III

THE TENETS OF MODERN LITHUANIAN NATIONALISM

DEMOCRACY IN POSTWAR EUROPE was generally a brief experiment. In the majority of European nations it eventually succumbed to the forces of authoritarianism. In spite of differences, the various authoritarian movements on the Right exhibited many elements in common. Central in importance was their all-encompassing nationalism.

The advent of authoritarianism in Lithuania occurred on December 17, 1926. Why this particular corner of the world was not made safe for democracy is not the primary concern of this book. We are discussing here the consequences of this failure, namely modern nationalism in Lithuania from 1927 to 1940. In this essay modern nationalism includes the doctrinal concepts of the members of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, formed in 1924, and of other individuals who contributed to the main body of Nationalist principles. Similarly, the term Nationalists refers mainly, but not solely, to members of the ruling Lithuanian Nationalist Union; it also includes other individuals who were generally sympathetic to the existing form of government.

Honoring President Antanas Smetona, the principal Nationalist journal surprised no one when in 1939 it openly conceded that “it is no secret that since 1927 Lithuania has been led not by some group of persons, not by some institution, but by one man.”¹ Because this veteran personality had succeeded in presiding over the nation’s destiny both during its moments of grandeur, as in 1918, and in its days of despondency, as in 1940, the study of the Nationalist movement must first of all be a study of the political thought of its President. Other men made weighty contributions to Nationalist theory and practice, but in the final analysis Smetona alone was responsible for both.

National Unity and National Uniqueness

THE FIRST FACTOR which defined Smetona’s political endeavors was his idea of national unity. This was the criterion by which he judged the quality of his country’s civil life.² With uncommon consistency, his last major address in 1940 presaged national unity as the basis for postwar reconstruction, just as in 1907 he had thought it necessary to publish a new periodical expressly for that purpose.³ In the intervening decades the means had changed, but the predilection for unity had not. Year in, year out, the apostle of unity and his disciples had lectured their fellow countrymen on every conceivable occasion that all individual views must be subservient to the demands of national unity. A truly indivisible nation was to be forged by uniting the people in a common cause, and a Nationalist administration was to be the instrument of national unity.⁴ In order to keep the contrast alive between the liberal democracy before 1926 and the new regime, the Nationalists vigorously and persistently countered all the basic tenets of the old system.

The unity which the Nationalists had volunteered to bring about was teleological; its grand design was the realization of national potentialities. A descendant of the formative decades of preindependent Lithuania,⁵ nationalist ideology, as it evolved before World War II, was implanted in a categorical affirmation of faith in the nation’s future. “Ever more successfully and joyfully we shall create the Great Lithuania,” exulted a Nationalist author. “Now comes the time of the concentration of Lithuanian national energies, of the consolidation of will, and, finally, of the true flowering of the ways of creation.”⁶ The Nationalists’ quest for Lithuanian ways of life underscores their conviction that their predecessors had imitated the Western model; hence, they began with an adroit denunciation of everything which seemed alien to the Lithuanian soul. “Pacifist wild talk,” “sickly cosmopolitan ideas,” “noxious gases and intoxicants,” “foreign winds” and “foreign gods,” “ideological scholasticism,” “intellectual superstition” were some of the colorful gibes the Nationalists used in their scornful campaign against liberal democracy. Smetona once said that Lithuania had been “insulted” by liberalism and that there would be no return to it.⁷ The nation had to discover not only its own form of government but also its own way of life. In doing so, the Nationalists particularly treasured qualitaties innate in the land and the people which distinguished one nation from another.⁸ However, the Nationalist writers failed to identify any of these qualities. Instead, they merely placed emphasis on the need for individuality and hoped that ultimately, “in the process of our nation’s life and work,” this would produce a national culture which would make the country “an inimitable phenomenon of the universe,” which would “justify” the nation’s existence.⁹

The reasons for such concentration of attention on purely Lithuanian traits are traceable in part to the nineteenth century, to the disillusionment with the West in general, and to parliamentary democracy in particular. “In the speeches of the ‘great’ Western statesmen we once looked for lofty ideas and a true concern with the needs of mankind,” confided a disaffected Nationalist. “Now we merely skim through those speeches. Now we are almost sure that we will find there either the official and insincere statements about the ‘great principles’ which no one believes any more and which are never put into effect, or demagoguery, or a formal justification of some evil, or, finally, the betrayal of impotence.”¹⁰

National consciousness originates unawares, imperceptibly. To impart meaning and direction to it is the work of the educators, the intelligentsia.¹¹ By sketching and elucidating new vistas for future years, Antanas Smetona substantiated his own belief that “a nation without consciousness is no nation, and that a nation without leaders is no nation: both are necessary.”¹² He was resolved to give his nation both purpose and leadership.

