V

THE COMMUNIST UNDERGROUND

LITHUANIA’S SUCCESS in gaining and reinforcing its independence from Russia after the end of World War I condemned the Communists to twenty years of underground existence. Incessant hostility between nationalists¹ and Communists issued from divergent ideological commitments. The nationalists wanted Lithuania to be an independent state; the Communists subordinated national aspirations to the demands of the class struggle and expected Lithuania to become part of Soviet Russia.² The congruity of political program and action between the Russian and the Lithuanian Communists during the interwar decades made the Communist Party of Lithuania, in the eyes of the nationalists, a medium of a foreign power. Thus, the Communist alternative concerned Lithuania’s very existence. The stakes were high, and at the time compromise seemed to be impossible. The nature of domestic politics did not fundamentally affect the hostile attitude which the two parties assumed toward each other.

Communist Strategy and Tactics

EARLY COMMUNIST PLANS for Lithuania depended largely on events and policies in Russia. In 1920, the victory of a Communist revolution in the West still appeared to be possible. The outcome of the Polish-Russian war, then in progress, was one determinant of such a possibility. In the summer of 1920 it seemed that Russia would win that war, and the Communists were jubilant. Many in Moscow hoped that Russia’s successes at the front would induce the proletariat in other countries to take up arms for the Communist cause.

The inroads of the Red Army animated the Lithuanian Communists, too. A Provisional Revolutionary Government was established on Lithuanian territory which was retaken by the Russians from the Poles. The Lithuanian Communist leaders considered the time opportune for an uprising against the government in Kaunas. They made the necessary preparations and sent instructions to local Communist organizations, telling them to be ready for action. The purpose of these activities was the establishment of a Soviet government in Lithuania.³ However, Communist plans aborted because the progress of the Red Army proved to be ephemeral. Russian reverses in the war with Poland destined the victory of the Communist revolution in the West to an indefinite delay. The delay, in the case of Lithuania, lasted two decades. Adverse circumstances prevented the Russian army from absorbing Lithuania in 1920, but a propitious turn in events enabled it to accomplish that purpose in 1940. In the interim, Communists in Lithuania made every effort to survive as a cohesive group.

The strategy of the Communist Party of Lithuania for the years following the Polish-Russian war was worked out at a congress held in 1921 in Königsberg. Its immediate task was to approach the masses, radiating influence throughout the lower segments of Lithuanian society. Specifically, the Communist plans called for an alliance of two groups, the urban and rural workers and a portion of the farming population, the small landholders. The Communists hoped that in their struggle against the government the farmers with medium sized holdings would adopt a neutral, if not a favorable attitude. These decisions and expectations were inspired by Lenin’s writings, by the experiences of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and by the resolutions of the Comintern’s third congress.⁴ In subsequent attempts to implement these plans, the Communists put forth economic demands beneficial to labor and the small farmers. Their covert participation in government elections, labor union activities, and the cooperative movement was intended to win for them as broad a range of influence as possible.

The next congress of the Communist Party of Lithuania convened in 1924. Meeting in Moscow, the delegates reviewed the record of the preceding three years and appeared rather pleased with it. Two accomplishments were considered noteworthy, the increase in ideological and organizational strength and the additional popular support for the Party.⁵ The congress made no changes in strategy. It simply told the Party organizations to make use of the public’s dissatisfaction with government policies by supplying the people with political meaning and direction. The congress did, however, alter some of the tactical means. For example, the attempt to appeal directly to the rank and file members of other socialist parties, a device known as the united front from below, replaced earlier attempts at joint action through agreement with the leaders of those parties, known as the united front from above.⁶ Refusal by the leaders of other socialist parties to collaborate with the Communists in the past made such a change necessary.

The military coup in late 1926, which brought the Nationalists to power, augured a precarious future for the Communist Party. The Communists themselves referred to the next four or five years as a time of crisis.⁷ Changes in Lithuania’s domestic politics prompted the Communist leaders to call another conference, which was held in Moscow in 1927. Empowered to act as a congress, it entered into a critical examination of past operations and enunciated the general direction which the Party was to adhere to in the years of Nationalist supremacy. The next comparable congress was convened only in 1941. The decisions made in Moscow⁸ spurned the use of any sporadic conspiracies against the Kaunas authorities. Instead, they asserted that the Lithuanian regime could be overthrown only by a well-planned mass uprising of workers and peasants led by the Communist Party. The peasants in question were primarily the hired agricultural laborers,⁹ but small landholders and even farmers with medium sized holdings were not excluded. In fact, the conference decided to intensify the Party’s efforts to win the support of the farmers of medium sized holdings. The delegates reaffirmed the need to link the struggle for the economic progress of workers and peasants with that for their political goals. They also agreed that those committed to such a struggle should not be led to rely upon outside help; rather, they should be educated to have faith in their own energies. Lastly, the conference decided to set up a number of illegal organizations for work in Lithuania, but it added that legal means of action must not be overlooked either.

