Amir Weiner Getting to Know You

GETTING TO KNOW YOU 31
In 1949, Soviet doggedness finally bore fruit. In the three Baltic republics,
locals accounted for over 60 percent (46,791 of 76,212) of the forces
employed to carry out the deportations of their brethren. 83 Moreover, the
absolute majority of people on the deportation lists were apprehended, which
underlined the ability both to obtain accurate information and to avoid leaks,
in sharp contrast to the 1941 deportations. 84 There were inevitable leaks: poor
Estonian peasants assembled to list a priori kulaks informed the latter when
they were slated for deportation; Latvian peasants sold their property once
troops began assembling so as to avoid being classified as kulaks or simply
left the villages; and in Moldavia, the June deportations were preceded by a
wave of rumors. 85 Despite such incidents and cases of loading the trains with
exempted categories of families of army servicemen, kolkhoz members, sick
older people, and newborn babies, the absolute majority of marked people
were located and deported, a remarkable feat given that the operation lasted
for a full four days amid a suspicious and panic-stricken population. 86 Once
again, myriad registers produced by various Soviet institutions, from local
card indexes to records of military tribunals and taxation records, were put
to devastating use in identifying and selecting candidates for deportation.
The passport system contributed its share by filling in the gaps. Ironically,
three years earlier, the MGB–MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) objected to
the request by the Latvian and Estonian party-state leaders to issue passports
to the entire population, including rural inhabitants. The latter prevailed,
arguing that aside from passports’ security benefits in the countryside and
83 Heinrich Strods and Matthew Kott, “The File on Operation ‘Priboi’: A Re-Assessment
of the Mass Deportations of 1949,” Journal of Baltic Studies 33, 1 (2002): 24–26. For the
recollections of an Estonian Komsomol member of the mobilization of youth to help in the
implementation of the March 1949 deportations, see Rutt Hinrikus, ed., Eesti Rahva Elulood
(Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2000), 2:50–62.
84 For the NKGB addressing the problem of missing individuals in the course of the June 1941
deportations from Lithuania, see LYA f. V-135, ap. 7, b. 8, ll. 48–49. In the Estonian county
of Viljandi, only 494 out of 573 who were marked for deportation were apprehended, because
of a shortage in operational personnel and flawed information and preparation. See Toomas
Hiio et al., eds., Estonia, 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian Commission for the Investigation
of Crimes against Humanity (Tallinn: Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes
against Humanity, 2006), 373.
85 ERAF f. 1175, n. 4, s. 1; Elmars Pelkaus, ed., Policy of Occupation Powers in Latvia, 1939–
1991: A Collection of Documents (Riga: Nordic, 1999), 301; Valeriu Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy
istorii Moldovy, 1940–1950-e gg. (Moscow: Terra, 1994), 402–3.
86 In one of the last deportations of 15,537 alleged kulaks on 2 October 1951, the Lithuanian
MGB recorded 31 individuals who escaped and 164 who were not at home when the families
were rounded up (LYA f. V-135, ap. 7, b. 328, ll. 144, 286–87). On the inclusion of sick
elderly people and newborn babies, see a report from the Estonian district of Viljandi in ERAF
SM f. 17/1, n. 1, s. 140, ll. 96–97.