From the Memoirs of Juozas Urbšys

Dear readers,

On 15 June 1940, Soviet Russia invaded Lithuania. This was the beginning of Lithuania’s loss of freedom for more than fifty years and the beginning of one of the saddest and most tragic parts of Lithuania’s history. There has been much talk and speculation about how this invasion came about and what Lithuania did, or as some would accuse didn’t do, to prevent it. To shed clear light on this topic, we would like to share with you parts of the personal memoirs of Juozas Urbšys who was a member of the group that personally met with Vyacheslav Molotov and Stalin. After reading these fascinating and very informative memoirs we are sure you will have a better appreciation for the precarious situation the leaders of the then free Republic of Lithuania were in and what they did to try to protect the lives of the Lithuanian people.

We will share these memoirs in 4 parts. Here is part 1 of 4 - IN MOSCOW

Introduction by editor Antanas Dundzila

Juozas Urbšys, Lithuanian diplomat and statesman, was born in 1896 and currently resides in Kaunas (at the time this article was first published in 1989 Mr. Urbšys was residing in Kaunas. Mr. Urbšys died on April 30, 1991. After lying in state at the city of Kaunas' War Museum, he was entombed in Petrašiūnai Cemetery in Kaunas).

He began his long career in the service of his country during World War I as a member of the Lithuanian Central Relief Committee in Moscow (1915-16). An officer in the Lithuanian army, he retired in 1922 to join the diplomatic corps and served in a number of posts in Berlin, Paris, Riga, and Kaunas. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1938-40) during a particularly difficult time in Lithuania's history. His tenure saw the Polish ultimatum of 1938, the German seizure of the Klaipėda Territory in 1939, the forced stationing of Soviet garrisons in Lithuania from October 10,1939, and ultimately, the Soviet occupation of the country subsequent to the ultimatum of June 14, 1940.

Urbšys and his wife were arrested on July 16, 1940 and deported to the Soviet Union (Soviet authorities sent him initially to a prison in Tambov; he was later moved to prisons in Saratov, Ivanov and elsewhere. Of his 13 years in prison, 11 were spent in solitary confinement). In 1956, they were permitted to return to Lithuania. Urbšys (then worked translating a number of works of French literature into Lithuanian, and presently subsists on a meager pension.

Urbšys's memoirs, quite astoundingly, appeared in the Soviet Lithuanian press in September of 1988. One of the few remaining eye-witnesses to the cynical manipulations, both Soviet and German, preceding the occupation of Lithuania, Urbšys, at 93, has recently addressed mass rallies in Vilnius and Kaunas.

The following excerpts are translated from the Lithuanian edition of Urbšys's memoirs and are paginated accordingly.

IN MOSCOW

p.8

On the third of October 1939, I, as Lithuania's Foreign Minister, flew to Moscow via Riga. At Moscow airport, decorated for the occasion with Lithuanian and Soviet flags, I was met by a group which included Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, an elderly man, whose name, if memory serves me correctly, was Lozovsky. That same evening, together with the Lithuanian envoy in Moscow, Ladas Natkevičius, we were invited to the Kremlin.

Lithuanian delegation before departing to Moscow in October, 1939.

Urbšys is third from left.

Arriving a little before eleven we waited with other automobiles to pass through the gates while uniformed secret police formed us into a line. At the door of the government offices we were met by an official in military uniform who introduced himself as "Commander of the Workers' and Peasants' Government Offices." We exchanged greetings and the commander led us to an elevator which took us to the second or third floor, I do not remember which. In the cloakroom an elderly attendant typical of such places took our coats.

We stepped into the waiting room. There sat one or two taciturn almost dour, young men surrounded by telephones and dressed in civilian clothing. They announced our arrival to whom it was necessary and, opening a door, let us into a further room.

A spacious hall. In the right corner (looking from the door) a large writing desk laden with telephones. In the left, a door opening onto yet another room. Almost directly in front of the open door stretched a long conference table. This then was the office of V. M. Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Molotov, Potemkin, Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and Pozdniakov, Charge of Lithuanian Affairs in the Soviet Union, awaited us. We sat down at the further end of the conference table near the open door.

Before long, Stalin appeared in the doorway: graying, rather thick hair combed upwards, luxuriant mustaches, thick-set frame; a sand colored jacked buttoned down the front with the collar turned back at the neck revealing a thin white band, peasant trousers of the same color stuffed into soft low black boots. A closer look revealed that these supposedly ordinary clothes and shoes were of exceptional quality fabric and workmanship.

Then began negotiations between two sovereign nations, each enjoying equal rights, whose friendly relations, as we have seen, were based on solemnly signed accords still in effect. One would have thought that this was a golden opportunity for a socialist nation to display its moral superiority to the world and a chance for it to prevail forever upon the heart of a small but noble one.

Stalin began to speak and without beating around the bush stated bluntly that the Soviet Union had made a pact with Germany (Hitlerite, Fascist Germany!) granting the major portion of Lithuania to the Soviet Union and a narrow strip of border to Germany. Placing a map of Lithuania on the table, he pointed to the line drawn in on independent Lithuania's territory demarcating the Soviet and German "domains." So this is what Molotov had hidden up his sleeve when, having already made a pact with Ribbentrop, he told Natkevičius that he was expecting a particularly amicable comportment from Lithuania.

