Trial Brings Home Terror of Soviet Rule

PARNU, Estonia — As a young agent of the Soviet secret police, Mikhail A. Neverovsky remembers going with a squad of soldiers to the homes of two families in 1949 and delivering the order: They would be sent to Siberia that day.

“We gave them two hours to collect everything, first at one house and then the other,” Neverovsky recalled in an interview last week. “I helped them pack their things.”

Half a century later, Neverovsky is on trial for his role in an infamous three-day operation by the Soviet government to ship more than 20,000 Estonians to Siberia. Now 79 and walking with the aid of a cane and a crutch, Neverovsky is charged with crimes against humanity. A verdict is expected as early as today.

Prosecutors accuse the retired KGB agent of compiling a list of 274 enemies of the Soviet Union--well-to-do farmers and Estonian nationalists--to be sent into exile. They also charge that he personally delivered three families to the train that carried them to Siberia.

Neverovsky, an Estonian-born Russian, denies any wrongdoing. “I haven’t done anything bad for the Estonian government,” he said. “I have just been dying peacefully.”

For Estonia, the trial is a rare opportunity to bring to justice a Communist operative whose alleged crimes helped the Soviet Union consolidate its postwar hold over the tiny Baltic republic. It is also a chance for Estonia to remind the world of the horrors it suffered during 47 years of Soviet occupation before winning independence eight years ago.

Despite the terror and brutality of the Soviet regime, the 15 nations spawned by the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union have been slow to prosecute aging former officials for their part in crimes during the iron rule of Josef Stalin.

In Estonia, the first conviction for Stalin-era crimes against humanity came only this year. If Neverovsky is found guilty, he would be the fourth person convicted in Estonia for assisting in the deportations--more convictions than in any other former Soviet republic.

Some countries, including Estonia, have been handicapped in their investigations by the KGB’s removal of potentially incriminating records to Moscow shortly before the Soviet Union’s collapse. Others are headed by former Communist officials who find it easier not to confront the past.

Estonian President Lennart Meri, who was 12 when he was sent to Siberia in 1941 with his family, said it is unfortunate that there has been no post-Soviet equivalent of the Nuremberg trials, at which high-ranking Nazis were held accountable for World War II crimes against humanity. Meri also criticized Russia for not opening its KGB archives to police investigators from Estonia and other nations.

“Could you imagine a Germany without the de-Nazification procedure during and after the Nuremberg trial?” Meri asked in an interview. “I think this is still a problem Russia has to solve.”

When Neverovsky went on trial last week, more than 40 of his alleged victims came to court to watch the proceedings and testify about their exile and the hardships of life in Siberia.

Now in their 60s and 70s, many were youths when they were sent with their families into exile. Most spent at least eight years there before they were allowed to return to Estonia; many had relatives who died in Siberia.

During breaks in the trial in the small Parnu courthouse, several of the victims confronted Neverovsky and berated him for his alleged role in the deportations.

“He’s a murderer and he should be sent out of Estonia,” said an angry Alviine Haas, 70, who spent 10 years in Siberia. “He has to be punished, because we will never be able to forget what we went through.”

Estonia has a long history of domination by foreign powers, including Sweden and Russia. It won independence after World War I but had the misfortune of being occupied by both Hitler and Stalin during World War II.

The Soviet Union invaded in 1940 and began the first wave of killings and deportations. The following year, the Nazis drove out the Communists and carried out their own massacres. The Soviets retook Estonia in 1944, harshly punishing those who had sided with the Germans. In 1949, the Communists strengthened their grip on power by sending suspected nationalists and farmers likely to resist collectivization to Siberia.

In Estonia, most of the high-level officials who orchestrated the deportations are long dead. Estonian Security Police spokesman Hannes Kont said his department has focused its efforts on mid-level operatives and is investigating more than 20 suspects.

Prosecutors won their first conviction in January when former secret police agent Johannes Klassepp, 78, was found guilty of sending to Siberia 23 Estonians who ranged in age from 4 to 83. He was given a suspended eight-year prison sentence.

Since then, the government has won two more convictions of former secret police operatives for their part in deportations: Vasily Beskov, 80, who also received an eight-year suspended sentence, and Vladimir Loginov, 74, who was deemed incompetent and confined to a mental hospital. Two other suspects died before their cases could come to trial.

The main evidence against Neverovsky was uncovered through painstaking examination of old records the Soviet government left behind.

Investigators found documents allegedly signed by Neverovsky in 1949 transferring custody of three families of deportees to officials who were in charge of the train that took them to Siberia. Neverovsky’s alleged signature also was found on a list designating 274 other people to be deported.

As a KGB agent, police say, Neverovsky would have had sufficient authority to decide who would be sent to Siberia. Most of his alleged victims had never heard of him until they were notified by the court that their names were on the list.

Testifying on the first day of his trial, Neverovsky denied responsibility for deporting anyone to Siberia and said he was simply a low-level agent who did as he was told. “I was following the order,” he said.

Neverovsky cast himself as a poor, barely literate farm boy who joined the KGB after leaving the Red Army and was assigned to the deportation sweep only because he was able to speak Estonian. He acknowledged going to two farmhouses to deliver the deportation orders but said he was just there to read the document in Estonian. He said he had no recollection of going to a third house, as alleged by the prosecution.

Shown copies of the deportation papers, Neverovsky denied that they bore his signature. Similarly, he said he did not draft or sign the list of names. “This is not my signature, and this is not something I’ve written,” he said under questioning by the prosecution.

In an interview before the trial began, Neverovsky said he now sees that the deportations were wrong and that he was manipulated by the Soviet government. “They used me like a fool,” he said. “I don’t approve of all the repression. Why deport people? I feel sorry for them.”

Prime Minister Mart Laar was a young historian in 1989 when he published an article describing mass killings carried out by the Red Army in 1941. Soviet prosecutors opened an investigation into the deaths--but the only person they charged was Laar, for “slandering the Soviet order.”

Now Laar would prefer to see the deportation cases move more quickly but is proud that Estonia did not retaliate in the Soviet style by imprisoning the accused without a fair trial. Rather than seek immediate revenge, Estonia has established the rule of law--adopting a criminal code that covered crimes against humanity, conducting thorough investigations and bringing those accused of Stalin-era crimes to court.

“Those people will get punishment based on democracy, and this is our very first principle,” he said, “even if it’s taking more time than we like.”