XV

ARRIVAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS AND THE RETURN OF VILNIUS

THE TREATIES which Germany and the Soviet Union made with each other in August and September 1939 effected a mutual division of interests in Eastern Europe. Among other things, the two powers agreed that the Baltic states should stay within the Soviet zone of action. At the time, the exact nature of this trade in the fate of nations was not generally known.

Russia Moves West

THE NEWS the Lithuanian Minister in Moscow brought home on September 30 was received in Kaunas with a cautious optimism. Ladas Natkevičius presented his Foreign Minister with an invitation from the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars to visit the Kremlin to discuss matters of mutual interest that had arisen as a result of recent events in eastern Europe. The government complied, and by October 3 Foreign Minister Juozas Urbšys was on his way to Moscow.

Reluctant to predict what lay ahead, Lietuvos Aidas merely observed in general terms that conditions in eastern Europe had changed during the preceding month. Consequently, it had become necessary to review the new situation.¹ The Catholic organ similarly declined to speculate on the sum and substance of talks with the “new Russia.” It expressed assurances that the Lithuanian delegation would do everything humanly possible to guard the nation’s liberty and hoped for the best:

Russia today is no longer the same. Perhaps it wanted nothing so much as to be different. . . . We are talking today with this new Russia. Having entered upon a different course, she will not repeat in regard to us the mistakes of the old Russia, so gravely recorded in the history of our [country] and of old Russia. The new Russia can face the world with nobility, [and it can] disdain the actions of imperialistic . . . states.² We are waiting for this.³

Populist reaction was not devoid of optimism. Their political commentator was inclined to believe that new developments in this part of Europe did not give sufficient ground for alarm.⁴ Press dispatches from the Soviet capital, which described a “very friendly spirit” and a “very good atmosphere” among the conferees, did nothing to abate the guarded optimism of the general public.

At the conference table, however, the Lithuanians did not fare as well as the man in the street was led to believe. The Soviet position was that they were willing to hand over to the Lithuanians only a part of the Vilnius territory outlined by the Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty of July 12, 1920. They demanded that the Kaunas government conclude a treaty of mutual assistance with Moscow, which would authorize the stationing on Lithuanian soil of some 75,000 Soviet troops. Their refusal to return all areas set forth in the Peace Treaty was allegedly motivated by serious objections from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and by Moscow’s inability to prevail on that republic to alter its stand. Furthermore, the bases were a matter of military necessity.⁵ Irrespective of the several alternatives they had suggested, the Lithuanians, like the Estonians and Latvians before them, failed to dissuade Soviet authorities from their insistence on stationing military garrisons in the Baltic republic. But they succeeded in reducing the number of troops to 20,000 men. On October 10, after a week of Russian “demands,” ”dictates,” “threats,” and “reproaches,”⁶ the treaty, with a secret supplement concerning the bases, was signed.

From Optimism to Euphoria

KAUNAS RADIO broadcast the news of the return of Vilnius on October 11. The instantaneous outburst of enthusiasm which attended the announcement defies description. Any foreboding the government had had about the admission of foreign troops was drowned amid public rejoicing. As a matter of fact, the press hardly even mentioned the articles authorizing Russian bases. While the Te Deum was being sung in churches throughout the land, effusive editorials and demonstrations accurately reflected the popular sentiment in mid-October. The prestige of the Soviet Union soared.

The press applauded the Kremlin for its consummation of “traditional friendship,” a term frequently used by both sides to describe Lithuanian-Soviet relations between the wars. The usually reserved Lietuvos Aidas beamed that, “one of the most constant and positive factors in our foreign policy always has been and still is our friendly relations with Soviet Russia, which have been raised to the highest degree by the treaty that came into force today.”⁷ Catholic, Populist, and Nationalist periodicals, too, showered the Soviet Union with praise. The following passages are indicative of the nonpartisan encomia:

The day the agreement is signed Lithuania [and] the Lithuanian nation will have an historic wrong righted. That is a fact which permits us to say: an imperialistic power had deprived us of all this and a peaceful state, which understands the interests of another nation, gives it back to us. So, the profession of good will on the part of the USSR is enormously impressive.⁸ The Soviet Union respects a nation’s right to an independent existence, and in regard to the Lithuanian nation—in the solution of the Vilnius problem— it has repeatedly honored and implemented both this right of the Lithuanian nation and its own commitments. In view of this additional event, so obvious and convincing, all compliments on our part seem to be superfluous.⁹

