Operation North
Operation North (Russian: Операция "Север", romanized: Operatsiya "Sever") was the code name which was assigned by the USSR Ministry of State Security to the massive deportation of Jehovah's Witnesses and their families to Siberia in the Soviet Union on 1 and 8 April 1951. == Background == There were almost no Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union until its annexation of the Baltic States, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina; most of them were living in the Moldavian SSR and Ukrainian SSR. Jehovah's Witnesses came into the conflict with the Soviet government, primarily because they refused to join the military.