Why Stalin did not please the inhabitants of the Pskov region, or Another big deportation

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The end of the Great Patriotic War did not everywhere entail peace and quiet. In some regions, the war was only reformatted into an underground partisan struggle against everything Soviet. This is how the situation developed in the Baltic States, which became part of the USSR in 1940. Active resistance to the power of the Soviets prompted Stalin to take radical measures - the mass deportation of an unreliable element from the republics. Repressions also affected the neighboring Pskov region, or rather, its western regions, which had been part of Latvia and Estonia for a long time.

Post-war anti-Soviet attacks and Baltic partisans

Sovietization of these territories did not always go smoothly; forced repressive measures took place. During the war years, large nationalist groups were formed in the Baltic States that opposed the Red Army and Soviet power as a whole. With the proclamation of victory, the members of such unions went underground, not abandoning their anti-Soviet intentions. The situation was similar in the western districts of the Pskov region, recently restored within the Soviet borders.

Before the revolution, these border areas were part of the Pskov province. In 1920, the Riga Peace Agreement ordered the RSFSR to partially transfer part of the Pskov lands to Latvia (Ostrovsky district). According to the same principle, Estonia withdrew the Pechora district of the Pskov region, which was indicated by the Treaty of Tartu. The western ex-Pskov regions were culturally united. The border between Latvia and Estonia was transparent, and the Orthodox Pskov-Pechora monastery has long served as a unifying landmark. On the adjacent lands of the Pskov district, church institutions were closed.

The Russians in the Latvian-Estonian regions, although they were subject to ethnic domesticization, were not oppressed. The long-term presence of these territories as part of capitalist Latvia and Estonia significantly distinguished them from the rest of the Pskov province, where Soviet power ruled. When in 1944 the Soviet army liberated the Pskov-Pechora region from the Germans, a powerful militarized underground came out against the Red Army.

Fight against separatism and locals on the side of bandits

After May 1945, the inhabitants of the western part of the Pskov region, as expected, were in the ideological captivity of the nationalist Baltic groups. The party called the fight against local insurgents the most important task, on the solution of which the infusion of new regions into the Soviet system of life depended. To quickly eradicate underground separatism, law enforcement officers resorted to the worked-out scenario of the 20-30s with the right of out-of-court proceedings and death sentences. Not only men were part of the partisan gangs; the activists' relatives also found themselves here. They not only aided the rebels, but also participated in armed attacks themselves.

Often anti-Soviet formations, the most famous of which were considered the "Forest Brothers", were organized by visitors from Germany. Sometimes already formed gangs came here from the neighboring Baltic territories, conducting active propaganda in the Pskov borders and recruiting new members. The difficulty for the Sovietization process was the massive complicity of the bandit formations of the local population. The underground workers were regularly supplied with food, clothing and information about the slightest body movements of the internal organs and the military.

Pskov Supe bandit detachment and Latvian-Russian partisans Irbe-Golubeva

The most popular gang in the west of the Pskov region was the group of Peteris Supe, which called itself the Association of the Latvian Partisans' Defenders of the Fatherland. In April 1945, this unit had at least 700 members. The Supe gang was responsible for sabotage in the Soviet rear. Peteris himself, who graduated from a German intelligence school, was thrown to carry out anti-Soviet operations from an airplane, after which he again went abroad. Detachments subordinate to Supe attacked the village councils, stole cattle, repaired party officials and pro-Soviet citizens.

In the fall of 1945, Supe was responsible for disrupting the elections to the Supreme Council, and in April he was assassinated. The remnants of the gang were defeated by the end of the summer, and Supe's follower, Petr Buksh, was also liquidated. In the same year, the Russian-Latvian gang of Irbe-Golubev was defeated. One of the leaders voluntarily surrendered to the authorities, and Golubev's Russian accomplice was arrested. At the same time, the “forest brothers” in Latvia were liquidated, and the purges of anti-Sovietists in Estonia continued. Sovietization was reinforced by a campaign to legalize partisans who voluntarily laid down their arms. Forgiveness was guaranteed to them.

Purge of the Pskov party and eviction to the Krasnoyarsk Territory

The first wave of post-war deportations in 1948 affected only Lithuania, a year later repressions were carried out in the Latvian and Estonian republics. Ardent activists of gangs were evicted together with their families. The Soviet authorities reached the Pskov rebels at the end of 1949. The first step was to purge the party environment. On the initiative of the new head of the region, who enlisted the support of the MGB, lists of local counter-revolutionaries were prepared. According to the official decree of the Council of Ministers of December 29, 1949, residents of the Pechora, Pytalovsky and Kachanovsky districts of the Pskov region, who had somehow denigrated themselves as anti-Soviet, were subject to eviction.

The next few months prepared the ground for the massive export of the anti-Soviet element. The deportees were allowed to take their personal belongings, small handicraft and agricultural utensils with them, food supplies were allowed. The rest of the property was confiscated free of charge: part of it covered arrears on state obligations, something went to collective farms, the rest was transferred to the jurisdiction of financial organizations. By June 1950, about 1,500 people left for the Krasnoyarsk direction. The legal restrictions on the families of the Pskov special settlers were lifted only in 1960.

Almost immediately after the Second World War, the USSR decided to exchange territories with a neighboring country. Both states received equal plots of land. It is behind this The USSR exchanged territories with Poland, and what happened after that with their population.