Amid toasts to the Russians, some went so far as to welcome the treaty in its entirety as a sure safeguard against the eventual wrath of Polonia restituta. They re-echoed former Prime Minister Voldemaras’ sentiments of more than a decade past, that the savior of Lithuania from the designs of her Polish neighbor was none other than the Soviet Union.¹⁰ Such thinking persisted among some political commentators throughout the months ahead. Weeks before the Soviet occupation one commentator was still insisting that the situation in which the Baltic states found themselves was the best possible in time of war. The outcome of the Finnish-Soviet war of 1939-1940 later emboldened a Catholic author to conclude that the Soviet Union did not harbor any aggressive designs in the Baltic and that, therefore, its military protection of the three republics was quite congenial.¹¹

The impending arrival of the Red Army was discussed as a footnote to the acquisition of the eastern territory. The proportion of news space allotted to the two topics is fairly illustrated by a Populist weekly which devoted its first two pages to the coverage of the agreeable news and only several lines, somewhere on page four, to a dispatch from Finland to the effect that Russia intended to keep some five hundred military aircraft and a thousand tanks in the Baltic states. But this is not to say that sober appraisal of the situation escaped the Lithuanians entirely. A Catholic editorial was fearful of a “foreign soldier on our soil” and asserted that his presence would not relieve Lithuanians of their duty to defend the country; a Populist commentator was sufficiently keen to point out that the treaty was concluded between two partners of vastly unequal strength and that it mattered less what the terms said than what the more powerful cosignatory intended to do.¹² However, the ineradicable byproduct of the October days, important in the light of future developments, was that not only had the military incursion failed to destroy Soviet-Lithuanian amity, but that, on the contrary, the restoration of the ancient city had strengthened it. The profound impression that the realization of the Vilnius idée fixe had made obscured the fact that Lithuania’s independence was seriously impaired, that it in fact had become a Soviet satellite.

Klaipėda had provoked a virulent popular protest in March, when danger to national independence was largely a product of “public psychosis.” Vilnius fostered a grand delusion in October, when the threat was real. The Lithuanian press absolved Moscow from any impropriety by adducing a variety of “understandable” Soviet interests and aspirations. It talked itself into believing that Russia harbored no harmful designs against its Baltic neighbor. Indeed, it confidently proclaimed the opinion that Lithuania’s future remained in its own hands!

On October 11 and 12 both Lithuanian nationalists and proCommunists demonstrated in Kaunas. The former group, who heavily outnumbered the leftists, lauded the administration for its course in regard to Vilnius; the latter group voiced its gratitude to the USSR in front of the Soviet Legation. Outstanding among the leftists was Justas Paleckis, the future front man in Soviet Lithuania. Some twenty-six pro-Communists, including Paleckis, who interrupted the festivities by demanding freedom for political prisoners and the overthrow of the Smetona regime, were put behind bars.¹³ To counter the Communists, the Union of Christian Workers called a series of meetings in Kaunas and elsewhere. The well-attended rallies, organized in the later part of October, expressed satisfaction over the cession of Vilnius, condemned “demagogic agitators” and “provocateurs,” and recommended land and social reforms favored by the Catholic-Populist representation in the government.¹⁴

The administration did not lag far behind the public in its praise for the Kremlin. Foreign Minister Urbšys declared his satisfaction to Joseph Stalin for the Soviet leader’s understanding of Lithuanian interests and for his contribution to mutual confidence and the traditional friendship, which, the Minister affirmed, was unalterable.¹⁵ Privately, however, as German Minister Zechlin disclosed on October 14, “Urbšys did not hide his concern about future developments but he also emphasized that Lithuania would still work to the utmost in the future for her independence.”¹⁶ On the occasion of the entrance of Lithuanian troops into Vilnius, Prime Minister Černius expressed his appreciation of Moscow’s unremitting aid to Lithuania by the conclusion of the treaty.¹⁷ And Owen C. Norem, the United States Minister at Kaunas, informed Washington on October 13 that Deputy Premier Bizauskas, a member of the Lithuanian delegation to Moscow, “seemed quite happy over the whole affair.”¹⁸ However, judging from the correspondence of former Minister of Defense Musteikis, as well as from the precautionary measures taken after the arrival of Soviet garrisons on November 14, 1939, the professed satisfaction of top officials was exaggerated and not representative of the true situation, as perceived in government quarters. If not alarmed, these officials were nonetheless concerned.¹⁹

