The first wave of Stalinist deportations began on the night to June 13, 1941. Tens of thousands of people from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were put on freight trains and taken by force to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Most of them were so-called “kulaks”, priests, intellectuals and party members. Many did not survive the harsh conditions, and their families were separated and treated inhumanely, IPN reports.
As a result of an agreement between Hitler and Stalin, the Soviet Union annexed the region situated between the Prut and Nistru rivers. Under the pressure of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, Romania ceded Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa region. In the occupied territories, the Soviet power began a campaign of purge, terror and unprecedented repression. Those considered dangerous were picked up and sent to forced labor camps, the GULAG, in the most remote regions of the USSR.
The ordeal began on the night to June 13, 1941, at 2:30 a.m., the moment that went down in history as the beginning of the first wave of Stalinist deportations from Bessarabia. During the first wave, almost 22,000 people from 3,470 families were deported.
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The lists of deportees were drawn up with multiple deviations – handwritten, without stamps or without official approval from any state institution. The most active representatives of the local population – mayors, officers, landowners, merchants, policemen, intellectuals and their families – were deported.
The journey by train lasted up to three weeks and took place in inhumane conditions, in the middle of summer: each deportee had 200 grams of water per day and only salted fish to eat. At each stop of the train, corpses were thrown into the field and were either summarily buried or left as animal feed. Those who reached their destination were assigned to work in forestry enterprises, sovkhozes and craft cooperatives.
Those who took refuge in Bessarabia and who came from other regions of the USSR, avoiding the Soviet power, were the favorite target of deportations. The heads of the families were sent to the GULAG, where very few survived. Their families were deported to Siberia or to the steppes of northern Kazakhstan. In fact, one of the purposes of the deportations was to populate the territory of Siberia.
The deportations caused the breakup of communities, the impoverishment of villages and the establishment of a state of fear and mistrust, which profoundly affected the social and identity structure of the region. For many years in a row, no one was allowed to talk about everything that happened.
After the deportations of June 1941, two more waves of mass deportations from Moldavia followed.
The one of July 5-6, 1949 was described as an economic offensive because the people sent to Siberia were more or less wealthy. The spiritual-ideological wave of March 31-April 1, 1951 was the third one.
Although Soviet data showed that nearly 70,000 people were deported between 1941 and 1951, the number was much higher, say historians in Moldova.
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