Deportation

In addition to executions and conviction to labour camps, the Communist regime established in Estonia after the Soviets invaded the country in 1940 organized mass deportations with the aim of isolating the better part of the Estonian society by whole families. Of all the deportations the people have the worst memories of those of 1941 and 1949. In the first major deportation on 14 June 1941 more than 10,000 people, of those nearly 80 percent women, children and the elderly, were taken away from their homes under the threat of arms and without any court order, loaded into railway wagons normally used to carry cattle and transported to outlying parts of Russia, mainly the Kirov and Novosibirsk Regions. Many of the deportees died en route or during the first year of banishment. In the second major deportation on 25 March 1949 more than 20,000 people were taken from Estonia to Siberia in the same manner, mainly farmers who were better off or had spoken out against the Soviets. Some of the deported remained buried away from home, while others were permitted to return to Estonia after 1956, but often not to their former homes. This souvenir sheet was issued to commemorate victims of the Stalininist genocide of the Estonians.