 During the Operation North, 723 families (2,617 persons) were deported from the Moldavian SSR, on the night of March 31 to April 1, 1951, members of neoprotestant sects, mostly Jehovah's Witnesses, qualified as religious elements considered a potential danger for the communist regime.Most political and academic positions were given to members of non-Romanian ethnic groups (only 17.5% of the Moldavian SSR's political leaders were ethnic Romanians in 1940).Although Brezhnev and other CPM first secretaries were largely successful in suppressing Romanian irredentism in the 1950s–1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev's administration facilitated the revival of the movement in the region.