Victims of Stalinist deportations commemorated in Chișinău

Eighty-five years after the Stalinist deportations from Bessarabia, when thousands of people were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Culture and the National Archives Agency are organizing a series of commemorative events dedicated to the victims of Soviet repressions.

The event will be attended by Speaker Igor Grosu, Minister of Culture Cristian Jardan, Director of the National Archives Agency Igor Cașu, as well as historians, cultural figures, and representatives of public authorities. Now in its fourth edition, the exhibition has a special significance this year, being organized in the context of marking 85 years since the deportations that took place on the night of June 12–13, 1941.

"Through documents, photographs, period objects, and testimonies, the exhibition reconstructs the suffering of deported families and the memory of those who experienced Soviet state terror not only in Bessarabia but also on the left bank of the Dniester (the Great Terror in the Moldavian ASSR, 1937–1938). It also goes beyond the Stalinist period by evoking repression and resistance in the years 1953–1989. Moreover, the exhibition is designed in such a way as to include the famine of 1946–1947 as a method of Soviet state terror in Bessarabia and Transnistria. The component related to the post-war famine holds particular significance this year, as it marks 80 years since the revolt of starving women in the spring of 1946, a fact reflected in a special banner created for this occasion," the National Archives Agency notes.

The exhibition will be open to visitors until July 6, daily between 09:00 and 21:00. The program also includes screenings of documentary films from the collections of the National Archives, dedicated to Soviet repressions, as well as a thematic performance scheduled for June 28.

The commemorative events will conclude on July 6, when the largest deportation operation carried out on the current territory of the Republic of Moldova will also be marked. Between July 6 and 9, 1949, over 35,700 people, including almost 12,000 children, were forcibly loaded into cattle cars and deported to remote regions of the Soviet Union.

A novelty of this year's edition is the organization of a similar exhibition in Bălți, which will also be inaugurated on June 12.

On the night of June 12–13, 1941, 18,392 people were taken from their homes and deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan, as part of a repression operation organized by the Soviet regime against the population of territories annexed by the USSR following the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact.