Soviet deportations from Latvia

Soviet deportations from Latvia were a series of mass deportations by the Soviet Union from Latvia in 1941 and 1945–1951, in which around 60,000 inhabitants of Latvia were deported to inhospitable remote areas of the Soviet Union, which had occupied the country in 1940.[1] Similar deportations were organized by the Soviet regime in the fellow occupied Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania at the same time.

Alongside smaller forced population removals, the two main waves of deportation were:

• the first, June deportation of 14 June 1941 of around 15,500 people and their families. This wave of deportations was mostly directed at the local Latvian intelligentsia and political-social-economical elite. Out of all the deportees, around 40% of the total number died in exile[2];
• the second deportation under Operation Priboi of 25 March 1949, when 42,113 people were deported.[3] This time, the victims were people, together with their family members, who were included in the "kulak lists" of 1947, as well as members of the armed resistance. Of the total number of deportees, more than 5000 people died in exile.[4]

People from Latvia were mostly resettled to Amur, Tomsk, and Omsk regions. Several smaller scale deportations took place during the Soviet occupation, especiallyof ethnic Germans, stateless persons from Riga, and Jehovah's Witnesses. After destalinization, internment in camps was a punishment reserved for people engaged in "anti-Soviet" behaviours.[5]

See also

• Population transfer in the Soviet Union
• Latvian Operation of the NKVD
• Forest Brothers
• Sandra Kalniete - a Latvian MEP and author, writing about growing up in a deportee family in Siberia

References

1. Kaprāns, Mārtiņš. "The Tradition of Deportation Commemoration". Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
2. "Latvia". Latvia | Communist Crimes. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
3. "Soviet Mass Deportations from Latvia". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia. 2004-08-16. Retrieved 2020-06-06.
4. "Latvia". Latvia | Communist Crimes. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
5. "Latvia". Latvia | Communist Crimes. Retrieved 2020-08-05.