THE CRIMES OF
COMMUNISM IN THE
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Since Red Terror, genocide and the slave economy, provided
for in the economic structure of the Soviet State, are the foundation of the bolshevik regime, it is easy to understand that all these
methods were automatically put into effect immediately after the occupation
of the Baltic States in June 1940. The
incorporation of these countries had not yet taken place when the NKVD
started its work, in all three Baltic countries, not only by deporting the
State presidents of Latvia and Estonia (the Lithuanian President was the only
one who escaped the Soviets), but also the governments and the most prominent
of the social workers and politicians of the three countries. After
the incorporation, the Order No. 001223 which referred to the registration of
"anti-Soviet elements" with the view of subsequently punishing
them, and issued by the NKVD as early as October 11, 1939, was revived to its
full extent. No sooner was the Soviet Latvian Constitution decreed on August
30, 1940, according to which the Latvian People's Commissariat of State
Security was "federal-republican",
i.e. common with that of the USSR, than the specialists in the matters of the
NKVD, sent from Russia, could under the direction of the NKVD commissar A. Novik (in autumn 1940) and the NKGB commissar S. Shustin (early in 1941) "legally" start their activity. The premises of the former Ministries
of Home and Social Affairs, a conspicuous building in the central part of Who, then, were the unfortunate people who sooner or
later had to succumb to the NKVD? The secret order, signed on November 28,
1940, at This circular order of November 28, 1940, contains the
following passage: "For the task of operative
work it is of profound importance to know how many former policemen, white-guardists, ex-army officers, members of anti-Soviet
political parties and organizations are in the § 5. Into the alphabetic files
must be entered all those persons who, because of their social and political
past, their nationalistic-chauvinistic inclinations, religious beliefs, moral
and political instability, are hostile to the socialistic form of State, and
consequently might be exploited by foreign intelligence services and
counter-revolutionary centres for their anti-Soviet
purpose. Among such elements are to be counted: a) all former members of anti-Soviet political parties,
organizations and groups: Trotskyites, right-wingers, Essers,
Mensheviks, Social Democrats, anarchists, etc. b) all former members of nationalistic, chauvinistic
anti-Soviet parties, Nationalists, Christian Democrats, the active members of
student fraternities, of the National Guard etc. c) former policemen, officers of the criminal and political
police and of prisons. d) former army officers and members of military courts. e) persons who are dismissed from the Communist Party and
Communist Youth Organization for various offences against the party. f) all
refugees, political emigrants, immigrants, repatriants
and contrabandists g) all
citizens of foreign states, representatives of foreign firms, employees of foreign
state institutions, former citizens of foreign states, former employees of
foreign legations, firms, concessions, and stock companies. h) persons who maintain personal contact or are in
correspondence with foreign countries, legations and consulates, with
philatelists and esperantists. i) former officials of
Ministerial Departments. j) former Red Cross officials. k) clergy of religious communities, Orthodox priests, Roman
Catholic priests, sectarians and active members of religious congregations. l) former noblemen, estate owners, merchants, bankers,
businessmen, owners of factories and shops, owners of hotels and restaurants.
