75th anniversary of Stalinist deportations // Scientific conference in Chisinau

Chisinau, July 3 /MOLDPRES/- The Institute of History of Moldova State University and the Museum of Victims of Political Repressions and Deportations, a branch of the National Museum of History of Moldova organized on July 2-3 a scientific conference with international participation - 75 years of SUD operation. The forum aimed to re-evaluate the Stalinist deportations on the territory between the Prut and the Dniester as a form of political repression practiced by the Soviet authorities.

The event started yesterday in the premises of the Institute of History. Today, the conference continued with a plenary session at the National Museum of the History of Moldova, where an exhibition dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Stalinist deportations of July 5-6, 1949, entitled Memory of the Deportations, is also being held.

Conference participants agreed that more discussion and historical data are needed to understand Stalinist policy, especially in the context of the times when neo-Stalinism is gaining power in the former Soviet space.

The event is organized with the support of the Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. 

July 6 marks the 75th anniversary of the greatest wave of Stalinist deportations. On the night of July 5-6, 1949, the Soviet regime rounded up tens of thousands of Bessarabian peasants and took them to Siberia to forced labor camps and confiscated their property. Between 1941 and 1951, there were three waves of deportations, and historians estimate the total number of Bessarabian deportees at between 80 and 120 thousand.

Photo: Mihai Vengher