FILIAE PATRIAE SORORITY

ARTICLES AND LIFE HISTORIES

SOVIET DEPORTATIONS IN ESTONIA:IMPACT AND LEGACY

Editors: Kristi Kukk, Toivo RaunLinguistic redactor: Madli PuhvelTranslators: Alliki Arro (pp. 9-53), Madli Puhvel (pp. 91-103, 129-157, 179-215), Lilian Puust (pp. 159-177)

Cover design: Merike Ivask, Triin Laur, Riina Reinvelt, Leeni SadamBook design: Kristi Kukk

We thank the publication committee: Karolina Antons, Kristi Aule, Terje Hallik, Janet Laidla, Triinu Linnus, Riina Reinvelt, Mare Taagepera.

We thank those who helped sponsor this publication: Estonian-American National Council, Estonian Cultural Foundation in the USA, Filiae Patriae Sorority’s New York and California branches.

This book is the modifi ed translation of Eestlaste küüditamine: Mineviku varjud tänases päevas (Deportation of Estonians: Present day shadows of the past), a book published in Estonian in Tartu in 2004. We thank the members of the editorial committee of the Estonian version: Ene Andresen, Kadi Kass, Terje Hallik, Merike Ivask, Mari-Liis Sepper and Riina Reinvelt.

Illustrations and letters in this book are from private collections and from the archives of the Estonian National Museum.

ISBN 978-9949-15-146-2

© Filiae Patriae Sorority, 2007© Authors of individual articles

Printed by Greif Ltd.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD 5TOIVO RAUN

ARTICLES

AIGI RAHI-TAMM, Deportations in Estonia, 1941-1951 9

LAURI MÄLKSOO, Soviet Genocide? Communist Mass 55Deportations in the Baltic States and International Law

MART LAAR, The March 1949 Deportations and the Armed 91Resistance Movement

REIN TAAGEPERA, Western Awareness of Soviet 105Deportations in Estonia

LIFE HISTORIES

HENRIETTE KÄRSNA-ISRAEL 129

LUCIA ROHTLAAN-OINAS 147

AINO ROOTS 159

VÄINO-JOHANNES SÕERDE 179

ROBERT TASSO 193

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 216ABBREVIATIONS 218

4

Estonian deportees at forest work near Retika village, Kirov oblast, Nagorsk raion. (ERM Fk 2819:35)

5

FOREWORD

Toivo RaunIndiana Universityraunt@indiana.edu

June 1941 and March 1949 stand out as defi ning moments in Estonian historical memory. In the course of a few days during those months mass deportations sent over 30,000 Estonians – crowded into boxcars – to Siberia, assuming they survived the journey. In actual fact, deportations and arrests took place periodically throughout the Stalinist years in Estonia, but the June and March episodes remain in a special category because of their crucial psychological impact: 1941 because it was the fi rst mass act of inhumanity perpetrated by the Soviet regime, and 1949 because it dealt a devastating blow to the postwar guerrilla resistance and to any wider hope for escape from Soviet rule. This volume of scholarly articles and life histories originated in a conference on the topic of deportations, held in November 2002 and organized by Filiae Patriae, an Estonian sorority at the University of Tartu. Most of the contributions to the current work were presented in abbreviated form at this conference and then published in an Estonian version in 2004. The goal of this English translation is to make this key topic in 20th-century Estonian history more accessible to a wider audience. The events of the 1940s had a wrenching impact on the Estonian population and left a bitter legacy. The June 1941 deportation was the most important factor that led about 8 percent of ethnic Estonians to leave their homeland and fl ee to the West in what was hoped to be only a temporary exile. In view of the previous Stalinist record, the March 1949 deportation raised exaggerated, but justifi ed fears about the possible removal of the entire Estonian nation to Siberia. The four articles included in this volume provide a signifi cant introduction to the topic of deportations in Estonia. Aigi Rahi-Tamm offers a detailed overview of the Estonian experience in the 1940s and – importantly – also places it in the larger context of Soviet repression throughout the newly acquired western borderlands. It is striking that a large proportion of women, children, and elderly persons were among the deportees, mainly because at least one of their relatives was considered an “enemy of the people” in Soviet terms. The fi rst deportation clearly had a more brutal impact on the deportees: the mortality