Providing the people with leadership turned out to be a less exacting undertaking than drafting a national ideology. The Nationalists were reluctant to define the essential qualities of their concepts and were puzzled about just where this cultural autarchy would lead. The new man, no longer simply a citizen but a national figure, was above all interested in action, in striving for the ultimate. One proposition proved to be incontrovertible: the new ideology must grow out of the native soil. As Smetona vividly put it, “the Italians have their marble, the Germans their iron, and we have our clay, wood, and stone.”¹³ Such was the inception of the national movement which, in the words of a young proponent, proceeded “to foster national consciousness, to promote solidarity [and] the sense of destined togetherness, and to [cherish] love of one’s land, one’s traditions, work, duty, and the irresistible struggle for . . . a better future.”¹⁴

To create such a nation meant to enhance cultural, not political, energies, for only cultural production attests to the fullest expression of the national spirit. Modern Lithuania, unlike historical Lithuania, was determined not to overlook the importance of national culture as the base upon which the state was founded.¹⁵ The new leaders turned their backs on the medieval grand dukes, whose resourceful statecraft in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had neglected the development of a national culture.

In theory, modern nationalism was attended with deference to humanism. With the excesses of 1917 over and forgotten and the cataclysm of 1940-1945 still in the future, the Nationalists cherished the humanist tradition and hoped to become worthy successors of the gens humanissima. Confident that the welfare of one nation is a contribution to the welfare of the entire family of nations, Jonas Aleksa recorded the moral fervor of nationalism when he exclaimed, “we shall finally declare war on animosity, malice, envy, obsolescence, indecency, and infamy.”¹⁶ There is reason to assume that Lithuanian politics was modified to a considerable extent by fidelity to ethical norms.¹⁷

The repudiation of parliamentary democracy was not confined to the disavowal of a form of government; it meant parting with a way of life. The Nationalists were not content merely to establish a new government but aspired to bring about a thorough change in the very structure of society as well. In theory the Nationalist transformation promised to be all-encompassing. “The nation-state is essentially a totalitarian state,” asserted Antanas Maceina. “The totality in a nation-state is nothing but the permeation of public life with national elements.”¹⁸ In one of his addresses, President Smetona commented on the totality of aspirations and obligations:

Not pars but tota, not some part of the nation but its totality shines in the hope of our free country. Not the needs of any one social class but the welfare of all . . . must be the nation’s concern . . . The government’s orientation, which we say is national, prepares ways for itself from one end of our land to the other, not only in breadth but also in depth. . . . Through various public cultural institutions, through educational, agricultural, credit, industrial, and trade organizations, through the nationally conscious organizations [the government] . . . deliberately aspires, as if by means of some girders, to associate with the public at large. In this manner it reaches for and comes to the nation’s solid base with all its characteristic features. . . . Led by its government in such a manner, so educated and roused, the public becomes organized. In other words, it becomes conscious of itself, an orderly nation, knowing what it is and what it wants.¹⁹

Stout words echoed throughout the land, striking a totalitarian note which was not lost upon the army, the schools, the economy, and the arts. “The army command is now concerned not only with the education the soldiers get but even more so with their indoctrination”;²⁰ the purpose of education is to foment a national society, or “total pedagogics in a young nation-state, seeking a monolithic national body and a collective soul”;²¹ “a nation-state, as a matter of course, presupposes a national orientation in art.”²² Nationalist ambitions appeared to be without limit.