The Communist Party had survived the crisis produced by the Nationalist takeover. This hopeful conclusion issued from a conference of Party leaders held in 1933. However, the delegates were not at all satisfied with the Party’s over-all achievements. They conceded that their failure to attract a sizeable following was of major significance. The conference felt that the causes of this failure were an improper application of the united front tactics in some cases and their utter disregard in others. Moreover, the conference noted that in fighting for the cause of labor the Party had not always put forth demands which the workers cared most about, but had instead accentuated requests alien to their immediate needs. Many local Communists were irritated by the priorities given to the interests of international Communism and of the USSR over local requirements. Their earlier grumble that “Moscow issues the directives and we fools carry them out” was corroborated by a defector who, in 1939, had testified that to Communists in Lithuania the orders from abroad not infrequently seemed altogether senseless, because they failed to meet the needs of labor. For instance, strikers who sometimes did not even know what they were striking for were induced to demand that England pull its troops out of China, that Italy cease fighting Ethiopia, and that the German government release Ernst Thälmann, demands which were all fairly remote.¹⁰

The conference impressed on the delegates the need to correct these operational errors. Specifically, it ruled against further attemps at concerted action through agreement with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party, whom it upbraided for alleged collaboration with the government. Instead, it urged its followers to go directly to that party’s rank-and-file members. In conclusion, the conference again reminded the workers not to expect outside help but to rely on their own strength and to be prepared to give their lives for the sake of the revolutionary cause. The delegates hailed the future day when the Communist Party would lead an insurrection against the regime and inaugurate a Soviet government in Lithuania.¹¹

The threat to Russian security that the Kremlin leaders saw in the emergence of National Socialist Germany was probably the main reason for important tactical changes effected throughout the world Communist movement in 1935. The seventh congress of the Communist International spurred its member parties to propose to the Social Democrats, Populists, and other parties the formation of a broad anti-Fascist alliance commonly known as the popular front.¹² The attempt to form such a coalition in Lithuania came in July 1935, when the Communist Party decided to approach the leaders of the Social Democrats, the Populists, and the Socialist Zionists, but it also persisted in its campaign to undermine the strength of the rival parties by a direct appeal to their rank-and-file members and supporters. The Communists were instructed not to insist on a dominant position in any coalition that might be created, but instead to work on equal terms with the others.¹³ Communist efforts to put together an anti-Fascist coalition produced virtually no result. The failure to frame such a coalition indicates that despite the expedients employed, the Communist Party found few if any partners willing to engage with it in any kind of concerted action.

Organization and Members

COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES in Lithuania flowed principally through three channels: the Communist Party of Lithuania (Comintern Section), Lithuania’s Communist League of Youth, and the Lithuanian Red Aid. The main, although not the most popular, vehicle was the Party.

As early as April 1918, agents from Moscow appeared in Vilnius and began to build a Communist organization in Lithuania. Soon they founded the Communist Party of Lithuania and Byelorussia, a hybrid symptomatic of the early Bolshevik intention to merge Lithuania and Byelorussia into one Soviet republic.¹⁴ However, Lithuania’s success in preserving its independence made that type of organization unsuitable. In 1920 the two were divorced, and Lithuania acquired its own organization, the Communist Party of Lithuania.

One determinant and indicator of any group’s potential is membership. However, the discussion of the Communist Party’s numerical strength encounters two problems. One is determining the actual number of members; the other is determining their effectiveness. Evidence suggests that a number of the Party’s local and intermediate organizations were so shattered and inert as to deprive their membership lists of much of their meaning. Their poverty of accomplishment was due to numerous and diverse causes: an actual membership short of the purported one, desertion from the Party, inactivity of the primary organizations, broken communications between the regional centers and their primary organizations, and a disorganized state of regional leadership.¹⁵

The attempt to determine the precise membership in the Communist Party faces difficulties. Factors responsible for the lack of certainty include the following: a dearth of reliable information, discrepancies in available data, failure to distinguish between members living in detention under the State Security Department and those still enjoying their freedom, and failure to distinguish between members residing in Lithuania and abroad. Recognizing such limitations, Table 1 presents estimates of Party membership.

