|
THE CRIMES OF COMMUNISM IN THE
|
|
|
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 Riga,
was turned into the NKVD main headquarters. In November 1940 the ground-floor and cellars of this building were
remodelled into a special prison for interrogation, and provided with
cells measuring 80x80 cm [31.5 inches square] on plan and called
"dog-kennels" (in
Russian "sobachniki"),
where the prisoners could neither stand nor lie. After all kinds of
devilishly subtle methods of torture the prisoners were put into these cells
to "recover" until they were again summoned for interrogation which
usually began late in the evening and lasted the night through with the
purpose of extorting a confession from the prisoner. The NKVD had at its command
an extensive net of agents whose reports were worked out by specialists. All
prisons were under the control of the NKVD which had at its disposal special
military units. Even the militia, Workers' Guard, the members and candidates
of the Bolshevik party, members of the Communist Youth and the rest of the
ancillary party organizations had to obey NKVD orders and instructions. 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." |
|
|
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." |
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
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 |
|
|
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. |
|
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. |
|
...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) |
||||||
|
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 |
||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
Chancellor Anton Palvadre and the family |
Siblings (last name unknown) |
|||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
General Alex Tonnisson |
General Gustav Jonsson |
Dr. August Korv |
Heinrich & Ella Luberg |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||||
|
People
to be deported to the death camps of Siberia and Arctic |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
Aarne Norralt before and after arrest |
Alma
Poldma |
|||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
Ago Steynback |
Lilian
Looring |
|||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
||||
|
Evald
Partel |
Execution
room |
Leida
Kibuvist |
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ivan Eisenthal |
Ethel Romanis |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other Latvians tortured and shot by the
Soviets |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 |
||
|
|
May One
of the victims carved these words into an aluminum cup found by the railroad |
|
|
|
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 |
|
