ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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 controlled
by thousands of NKVD 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
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