Tag #118290 - Interview #78256 (Cilja Laud)

In 1940 Estonia became a Soviet republic. Of course, my parents were not happy about it, but what could they do? They had to adapt to the reality. Probably, Father's elder brother Simeon was the only one in our family who welcomed the Soviet regime as he was a hard-boiled communist. The rest of us just abided by that. There were a lot of newcomers from the USSR. They were to settle somewhere. The new regime took the houses from the owners, and strangers were housed in large apartments, where only one family used to be living. Our apartment was also turned into a communal one [11], two or three families moved in there. Then, we found out that it was not the most horrible thing.

On 14th June 1941, 10,000 Estonian citizens were deported from the country [12]. Maybe that number does not seem so big as compared to those repressions that took place on the territory of the Soviet Union [see Great Terror] [13]. It should also be noted that the entire population of Estonia was only about a million at that time.