latviski
Subjugation
Part 4—USSR inflicts deportation, ruthless subjugation, NKVD atrocities, and Russification.
| Siberian deportations date as far back as 1925 | Although the revolution of March 1917 did away with administrative deportation and forced labour by court sentence, provided for in the Penal Code valid since 1885, the Soviet Government re-introduced these two institutions of the Tsarist regime as early as 1922, authorizing the Cheka to transfer all "socially dangerous elements" to forced labour camps for a duration up to 3 years. This practice was legalized by all Soviet criminal codes. In addition, the programme of the Bolshevik party provides for a "transfer of inhabitants according to plan, for the purpose of balancing the distribution of man-power" which began in 1925 when several million Soviet citizens from European Russia were deported to Siberia, Central Asia and the Far East. Thus, deportation and forced labour had developed into a system of extermination of whole social groups ("bourgeois", "kulaks") and of genocide in that sense and understanding which made the UNO Plenary Meeting in Paris, on December 9, 1948, pass the convention on the punishability of genocide. |
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| NKVD deports Latvian and Estonian heads of state prior to incorporation into USSR | Since Red Terror, genocide and the slave economy, provided for in the economic structure of the Soviet State, are the foundation of the bolshevik regime, it is easy to understand that all these methods were automatically put into effect immediately after the occupation of the Baltic States in June 1940. The incorporation of these countries had not yet taken place when the NKVD started its work, in all three Baltic countries, not only by deporting the State presidents of Latvia and Estonia (the Lithuanian President was the only one who escaped the Soviets), but also the governments and the most prominent of the social workers and politicians of the three countries. After the incorporation, the Order No. 001223 which referred to the registration of "anti-Soviet elements" with the view of subsequently punishing them, and issued by the NKVD as early as October 11, 1939, was revived to its full extent. No sooner was the Soviet Latvian Constitution decreed on August 30, 1940, according to which the Latvian People's Commissariat of State Security was "federal-republican", i.e. common with that of the USSR, than the specialists in the matters of the NKVD, sent from Russia, could under the direction of the NKVD commissar A. Novik (in autumn 1940) and the NKGB commissar S. Shustin (early in 1941) "legally" start their activity. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The premises of the former Ministries of Home and Social Affairs, a conspicuous building in the central part of Riga, was turned into the NKVD main headquarters. In November 1940 the ground-floor and cellars of this building were remodelled into a special prison for interrogation, and provided with cells measuring 80x80 cm [31.5 inches square] on plan and called "dog-kennels" (in Russian "sobachniki"), where the prisoners could neither stand nor lie. After all kinds of devilishly subtle methods of torture the prisoners were put into these cells to "recover" until they were again summoned for interrogation which usually began late in the evening and lasted the night through with the purpose of extorting a confession from the prisoner. The NKVD had at its command an extensive net of agents whose reports were worked out by specialists. All prisons were under the control of the NKVD which had at its disposal special military units. Even the militia, Workers' Guard, the members and candidates of the Bolshevik party, members of the Communist Youth and the rest of the ancillary party organizations had to obey NKVD orders and instructions. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Who, then, were the unfortunate people who sooner or later had to succumb to the NKVD? The secret order, signed on November 28, 1940, at Kaunas by the Lithuanian NKVD commissar A. Guzevicius, which was found in the summer of 1941 among the documents left by the NKVD (cf. K. Pelekis, Genocide, p. 265-267, published by Venta, Germany 1949), gave the answer to this question. Taking into account that the NKVD in the three Baltic countries only executed the orders which they received from Moscow, there is every reason to assume that confidential orders of a similar content were issued to their subordinate authorities also by the Latvian and Estonian NKVD commissars. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This circular order of November 28, 1940, contains the following passage: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| November 28, 1940 "Annihilation" of anti-Soviet elements ordered |
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| This enumeration is not complete, as is proved by other documents. Thus, in the above Order are only mentioned members of military courts, but after the NKGB was established on February 3, 1941, the latter had lists prepared which included even public prosecutors, inquestors of the specially important trials, members of Courts of Appeal and Supreme Tribunals, district prefects, military commandants of districts, officers of the Intelligence Section of the General Staff, officers of the Frontier Guard Corps, all officers of the former white Armies, prison guards of the ranks, former employees of the Baltic legations abroad, members of the families of the participants of counter-revolutionary nationalist organizations, whose family heads had been sentenced to death or were in hiding from government organs; families of traitors of the homeland who had fled abroad. