June deportation
The June deportation of 1941 (Estonian: juuniküüditamine, Latvian: jūnija deportācijas, Lithuanian: birželio trėmimai) was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940 – into the interior of the Soviet Union. The June deportation was ordered by the Soviet dictator Stalin, and organized following formal guidelines set by the NKVD with the Soviet Interior People's Commissar Lavrentiy Beria as the senior executor.