The Lithuanian Jewish Community is publishing a series of articles by the historian Algimantas Kasparavičius, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian History Institute.

Part 2

In the 20th century Lithuania without intermission lived through two bloody world wars and the psychological Cold War tensely lasting more than 40 years. The realities and outcomes of World War I corresponded with the political aspirations of the Lithuanians and set the groundwork for restoration of Lithuanian statehood. The confused ideology and daily horrors of World War II resulted in the loss of the Lithuanians’ nation-state, the de facto destruction of the first Republic of Lithuania. Hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops occupied Lithuania on June 15, 1940, And less than two months later, using the policy of total state terror and the services of local collaborators, the Stalinist Soviet Union annexed Lithuania along with her two northern neighbors.

Without going into all the factual trivia or fine details, or worse the political circumstances of alternate plans, looking at events in Lithuania generally and in the context of the entire political-ideological and geopolitical of Europe, we can say the Soviet occupation of the Republic of Lithuania and the forced, actual destruction of Lithuanian statehood in the summer of 1940 had two essential features.

First. The authoritarian government of Lithuania accepted the Kremlin’s ultimatum, gross diktat and the occupation by the Red Army in effect silently and obediently. As the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania the country’s government made no public official protest to the still free international community and did not go into exile in corpore as part of such a protest. Even the long-time president of the country Antanas Smetona, who it seems according to many factual details out of the entire Lithuanian political elite at the time had the most sober thinking and grasp on the situation, even he, not daring oppose the collective capitulation by the government, as he went into exile did so not clearly making a principled protest based on politics and law, but did so privately and quietly, feigning “incapacitation.”

Second. One of the essential features of the events of June 15, 1940, is that practically all of the anti-Smetona and anti-authoritarian Lithuanian opposition–mainly the Christian Democrats and members of the People’s Party–held for an extended period rather infantile political illusions, according to which, to put it imaginatively, Soviet tanks would toppled president Smeota’s political regime and clear the road for the anti-Smetona opposition to take power. In the first days of the occupation noted Christian democrat figures, mixing up affairs of state with personal ambition, such as the prelate Mykolas Krupavičius, Ignas Skrupskelis, Feliksas Kemėšis, Kazimieras Bizauskas and a whole series of others worked with the People’s Government led by Justas Paleckis and called upon the public to support it. They reasoned it was not treason to the national interests of Lithuania to cooperate with the Soviets and bend to the will of the occupier under the prevailing political conditions (as the world war raged on), and that this wouldn’t undermine the foundations of Lithuanian statehood. It was these and similar political illusions which help explain why some of the most notable cultural, scholastic and public figures from the First Republic participated in the propaganda program of elections to the so-called People’s Parliament in the summer of 1940, agreed to be included in what was called the collaborationist People’s Government, or at least remained in their high posts in the ministries and departments and thus through the ministries and departments by their own hands over the first days and weeks of the Soviet occupation insured the silent death agony of the independent state of the Republic of Lithuania. [2]

Official protests by diplomats now in exile in London, Washington, Geneva, Berlin, Rome and other capitals at the end of July and in early August of 1940 against the Soviet occupation were already politically ineffective. [3]

It was these two features of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and the factual destruction of statehood which led to later strategies by the Lithuanian political elite to restore statehood. Sorting the political situation and facts historically and methodologically, the hypothesis presents itself that later in the years of World War II, i.e., from the fall of 1940 onwards, in essence two main strategies crystallized in the Lithuanian political struggle for return/restoration of independent statehood. The first could be called provisionally the revolutionary or pro-German strategy. To put it more precisely, the pro-Nazi strategy of restoration of partial Lithuanian statehood which called for and preferred the path of armed restoration of Lithuanian statehood in political and military cooperation with the Third Reich, which at the same time called forth the Holocaust in Lithuania. The second strategy, on the other hand, is most accurately defined it seems as clearly oriented towards the anti-Hitler coalition and could be called the diplomatic strategy: application of the principles of the Atlantic Charter and the absolute and unconditional restoration of Lithuanian statehood. The core of this strategy was to seek political support from allies in the Western anti-Hitler coalition, to get involved in fighting Naziism and to restore Lithuanian national statehood not so much through armed struggle as through balancing the interests of the global political powers and through political agreement. That is, to follow much the same path as Finland did in early spring (March 12) of 1940, concluding peace with the Soviet Union, a path Finland followed later from 1944 to 1947, withdrawing from World War II, defining the country’s geopolitical situation in a final way and establishing its political relations with its large eastern neighbor.

[1] Liudas Truska, Antanas Smetona ir jo laikai, Vilnius: Valstybinis leidybos centras, 1996, p. 378-379.

[2] Telegram in cypher from Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys and Lithuanian plenipotentiary ambassador and authorized minister to Moscow Dr. Ladas Natkevičius to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, June 15, 1940, in Lietuvos okupacija ir aneksija 1939/1940. Dokumentų rinkinys. Vilnius: Mintis, 1993, p. 257.

[3] Laurynas Jonušauskas, Likimo vedami. Lietuvos diplomatinės tarnybps egzilyje veikla 1940–1991, Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimų centras, 2003, pp. 76–78, 316