Commemorating the March Deportations of 1949 (and more)

ERIK KÕVAMEES, on behalf of the Society for the Advancement of Estonian Studies in Canada

March of 2022 has been a sobering month. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began near the end of February, on Estonian Independence Day no less, is ongoing, and has stirred up memories of the past and/or fear of the future in many Estonians and people in general.

The war in Ukraine has added a new dimension to commemorations of what are known as the March Bombings of Estonia. In the March of 1944 – on March 6th in Narva, on March 9th in Tallinn, and on March 26th and 27th in Tartu – the Soviets carried out a series of bombings that in the end amounted to nothing more than the destruction of Estonian culture and the genocide of the Estonian people. In Tallinn itself, it is estimated that just over 700 people (including somewhere around 550 civilians) were killed, about 450 people slightly injured, and slightly over 200 people seriously injured. Over 5000 buildings in Tallinn were affected in some way – whether completely destroyed or damaged to a greater or lesser extent – including ones centrally-important to Estonian cultural memory and heritage.

And of course, 73 years ago, in 1949, the so-called March Deportations of nearly 20 000 people living in Estonia occurred, an indiscriminate herding of babies, grandparents, and everyone in-between, on the part of Soviet authorities. In 2019, President Kersti Kaljulaid gave a speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Deportations, which she introduced with a poem by Kalju Lepik. The poem is as follows:

Magav maimuke kambrist kisti,

taadi sülest kogunisti.

Mulla alla taat magama –

sinna kus viha valuvärvi,

valu lume valget värvi.

Risti ei kellegi haual.

Rattad ruttasid raual.

Kellele ma kaeban kurja,

kurjale, et kargaks turja.

The poem tells a story; the first “shot” is of a baby sleeping in her or his chamber, torn out of the arms of an old man, the grandfather. In the next “act,” the old man is dead and buried, killed and put underground, there where anger is the colour of pain and where pain is the colour of the white snow, and where there are no crosses marking graves. In the next “scene,” wheels are rattling over iron railways. The poem concludes with the narrator wondering about who they can complain to about this evil, and if the figure who receives this complaint could possibly avenge the evil that has been carried out.

What is noticeable about this poem is that it is intimate; it concerns very few actual actors, probably only those living in a single household. But over the course of the poem, the context widens, and this household becomes representative of a larger experience, perhaps the experience of all those households and all those individuals who were deported that day or night.

The narrator of the poem also leaves a tragic impression: It seems like they are imagining the narrated scenario, which means that they are one of those individuals who have been left behind. And perhaps, as their mind wanders and they attempt to answer the questions they have posed, more questions develop: Who can be held responsible for this evil? Has the evil been perpetrated by evil itself? Will this evil eventually attack me?

None of us will ever be able to fully understand the experiences of those who were bombed in 1944, deported in 1949, or invaded in 2022. The best we can do is commemorate, and for those who value human freedom and life, fight and hold the evil that Lepik mentions responsible. In commemorating, fighting, and demanding accountability, we can make it clear that evil has very-real perpetrators and perpetuators; we are fighting against not only the abstract notion of evil, but concrete evildoers, as well. In valuing human freedom and life, we can formulate the following ideal: Nobody gets left behind.

For the moment, let the description of Lepik’s poem create an image or impression in your mind. Now, take this impression and multiply it by 20 000, by the experiences of all the human beings who got deported that March. Further, take this new impression and multiply it by the experiences of all those who – like the narrator in Lepik’s poem – did get left behind. And at this point, you may begin to realize that you are only scratching the surface of the consequences and the meanings which the March Deportations entailed, and still entail.

In the end, all Estonians stand as the products of history, of March 1944, March 1949, March 2022, and many other slices of time. Alongside Latvians and Lithuanians – who were also subjected to the March Deportations – we are like travellers who have just exited our trains and poured out into a bustling station; we must now decide how to remember the compatriots we have left behind in time. As we stand, travellers are also exiting a neighbouring train, and they are discussing how to support the compatriots they have left behind in space. The impression given by our new neighbours is both familiar and strange, because every time a co-traveller who has just exited the neighbouring train says to us Slava Ukraini!, we also somehow hear Elagu Eesti! in their words.