The Seimas scrutinized the Moscow settlement even less. The treaty was brought before it on October 14, and Foreign Minister Urbšys took the floor to say:

Abroad and perhaps at home in Lithuania, too, some people might think that the presence of the Soviet army on Lithuanian territory might affect Lithuania’s internal order and even her independence. These problems were discussed in great detail with Soviet statesmen who, for their part, have accentuated in categoric and clear terms that the Soviet Union does not under any circumstances and in any way intend to interfere either in Lithuania’s domestic affairs, or in Lithuania’s political, economic, and social order, or in her military matters. These Soviet assurances are included in the treaty, too.

It is noteworthy that these questions affecting Lithuania’s domestic policies were thoroughly discussed with . . . Stalin himself, who has shown much consideration for and sympathy with Lithuanian national interests and who has guaranteed that under no circumstances would the Soviet Union interfere in any way in Lithuanian internal affairs. . . .

[Besides the return of Vilnius], the government is convinced that the treaty . . . will be advantageous to Lithuania also by its terms of mutual assistance. In the disquieting times in international life, when law and justice, the moral side of international relations, are but little adhered to, the assistance of the powerful Soviet Union . . . will help Lithuania to come out of these difficult . . . times intact, unharmed, and united with its historical capital Vilnius.²⁰

The Seimas thought so, too. Its speakers shared the public joy over the “event of historic significance,” meaning Vilnius, and were hopeful that Moscow would not betray their trust. To fortify their confidence, the representatives leaned on many years of advantageous Lithuanian-Soviet cooperation and concluded that they had no reason to doubt Soviet good will.²¹ And at least one Catholic newspaper went so far as to suggest that Russia’s presence would encourage social justice in Lithuania’s neighboring states. It reasoned that since the Soviet Union acquired eastern Poland in October of 1939, Hungary had introduced social reforms. Hence, the provincial publication hastened to point out, all Soviet neighbors would be well advised to imitate the Hungarians.²² Kaunas pondered the timely exhortation.

Riding on the wave of popular rejoicing, the Nationalists reaped some political profit by ascribing the fortuitous feat to their long-range Vilnius policies. In addition, they again called for national unity—especially in this serious hour.

A Shadow Falls

THE OCTOBER TREATY had stipulated that the location of Russian troops in Lithuania, as well as attendant matters of an economic, administrative, and legal nature, would be determined by a separate agreement between the contracting parties. To implement these treaty provisions, a Soviet military mission arrived in Kaunas on October 21. In the ensuing negotiations the Russians insisted on a liberal interpretation of the treaty terms and, consequently, modified the original agreement in two respects. First, the secret supplement had authorized the Russians to station a maximum of 20,000 soldiers in the country, with Lithuanians retaining the right of control. However, from the very start the Soviet authorities had insisted on the right to bring in auxiliary personnel, and they proceeded to bring them in, evading any control. Second, the treaty had provided for a bilateral determination of the exact location of the Russian bases, but it had excluded both Kaunas and Vilnius as possible areas for Soviet garrisons. Contrary to the above, the Russians ruled that their troops would stay in Vilnius, if only temporarily.²³

In matters which were not detailed in Moscow the Soviet delegation proved to be exacting. It asked for the best barracks the Lithuanians had, demanded strategic areas, and in some instances even wanted to surround the Lithuanian army with Russian troops.²⁴ These illustrate some of the difficulties which arose between the cosignatories. There were others, too. The Russians interpreted the treaty provisions in a manner which benefited them most, while the Lithuanians, for fear of consequences, scrupulously abided by the contract.²⁵ Administrative questions, however, caused no undue difficulties; and the behavior of the Russian soldier, who was to avoid both the native population and local Communist activities, was “most correct.”²⁶