This
enumeration is not complete, as is proved by other documents. Thus, in the
above Order are only mentioned members of military courts, but after the NKGB
was established on February 3, 1941, the latter had lists prepared which
included even public prosecutors, inquestors of the
specially important trials, members of Courts of Appeal and Supreme
Tribunals, district prefects, military commandants of districts, officers of
the Intelligence Section of the General Staff, officers of the Frontier Guard
Corps, all officers of the former white Armies, prison guards of the ranks,
former employees of the Baltic legations abroad, members of the families of
the participants of counter-revolutionary nationalist organizations, whose
family heads had been sentenced to death or were in hiding from government
organs; families of traitors of the homeland who had fled abroad. Let us
remember the Order of the Cheka, published on December 25, 1918: "Your first duty is to ask the prisoner what
class he belongs to, what were his origin, education and occupation. These
questions should decide the fate of the prisoner." The citizens of the Baltic States at that time naively
believed that in the course of the 30 years after the bolshevik
subversion in Russia the primary terror and methods of civil warfare had been
entirely abolished or, at least adjusted to the principles of right, declared
in Stalin's Constitution. Thus, sections 84 and 85 of the Constitution of the
LSSR declared that: "In all courts of the LSSR, to the extent
that the law does not provide exceptions, cases are tried publicly, ensuring
the defendant the right of counsel. Judges are independent and subject only
to the law." |
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Successor, the NKVD,
continues to operate without regard to the law |
... In fact, the Cheka,
NKVD-or-NKGB, became the actual ruler of the occupied countries, superior to all
other branches of Government, Party and the Red Army. This institution had
laws of its own and methods, elaborated during a 30 years' practice which no
Constitution of Stalin's ever mentioned anywhere. Thus, for example, in its
Order dated April 25, 1941, under No.0023, the Lithuanian NKGB advises all
its district branches: "The existence of a large contingent of
persons, subject to operative accounting under Order No. 001223 of the NKVD
of the USSR, dated October 11, 1939, regardless of concrete data concerning
their anti-Soviet activities, obligates the NKGB at the present time to specify
separately in its accounting work and screening of the
counter-revolutionary and hostile elements, the categories of particularly
dangerous persons, whose accounting must be organized in first priority order
and within the shortest time possible." |
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This group of particularly dangerous individuals
comprised the leaders of the former political parties of the Baltic States,
the chairman of the parliaments, heads of police, commanding officers of the
army and the Home Guard and other leading persons who had held administrative
key positions during the period of independence and who still enjoyed the
loyalty of their adherents and former subordinates. According to the Order
No. 001223, these persons had to be eliminated without noise and panic, so as
not to permit any demonstrations and other excesses by a certain part of the
surrounding population inimically inclined toward the Soviet administration.
All arrests took place by night or late in the evening. The arrested were
removed to the NKVD where they were made to fill in questionnaires,
containing innumerable questions, with the view of recording their social
origin, education and activity before the occupation. Then followed the
interrogation which was combined with psychical [i.e., mental] and
physical torture. |
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June, 1941 |
When, in June 1941, the Red Army retreated from the
Baltic area, on the premises of the NKGB were found a variety of instruments
which were used for extorting confessions from the prisoners. Without
enumerating all the devilish devices of torturing, let us mention the
ordinary equipment of the working cabinet for interrogation of the NKVD, or
NKGB: instruments to break the bones
of shins and arms, to squeeze testicles, to pierce the soles of feet and to
pull off nails and skin from hands, to squeeze the main nose ligament until
the victim bleeds profusely, electrical appliances, etc. The corpses which
were left in the courtyards of the NKVD prison and exhumed from mass-graves
show that before being shot the "enemies of the people" were
mutilated to an extent which in many cases made it quite impossible for
relatives to identify the NKVD victims. As a matter of course, the
interrogation and sentencing were not carried out publicly, but in great
secrecy by special NKGB tribunals. |
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Among the papers of the NKGB, there have survived several
lists, bearing the signature of Shustin, Commissar of
State Security of the LSSR, on death sentences passed in The registration, carried out by the Latvian Red Cross in
the summer of 1942, evinced that during the first Russian occupation of
Latvia no less than 7,161 political criminals were in prison, amongst them
404 women and 17 children and 179 old people over 60 years of age. Actually,
the number of prisoners was by far larger, because many prisoners were
reported as missing. Of these prisoners 979 were killed, the rest sentenced
and deported to forced labour camps in |
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June, 1941 |
When, in June 1941, the Red Army retreated from the Baltic
area, on the premises of the NKGB were found a variety of instruments which
were used for extorting confessions from the prisoners. Without enumerating
all the devilish devices of torturing, let us mention the ordinary equipment
of the working cabinet for interrogation of the NKVD, or NKGB: instruments to break the bones of shins and
arms, to squeeze testicles, to pierce the soles of feet and to pull off nails
