Estonia: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn or had escaped to the West. As a result of Moscowplanned industrialization, heavy industry plants and shipyards were started in a country which lacked the necessary raw materials and manpower. Almost half of these plants served the needs of the Soviet defence establishment which employed technicians and workers sent from Russia. As a border region, Estonia was covered with Soviet military bases and was guarded by thousands of border guards. To crush the spirit of resistance, the Soviet authorities started to make preparations for a new extensive deportation. The pretext was the need to overcome the passive resistance of the farmers to the policies of collectivization. This was officially labelled liquidation of the kulaks (independent farmers) as a class. On March 25–26, 1949, about 21,000 persons, the substantial part of them farmers, were deported along with their families from Estonia and re-settled in the remotest areas of Siberia. This act of mass terror resulted in the formation of nearly 3000 collective farms in Estonia in just a few months. Farmers had to give up their lands, agricultural machines and cattle were relinquished to the agricultural proletariat. The living conditions in Siberia were continuously severe, and deportees were officially treated as politically unreliable second class people. Especially tragic was the fate of 5000 Estonians who were deported to the Omsk region and settled in the vicinity of the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing grounds. In the years between 1949–1956, about 260 atomic and hydrogen bombs were exploded there. The victims of radiation sickness were left for decades without any 26
ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn information or medical help. Overall Estonian losses under the two occupations are estimated to be nearly 200,000 people – 17 per cent of the population. The number of Estonians in Estonia today is still fewer than there were in 1939. Certain changes in the character of Soviet policy occurred after Stalin’s death in 1953. After the Khrushchev led criticism of Stalin’s “excesses” in 1956 and in 1961, the majority of the political prisoners were released and the deportees were gradually permitted to return to their homeland. However, their property was not returned nor were many of them allowed to settle in their former homesteads. People who had suffered under repressions were continuously treated as secondclass members of society, who remained under the surveillance of the security organs. In fact, the whole population had the status of collective hostages, guarded by more than a hundred thousand Red Army troops and Soviet border guards – on the average one Soviet soldier for every 15 inhabitants. The islands and the sea coast were isolated from the rest of the country as special border zones. To enter these zones one needed a Ministry of the Interior permit from Moscow. Although indiscriminate terror subsided in the Soviet Union starting from the second half of the 1950s, it had achieved its principal aim – to generate a deep-seated aversion to any independent action. As thousands of arrested or deported husbands and wives were separated for years, tens of thousands of children remained unborn. The official Soviet population policy even 27
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Estonia: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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