6

rate for those sent to Siberia in June 1941 was about 60 percent, while for those deported in March 1949 it was 10 percent. Lauri Mälksoo grapples with the issue of genocide as a description of the mass deportations undertaken by the Soviet authorities. He rightly suggests that the question is highly complex and requires a nuanced and careful approach. Mälksoo applauds the establishment of the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, consisting of seven prominent non-Estonian citizens, through the initiative of President Lennart Meri in 1999 and views its activity as an important means for Estonia to confront and deal with its past. Mart Laar links the 1949 deportation with the signifi cant postwar guerrilla resistance movement. By that year the pro-independence partisans or “forest brethren” had been seriously weakened by Soviet repression and were unable to hinder the March deportation. In an unequal struggle the partisans were bound to fail, but Laar concludes that their spirit of resistance lived on among the broader population in the ensuing decades. Rein Taagepera’s contribution on the connection between collectivization and the 1949 deportation fi rst appeared in 1980, based on published Soviet sources available at the time as well as informal contacts with a scholar in Estonia. Fortunately, Taagepera’s initial estimate for the number of deportees in 1949, like most Western assessments, proved to be exaggerated, but as he notes, there was no effective way to check his fi gures without endangering the position of his colleague in Estonia. The fi ve life stories published here offer a varied and moving cross section of the Estonian experience of the June 1941 deportation. The authors, three women and two men, were all born in the decade before the consolidation of Estonian independence and grew up as the fi rst generation to come of age in the Republic of Estonia. All attended the University of Tartu, participating actively in student organizations, and all were sent to Siberia in the prime of their lives (at ages 22 to 32). Despite the many tragedies, e.g., the separation of husbands from wives and children, or the rapid death of the weak, as in the case of Aino Roots’ three young children, these life experiences demonstrate the resilience of the human spirit. Several authors note how people of different nationalities helped each other survive the challenges of Siberia. These former Estonian university students coped in various ways, some by repressing their past because the memory was too painful, others by accentuating their connection to Estonia because it gave them strength. The authors’ return to Estonia in 1947 and 1956-1958 brought new challenges of adjustment and often lack of acceptance by those who had not experienced the deportations. In the striking image offered by Aino Roots, life went on for the deportees, but it was as if the shirts they wore were turned permanently inside out.

7

Coming to grips with painful episodes from the past is a useful form of therapy not only for individuals, but also for nations. Although the Estonians were mostly victims in the deportations, it is important to bear in mind that some were perpetrators and participated actively in sending their fellow citizens to Siberia. Understanding the complexity of a given nation’s history is also aided by viewing it in a larger context and realizing that no group’s experience is unique. Above all, actively engaging with the past, no matter how diffi cult it may seem, provides the most powerful insurance against the repetition of horrendous acts such as the deportations.

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Elfriede Jürgens-Tänava at the grave of her husband and child, Bilokhunitsa village in the Kirov oblast, 1945. (ERM Fk 2818:84)

9

DEPORTATIONS IN ESTONIA, 1941-1951

Aigi Rahi-TammTartu Universityaigi.rahi-tamm@ut.ee

“Grandma, what does deportation mean?”“It’s when they come and get you at night and take you away to a place you don’t know.

Forever.”

During the Soviet and Nazi occupations Estonia lost about 17.5% of its pre-war population.1 The Second World War claimed its victims, but the physical annihilation of people on ideological grounds before and after it left a more painful imprint on Estonians than the war itself. Everything that came with the severance of ties to a former life – the slamming of doors, strangers forcing their way into people’s homes, the ransacking of personal possessions, the armed guards, the barked orders – served to usher in a time of fear and terror. Why? Why is it necessary? Will they come again? Who will be next? Such questions were to haunt people for many years. The sovietization of Estonia in 1940 meant the occupation of its territory by the Red Army and during the coup d’état that followed in June, the government and machinery of state of the Republic of Estonia were replaced, Parliament was dissolved and elections were announced ahead of schedule. In characteristic Soviet fashion the new Parliament consisted of individuals acceptable to the Soviet Union who changed the name of the Republic of Estonia to the Estonian SSR (hereinafter the ESSR) and requested that it be admitted to the Soviet Union. On August 6, 1940 Estonia became one of the Soviet Socialist Republics in the USSR and with that the annexation was complete. A restructuring of the administrative apparatus of the state followed, new laws were enacted, the economy was nationalized and the groundwork was laid for reforms in education and culture. The Communist Party assumed the decision-making role in society. All this meant the complete reorganization of life, a steep decline in the standard of living, and the incorporation of Estonia into the Soviet Union. It would

1 Salo, V., et al. (Eds.) (2005) The White Book. Losses Infl icted on the Estonian Nation by Occupation Regimes 1940-1991. Estonian State Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression, p. 25.

