Operation North

On April 1, 1951, Soviet soldiers forcibly resettled nearly 10,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in a sweeping operation known as Operation North, directed by Joseph Stalin and carried out by the Ministry of State Security. Families were taken from their homes across six republics and transported under dire conditions to Siberian settlements, where they faced brutal winter survival. This mass deportation marked the largest relocation of a single religious group in Soviet history, as the regime sought to eliminate their presence in the Soviet Union. Over the years, many of those exiled were eventually allowed to return home as the state dismantled the deportation system.