Serov Instructions

The so-called Serov Instructions (full title: On the Procedure for Carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) was an undated top secret document, signed by General Ivan Serov, Deputy People's Commissar for State Security of the Soviet Union (NKGB). The instructions detailed procedures on how to carry out the mass deportations to Siberia of June 13–14, 1941, which occurred throughout Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia during the first (1940-1941) Soviet occupation of the three Baltic countries.

The instructions specified that the deportations would be carried out as secretly, quietly and speedily as possible. Families were restricted to taking 100 kilograms (220 lb) of their belongings (clothes, food, kitchenware). The heads of the families were sent to Gulag labor camps, and other members were transported to forced settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union.