Operation Priboi

Operation Priboi (Russian: Операция «Прибой» – Operation "Tidal Wave") was the code name for the biggest illegal Stalin-era Soviet mass deportation from the Baltic states on 25–28 March 1949. Also known as the March deportation (Estonian: Märtsiküüditamine; Latvian: Marta deportācijas; Russian: Мартовская депортация). More than 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, labeled as "enemies of the state", were deported to forced settlements in inhospitable Siberian areas of the Soviet Union. Over 70% of the deportees were either women, or children under the age of 16.

Portrayed as a "dekulakization" campaign, the illegal operation was intended to facilitate collectivisation and to eliminate the support base for the armed resistance of the Forest Brothers against the illegal Soviet occupation. The deportation fulfilled its purposes: by the end of 1949, 93% of farms in Latvia and 80% of the farms in Estonia were collectivized. In Lithuania, progress was slower and the Soviets organized another large deportation known as Operation Osen in late 1951. The deportations were for "eternity" with no way to return. During the de-Stalinization and Khrushchev Thaw, deportees were gradually released and some of them managed to return, though many of their descendants still live in Siberian towns and villages to this day.