Given minutes to pack. they were rushed out of their homes. many for the last time. At first. the arrests took the elite of Baltic societythe educated. those in government or military servicewho could have provided the most resistance to Soviet rule. Later. the arrests and deportations would spread to many others who were even remotely related to the original victims. In its final form. the campaign took all Baits who were merely suspected of noncompliance. as well as those whom the Soviet authorities simply disfavored for unknown reasons. It was an irrational campaign of terror which reflected the fears of a paranoid dictatorship in Moscow.
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deportations