The conclusion of a non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union (the «Stalin-Hitler-Pact») on August 23/24, 1939 with its secret addendum carving out the dictators’ spheres of interest and the following Treaty on Borders and Friendship on September 28, 1939, can be considered one of the cornerstones of European politics and history of the twentieth century. The documents that tell the story of this event and its consequences appeared in several publications in the years after the «archival revolution.»^[1] While the elimination of the Polish state and the beginning of World War II are better known consequences of these agreements, Russian-German relations had immense impact on another region as well: the Baltic states. The annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union in August 1940 occurred as a direct consequence of the agreement upon spheres of interest between Nazi Germany and the USSR.
The case of Lithuania is the subject of this document edition covering one and a half years of Lithuanian-Soviet relations – from the German annexation of Klaipeda in March 1939 until the incorporation of the country into the USSR in August 1940. The edition includes 257 partly bilingual documents,^[2] compiled and edited by well-known Lithuanian and Russian historians from the Lithuanian History Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Included are mostly previously unpublished documents of archival origin from both countries: the Russian Archive of Social and Political History, the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive and the Central State Archive of Lithuania. Remarkably, despite the bi-national nature of the subject and scholarly cooperation, mutual understand could not be extended to the level of publishing, resulting in the volume being issued in Lithuania only, which might be interpreted as a hint of how controversial the topic of the annexation of the Baltic countries still is in Russian historiography.
The preface by N. Lebedeva outlines the exceptional position of Lithuania. This state traditionally had a better relationship with the Soviet Union than the two other Baltic countries and, unlike its neighbours, it was genuinely interested in Soviet guarantees of security in order to seek protection from German claims (P. 24). The pact, with accompanying rumours about a secret addendum, had a detrimental effect on Lithuanian-Soviet relations and caused a political shift towards Germany – at least as perceived by Soviet diplomatic personnel (P. 29).
The documents illustrate that already in September 1939 Lithuania had become a pawn to Soviet and German interests. According to the secret addendum of the non-aggression treaty, Lithuania was part of the German sphere of interest, yet the German-Soviet Treaty on Borders and Friendship on September 28, 1939 ceded the country to the Soviet zone of interests. After the elimination of Poland, Lithuania was subtly yet decisively forced by both sides to take back Vilnius which since 1922 had belonged to Poland. The regaining of the old capital might have slightly augmented a pro-Soviet attitude, but it came at a high price as unconditional «friendship» with the Soviet Union was demanded in return (Pp. 253-255). Before annexation of the city took place, the city was gutted not only of many cultural assets, but even of whole factories (P. 319) and trains (P. 419). The «friendship» with the Soviets (in connection with the loss of the port of Klaipeda to the Germans) also caused gradual economical dependence on the Soviet Union. In October 1939, Lithuania was forced to import a vast quantity of Soviet goods (Pp. 288-292), and at the end of the month, the country was coerced into stationing 20,000 Red Army soldiers.
Yet, Lithuania was not only caught between Germany and the Soviet Union – it is more accurate to depict it within a triangle of the aforementioned two countries and Poland. Due to Lithuania’s historical affiliation with Poland and the conflicts of the 1920s that resulted in the loss of Vilnius, the relationship between those two countries was rather ambiguous, and the book succeeds in showing this. On the one hand, sympathies were not unconditionally on Poland’s side after September 1, and Lithuanian politicians even observed a malicious joy coming especially from the rural population, «where the reign of the Pans [Polish landlords] is still a vivid memory» (P. 276). On the other hand, some observers hesitated to rejoice, bearing in mind that Lithuania might be next to lose its independence. In November 1939, a group of Lithuanian diplomats sent a memorandum to foreign minister Juozas Urbšis, where they warned him against fully accepting Poland’s disappearance – their own country might get the same treatment in an analogous situation (P. 341). Furthermore, they recommended the creation of a secret «independence fund,» the evacuation of the government, and similar measures in case Lithuania lost its independence. Their effort, however, was ignored.
Apart from Politburo, parliamentary, military and Comintern documents, a large part of the document corpus consists of diplomatic correspondence. On the Lithuanian side, they are mostly drawn from day-to-day reports by international Lithuanian diplomats to their superior Urbšis. They show Lithuania not only as a pawn in the game of great power interests, but also as a political subject in its own right. The focus on Lithuanian diplomatic correspondence offers a crucial viewpoint on Soviet politics from an unusual perspective. Some reports from Lithuanian diplomatic personnel on conversations with Soviet officials abroad show for the NKID (Narkomat inostrannykh del) what has been observed in the case of the Comintern already^[3] – a complete disorientation following the about-face of Soviet foreign policy in connection with the Stalin-Hitler Pact. Stalin’s plans were not only a «sphinx» for Lithuanian politicians (P. 165), but even for Soviet diplomats. For instance the report of the Lithuanian ambassador in the UK, Bronius Balutis, about his conversation with Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky on September 19, 1939, reveals the latter’s complete disorientation in the face of recent events. The Soviet ambassador answers the detailed inquiries of Balutis with insightful replies such as «Nowadays, no one can know what might happen. …God knows… Everything is possible…» (P. 189). The diplomatic correspondence on the Soviet side reveals the same lack of orientation when, for example, the Soviet consul in Klaipeda, Kulikov, complains to the NKID that even after the Germans took the town there were no instructions from Moscow for four days (P. 144). This is also probably due to the effect of the Great Purges on the NKID. First and foremost, however, the disorientation of the Soviet diplomatic corps is another proof of the existence of multiple threads of Soviet foreign policy with the NKID, the Comintern, and Stalin’s personal networks moving in different directions. With the example of Lithuania the edition succeeds in showing the non-monolithic nature of Soviet foreign policy. The multitude of Lithuanian and Soviet diplomatic documents could have been completed with German diplomatic correspondence, which would have been an enrichment of the already substantial documentary corpus. The correspondence of the German ambassador in Moscow Count von der Schulenburg and other protagonists could have, for example, illustrated the connection between the annexation of Lithuania and Soviet economic obligations towards Germany.^[4] Hopefully, these sources will be considered for the planned second volume of the edition, which is being prepared at the moment and will include documents through 1945.^[5]
