Danubius International Conferences, 10th International Conference The Danube - Axis of European Identity

Operation "Iug" (1949) and the Fate of the Population of Southern Bessarabia

Aliona Accebaş
Last modified: 2020-06-18

Abstract

In the early 1990s, new possibilities opened up in the scientific horizon. Among the current topics of many studies - the massive Stalinist deportations immediately after the end of World War II.

The mass terror and displacement of certain peoples or groups of people from their places of origin was conceived as a state policy implemented by the Soviet authorities.

Carried out in successive waves, the deportations were one of the most painful pages in the history of the Moldovan SSR. The height of terror in the territory between the Prut and the Dniester was reached on July 5-7, 1949. According to Operation Iug, about 40,000 people were displaced from their homelands and taken to the depths of Siberia and the R.S.S. Kazakh. The main criterion that was the basis for detecting the dangerous elements - the scoundrels, was their attitude towards the communist regime and the opposition to collectivization.

The echo and effects of the 1949 deportations were also felt in the Ismail region. Families of Moldovans, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gagauzians, Russians, Albanians, etc. were uprooted from the ancestral hearth.

Hundreds of tragic destinies, destroyed houses, separated families - and this is still not the complete list, which presents the true facet of the Soviet "heaven".