The Assertion of Authority

HAVING DISCARDED THE LIBERAL FAITH, Lithuania, like other states in eastern Europe, sought a new framework to act within. According to Smetona, there were three possible options: Communism, Fascism, and authoritarianism. He selected the last for his country. Authoritarianism was defined as a form of government in which all institutions were constituted and operated in conformity with the predominance and responsibility of one person’s will, and which excluded all legal means to oppose the will of the leader.²³ Authoritarianism was essentially a means to an end for the Nationalists. The realization of a conscious transformation of society which the Nationalists hoped to achieve was inconceivable without a monopoly of power. And when the President said “unity without discipline is impossible,”²⁴ he merely bowed to the demands of the logic of power. Despite the emphasis on education and indoctrination, which was abundantly supplied by the Nationalist ideologue, authoritarian power was the beloved instrument of the President.

Smetona distinguished between Fascism and authoritarianism. The affinity between the two was readily perceptible, but the differences were not. On several occasions President Smetona had echoed Benito Mussolini’s advice that Fascism was not for export. Having branded his country’s adoption of parliamentary democracy as an unfortunate import of foreign ways, the President was astute enough not to appear to be doing the same thing with Italian Fascism. “The Fascist state,” he reasoned, “is a nation’s form, and the nation itself—its content.”²⁵ National content is a living phenomenon, creating at all times new forms of self-realization—both in the life of an individual and of a nation.²⁶ And because the experiences of one nation are unlike those of another, the cultural synthesis would retain national individuality. Lithuania would not embrace Fascism in its entirety, but it would be affected by Fascist experience.²⁷ The Nationalist establishment did not develop into a Fascist state, but the doctrines which the Nationalists espoused were based on Fascist thought.

The Nationalists, with some support from Catholic intellectuals,²⁸ had persistently assailed the liberal democrats for having failed to offset ample individual rights with commensurate obligations. The new government would restore the proper balance by inducing all citizens to esteem tradition, discipline, authority. In habitual exhortations to old and young, to soldiers and farmers, by written and spoken word, the Nationalist President was indefatigable in his efforts to enhance order and discipline by continual references to a citizen’s absolute obedience to his leaders:

Today the leadership principle is everywhere being considered as the basic law in life. . . . Line up . . . toward the top, toward authority, toward the leader! Only this will make united action and united work possible. . . . Having devoted themselves to government authority, [the Nationalists] must not surrender to any outside influence. Should something be not clear to you, wait for explanations from above. . . . Trust only those who stand at the helm of the state. . . . Be calm and patient! In case of need, your thoughtful government officials will explain to you and will warn you how and what to guard against, how and what to defend. Obey them and do as you will be told.²⁹

Another qualitative change wrought by the Nationalist regime was its emphasis on action. According to the Nationalists, their liberal predecessors talked much and acted little. Now it would be different. Antanas Smetona insisted that members of a Fascist society must always be on the move, for Fascism was an organization of work. Lithuania had to hasten onward because dangers surrounded her; she was constrained to race against time, he urged. At the end of the war most people had hoped that the soldier would be able to put away his sword and go back to his plowshare. But, continued the President, this had not happened. On the contrary, continental powers again were at odds with one another. Their armies and even their entire populations were being mobilized for an eventual challenge of power. The implications were clear. Nations would have to be drilled like armies, and discipline and harmony would have to displace freedom and dissent. There was no time to waste on parliamentary chatter, when there was serious work to be done quickly, in accordance with the dictates of the leadership principle.³⁰ Frequent allusions to the ominous foreign threat surrounded Nationalist reforms with a barrack-like atmosphere and a sense of urgency. Most of these dangers were real, the Nationalists had no need to invent them.

The ardent Nationalists, both party members and their intellectual coadjutors, were in accord on one far-reaching purpose, namely, to activate the Lithuanian character and to bring about a “psychological coup.”³¹ Stasys Šalkauskis analyzed this object of the Nationalist program: “The Lithuanian is not a voluntaristic but a contemplative type, with a noticeable inclination to an eastern quietism. He is patient, persevering, rather passive, and often even sluggish. He is a subtle observer of the world and people, in harmony with nature’s rhythm, and peacefully disposed in his relations with others. . . . The Lithuanian is not inclined to tackle his future problems actively and resolutely, . . .”³² Other writers, too, had studied and deplored the Lithuanian’s “passive character,” which was said to have been responsible for his disinclination to resist energetically the misfortunes that often were his lot.³³ The new man would have to be a Westerner, an activist, and the Nationalists would see to it that he became one.