The period when Lithuania struggled to maintain and reinforce its independence from Russia inflicted severe losses on the Communist Party. Many of its primary organizations were smashed, while those that remained lost contact with one another. Some Communists lost their lives fighting the nationalists, others were arrested and detained in custody, while still others were forced to flee the country.¹⁶ Thus, Table 1 indicates that the Party survived this period with an approximate membership of 863 in 1920.

Russian gains in the war with Poland in the summer of 1920 heightened Communist activities in Lithuania. Membership in the Party rose to about 1,300. However, the increase in numerical strength was a momentary one, and membership soon began to fall. In 1922 it stood at only 211. A government decision to intensify its repressive measures against the Communist Party was one cause of this marked decline, while the repercussions of the Polish-Russian war were another. The expectation of a quick and easy victory in mid-1920 prompted a number of people to join the Party. When the victory failed to materialize, many of the less determined members became disillusioned and left the Party—or were expelled.¹⁷ These adverse developments, in turn, gave rise to further problems: violations of Party discipline, failure to attend meetings, and the inclination to discontinue work among the citizens at large in favor of work within the Party.¹⁸ Lastly, the collapsed condition to which the organization was reduced generated discord among the leaders of the Party.

Later, however, persistent efforts enabled the Communists to rebuild their organization and find new supporters. In the months before the Nationalist seizure of power late in 1926, the Party was believed to have a membership of more than 500. But the dawn of the Nationalist period dealt another blow to the Communist Party. Its illegal publications were a registry of failures. They show that Party committees in the city and region of Kaunas, both in an area of preponderant activities, were “dead organs.” They further disclose that “the primary organizations were not doing anything,” and that there were practically no such organizations in places of work. In general, the Communists were more or less isolated from the public.¹⁹ Precise figures on membership for the years immediately following the Nationalist victory are not available. However, there is reason to think that the Party was decimated. In mid-1932, a time when the crisis was considered to be over, the membership was still below 500.

TABLE 1
Membership in the Communist Party

Note on Sources: The table is based on the following Communist sources: B. Sudavičius, LKP kova už darbininkų klasės vienybę (1934-1937 metai) (The Struggle of the CPL for the Unity of the Working Class, 1934-1937; Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1961), p. 29; A. Gaigalaitė and others (eds.), Lietuvos TSR istorija (History of the Lithuanian SSR; Vilnius: Mintis, 1965), III, 165 and 283; E. Šopa, “Buržuazinės diktatūros nuvertimas ir Lietuvos įstojimas į Tarybų Sąjungą” (The Overthrow of the Bourgeois Dictatorship and Lithuania’s Entrance into the Soviet Union), Lietuvos TSR istorijos bruožai (Aspects of the History of the Lithuanian SSR), ed. J[uozas] Jurginis (Kaunas: Šviesa, 1965), p. 71; S. Atamukas, LKP kova prieš fašizmą, už tarybų valdžią Lietuvoje 1935-1940 metais (The Struggle of the CPL against Fascism, for the Soviet Government in Lithuania, 1935-1940; Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1958), pp. 48, 50, 56, and 63; A. Beržinskaitė, LKP veikla auklėjant Lietuvos darbo žmones proletarinio internacionalizmo dvasia, 1927-1940 (The Activities of the CPL in Educating the Working People of Lithuania in the Spirit of a Proletarian Internationalism, 1927-1940; Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1962), p. 8; S. Lopajevas, Lietuvos komunistų partijos idėjinis ir organizacinis stiprėjimas, 1919-1924 (The Increase in Ideological and Organizational Strength of the Communist Party of Lithuania, 1919-1924; Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1964), pp. 46, 81, 97, and 100; Partijos darbas (Party Work), no. 8 (August 1932), p. 97; Institute of Party History, “Lietuvos komunistų partijos istorijos apybraiža” (A Sketch of the History of the Communist Party of Lithuania), Komunistas (The Communist), no. 11 (November 1967), p. 107.

The estimate for 1927 is based on recent Communist disclosures that “about 50 per cent” of the total party membership had been arrested by the Nationalists soon after their seizure of power late in 1926. See A. Marcelis, “Dėl padėties Lietuvos Komunistų partijoje po fašistinio perversmo” (On the State of the Communist Party of Lithuania After the Fascist Coup), Komunistas (The Communist), no. 8 (August, 1966), p. 68. The estimate for 1930 is based on an article placing the total membership between 600 and 700. See Balsas (Voice), July 25, 1930, p. 586.