For their part, the Lithuanians intensified their alertness and constantly watched what the Russians were doing. The State Security Department looked into the equipment of Soviet troops, military construction, the life inside the bases, the attitude of Russian soldiers, the conversations between the soldiers and the local population, how the officers lived, where they purchased their food, and how they spent their leisure hours.²⁷ Moreover, the government decided to strengthen the national guard. In a circular addressed by the Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers to all government departments, the administration stated that in view of the need for all citizens to be ready more than ever before to protect the country against all eventualities, it was necessary for all civil servants and employees of private firms which received government assistance to join the ranks of the national guard. The enlisted men and women were to perform exceptional functions during their regular work hours and were to be paid for the time spent.²⁸

Finally, there is reasonable ground for thinking that by the end of 1939 the three Baltic governments of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were agreed on the need to coordinate their defenses against the possible Russian threat.²⁹ In earlier years the possibility of military collaboration was stillborn largely because of fear on the part of Latvia and Estonia of becoming entangled in Lithuania’s quarrels with Germany or with Poland over Klaipeda and Vilnius. In the winter of 1939-1940 these particular quarrels and fears were a thing of the past.

In the meantime, all things considered, coexistence was relatively unperturbed. On January 5, 1940, Foreign Minister Urbšys disclosed before a Nationalist convention that Soviet garrisons so far had not interfered in Lithuania’s domestic affairs, that the Lithuanian administration continued to go about its business just as it had before October 10, and that in general the Soviet soldiers were behaving well.³⁰ On April 17 Prime Minister Antanas Merkys himself reverted to the subject in order to reply to those who distrusted the foreign troops. Addressing a conference of economists, the Nationalist Premier pointed out that by reason of a twenty-year experience in dealing with the Russians and by virtue of the fact that the government had no cause for complaint about the conduct of the Russian garrisons, the administration saw no reasonable ground for regarding the Soviet Union as a threat to national security.³¹ As late as June 9 a high cabinet member assured a veterans’ convention that there was no cause for misgivings about the nation’s future. Rumors to the contrary, originated by those who did not understand the political situation, were to be discounted as so much “unsubstantiated wild talk.”³²

Such categoric public assertions were not fully representative of government thinking. Former Finance Minister Ernestas Galvanauskas testified that in an extraordinary session “several months” before the occupation, the Council of Ministers had agreed that the Soviet Union was Lithuania’s “enemy number one,” a phrase attributed to the Prime Minister himself.³³ Thus the months of Lithuania’s semi-independence were imbued with a sense of baffling dualism. On the one hand, the “foreign soldier on our soil” had impressed most citizens with the need to adopt additional safeguards. On the other, there is ample evidence for concluding that the nature of the peril had eluded both the leaders and the led. Until the climactic days of the Communist takeover beguiling optimism was an unrelenting rival of sober analysis.

Land Reform in Vilnius

THE ACQUISITION of the ancient capital appeased Lithuania’s national aspirations but it proliferated its troubles, too. The interaction of such complexities as the depressed state of the region’s economy, the losses it incurred from Bolshevik pillage,³⁴ its strikingly unequal distribution of land, and the spasmodically colliding national interests of its heterogeneous population,³⁵ confronted the Kaunas authorities with a formidable challenge which was further complicated by the European conflagration. However, in the months before Soviet occupation, the jubilant Lithuanian administrators set to work upon these problems with an ardor equalled only by their impetuous chauvinism.

One of the first enactments of the Nationalist administration was to put into effect in this eastern district the land laws which were in force in Lithuania proper. This meant that large proprietors who had been favored by the Polish authorities would be dispossessed of most of their land, which would be divided, subject to redemption dues payable in 36 years, among the area’s small landholders and its landless peasants. The policy of expropriation proved to be remunerative to the expropriators in more ways than one. The Vilnius landholders were known to have been inimical to Lithuanian interests. Their large estates, those “fortresses of foreign leaven,” had enabled them to give effect to their policies. By the seizure of the bulk of these lands the Lithuanians hoped to extirpate these pockets of opposition.³⁶ Moreover, the Lithuanian lawmakers believed, and not without reason, that expropriation decrees would win the favor of the peasant reci pients of the land. From a bleak, servile past the peasant had preserved a deep-seated resentment against working the lord’s land, an aversion which the Lithuanians were eager to turn to their own immediate advantage.³⁷ Implementation of land reforms had its economic considerations, for as in Lithuania proper, the administration favored medium sized farms. It was reported that by the middle of March 1940, the expeditious Nationalists had disappropriated 90 country estates with some 23,000 hectares of land, and planned to expropriate a total of no estates covering 30,000 hectares.³⁸ Additional projects were planned, such as converting the 146,660 hectares of land controlled by peasant communities into individual farms. It is next to impossible to determine whether any progress was made, however.

