Fortythree years later the people of the Baltic States remain under Soviet domination and continue to be deprived of their basic human rights. and the right to selfdetermination. One year. almost to the day. after the Soviet invasion. the Soviets began a campaign of genocide against the Baltic peoples. In Lithuania alone. 30.000 members of the government. military. and intelligensia were rounded up and either killed or deported to inner Russia or Siberia. Another 5.000 political prisoners were summarily executed. German armies overran Lithuania only a few days later. and the Nazis sent almost all the Lithuanian Jews to concentration camps. It is estimated that from 194045. the population of the Baltic countries was reduced by 10 percent. as over 850.000 people were either killed. relocated or forced to emigrate. The purpose of the Soviet strategy of violence and disruption of the people of the Baltic States was to purge them and any dissident forces. and to lay the groundwork for the reoccupation of those countries more vulnerable to control once the war was over. Over the last four decades. the genocide of the Terrible June Days has been followed by efforts at Russification of the cultures of Lithuania.
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deported emigrate