Membership in the middle of the 1930’s was on the rise. The increase was partly due to the relaxation of the rules for admission of new members effected in 1935. Sectarianism, which had characterized the Party in previous years, was discarded in favor of a more inclusive organization. Loyalty, agreement with Party decisions, and willingness to work toward the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat were henceforth to be sufficient qualifications for membership.

From 1937 to the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in mid- 1940, the Party managed to keep its membership at about 1,500,²⁰ despite purges and police repressions. Table 2 shows that on the eve of Russian annexation, many Communists were relatively new members who had joined the Party during the preceding three and a half years. This would tend to corroborate the conclusion reached by the State Security Department that the Party not only had succeeded in finding new support to take the places of comrades isolated by the police, but also had continued to increase its total membership.

Lack of reliable information precludes an inquiry into the Party’s social composition before 1940. However, Communist sources reveal that seven months after the Soviet occupation, 65.8 per cent of Party members were white collar workers. They further indicate that in February 1941, only 13.5 per cent of members were industrial workers.²¹ Communist influence was generally stronger in small industrial and commercial firms which had succeeded in evading government controls in independent Lithuania and which had oppressed their employees by substandard conditions of work. In such places the workers were alienated and disgruntled, tending to pay more attention to what the Communists had to say.²²

TABLE 2
Membership in the Communist Party as of January 1, 1941

(according to length of service)

Note on Sources: The table has been derived from a report which Party Secretary Antanas Sniečkus gave in 1941. See A. Butkutė-Ramelienė, Lietuvos komunistų partijos kova už tarybų valdžios įtvirtinimą respublikoje 1940-1941 m. (The Struggle of the Communist Party of Lithuania for the Consolidation of Soviet Power in the Republic, 1940-1941; Vilnius: Valstybinė politinės ir mokslinės literatūros leidykla, 1958), p. 167.

The table apparently includes a number of Communists who were living abroad before the occupation but returned to Lithuania after the occupation.

The primary organizations, known as cells, were the base of the Party pyramid. According to the rules, they were not to have more than seven members. However, some primary organizations failed to abide by these rules and had a much larger membership.²³ Between the primary and the national organizations were the regional formations, of which there were fourteen in 1936.²⁴ This structure lasted until the reforms of 1938, when it was decided to abolish the regional organizations. The reforms were intended to synchronize the Party apparatus with the units of administration into which Lithuania was divided.²⁵

The chief instruments of Communist operations were strikes, demonstrations, and clandestine publications. As a case in point, during 1935 the Communist underground activities inside Lithuania included: publication of nine issues of Tiesa (Truth), an organ of the Party’s Central Committee with a circulation of 2,000; seven issues of Kareivių Tiesa (Soldiers’ Truth), the Central Committee’s organ for soldiers, circulation 2,000; eleven issues of Darbininkų ir Valstiečių Jaunimas (The Youth of Workers and Peasants), an organ of Lithuania’s Communist League of Youth, circulation 1,000; and between thirty-six and forty-nine proclamations. Moreover, the Communists were responsible for approximately thirty-five strikes in which 5,400 workers took part.²⁶ Communist political slogans generally decried the persecution of “revolutionaries,” demanded the release of political prisoners, called for additional rights for workers and peasants, resisted any improvement in Lithuanian-Polish relations, and pursued a pro-Soviet course.

Subsidiary Organizations

MEMBERS OF LITHUANIA’S COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF YOUTH (Komsomol) did not fare as well as their senior comrades. Diligence by the security organs, interfactional quarrels among the members themselves, and the sectarian nature of the organization made the Komsomol a failing body as late as 1936. The young Communists distributed revolutionary leaflets, hoisted red flags, and spent much time with individual employees in small shops, but the results were meager. They failed to establish contacts with larger groups of young workers in the factories; moreover, it appears that they themselves were not at all enthusiastic about political education.²⁷ After the seventh congress of the Communist International, the Komsomol altered both the nature of its activities and its organizational structure with a view to making itself more attractive to younger citizens. For the most part, the innovations corresponded to the changes effected by the parent Party.²⁹ This readjustment enabled the youth group to double its small membership, which by mid-1940 reached approximately 1,000. This total may include a number of Komsomols who were also members of the Party, since in earlier years all Party members under 21 (or 23 according to some sources) were at the same time members of the Komsomol.²⁹