The manufacturing establishments the Lithuanians regained in October approximated the number of firms they were deprived of in Klaipeda in March. In terms of quality, however, the gain did not make up for the earlier losses. Industrial shops in Vilnius were smaller, less mechanized, employed fewer people, and produced inferior goods. With a view toward reinforcing its urban economy, burdened with 15,000 jobless workers and a throng of war refugees, the government set a high rate of exchange for Polish currency, reserved 45 per cent of its public works appropriations for the area, floated a special aid loan which by May of 1940 totalled 28 million lits, and redirected large quantities of surplus food originally set aside for export.³⁹

The Lithuanianization of Vilnius

ON THE WHOLE, the brief encounter between the fervid Kaunas nationals and the ethnically diverse Vilnius population was not overly amicable. The avowed intention of the former to Lithuanianize the estranged districts augured bitter repercussions. Lithuanian Nationalism in the ceded area promised to be irascible, intolerant, discriminatory, and unsparingly thorough. The new leaders paraded their contemptuous dislike of the area’s pervasive Polish culture. Prime Minister Merkys himself told members of his party that from the moment his administration set foot in the contested territory it tried “to make everybody think like Lithuanians. First of all, it was and still is necessary to comb out the foreign element from the Vilnius region. In this sense we have already done much.”⁴⁰

The theoretical basis for freeing the society from its “foreign element” had been rationalized years in advance. It belonged to the essential nature of nationalism, in Lithuania as elsewhere. “Members of the old state were citizens,” postulated Antanas Maceina, a resourceful Catholic writer.

The new [nation] state rests its existence not on the citizen but on the national. . . . The state, the embodiment of the nation cannot treat equally both nationals and citizens of foreign nationalities, or the so-called national minorities. Nationals are the true members of the new state, while all the rest are merely the state’s residents. They are entitled to all the rights of nationals, but they cannot have the same privileges as nationals. Their participation in the life of national culture, in science, art, public institutions, economy is undesirable and in some cases even inadmissible.⁴¹

The passage summarized the distinction, in theory, between the “true members” of a nation and the “undesirables.” In practice, this Catholic intellectual, who demanded that treasures of Polish culture be locked up in museums, insisted upon the following policy of liberation:

The Vilnius resident must be liberated from that Polish nightmare which originates from Polish surroundings, Polish language, Polish art, Polish literature, Polish schools. . . . Any toleration of Polish institutions in fields of civil affairs, science, art or religion is a crime against the re-Lithuanianization of the Vilnius territory. . . . But we are not vandals. . . . We do not want to destroy all this wealth, only to eliminate it from life.⁴²

While the repudiation of vandalism may have been problematical, the all but unanimous intention to monopolize community life is illustrated by such sentiments as:

All that serves as a cultural medium and is not reserved exclusively for the minority must be in the hands of the Lithuanians themselves. Therefore, all publishing houses of Lithuanian books and newspapers, all distributors of the Lithuanian and foreign press, the screen and stage, offices of film distribution, concert agencies, and radio . . . must belong exclusively to the Lithuanians.⁴³

Fragmentary news reports from the capital bear witness to outbursts of Lithuanian jingoism. On March 13, 1940, an influential newspaper denounced an alien who had addressed a Vilnius civil servant in his native tongue and a Lithuanian national who, failing to see anything wrong, not only had responded in that language but also had paused for a social chat. The Catholic daily found these frequent trivial incidents to be evidences of disrespect to the official language.⁴⁴

There seems to be some indication that discrimination against the “foreign element” marred labor relations, too. In certain cases the nationals enjoyed priorities in obtaining jobs, and nonLithuanian businessmen were burdened with various restrictions.⁴⁵ Amid occasional clashes between contending interests, a group of leftist intellectuals publicly cautioned the militant extremists against using disgraceful means to pursue national objectives.⁴⁶ But this did not appreciably reduce the bitterness of rampant antagonism. It, too, was to be buried beneath the imminent Soviet invasion.