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Standing order of the Cheka gives the lie to the Constitution of the LSSR | Let us remember the Order of the Cheka, published on December 25, 1918: "Your first duty is to ask the prisoner what class he belongs to, what were his origin, education and occupation. These questions should decide the fate of the prisoner." The citizens of the Baltic States at that time naively believed that in the course of the 30 years after the bolshevik subversion in Russia the primary terror and methods of civil warfare had been entirely abolished or, at least adjusted to the principles of right, declared in Stalin's Constitution. Thus, sections 84 and 85 of the Constitution of the LSSR declared that: "In all courts of the LSSR, to the extent that the law does not provide exceptions, cases are tried publicly, ensuring the defendant the right of counsel. Judges are independent and subject only to the law." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Cheka's successor, the NKVD, continues to operate without regard to the law | This, however, was only the facade of the Soviet State, painted in bright colours to catch the eyes of the onlookers from the western world. In fact, the Cheka, NKVD-or-NKGB, became the actual ruler of the occupied countries, superior to all other branches of Government, Party and the Red Army. This institution had laws of its own and methods, elaborated during a 30 years' practice which no Constitution of Stalin's ever mentioned anywhere. Thus, for example, in its Order dated April 25, 1941, under No.0023, the Lithuanian NKGB advises all its district branches: "The existence of a large contingent of persons, subject to operative accounting under Order No. 001223 of the NKVD of the USSR, dated October 11, 1939, regardless of concrete data concerning their anti-Soviet activities, obligates the NKGB at the present time to specify separately in its accounting work and screening of the counter-revolutionary and hostile elements, the categories of particularly dangerous persons, whose accounting must be organized in first priority order and within the shortest time possible." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This group of particularly dangerous individuals comprised the leaders of the former political parties of the Baltic States, the chairman of the parliaments, heads of police, commanding officers of the army and the Home Guard and other leading persons who had held administrative key positions during the period of independence and who still enjoyed the loyalty of their adherents and former subordinates. According to the Order No. 001223, these persons had to be eliminated without noise and panic, so as not to permit any demonstrations and other excesses by a certain part of the surrounding population inimically inclined toward the Soviet administration. All arrests took place by night or late in the evening. The arrested were removed to the NKVD where they were made to fill in questionnaires, containing innumerable questions, with the view of recording their social origin, education and activity before the occupation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Then followed the interrogation which was combined with psychical [i.e., mental] and physical torture. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| June,
1941 Red Army retreats, the NKVD leaves its sickening tracks |
When, in June 1941, the Red Army retreated from the Baltic area, on the premises of the NKGB were found a variety of instruments which were used for extorting confessions from the prisoners. Without enumerating all the devilish devices of torturing, let us mention the ordinary equipment of the working cabinet for interrogation of the NKVD, or NKGB: instruments to break the bones of shins and arms, to squeeze testicles, to pierce the soles of feet and to pull off nails and skin from hands, to squeeze the main nose ligament until the victim bleeds profusely, electrical appliances, etc. The corpses which were left in the courtyards of the NKVD prison and exhumed from mass-graves show that before being shot the "enemies of the people" were mutilated to an extent which in many cases made it quite impossible for relatives to identify the NKVD victims. As a matter of course, the interrogation and sentencing were not carried out publicly, but in great secrecy by special NKGB tribunals. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Among the papers of the NKGB, there have survived several lists, bearing the signature of Shustin, Commissar of State Security of the LSSR, on death sentences passed in Riga. These lists usually end with a resolution which reads as follows: "Considering the social danger they represent, all must be shot." On some of these lists, in special columns, the crimes of the condemned have been formulated in a few words, as, for instance: "Did not join singing the Internationale on the 1st of May; has fought in the Latvian Army against the bolsheviks; member of a student fraternity; former policeman; descendant of a kulak; awarded the Order of Lacplesis (Bear-killer); formerly adjutant of the State President; exploited man-power other than his own, etc." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The registration, carried out by the Latvian Red Cross in the summer of 1942, evinced that during the first Russian occupation of Latvia no less than 7,161 political criminals were in prison, amongst them 404 women and 17 children and 179 old people over 60 years of age. Actually, the number of prisoners was by far larger, because many prisoners were reported as missing. Of these prisoners 979 were killed, the rest sentenced and deported to forced labour camps in Russia. The deportation of smaller groups began as early as towards the end of 1940, while the first larger transport of prisoners left for the autonomous republic of Komi on April 25, 1941. Others followed until June 24, with different polar regions as destination. During the whole period of Latvia's independence the total number of political prisoners did not exceed 300 to 400 and of these, as a matter of course, no one was ever sentenced to death, capital punishment being abolished in Latvia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| June
13,14, 1941 Mass deportations to Siberia... |