The Organic State

NATIONALIST CONSTRUCTION is attainable only in an organized society. Smetona believed that the pluralist Lithuanian society must be converted into a monolithic community. Certain implications then followed with bitter logic. Fascism did not answer the demands of individual freedom, but only of individual inter ests. Instead of formal rights, the “organic” state provided for individual needs and security.³⁴ The nation was not a loose mass of people but an “organic” whole. Only such a nation could convey a true impression of its will. The tabulation of votes, a typically democratic contrivance, was a mechanical and therefore imperfect representation of the nation’s will. Afflicted with internal contradictions, liberal institutions must surrender to the authority of a Leader who alone could achieve domestic harmony, for only one person’s will could bring about ultimate unity. The balanced individual, one whose rights did not exceed his obligations, became the mainstay of society.³⁵

Members of the “organized society” were not to compete among themselves; rather, they were to labor in harmony for the greater good of the entire nation. Work for mutual existence was to supplant the struggle for individual survival. Relations between capital and labor became an object of government attention. There were to be no strikes or lockouts to advance the conflicting interests of labor and management. A common standard of justice was to be applied.

Life in the new society would be organized through unified financial, economic, and cultural associations. And the association of associations would be the compact nation itself.³⁶ The role of the individual in such a well-ordered society was traced by a Nationalist editor, who advised that “the nation can be structured in such a way that the performance of any state service would constitute an active participation in the nation’s common destiny. By an appropriate system of organizations every citizen can be made a part of such a trend in which he would feel himself a significant particle of order. . . . We conceive a nation so organized as integrated on a professional and functional basis into the political, economic, and cultural work of the state.”³⁷ The Leader would exert discipline and harmony would spread through this organized whole of individual activities: “In all areas of culture, doing any kind of work, one must be guided by these principles. That is how the schools must operate, every institution, every organization or association, the press, the written and spoken word. A work of such proportions is conceivable [only] in consolidated organizations. This must be plainly visible in agriculture, industry, trade, and various other branches of private economy. Such today is the general direction everywhere. . . . Leadership is everywhere. . . .”³⁸ In an “organic” society the execution of work is the domain of manifest will and is reserved for appointed individual leaders. The thinking, on the other hand, is the province of a select collective. Antanas Smetona, who had participated in both, suggested the following division of labor: “Where in any work will manifests itself, an appointed individual leads; and where anything is being considered, selected men think. Consequently, leadership must everywhere be individual, from top to bottom, [and] in conformity with a selected collective. Only in this manner can a nation be spirited, enduring, progressive, vigorous, and, finally, united.”³⁹

The constitution of 1938 was the epitome of Nationalist theories. A punctilious embodiment of Smetona’s political philosophy, this basic law conferred on the Seimas and the State Council only advisory and deliberative functions; invested the President with practically unlimited powers; and established ministries to direct public affairs in conformity with the Leader’s will. Faithful to the intrinsic nature of authoritarianism, the Nationalist document left no legal means to countervail the Presidential will with any other.

The Lithuanian Nationalist Union

THE PRINCIPAL INTERMEDIARY between the Nationalist government and the general public was the Lithuanian Nationalist Union. Unlike political parties in the democratic countries, the Union as such was not expected to formulate its platform and campaign for political power. With an approximate membership of 13,000 men and women,⁴⁰ its task was to popularize the ideas of its leader. Discipline, the President was prone to remind, must originate with him, then pass through his administration into the Nationalist Union, from which it would devolve upon the man in the street.⁴¹ In order to carry out its responsibilities, the party had to be in close communion with the government and other Nationalist organizations, and had to have an intimate knowledge of a multitude of public activities. Party functionaries were often spurred by the President to set about their mission by exhibiting efficiency in the management of their particular affairs and by propagating in word and deed the Nationalist doctrines.

