Gallery: Deported Estonians in Siberia

The Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn holds some memories and pictures of Estonians who were deported to Siberia by the Soviet Union; Estonian World brings you some of those preserved images of life in Siberia.*

In the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania following the infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Estonia had lost approximately 17.5% of its population.

The Soviet occupation brought with it an ordeal that, until then, many had only read about in history books, but which would become one of the most horrific memories of the past century – mass deportations that affected people of all nationalities living in Estonia. The two deportations that scarred Estonia most deeply, on 14 June 1941 and 25 March 1949, are marked annually as days of mourning.

The first deportation raid began during the night of 13 June and in the early hours of 14 June 1941. Families who had gone to bed on Friday night with no sense of the horror that was about to unfold were woken in the early morning by pounding on their doors. A decree was read aloud, declaring them under arrest or subject to deportation from their homeland without due process. All their property was declared subject to seizure. They were given an hour to pack.

Within a few hours of the start of the deportation, the first trucks began arriving at railway sidings, where cattle cars were waiting. In total, 490 cattle cars had been set aside for the operation. The search for those marked for arrest or deportation continued until the morning of 16 June. Those carrying out the deportations behaved with extraordinary cruelty: even pregnant women and seriously ill elderly people were forced into overcrowded stock cars.

According to the order, issued from Moscow on 13 June, more than 10,000 people were deported from Estonia between 14 and 17 June 1941. Among them were more than 7,000 women, children and elderly people. The scale of the atrocity is reflected in the fact that more than a quarter of those deported in June 1941 were minors, under the age of 16. The deportations also had a severe impact on Estonia’s Jewish population: more than 400 Estonian Jews, approximately 10% of the community, were among those deported.

As the first trains carrying deportees arrived at their destinations, the Soviet authorities in Estonia were already preparing the next wave of deportations. Its implementation, however, was disrupted by Germany’s assault on the Soviet Union. Because of the rapid advance of the front, a second deportation was carried out only on the island of Saaremaa.

Soviet prison camps, conducting on-site interrogations and issuing court decisions under which hundreds of detainees were shot dead. By the spring of 1942, of the more than 3,000 men sent to prison camps, only a few hundred were still alive.

The fate of the women and children sent to the remote regions of Kirov and Novosibirsk oblasts was also harsh. Many deportees died from cold, starvation and hard labour. In total, only 4,331 people – fewer than half of those deported in 1941 – ever returned to their homeland. During the 1941 deportations, about 95,000 people from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Moldova were deported to Russia within a single week.

Another mass deportation followed a few years later, on 25 March 1949, when more than 20,000 people – nearly 3% of Estonia’s 1945 population – were seized within a few days and sent to remote areas of Siberia.

The Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn holds memories and photographs of deported Estonians. Courtesy of the museum, Estonian World presents some of these preserved images of life in Siberia. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Pictures courtesy of Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom. Read also: Estonia remembers the Soviet deportations and Hope and freedom: remembering Estonia’s occupations. * This article was originally published on 14 June 2016 and lightly edited on 14 June 2021.