June deportation

The June deportation of 1941 (Estonian: juuniküüditamine, Latvian: jūnija deportācijas, Lithuanian: birželio trėmimai) was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940 – into the interior of the Soviet Union.

The June deportation was ordered by the Soviet dictator Stalin, and organized following formal guidelines set by the NKVD with the Soviet Interior People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria as the senior executor. The official title of the top secret document was “Resolution On the Eviction of the Socially Foreign Elements from the Baltic Republics, Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Moldova”. The NKVD and Red Army units carried out the arrests, often in collaboration with the Soviet police and local Communist Party members.