The file on operation “Priboi”: A re-assessment of the mass deportations of 1949

2002

Abstract Using information from documents found in the Russian State Military Archives, this article discusses the organization and execution of the Soviet mass deportations from the Baltic States in March 1949 — code-named Operation “Priboi” by the USSR MVD. These findings are presented for the first time in English, in the context both of established historiographical interpretations and recent literature on the deportations. The aim is to encourage a scholarly reassessment of Operation “Priboi” as a crime against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet occupation regime, but supported by indigenous collaborators to a far greater degree than previously assumed.