to sit and mothers holding their children.

What did the deportees do?

Worked in salt and coal mines, collective farms, woods.

Cut wood and sailed rafts. Built roads and railways in Taiga. Worked in Fishing farms.

Consequences of the deportations

Total 132,000 Lithuanians were deported to remote areas of the USSR: Siberia, the Arctic Circle zone and Central Asia.

More than 70 percent of the deportees were women and children.

Around 50,000 of the deportees were not able to return to Lithuania ever again. 

Every third Lithuanian became a victim of Soviet terror.

The lithuanians feel the moral harm of these tragic events till nowadays.