and skin from hands, to squeeze the main nose ligament until the victim
bleeds profusely, electrical appliances, etc. The corpses which were left in
the courtyards of the NKVD prison and exhumed from mass-graves show that
before being shot the "enemies of the people" were mutilated to an
extent which in many cases made it quite impossible for relatives to identify
the NKVD victims. As a matter of course, the interrogation and
sentencing were not carried out publicly, but in great secrecy by special
NKGB tribunals. |
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June 13,14, 1941 |
The large deportation scheme, carried out in all three
Baltic countries on the night from June 13 to June 14, 1941, had a purely
administrative character and had been carefully prepared during the whole
previous year according to Serov's Order No. 001223
already mentioned before. This measure was conceived not for the liquidation
of individual leading persons, but with the view of exterminating a whole
class, the so-called "bourgeoisie". Several days before it was
implemented, all available lorries were mobilized and ordered to wait at the
police, NKVD and party offices. Before this scheme was put into effect the
drivers, among themselves, had already been hinting that a "hunt for the
bourgeois" was under preparation. These lorries, manned with armed chekists, militia-men and members of the Communist party
who were provided with special lists approved in Moscow, raided, in the dead
of night, town flats and country farms, carrying out domiciliary searches,
reading their warrants of deportation and telling the people to be ready for
departure in an hour's time or even less. According to the instructions, the
deportees from the towns were allowed to take with them their belongings not
exceeding 100 kg in weight (all personal cash, a whole family's food ration for
a month, cooking appliances, footwear, clothes and linen). In the country,
people could also take some working tools (axes, saws) with them. If, during
the search, arms, foreign currency or counter-revolutionary literature were
found, a report was drawn up. Persons to be arrested who offered armed
resistance, were separated from the rest and handed over to the NKVD. After
these formalities were settled the arrested families were taken to railway
stations where trains, composed of goods-vans with grated window-openings and
- as the only convenience - a hole sawn in the floor of the van, were already
waiting. |
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...and the forcible separation of deported families |
While preparing for departure, the families of the
deportees were made to believe that they would be all sent together to one
place. However, this was a cunning trick, because Order No. 001223 provided
that "In view of the fact that a large number of deportees must be
arrested and distributed in special camps and that their families must
proceed to special settlements in distant regions, it is essential that the
operation of removal of both the members of the deportee's family and its
head shall be carried out simultaneously, without notifying them of the
separation confronting them. . . The convoy of the entire family to the
station shall be effected in one vehicle and only at
the station of departure shall the head of the family be placed separately
from his family in a car specially intended for heads of families." These trains were escorted by a NKVD officer,
specially appointed for this task, and by a military convoy. Since the
deportation took place in the hottest season, deportees in the crammed wagons
suffered horribly from thirst and diseases caused by the unsanitary
conditions on the trains. |
From the article “those
Names Accuse” originally published at
http://www.latvians.com/en/Reading/TheseNamesAccuse/ThNA-06-Historical-Introduction-pt5.php
GALLERY:
ESTONIANS & LATVIANS KILLED, TORTURED OR DEPORTED
BY THE SOVIETS (1940-53)
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There were thousands and thousands of them including those whose
pictures are below. Many of these people were shot. Most of them were
tortured. But the soviet regime failed to break their spirit http://www.angelfire.com/ks3/klubs/victims_in_the_balt.html http://www.angelfire.com/ks3/klubs/see_their_they_are.html http://www.angelfire.com/ks3/klubs/too_many_to_count.html |
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Chancellor Anton Palvadre
and the family |
Siblings (last name unknown) |
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General Alex Tonnisson |
General Gustav Jonsson |
Dr. August Korv |
Heinrich
& Ella Luberg |
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People to be deported
to the death camps of Siberia and Arctic |
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Aarne Norralt before and after
arrest |
Alma Poldma |
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Ago Steynback |
Lilian Looring |
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Evald Partel |
Execution room |
Leida Kibuvist |
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Ivan Eisenthal |
Ethel Romanis |
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Other Latvians tortured and shot by the Soviets |
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The soviet
regime tried really hard to make them forget their rights, their history and
their culture. But in spite of all the pressure and atrocities, their country is free again and the |
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May One of the victims
carved these words into an aluminum cup found by the railroad |
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LINKS TO MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.okupatsioon.ee/rus/fotod/koikfreimid.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ks3/klubs/default.htm
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p-25_Berkis.html
http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/eng/Exile/054.htm
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/498/remembered.html
http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/eng/Exile/053.htm