kinnitatavatele

Kinnitatavatele is an informal group designation for citizens of Estonia who were displaced from or relocated to other countries during the period of Soviet occupation of Estonia.

The relocation occurred mainly in the 1940s and 1950s, and the individuals affected were forced to leave their homes and families to move to areas of the Soviet Union where they were resettled and assimilated into local populations. The majority of those affected were members of the Estonian ethnicity.

A significant proportion of kinnitatavatele were targeted for specific reasons, including accusations of counter-revolutionary activity, suspected collaboration with enemy forces during World War II, or among another possible reason being interrogated as being "unreliable" or having "anti-Soviet" sentiments.

Although it's estimated that over 20,000 Estonians were forcibly re-settled in Siberia and the Central Asian parts of the Soviet Union, it's believed that the number of people recorded in the available records may only represent a fraction of the actual number of citizens affected.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, many Estonian kinnitatavatele, having already rebuilt their lives in the remote areas of the Soviet Union, or came to Estonia after the occupation's end, were faced with confronting past traumas and difficulties in integrating back to their native society.

The Legion of Origins and the Institute for Estonian and East European Studies have researched the effects of mass relocation and repression on Estonian society.