Soviet deportations from Estonia

Soviet deportations from Estonia were a series of mass deportations in 1941 and 1945–1953 carried out by Joseph Stalin's government of the former USSR from then Soviet-occupied Estonia. The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three occupied Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In addition, there were Soviet deportations from Estonia based on the victims' ethnicity (Germans in 1945 and Ingrian Finns in 1947–1950) and religion (Jehovah's Witnesses in 1951). Ethnic Estonians who had been residing in Soviet Russia (mostly in the Leningrad Oblast) had already been subjected to deportation since 1935.

People were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union, predominantly to Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, by means of railroad cattle cars. Entire families, including children and the elderly, were deported without trial or prior announcement. Of March 1949 deportees, over 70% of people were women and children under the age of 16.

In total, over 35,000 of "enemies of the people", individual persons and whole families, were deported during 1945-1953, of which 33,000 were deported during the March deportation of 1949 (Operation Priboi). Their names were compiled into lists by the Memento Estonian Repressed Persons' Records Bureau.

The Estonian Internal Security Service has brought to justice several organizers of these events. The deportations have been repeatedly declared to constitute a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Estonia and acknowledged as such by the European Court of Human Rights.