However, there were some Union members who believed that their duties were weightier than those of an agent; that, in fact, they were the decision makers. The Leader of the nation thereupon corrected them: the party merely influences the government, it does not direct it.⁴² However, in the actual course of politics this concept of the division of labor was not as perfect as the President had suggested.

Educational Policies and Youth

AN OBJECT OF SPECIAL NATIONALIST CONSIDERATION was the country’s youth. The two pillars upon which the education of a third of a million⁴³ students had rested were religious and national traditions. President Smetona dictated that religion was to be the rule, and its absence the exception. Ancient Lithuania, he pointed out, was religious and tolerated all faiths; and such it had remained until the present day. Having said that much, he then made it clear that education was to have a national orientation too.⁴⁴

In their delineation of educational policies, the Nationalists were disinclined to tolerate in classrooms any universalist tendencies. They insisted that teachers impress upon boys and girls that national mindedness was the crucial pivot of culture.⁴⁵ By 1939 the country’s leading pedagogical journal inferred that the “dry and abstract values” which had formed the basis of instruction in earlier years now had given way to the “intimate, living, and Lithuanian reality,” and that this change attested to the triumph of the idea of national unity.⁴⁶ The school was regarded as a nucleus of nationalist society and as a model authoritarian republic, where students were to be the citizen-followers while the teachers were worthy leaders who directed them toward the ideals of truth, welfare, and beauty.⁴⁷

The Union of Young Lithuania, a Nationalist offshoot for youths over eighteen, supplemented the regime’s efforts to indoctrinate the country’s younger generation with chauvinism. Devoid of originality, it echoed the Leader’s ideas and blindly vowed its complete loyalty to him. The organization called on its 40,000 members to absorb the meaning of national liberty and always to be prepared to give their all to defend it. Youths were also admonished not to stain their honor as Lithuanians by such practices as marriage with foreigners.⁴⁸ Of all its programmatic statements, the group was most explicit about the leadership cult. Its chief officer, Alfonsas Kaulėnas, summarized the stringent posture: “The Union of Young Lithuania operates on an authoritarian basis. It knows only one leader—the Union Chief, the Nation’s Leader, Antanas Smetona. Consequently, all that fails to originate with his thought and the general direction he has decreed is alien and unacceptable to the Union of Young Lithuania. Young Lithuania steadfastly believes that the nation can be united only when . . . the will of one leader prevails.”⁴⁹ In their unconditional surrender to supreme authority, the jaunalietuviai (Young Lithuanians) were drilled to obey orders even if they failed to grasp what they were all about. “Surely,” they would remark laconically, “one cannot always waste time on explanations, when one must act and act fast.”⁵⁰

Seven other Nationalist youth corporations were also voicing their ultrapatriotic sentiments and authoritarian faith in schools of higher education. In unison with the Young Lithuanians, they deified the splendor of their country’s past, rated national traditions highly, and solemnly promised never to forfeit the nation’s freedom: “Sooner will iron turn into wax and rock into water than will we desist from our purpose.”⁵¹ In the eleventh hour of Lithuania’s independence the loyalty of most of the younger generation continued to be militantly devoted both to its Leader and to its country.

Successes of the Nationalists

EVALUATION OF THE NATIONALISTS’ SUCCESSES and failures is hampered by the difficulty of ascertaining and measuring the degree and depth of patriotism and nationalism. The regime was obsessively concerned with both. In political theory authoritarianism had made far-reaching inroads and appeared triumphant. Unquestionably it had legions of devotees among those who explicitly espoused it (as was the case with the Nationalists) and among some Catholics; but it also attracted a throng of fellow travelers who simply shunned democracy. If the Nationalists failed to convert to the new faith as many citizens as they had hoped to, they had nonetheless succeeded in neutralizing diverse strata of society who were formerly their opponents.

