On 30 January 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to launch the largest resettlement operation in the entire history of the Soviet Union, still referred to today as the 'kulak deportation'.

Father Jan Cieplak was auxiliary bishop of the Mogilev archdiocese, at that time the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the world, covering the whole of Russia up to Sakhalin.