The Lithuanian Red Aid (MOPR)³⁰ was by far the most popular pro-Communist organization in the country. After the reforms initiated throughout the Communist movement in 1935, membership in MOPR increased from 145 in 1931 to 1,250 in 1936, and to approximately 6,000 in 1940.³¹ The Red Aid included a sizable leftist but not strictly Communist following. Moreover, it had a host of regular contributors whose numbers are impossible to identify. A number of businessmen and leftist intellectuals, especially after the establishment of Soviet military bases in Lithuania late in 1939, made regular payments to it in order to be on the safe side. A functionary of the Communist Party is reported to have said in 1940 that “we had always been able to keep a large and active group of sympathizers around us all through the illegal days.”³²

The main purpose of the Red Aid was to raise funds for the assistance of revolutionaries who were suffering arrest, imprisonment, and exile. Inasmuch as figures for the last years of the interwar decades are unobtainable, it is necessary to revert to earlier data for some estimates of the extent of its transactions. Table 3 lists the organization’s finances for the second half of 1935. Some 60 per cent of the total contributions raised in Lithuania came from Kaunas.³³ Furthermore, it appears that foreign aid was negligible and that the bulk of finances was raised at home.³⁴ In the closing years of the decade, the contributions probably increased, reaching a monthly average of 6,000 lits.³⁵

The months before Lithuania’s absorption by the Soviet Union saw an increase in Communist activities. Two main developments animated the Communist underground. One development was the deteriorating social and economic conditions that beset the Lithuanians after the loss of Klaipeda, the affliction of European war, and the acquisition of the heterogeneous Vilnius population; and the other was the encampment in Lithuanian territory of the Red Army late in 1939.³⁶ Unlike the ordinary Russian soldiers, the political commissars failed to comply with their treaty obligations not to meddle in Lithuanian affairs. Under orders to assist local Communist activities, they attended Party meetings and tried to establish contacts with workers in Vilnius. Furthermore, for purposes of military construction they employed Lithuanians of Russian descent, who were presumed to be susceptible to revolutionary propaganda.³⁷

TABLE 3
Semiannual Financial Statement of the Lithuanian Red Aid, July-December, 1935

(in lits)

Source: Raudonoji Pagalba (The Red Aid), No. 16 (April, 1936) quoted in Juozas Daulius [Stasys Yla], Komunizmas Lietuvoje (Communism in Lithuania; Kaunas : Šviesa, 1937), pp. 110-111.

The program of the Communist Party contained both its habitual slogans and some new allegations. It continued to insist on political rights for the workers, freedom for political prisoners, and legalization of the Party. It also included the following specific demands of a political and economic nature: mobilization of all forces against the Nationalist government, work for the unemployed, higher wages, and improvement of peasant conditions. Lastly, in addition to all of these objectives, the Communists accused the Lithuanian government of bad faith in executing the terms of the October 1939 treaty with the USSR.³⁸

In December 1939, the Party modified its tactics once more. Again it placed emphasis on the divisive approach, directing its attention to the average followers of non-Communist parties but refusing to have anything to do with the rival leaders, especially the Catholics and the Populists, who had aided the Nationalists by entering the coalition government in March.³⁹ The Communist attitude toward the Social Democratic leadership was an exception. Unlike the Catholics and the Populists, the Social Democrats were on exceedingly bad terms with the Kaunas authorities, so much so that their participation in any coalition government was out of the question. One may conjecture that the absence of any collaboration between the Marxists and the Nationalists was a factor which accounts for Communist overtures in January 1940, to the Social Democratic leadership to cooperate against the government. Communist disinclination to have any dealings with the leaders of the other political parties was fully reciprocated. For no matter how persistent their proffers of joint action in the past, no matter what name they went under, the response to them, first by the Social Democrats and later by the other groups, was always the same—negative.

Summary

THIS SUMMARY OF THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT in Lithuania requires several additional observations. The Communist underground had brought forth a number of professional revolutionaries who were committed to radical reforms of a social, economic, and political nature. More significantly, they were committed to such strong and close association with a foreign power that the very idea of an independent Lithuania was anathema. Ample evidence attests to the Lithuanian Communist Party’s affiliation with the Soviet Union, including the choice of Moscow as the place of some of the most important Party conferences and congresses, the occasional selection of prominent Russians to serve on the decision-making organs of the Lithuanian Party, the approval of Lithuanian-initiated actions by the organs of the Communist International or those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the vision of Lithuania as a future member of the Soviet Union. However, the government succeeded in keeping Communism a marginal force in Lithuania. The conclusion emerges that from the beginning of the interwar period to its end the Communist Party was perennially on the verge of a crisis.⁴⁰ Standing alone, the local Communists did not constitute any appreciable threat to a people with as highly developed a sense of national consciousness as the Lithuanians.