“The Russians Still Don’t Understand Anything” - Bozhena Rynska on the Deportations of 1940 0 13

Everything was very simple — the USSR invaded Latvia and in one day deported the best Latvians to Siberia. A quarter of the exiles died on the way. They were deported in freight cars, without food, without water, in unsanitary conditions. Children suffered the most during the journey, and many of them perished. Soviet officials and military personnel moved into the homes and apartments of Latvians.

To be honest, it wasn’t just Latvians who were deported; Latvians of all backgrounds were affected: Russians and Jews as well. But the repressions mainly targeted Latvians.

In this regard, I recall a conversation with a local Russian, a senior admirer of Putin, which feels like a bad joke. She explained to me that Latvians would never love me simply because of my background.

— Just imagine, — I said, — that Mongolians or Chinese moved into your apartment and turned it into a communal living space. Imagine that your beloved homestead was taken from you, and now Chinese soldiers live there while you are sent to Siberia in a freight car.

— So what? — my interlocutor replied, — as if only Latvians were deported. We were also deported back then. We ended up in Murmansk. Then we found a way to move to Novorossiysk. And later we were able to return to Latvia. Sometimes it’s useful to live somewhere else!

Well, yes, in Norilsk, for example, I said. A nice city, why not live there...

It’s all terribly sad. That the times were brutal, that the same brutality has returned, and that many Russians still don’t understand anything.

Not all commentators agree with the author’s opinion. Here’s what Mak Irina writes:

There is an illusion that the deportations after the annexation of Latvia to the USSR in 1940 affected only ethnic Latvians. In reality, the main criterion was property status — I recently learned that the first candidates for deportation were selected from the phone book: if you had a phone, you were considered wealthy. Consequently, a lot of doctors were deported. And many Jews as well. I knew a Jewish family that managed to return in the 1960s — a friend’s mother walked back to Riga. But fortunately, they survived in Siberia, while they had no chances in Riga.