This edition also sheds light on the question of how far the annexation of the Baltic states occurred within a continuous «communist doctrine» or rather to what extent this «doctrine» was motivated by «revolutionary» components. Even though the continuity of «world-revolutionary» intentions of Soviet policy from 1917 to the Warsaw Pact still forms a kind of paradigm, especially in Central European university courses, the documents hint at the opposite. The near complete absence of the Lithuanian Communist Party from the documents (except one rather vague directive by the Comintern to the Lithuanian CP) may be surprising at first, but there are profound reasons for this. The completely «unrevolutionary» preparation for the annexation of Lithuania is the logical intermediate step between the «People’s Front»-tactics in the mid-1930s and the formation of «People’s Democracies» after World War II. In the Lithuanian case, as a legacy of the «People’s Front» politics, the revolutionary justification is withdrawn in favour of a broad cooperation with left-liberal forces. Consequently, the position of head of the pro-Soviet «People’s Government» in August 1940, and later the head of the Lithuanian SSR, was given to the liberal journalist Justas Paleckis and not to a CP cadre.^[6] Yet, contrary to the later «People’s Democracies» of the Warsaw block, Lithuania was not allowed to maintain even pro-forma symbols of independence. In October 1939, however, Stalin preferred to wait. In a conversation with Comintern secretary Georgi Dimitrov, he argued against the sovietization of Lithuania. «There will come a time when they will ask for it by themselves,» he said (P. 305). According to this position, Molotov sent two harsh directives to the Soviet embassy in Lithuania not to play any «games» with the Lithuanian Left (Pp. 268, 295). The Lithuanian CP did not play any role in the Soviet ambassador’s lengthy report on the internal situation in March 1940 (Pp. 460-482) or in any similar documents. Possible action by the radical Left on May Day was discredited a priori by the Soviets as a potential provocation by police and Trotskyists (P. 498). The following annexation of Lithuania was a task for the military, not for the communists. It is symptomatic that the first document in this edition giving direct evidence of a occupation is a military order from June 9, 1940, to clear the existing POW camps for «new groups» (P. 578). From this point on, Soviet military documents are the dominant component of the edition. But even though the annexation was purely a military and administrative act, there was revolutionary potential from below in Lithuania. Soviet ambassador Pozdniakov informed Moscow in July 1939 that in case of a deployment of Red Army forces in the country, the bourgeoisie would fear the workers might call out Councils (sovety) (P. 117). And in fact, in the course of the August events, radicalised masses tried to push things further towards a «real» social revolution and had to be held back by Soviet authorities.^[7] It would be most interesting to see this aspect covered in the second volume of the edition.
Military action was preceded by Stalin giving up on his decision to wait for the Lithuanians to ask for integration into the Soviet Union. After a few Red Army soldiers disappeared from their military bases in Lithuania, the Soviet leadership tried to construct a plot involving the Lithuanian secret service and demanded, in terms approaching an ultimatum, punishment for the «guilty.» The documents do not give a definite answer as to whether the soldiers were really abducted or simply abandoned, impressed by capitalist Lithuania. The protocols of the lengthy talks in the aftermath of the supposed abductions feature Lithuanian politicians and Soviet representatives, mainly Molotov, who, as the new head of the NKID after the fall of Litvinov, is one of the main protagonists in the selected documents, while Stalin appears only occasionally. They are revealing in their own way. They uncover the complete unwillingness of the Soviet leadership to help clarify the affair as they rejected any substantial investigations (P. 564). In addition, seen in context of similar documents compiled in the edition, they show a low point in treatment of Lithuanian representatives by Moscow.
As far as a cultural history of diplomacy, these documents, as many others in the edition, illustrate both sides speaking «in different tongues.» When, on June 14, 1940, Molotov ultimately demanded that Urbšis arrest the leaders of the political police, the Lithuanian foreign minister replied that there is no law that would allow the state to put them on trial. Yet, «Molotov says that first they have to be arrested and put on trial, while a law can [always] be found. Actually, Soviet jurists could help in this matter, studying the Lithuanian legal code» (P. 597). The question is, whether this is just one aspect of Molotov’s derisive dealing with his Lithuanian counterparts, or whether he really perceived foreign legal systems through the twisted lens of Soviet justice. Yet, more «positive» examples of communication between Soviet leaders and Lithuanian diplomats can also be found in the selected documents. After pushing the Lithuanians into signing the treaty on the return of Vilnius on October 10, 1939, Stalin invited the Lithuanian delegation into the Kremlin’s private cinema to watch the comedy film «Volga-Volga» (P. 264).
From a technical-editorial point of view, this edition achieves the high standards of contemporary Russian document publications. The documents are well-annotated and a concise biographical index contributes to usability. Only the lack of a subject index, a list of archives or a bibliography can be considered a minus, apart from some flaws in the annotation of foreign-language terms (for example, on P. 139, the German «gratuliere» is annotated as being French, and the French «aide-memoire» on P. 294 is declared Latin). In its thematic spectrum, the edition is absolutely essential. Not only does it illuminate thematic sub-issues like the ones outlined above, but with its multitude of layers and perspectives, it gives a dense picture of Lithuanian-Soviet relations on the eve of Lithuania’s annexation. It would be extremely important to popularize the edition in Russia, where it could help to fight imperial stereotypes and historiographical taboos that dominate public discourse.