Thread by @gryn_a

So the Xitter algorithm is hiding posts about the deportations of people from the occupied Baltics by the s0viets (ru🐍🐍ians) that began today and continued from 1940 to 1953.
Well guess what?
Here’s a thread about it!
I promise you’ll find at least some facts you didn’t know 🧵

There were two types of people that our dear neighbours from the east deported once they signed the secret agreement with the nazis (Molotov-Ribentrop Pact): regular deportees who were deported, often with the whole family, and dropped off in Siberia, and political prisoners 🧵

Political prisoners were those who actively resisted soviet occupation, they were sent to soviet concentration camps (gulags).
But often charges were made up and you were sent there just because. It was very common.
Here’s my grandma, 24, before being sent to a gulag for 7 yrs 🧵

The russification of occupied territories of Ukraine that we see today is an old ru tradition, going back to the USSR, the russian empire, and earlier.
Mass killing and deportation of people and bringing russians to replace them is something russia was never made to answer for 🧵

Living conditions in Siberia were extremely harsh, whichever group of deportees you belonged to.
People were simply dropped off the train in the middle of nowhere, and had to build houses and find food by themselves.
That is, if you even survived the journey. Many did not.🧵

Left photo: my relative, holding the baton, celebrating victory in the Lithuanian Athletics Championship of 1937, with her teammates.
Right photo: Lithuanian deportees in Siberia post 1940 occupation.🧵

Baltic people were always mostly agricultural nations, and had an extremely strong relation to their land, going back to the Baltic pagan religion, many elements of which are still part of the Baltic identity.
Soviet deportations tore the very fabric of this identity.🧵

Recommended reading: Between Shades of Gray, a New York Times best seller novel by Lithuanian-American novelist Ruta Sepetys 🧵
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_S…

Recommended watching: In the Crosswind, a film by Estonian director Martti Helde.
🧵
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Cr…

Since 2006, a project called Mission Siberia (Misija Sibiras) was organised in Lithuania 🇱🇹.
Every year, a group of young people was selected and travelled by train to the places where Lithuanian people had been deported🧵

The goal was to gather information about those deported, those who died, went missing, or even still live somewhere in Siberia.
Also, to keep the memories alive by engaging the young generation.
Participants would tidy up abandoned Lithuanian cemeteries and pay their respects🧵

In 2021, a year before the full-scale russian invasion in Ukraine 🇺🇦, Mission Siberia stopped organising the expeditions because 🇷🇺 became too hostile.
During 15 years over 14000 young Lithuanians applied for the project, and over 200 of them got to travel to Siberia🧵

Over 170 places where Lithuanians had been deported were visited in the territory of present-day russia, but also in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
Misija Sibiras was a unique project that gathered a lot of important historical information in russia. This is not possible anymore.🧵

Later in 2021 Putin ordered to close Memorial, the oldest human rights organisation in russia.
Founded in late 1980s, its goal was to document political repressions in the Soviet Union and build a database of victims of the Great Terror and gulag camps

🧵en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_…

Once again, russians are supposed to forget the past and erase from memory all the crimes they participated in.
Then, crimes against humanity and genocide can be committed without a single pang of conscience.
We are seeing it now... again.
#SlavaUkraini
#GeorgiaIsEurope

P.s. A fantastic thread on this topic, highly recommended: