According to historian Robert Conquest , the selective deportations from the Baltic States represented the policy of " '' decapitation '' " of the nation by removing its political and social elite , " as was later evidently to be the motive for the Katyn massacre . " The new Soviet-installed governments in the Baltic states began to align their policies with current Soviet practices . According to the prevailing doctrine in the process , the old " bourgeois " societies were destroyed so that new socialist societies , run by loyal Soviet citizens , could be constructed in their place . The reconstituted parliaments quickly proclaimed the nationalization of large industries , transportation , banks , private housing , and commerce in general . Although land was now considered the property of the people , for the time being , the regimes expropriated only those holdings comprising 30 or more hectares ( about 66 acres ) . Around 100,000 ethnic German citizens were allowed to sell their land and property and leave the Baltic counties , and if they were racially acceptable , were resettled in Poland and given land and businesses in exchange for the money they had received from the sale of their previous possessions
Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
Sovietization of the Baltic states