The Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina took place between late 1940 and 1951 and were part of Joseph Stalin's policy of political repression of the potential opposition to the Soviet power (see Population transfer in the Soviet Union). The deported were typically moved to so-called "special settlements" (спецпоселения) (see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union). The deportations began after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which occurred in June 1940. According to a secret Soviet Ministry of Interior report dated December 1965, 46,000 people were deported from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic for the period 1940−1953. 1940–1941 As a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, the Romanian government was forced to accept the Soviet ultimatum of June 26, 1940, and withdrew from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. These regions (as well as the Hertsa region) were then incorporated into the Soviet Union, most of the former being organized as the Moldavian SSR, while the other areas were attributed to the Ukrainian SSR. On June 12–13, 1941, 29,839 members of families of "counter-revolutionaries and nationalists" from the Moldavian SSR, and from the Chernivtsi (of Northern Bukovina) and Izmail oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR were deported to Kazakhstan, the Komi ASSR, the Krasnoyarsk Krai, and the Omsk and Novosibirsk oblasts. For the fate of such a deportee from Bessarabia, see the example of Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya. The Georgian NKVD official Sergo Goglidze, trusted henchman of Lavrentiy Beria, was in charge of these deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Labor mobilization During 1940 and 1941, 53,356 people from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were mobilized for labour across the entire territory of the Soviet Union; though the mobilization was presented as voluntary, refusal to work could result in penal punishment, and living and working conditions were generally poor. Aftermath Professor Rudolph Rummel, based on older claims, estimated that in 1940–1941, 200,000 to 300,000 Romanian Bessarabians were persecuted, conscripted into forced labor camps, or deported with the entire family, of whom 18,000 to 57,000 did not survive. According to some estimates (as related by historian Pavel Moraru), 12% of the population of the two provinces was killed and deported in one year. Such figures were not confirmed after the opening of Soviet archives: historian Igor Cașu indicated a figure of 86,604 people from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertsa Region who suffered political repression in 1940-1941, the greater part (53,000) being subjected