They wanted to eliminate Lithuania as an independent entity. Unfortunately. they were successful in carrying out their designs. and by the middle of 1940 the country was overrun by the Red army and soon incorporated into the Soviet Union. As soon as Communist Russians were in control of the country. they carried out mass arrests and imprisonments which. in the course of a year. placed some 50.000 ablebodied Lithuanians in Soviet prison camps in Asiatic Russia. These arrests and imprisonments were carried out under terrorism and unprecedented oppression. To this day the arrest and exile of these Lithuanians are remembered as the tragedy of Lithuania.