The large deportation scheme, carried out in all three Baltic countries on the night from June 13 to June 14, 1941, had a purely administrative character and had been carefully prepared during the whole previous year according to Serov's Order No. 001223 already mentioned before. This measure was conceived not for the liquidation of individual leading persons, but with the view of exterminating a whole class, the so-called "bourgeoisie". Several days before it was implemented, all available lorries were mobilized and ordered to wait at the police, NKVD and party offices. Before this scheme was put into effect the drivers, among themselves, had already been hinting that a "hunt for the bourgeois" was under preparation. These lorries, manned with armed chekists, militia-men and members of the Communist party who were provided with special lists approved in Moscow, raided, in the dead of night, town flats and country farms, carrying out domiciliary searches, reading their warrants of deportation and telling the people to be ready for departure in an hour's time or even less. According to the instructions, the deportees from the towns were allowed to take with them their belongings not exceeding 100 kg in weight (all personal cash, a whole family's food ration for a month, cooking appliances, footwear, clothes and linen). In the country, people could also take some working tools (axes, saws) with them. If, during the search, arms, foreign currency or counter-revolutionary literature were found, a report was drawn up. Persons to be arrested who offered armed resistance, were separated from the rest and handed over to the NKVD. After these formalities were settled the arrested families were taken to railway stations where trains, composed of goods-vans with grated window-openings and - as the only convenience - a hole sawn in the floor of the van, were already waiting. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ...and the forcible separation of deported families | While preparing for departure, the families of the deportees were made to believe that they would be all sent together to one place. However, this was a cunning trick, because Order No. 001223 provided that "In view of the fact that a large number of deportees must be arrested and distributed in special camps and that their families must proceed to special settlements in distant regions, it is essential that the operation of removal of both the members of the deportee's family and its head shall be carried out simultaneously, without notifying them of the separation confronting them. . . The convoy of the entire family to the station shall be effected in one vehicle and only at the station of departure shall the head of the family be placed separately from his family in a car specially intended for heads of families." These trains were escorted by a NKVD officer, specially appointed for this task, and by a military convoy. Since the deportation took place in the hottest season, deportees in the crammed wagons suffered horribly from thirst and diseases caused by the unsanitary conditions on the trains. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| One survivor's account | The few deportees who afterwards succeeded in escaping from the settlements have attested under oath the truth of the statements they have given of the procedure of deportation. A Lithuanian deportee gave the following account: "After a month's journey, we, the male deportees, were detrained in the Krasnoyarsk region, at Kraslag, lagpunkt 7. On getting out from the train, the NKVD functionaries expressed their joy at the arrival of a new transport of bourgeois and fascist sons-bitches who in their own interest would be glad to meet their end here. Besides all objects of value, money and clothes, even such things as pocket knives, shaving apparatuses and small religious crosses were taken away. Clad in rags, we were divided up in brigades and sent into the tayga (virgin forest) to cut trees for railway-sleepers for a line under construction. Our day's food-ration consisted of 400 g of bread and a thin soup of frozen and rotten potatoes without any fat. We had to sleep in unheated huts, without blankets, on bare boards or on the floor. When winter came and the temperature fell to -50°C, mortality increased in a terrific manner. It was impossible to bury the dead, because the ground was frozen to a great depth, so they were heaped up in a corner of the camp. As early as Christmas 1941 nearly all the deportees of our transport had died." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Peters' parents happened not to be home at the fateful hour. | From the bills of lading it may be seen that between June 15 and June 27, 1941, a total of 901 goods-vans with deportees left Latvia. Of these, 427 had carried prisoners. It seems that among them were also the heads of the families of the deportees. A telephone message, received in Moscow on June 13 at 2:30 by Commissar Serov, revealed that it was planned to deport 16,200 people from Latvia. The total number of people actually deported may be reckoned to have been 15,600. Thus, a few hundred who happened to be absent from their homes at the fateful hour or who had changed residence succeeded in escaping deportation. The registration of deportees, which was afterwards carried out, yielded detailed information about 15,081 deportees. Among them were 6,447 men, 5,302 women and 3,332 children under the age of 16, this latter figure including also 291 infants under the age of 1, and 315 elderly people over 70 years old. When the Red Army, in June, 1941, retreated from Latvia, it engulfed in its wake also motor-drivers, railway-men, sailors, children from summer rest-homes and nurseries and soldiers of the Baltic Territorial Corps, especially officers, a total of about 13,000 persons. