Moldova publishes declassified Soviet deportation lists from 1941
The National Archives Agency of Moldova released declassified nominal lists of individuals deported from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic during the mass Soviet operations of June 13–14, 1941. The documents, originally declassified by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2010, are now accessible to the public and available for download in PDF format.
Although the surviving archival funds are incomplete, the published records contain the names of more than half of the estimated 19,000 citizens deported during the 1941 wave.
Preserving historical memory
Archival officials stated that the digital release aims to assist survivors, descendants, and historians researching the scale of Soviet political repressions in the region. The documents provide harrowing details of the logistics of Soviet repression, including records of individuals who died in transit to Siberia or Kazakhstan, as well as children born inside the transport cargo cars.
Among the prominent historical figures identified in the transport logs is Eufrosinia Kersnovskaia, a famous Bessarabian chronicler who survived the Gulag and later authored extensive memoirs about her captivity. According to the agency, Kersnovskaia is documented as a deportee from Soroca county, assigned to train car number 466978.
Scale of Stalinist repressions
The digital files are systematically organized within the National Archives under Fund R-3397, inventory 1, files 1 and 2. Archivists emphasized that while the records remain partial, they offer invaluable quantitative data on the initial stages of Soviet population transfers.
Totalitarian repressions on the territory of modern-day Moldova were executed in three primary waves under the Stalinist regime. Following the initial deportation of up to 19,000 people in June 1941, a second mass operation between July 6–9, 1949, forcibly relocated approximately 35,000 citizens.
The third wave, known as Operation Sever on April 1, 1951, targeted roughly 2,600 individuals, primarily members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community. In total, the three massive Stalinist operations disrupted and uprooted the lives of more than 56,000 inhabitants of the Moldavian SSR.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
