IneseV

Today is the sad anniversary of another russian mass crime against Estonians. Today 75 years ago, on March 25, 1949, russian occupiers forcibly deported more than 20 000 Estonians into remote areas of russia, mostly Siberia. My family, the family of Kaja Kallas, and countless other Estonian families were affected, and will always remember this crime and tragedy. The occupiers entered people’s homes by force unannounced at the middle of the night. Families were given one hour, sometimes less, to pack some essential belongings. People were then transported with horse carts and trucks to train stations, and then forcibly loaded into cattle cars, for a miserable journey that took several weeks. Some people died already on the way in those cattle cars. Some survived, and after many years made it back to Estonia. Many didn’t. russia and its cheerleaders do not like when people talk about russian mass crimes. They have a standard script to respond to these. I know their playbook better than they do themselves by now. Here are the three common tankie responses: “it did not happen”, “they deserved it”, and “Soviet Union was not russia”. Let’s save us all some time and I’ll just preemptively address these here upfront. “It did not happen” - yes, it absolutely happened. There is plenty of evidence about these deportations, including in russia’s own archives, from where many documents were published in late 1980s and early 1990s when russia relaxed restrictions for a while. It was a big logistical operation which was meticulously planned and executed. “They deserved it” - these deportations were deliberate Soviet russian policy to crush resistance to Soviet russian occupation. The only “crime” of the deported people was that they were Estonians (or Latvians, or Lithuanians, or Ukrainians, or…) who were living in their land and did not want russians to occupy them. “Soviet Union was not russia” - Soviet Union was a russian imperialist colonial project, and just another iteration in the long series of russian imperialist states, preceded by tsarist russian empire and followed by current russian federation. All these had, and have, a policy of invading and occupying their neighbors and committing systematic mass crimes on the occupied people. russian ethnicity, culture, and language were seen as superior in the Soviet Union, and everyone else as inferior, to be assimilated, exactly as russia continues to do today with many other indigenous nations on the territory of russian federation. That some collaborators and leaders were from other nationalities, does not change anything about this. I am not here to play my victim card or ask for your sympathy. The 1949 March deportations in Estonia were no more special than other russian mass crimes that russians did everywhere else on the occupied territory. My goal is to highlight that there is a very long list of unpunished russian mass crimes, going back centuries, and continuing all the way to 2024. The russian crimes that you continue to see in Ukraine today are of the same nature and powered by the same evil. This is why you see the people of Central and Eastern Europe stand with Ukraine today–the Ukrainian families of 2024 are our families, and we continue to viscerally feel all those russian crimes with our entire being. I cannot even put into words what it would mean for not only Ukrainians, but tens of millions of other people in Central and Eastern Europe, if the russian war criminals were finally brought to justice, and we got a judgement on past and current russian mass crimes, exactly as we got on German Nazi crimes in Nuremberg. It’s true that most people who actually committed the crimes in 1949 are dead by now. But crimes against humanity do not expire. Justice will come.

Hornet's nests on the outdoor patio were always a problem until 4 years ago when I crocheted and hung my fake one after reading that hornets are territorial. Not a single one since then! -Sandy Kendall Dennis