To my friends all over the Word, today Lithuania remembers one of the darkest moments in our history - the beginning of mass deportations organized be the soviets in 1941 (the deportations were organized for a decade from 1939 to 1955 and the final rehabilitation documents for the deported people were only signed in 1988).
So, what you need to understand is that the Soviet Union was never a union as we understand it as a term. The way to call this a "union" is similar as "specoperation" instead of war - it's a way to deny the fact of occupation. Remember, most of the countries who "entered" the USSR were simply occupied by Russian military forces and/or political ultimatums. Occupied by Russia, that's it. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, part of Finland - these lands were completely annexed. East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania - were under soviet influence, also repressed, no free will.
What happened to the people left in these territories? In Lithuania alone most of the intellectuals, teachers, lawyers, professors, wealthy farmers, businessman, state officers and former soldiers with their families and children were arrested and deported to the coldest regions of Siberia:
131 600 deported
156 000 jailed
50 000 from them were killed or died and never returned
See also: forced deportations from other countries occupied by USSR=Russia: Soviet deportations from Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Belorus, deportations from Kaliningrad, from Bessarabia, Deportation of the Crimean Tatars, Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks, Deportation of the Karachays, Deportation of the Balkars, and Deportation of the Kalmyks - a total of about 20 million people from all these regions. Total estimated number of deaths of people in exile: 824,203–1,514,877.
The most important thing to know is that Russia is using the same practice in Ukraine today, it's happening now with a system of filtration camps in Russia, where people from occupied territories are sent. Today it is happening again. The same aggressor, the same methods.
We tend to say "never again", but it is happening today in Ukraine. Again.
