During the Soviet occupation, the religious life in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the two World Wars. In the first days of occupation, certain population groups welcomed the Soviet power and some of them joined the newly established Soviet nomenklatura, including NKVD, the Soviet political police. The latter has used these locals to find and arrest numerous priests. Other priests were arrested and interrogated by the Soviet NKVD itself, then deported to the interior of the USSR, and killed. Research on this subject is still at an early stage. According to priest and academic Viorel Cojocaru, some 400 out of more than 1,000 Bessarabian priests at the time were arrested, deported, or exterminated by the Soviet authorities. As of 2007, the Christian Orthodox church has bestowed the martyrdom to circa 50 clergymen who died in the first year of Soviet occupation (1940–1941).