10

have been impossible for people to simply accept this. To forestall organized resistance the armed forces and leading citizens had to be quickly brought under control. In the USSR authorities knew that the means to stay in power was mass political terror, which forced people to adjust to the changes. To hold on to power they felt it necessary to weaken and destroy the people through arrests, killings and deportations – beginning with the socially most active to the so-to-speak ordinary people. The more extensive the terror, the more effective the horror. With the help of “purges” you could remove (real, or imagined) ideologically incorrect, hostile layers of population and potentially adversarial ethnic groups. Opponents of the regime became not only enemies of the state but enemies of all the people, and the campaigns to pursue and expose them which culminated in the Stalin era were characteristic of the entire Soviet period.

CREATING ENEMIES

After the Soviet coup d’etat many Estonians were suddenly given labels such as “counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet element,” “socially alien element,” “traitor of the Motherland,” “nationalist,” “bandit,”2 etc. Measures that the leaders of independent Estonia had taken to strengthen the state and protect the interests of its people were called crimes against the Soviet Union and the revolutionary movement. Performance of offi cial duties for the Republic of Estonia, and service in the army or police were worded in language that made them crimes. If one had been a Member of Parliament one was charged with participation “in the active struggle against the revolutionary movement in a counter-revolutionary government.” The patriotic activity of the civilian population in founding their state such as participation in the War of Liberation3 or belonging to the Defense League4 became criminal offenses. The text of the Peace of Tartu, signed in 1920, in which both parties undertook to not use sanctions against those who had participated in military activity was put aside and participation in the War of Independence was interpreted in changed circumstances as resistance against

2 Guerrillas, called “forest brethren” by sympathizers and “bandits” by the Soviets.3 A war fought in 1918-1920 against Soviet Russia to achieve Estonian independence. With the Tartu Peace Treaty, signed on February 2, 1920, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) recognized Estonian independence de iure, giving up in perpetuity all sovereign rights that Russia had, relative to the Estonian people and lands.4 A military organization in Estonia, 1918-1940.

11

the Red Army and the Soviet regime. Individuals who had been active in political parties, in society, in the community were condemned. They all became so-called class enemies, whose separation from the body politic started immediately in June 1940. The policy of “purging” society began to be implemented under the rubric of destroying the enemy, which meant political repressions and installation of the attendant repressive apparatus. At the end of August, 1940, the ESSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) was formed, and Boris Kumm was appointed to head it. In February, 1941 two separate people’s commissariats replaced NKVD – The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the People’s Commissariat of State Security (NKGB), but on July 20, 1941, after war broke out between the USSR and Nazi Germany they were combined again under one People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD).5 Most of the departments in the security structure functioned as political police – they fought the “anti-Soviet element,” interpreted “phenomena dangerous to the Soviet regime” and punished individuals guilty as charged. In December 1940 the Criminal Code of 1926 of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (hereinafter RSFSR) was put into effect in Estonia, and applied retroactively. Under it individuals were given sentences up to and including death. In order to cleanse society of “foreign elements” the security apparatus needed compromising materials. Some of this material was also buried in archives. In 1938 the archival system was placed under the NKVD of the USSR and it is considered to have a direct bearing on the scale of the mass repressions undertaken.

The card fi le of “political colors.” In 1939 a card fi le on counterrevolutionary and anti-Soviet elements was set up in the USSR NKVD and in the Central Administration of Archives. This was dubbed the fi le of “political colors” and initially refl ected 27 categories for classifying individuals of different “political colors.” The fi le encompassed millions of people from the members of the Imperial Family and the Provisional Government, members of the White

5 The Ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs have had many names at different times. Their functions have been different as well. In 1943, NKGB was separated from the NKVD of the USSR. The corresponding organizations in Estonia were set up again in February, 1944. In March 1946, NKVD in the ESSR was renamed Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD in Russian) and NKGB in the ESSR to the Ministry of State Security (MGB in Russian). There were further reforms in 1953-54. In March 1954, the Committee of State Security (KGB in Russian) was added to the Council of Ministers of the ESSR. The KGB was abolished in December, 1991.

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