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The sovietization of the Latvian Army | After the occupation of Latvia by the Russians the units of the Latvian National Army were reduced to one corps consisting of two divisions and the military order and regulations of the Russian Red Army with its political instructors (politruks) were introduced in it. As early as September 10, 1940, several hundred Latvian officers and several thousand Latvian privates were dismissed and replaced by soldiers of the Red Army. In spring 1941 the two Latvian divisions were sent to camp at Litene. It was here that 120 Latvian officers, mostly of the higher ranks, were told off by roll-call, put into lorries and, surrounded by chekists and Red Army soldiers, disarmed, arrested and deported. Also this scheme had already been planned early in spring 1941. Brigadier Blauberg of the Territorial Baltic Corps, on April 12, issued a secret order No. 02833 to all army prosecutors of the divisions, reminding them to shadow all soldiers of the former national army who were left in the national units of the Baltic Corps. ". . . In these national units there are individuals who originated from a socially alien element, reactionary and hostile to the Soviet rule and the Red Army. These elements, by abusing the backwardness of individual fighters, their religious superstitions, national ideas, insufficient understanding of the new socialistic order, are attempting in all ways to wage an anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary activity." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The tragic statistics | By adding those, the total of deported Latvians in the years 1940 and 1941 amounts to 35,000 or 1.8% of the population of Latvia. This means that in the case of a Soviet occupation and in proportion to the population: 2,400,000 people would be deported from the U.S.A., 865,000 - from Great Britain and 205,000 - from Canada. All trades and social groups, independent of nationality, sex and age, were affected by this deportation. Of all the professions and occupations, decimated by the deportation, the army lost 20 %, the police forces - 19 %, the judges and lawyers - 13 % and the number of professors of higher educational institutions was reduced by 8 %. Moreover, 372 school rectors and teachers, 1,953 pupils, many authors, artists and scientists were banished. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Peters' parents were listed for the next deportation. | This violent measure of June 13 and 14 was to be the introduction to a still more extensive deportation which according to the plans of the NKVD was to include several hundred thousands of Baltic citizens and which was to take place on June 27 and 28, 1941. However, the beginning of the Soviet-German war prevented the implementation of this second mass deportation. Documents found in the University of Latvia after the Soviet occupation authorities had left, revealed that the whole professional staff had been entered on three nominal lists, bearing the following headings: nationalists and fascists, neutrals, and sympathizers of the Soviet Government. The first-mentioned group was marked out for deportation on June 27 and 28. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| More than 20% of the Latvian government was deported on June 13/14 | Among the deportees of June 13/14, 1941, were the following members of the last Latvian Saeima (Parliament): J. Visna, R. Dukurs, A. Veckains, P. Lejins - Social Democrats; State President K. Ulmanis, H. Celmins, General J. Balodis, H. Dzelzitis - Peasant Party; M. Skujenieks - Progressive; G. Milbergs, P. Apinis - New-settlers; Berta Pipina - Democr. Centre; Arv. Bergs - Nationalist; P. Leikerts - Indep. Peasants; 0. Rancans - Letgall. Catholics; J. Trasuns - Letgall. Progressive; the rabbis M. Nuroks and M. Dubins - of the Jewish Group; deputies M. Kalistratov, Russian starover, and T. I. Muiznieks, Soc. Dem., were shot. Thus, the loss amounted to 20 % of the total number of Saeima members. The number of deported parliament deputies increases, if we add the members of the Constitutional Assembly and of the first three Saeimas. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Autumn, 1944 The second, and final, Soviet occupation Throughout the Soviet occupation... Aggressive Russification of Latvia |
The second Soviet occupation, which was continued since autumn 1944, shows that the true purpose of these administrative deportations is completely to exterminate the entire middle class. In an agricultural country this means the liquidation of the peasant class (the so-called kulaks) also, in order to completely carry out the programme of agricultural collectivization which provides only for the existence of "poor peasants". According to the data of the 15th Conference of the Russian Bolshevik party in 1926, only those peasant were regarded as poor whose yearly income did not exceed 39 dollars, while a well-off peasant's income was fixed at 46 dollars. The rest (kulaks) were considered to be enemies of the people. Yet before the annexation of the Baltic States, all three Baltic "people's parliaments", under the protection of the occupation army, on July 22, 1940, passed resolutions on land nationalization. Seven days later, a special Bill of Land Reform was passed which provided the maximum of 30 ha of land to be used by a family. At the same time, lots up to 10 ha each were apportioned to new-settlers from the fund of nationalized land. This new agrarian law created two different classes of peasants: working peasants with lots ranging from 1 to 10 ha and "kulaks" whose farms were larger. After the second Soviet occupation, it was decreed, on September 7, 1944, for reasons of propaganda, to increase the land norm of the working peasant to 15 ha, while the maximum area tilled by kulaks was reduced from 30 ha to 15-20 ha. In 1935, 44.5 % of the Latvian farmers had a landed property from 1 to 10 ha each, or 59 % of them 1 to 15 ha each. This meant that at least 41% of farming peasant and their families were now by law included in the category of enemies of the people and thus predestined for deportation. This scheme continues to work in all three Baltic countries without interruption ever since 1944, the vacuums created by the deported Balts being filled up by infiltrating Russians and other Soviet Peoples. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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