Red Army Choir

70th anniversary of deportation and uprising of 1941

VILNIUS - The entire month of June was marked in Lithuania with public commemorations of the 70th anniversary of Soviet-perpetrated mass deportations from Lithuania to the USSR in June 14-18, 1941, and the anti-Soviet uprising of June 22-28, 1941. Interestingly, like never before, many young people took part in those commemorations.

Arrests and deportations, executed by the Soviets and their local collaborators, started soon after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union on June 15, 1940 and even before the official incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR on August 3, 1940. In October-November of 1940, the Soviets drew up lists of “anti-Soviet elements.” This term included a wide spectrum of people: members of non-communist parties, including heretical communists; members of patriotic and religious organizations; former police and prison officials; former officers of the Lithuanian army; former officers of tsarist and Polish armies who got refuge in independent Lithuania; former volunteers who had joined anti-Soviet armies in 1918-1919; citizens of foreign states, representatives and employees of foreign firms, and employees of foreign embassies; those who corresponded with foreign countries or consulates of foreign countries as well as philatelists, prostitutes and those who studied the Esperanto language; former high level state officials, Red Cross employees, clergymen of all religions; bankers and members of aristocratic families. There were many teachers and professors, school and college students, farmers, industry workers and craftsmen on these secret lists of people destined for deportation. On June 14-18, 1941, the first massive arrest and deportation of the Lithuanian population was perpetrated. A cargo of 17,500 people were crammed into cattle cars. Moscow’s instruction required separation of men from their families: some 4,000 men were separated and transported to concentration camps in the Krasnoyarsk territory while 13,500 women, children and elderly people were transported mostly to Kazakhstan, the Altai Mountains territory, Russia’s republic of Komi, the Tomsk region, and the Arctic zone. The grandparents of modern-day Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich were also among those deported from Lithuania to the Soviet Arctic. Forty percent of these deportees were children under 16 years old. More than half of the deported died quickly. Pregnant women and babies born in the cattle cars were the first victims – they died in the trains. The deportation process was interrupted by the German-Soviet war.

Kennedy Center Honors — December 1989 | Free Our Press

I saw this performance originally on television, it also brought tears to my eyes. My time in the Marines during the early 80’s was spent training to stop a Russian invasion in Easter Europe, an attack most of knew would never come. Then in 2001 and again in the spring of 2002 I had a wonderful time visiting the city of Minsk in Belarus, a former soviet state. I found what I always expected, people that with only the difference of language were just like me.

Do you have the rest of the broadcast? One of the lesser known inductees that evening was William Shuman, who was likely inducted for his all-round contributions as a composer and educator. He’s best known for his Symphony No. 3, an orchestration of Charles Ives’ Variations on America and a setting of “Casey at the Bat.” I think his works are easier to get into as we basically know the sounds from movies and television.

I was born in 1950. I was raised during the Cold War. I went through the nuclear attack drills in grade school, and the civil defense drills on the radio, and all the fears that a child and young adult can have of a nuclear holocaust that could destroy the world. Then I went to Vietnam and came home with all those fears reinforced. I was watching this performance the night they gave it. I cried like a baby. I thought ” My God. It’s finally over.”

Very well said, and a lesson a lot of people need to learn. The majority of the time, its not the people of a country that are the problem, its the politicians that create the problems. Since they are the ones representing a country, the world thinks “hey everybody in that country must be just like that”. It makes you think, are we really like what our politicans are showing the rest of the world we are like? It only takes one rotten apple to spoil the barrel.

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The Red Army: the Red Army, 1918 to 1945, the Soviet Army, 1946 to the present