The most significant gain the Nationalists made in their deprecation of parliamentary democracy was the measure of theoretical support that their modern nationalist creed gained from Catholics. The establishment of cordial relations between the two groups focused first on educational policies, which were based on peaceful coexistence between religious and national traditions. “Religion and nationality,” propounded a Catholic philosopher, “are the two basic elements in man’s life which impart meaning to this life and make it precious.”⁵² The passage could have been attributed to President Smetona himself. Equally reinforcing was the confluence of Catholic and Nationalist ideas on the “organic” structure of society. Another philosopher, the highly regarded Stasys Šalkauskis, explicated the position which some Catholics assumed: “As a matter of principle the Catholic world view is prone to defend the organic and hierarchic organization of society and . . . to consider best that form of government which brings the monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements into a most perfect union.”⁵³ And when a Catholic politician openly embraced “authoritarian democracy” as the most suitable form of government for Lithuania under the circumstances,⁵⁴ the Nationalists rightly supposed that their leadership principle enjoyed a measure of Catholic support.⁵⁵ For such agreeable assistance the Nationalists replied in kind: they paid salaries to Catholic clergy and appropriated generous sums to Catholic schools, seminaries, monasteries, and churches.

Nationalist Failures

DESPITE THE SUCCESSES of the Smetona regime, by the eve of World War II the Nationalists had become bogged down. The Nationalist campaign was not confined to any one segment of society; consequently, its effects were equally diverse. The Nationalist theoretical challenge had been total, but when united action was called for, the public answered with apathy. Universal public indifference and deep political discord on the eve of the Soviet assault suggest the chasm that severed Nationalist theories from the pulse of everyday life. Both popular disengagement and national disunity are amply documented. “Colorless,” “passive,” “stagnant,” “baconized”⁵⁶—these were some of the disparaging terms hurled by intellectuals, especially leftists, at Lithuania’s youth and the general public.⁵⁷ Stasys Šalkauskis reflected Catholic ambivalence when he flouted the Nationalists by declaring “our passivity, inclination toward servility, a horizon closed to wider interests, a predilection for cunningness, and that monstrous envy which cannot tolerate the emergence of true personalities have now again found for themselves a most favorable ground.”⁵⁸ The stifling atmosphere was particularly distasteful to the country’s leftist intellectuals, the domestic outcasts who wanted none of the Nationalist doctrines. They lived with the hope that the future would eventually bring a new birth of freedom, when they would speak a language the coming generations would be able to understand, a language not unlike the thunder of a cannon.⁵⁹ They did not have to wait much longer.

National unity, the raison d’etre of the Nationalist movement, was seen as fantasy rather than as reality. From a seemingly inexhaustible diversity of adjectives, “great,” “true,” “real,” “iron,” “constructive,” used to depict unity, none characterized it more fully than “elusive.” The Catholic and Populist press on one side and the Nationalist media on the other battled ceaselessly. A Nationalist spokesman conceded that the regime in general and the leadership principle in particular remained alien to a great many people, and that the government was in retreat.⁶⁰

What were some of the causes which accounted for Nationalist failures? Two major developments may be cited: a dilution of the dynamic revolutionary nature of the movement and a reluctance to use force against the opposition. Conservative in social and economic policies, the President failed to satisfy his younger followers who had hoped for a more vigorous and more militant administration than the senior party members were willing to institute.⁶¹

The President’s disinclination to resort to arbitrary and excessive compulsion to impose his will caused a gap between the logic of totalitarianism and the compromising nature of politics. There appears to be some truth in the allegations by a number of dejected younger Nationalists that President Smetona was content to broach his political philosophy in general terms, while allowing a good deal of freedom, too much for the taste of most party members, to those who interpreted it and put it to use.⁶². This is not to imply that Lithuania’s was a liberal regime. The common recourse to police measures, the protracted ban on all opposition parties, the broad powers bestowed on district executives, and the existence of forced labor camps, all negate such a conclusion. Those repressive acts actually employed by the government were sufficiently severe to generate widespread discontent, but they were inadequate to give effect to the essential conditions implicit in Nationalist political theory. This ambiguity suggests that President Smetona might have been content with a less dictatorial form of government than had in fact evolved. Occasional testimony by former members of both the government and the opposition also indicates that the destruction of liberal democracy was not intended to be perma nent.⁶³ Perhaps there was some thought of a presidential democracy, that is, a form of democratic government under which the chief executive is not responsible to the legislature. Had this been in vogue on the continent, it might have reconciled the President’s beliefs with the means he was willing to apply to realize them. But President Smetona was primarily an exponent of national unity, not of democracy. To gain the first, he forsook the second.