The ones who were designated as being allowed back to their home countries couldn't leave from Grodno until they had “paid their way”. They were forced to cut many cords of wood or other hard tasks. On the journey back they were targets for robbery, disease, starvation, extortion etc.
The few who were repatriated from Sweden were similarly victimized. The induction/transfer camp at Viiburi (at the Finnish-Russian border) was usually a place for forwarding individuals not to their home countries but into Russia or labour camps. Many who were not initially destined for the Gulag were still arrested and sent there. Some who were lucky enough to reach home first were later accused of being agents of Western intelligence services and disposed of accordingly.
Amongst the many accounts of individual repatriated refugees were the stories of Reino Urmi and Lembit Mustel both under-aged boys in Sweden. They were adventurous types with ambitions of attending the marine academy in Tallinn. They were convinced that if Soviet life were to become intolerable then they always had the opportunity as merchant sailors to jump ship in a foreign port. Without telling their parents they went to the Soviet embassy in Stockholm where they were welcomed by the ‘diplomat' Ernst Simson who promised them acceptance to the marine academy.
Reality hit them hard. Reino Urmi had to bear hardships in a Soviet orphanage, seek a hideout with Estonian anti-Soviet partisan, suffer beatings while being interrogated, spend most of his youth in prison and labour camps. Lembit Mustel, extremely disappointed with Soviet life tried to defect in 1948. He was caught by border guards in Kaliningrad. Under interrogation he was forced to confess that he was a Swedish intelligence operative. The KGB later withdrew the spying allegations but he was still sentenced 25 years of hard labour in spite of being underage. After Stalin's death he was granted amnesty as were thousands of others. But it was discovered that he had died in the notorious Vologda prison in 1949 from the consequences of KGB beatings.
Repatriated individuals who had not been arrested at the border or forced into labour battalions were met with suspicion and discrimination. KGB counterintelligence statistics, which were compiled monthly showed that as of January 1, 1951, 11,169 persons had been repatriated to Estonia (including war prisoners) of which 186 had been arrested by the KGB and 704 were placed under investigative surveillance. Promises of having their former houses and apartments returned remained unfulfilled. They were given to government officials, factory bosses and people who had been brought to occupied Estonia to fill vacant jobs. Not a single establishment belonging to the local government had the courage to request employees of Soviet-wide concerns to move to another location.
It wasn't unusual that repatriated individuals suffered discrimination at the workplace. Documents show that often it would come to the attention of authorities that individuals were dismissed solely on the basis that they were returnees from the West. This forced the Soviet Council of Ministers and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of occupied Estonia on occasion to remind employers to treat the repatriated workers as equal citizens with the rest. After all the returnees “had seen the light, confessed the error of their ways and returned to the communist paradise”. On the one hand the KGB treated all repatriated persons with suspicion while the civil authority seemed to come to their aid. Researchers have come to the conclusion that because Council of Ministers and the Central Committee took it upon themselves to worry about the returnees, then their discrimination and bad treatment must have been on a massive scale.
Former fishermen who had fled and then coerced or decided to return were especially disappointed. The returning fishermen were targeted for helping people escape from advancing Soviet forces. Lt. General Stepanov, commander of the border guards in Soviet occupied Estonia (KGB) stated in a letter to the repatriation commission: “In the interests of national security, repatriated citizens should not be returned to coastal areas (where fishermen had previously lived).”
The fight against “bourgeois nationalism” intensified in 1949 as witnessed by the mass deportations of March 1949 and a new wave of arrests which also greatly involved repatriated people. Withdrawal of fishing licenses from those repatriated fisherman who were fortunate enough to have them also occurred in 1949. (To be continued.)
Laas Leivat