(...)

p. 10

I try to protest against this apportionment of an independent nation saying that Lithuania least of all expected this from its ally the Soviet Union. I refrain from saying too much: a vision of Vilnius, the city and its territory, which the government of Lithuania has sent me here to regain, looms before me. Stalin explains that, on the contrary, the Soviet Union wants no such division and if the Germans renounce their claim then the strip of border will remain part of Lithuania. The ambassador of Germany, von Schulenburg, can be summoned immediately to discuss this question.

Molotov intones:

— Any imperialist country would simply occupy Lithuania and that would be that. Unlike us. We wouldn't be Bolsheviks if we didn't search for new ways. . .

His words would seem consolatory if one knew for certain that these new ways would not rejoin the old well-traveled ones in the end.

Stalin concretizes:

— We have to sign two treaties: one dealing with the return of Vilnius, and the other regarding mutual assistance.

He spreads out a second map of Lithuania on the table, one more felicitous to the Lithuanian heart. The line drawn in on it shows Vilnius and a portion of the territory to its east ceded to Lithuania. However, this line, passing very close to the capital, is a far cry from all the territory recognized as Lithuanian in the July 20, 1920 peace treaty.

I inform Stalin that the government of Lithuania had but one thing in mind when they sent me to Moscow and that I was empowered to discuss solely the matter of Vilnius with the government of the Soviet Union.

— A mutual assistance treaty, — I continue, — is an entirely new thing which I have not been authorized to discuss. I must return to Kaunas and inform my government of this.

I ask for a copy of the text for the proposed treaty so that my report can be as factual as possible. The Soviet men reply that they will furnish us with a copy of the pact tomorrow.

Tomorrow had in fact begun, for Natkevičius and I left the Kremlin a good deal after midnight.

We had just returned to the legation when a phone call summoned us once again to the Kremlin. We arrived around two in the morning. The same individuals awaited us. They handed us drafts of two treaties: the first, dealing with the return of Vilnius and its territory to Lithuania, and the second, with Lithuanian and Soviet mutual assistance. The latter provided for the permanent placement on Lithuanian territory of, I do not recall the exact number, but no less than 50,000 Soviet troops.

Having read through this draft, I exclaim:

— But this is the occupation of Lithuania!

Stalin and Molotov both smile. The former assures me that this is what Estonia said at first, also. The Soviet Union was not seeking to endanger Lithuania's independence. Rather, the Soviet army stationed in Lithuania would guarantee that the Soviet Union would defend Lithuania in the event of an attack. Thus the Soviet army would be working to insure Lithuania's security.

— Our troops will help you put down a communist insurrection should one occur in Lithuania, — added Stalin smiling.

Perhaps sensing how heavily Stalin's words weighed on us, Molotov began to explain how the Soviet Union would remain as friendly as before towards Lithuania. The Soviets were preferring a mutual assistance treaty because they wished our country well. Such a pact had already been signed with Estonia and that country was not complaining, was it? Latvia would soon sign the same. Did Lithuania want to threaten the entire system of defense?

Stalin, meanwhile, agreed to cut the size of the Soviet army contingent to be sent to Lithuania to 35,000. He was seemingly unaware that Lithuania had such a small army and understood its reluctance to have more Soviet troops than its own. In our argument against the stationing of Soviet garrisons, we had pointed out, among other things, that the army being sent to Lithuania would be twice the size of the Lithuanian army.

Remembering that my instructions do not permit me to negotiate the stationing of troops in Lithuania, I speak hypothetically hoping to garner enough essential information to present as complete a report as possible to my government. I ask whether the contingent could not be reduced to 20,000 and confined to the newly reclaimed territory thus leaving the rest of the country unaffected. Stalin reasserts that troops must be stationed at specific locations throughout the entire country. He will not require that they be sent to Kaunas, however, since he realizes that it would be disconcerting to have another nation's army present at the seat of government. A portion of the Soviet army is to be posted in the territory of Vilnius, though not in the capital itself, of course, but in Naujoji Vilnia. The final number of troops was still, apparently, open to debate.

It looks as if everything has been said. Natkevičius and I rise to leave. Half in jest, I console myself aloud with my ill-starred fate, for having just borne Germany's blow, wresting the Klaipėda territory from us, now another such blow . . .

Stalin retorts:

— Germany grabbed territory from you. We, on the contrary, are ceding some to you. There can be no comparison!

— I am by no means comparing Germany's methods with those of the Soviet Union. Rather, I am grateful that so difficult a matter for Lithuania is being discussed with us in this deliberative atmosphere.

Molotov suggests that we telephone our government to get the necessary authorization. I reply that it is impossible to discuss such a matter over the phone. Stalin concurs.

What an interesting coincidence. When Ribbentrop handed us the ultimatum regarding the annexation of the Klaipėda territory, and when I protested that I had to return to Kaunas to inform my government, he, too, suggested that I get the necessary authorization from my government by telephone.

We would like to thank Lituanus for their kind permission to share this article with you.

LITUANUS

LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Volume 34, No. 2 - Summer 1989
Editor of this issue: Antanas Dundzila

Memoirs of Juozas Urbšys
Translated and edited by Sigita Naujokaitis

http://www.lituanus.org