VIDEO: A repressed man’s farm turned into a Soviet military base

Mara Kopa tells a story of her father who was deported with his entire family by the communist regime of the Soviet Union from their farm in Kunči, Latvia in 1949 to Omsk, Siberia. In 1958, he returned to Latvia, but was unable to find his farm because a Soviet military base had been built in place of the village. The base is now abandoned. Mara compares the former military town of Kunči to Chernobyl.

Video-story in English.

Video-story is recorded by the Kogu Me Lugu team. Kogu Me Lugu (translates into Collect Our Story) is an online oral history portal, which collects, preserve and share the family stories of Estonians and other nations from around the world in video format. Portal focus on the memories of people who were repressed by the Soviet or Nazi regimes, people who escaped during the occupations of said regimes or arrived in Estonia as a result of the occupations.