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 3 of 4

WE ACCUSTOM OURSELVES TO ARMY BASES. LIGHTNING OUT OF A CLEAR BLUE SKY.

p. 23

Once the mutual assistance pact had been signed the Soviet Union lost no time establishing army bases in Naujoji Vilnia, Gaižiūnai of Jonava, Prienai, and Alytus. Questions arose daily regarding the deployment and stationing of troops but, with both sides acting in good faith, they were satisfactorily answered.

Pozdniakov was now minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary.

The sentiments that had been stirred up by these events subsided and life went on as usual. While negotiations were underway, or whatever passed for "negotiations", we defended our position and points of view. Now that there was a treaty, the government of Lithuania had resolved to faithfully abide by it though whether the other side would really hold to article VII, regarding sovereign rights and non-interference in internal affairs, neither the members of government nor the ordinary citizens were wholeheartedly convinced.

(...)

(Government officials calmed the public by reiterating that Lithuania remained, as before, an independent and entirely sovereign nation. These official statements were repeated in the Soviet press, but to his query whether or not Stalin or Molotov would receive him in an unofficial capacity to discuss these issues, Urbšys received no reply.

In 1940, around the middle of May, Urbšys was invited by the General Secretary to the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Sobolev, who informed him that of the three Baltic Republics Lithuania had the most satisfactorily dealt with its Soviet bases. Not long afterwards, Urbšys was visited by Soviet General Lokstinov who informed him that two Soviet soldiers had apparently been apprehended by some Lithuanians and locked in a celler until they could escape. To Urbšys this seemed barely credible and he told Lokstinov that this sounded like something from "A Thousand and One Nights." Following this, on May 25, 7940, Molotov summoned Natkevičius to the Kremlin, was most unamica-ble towards him, and read the written statement which the Soviet government was sending the Lithuanian government. The statement posited that yet another two Soviet soldiers had disappeared in Lithuania and that the Soviet government knew for a fact that their disappearance was organized by individuals who were aided by the Lithuanian government. The statement went on to say that the Soviet government regarded such actions as provocations leading to serious consequences and demanded that the Lithuanian government cease such actions and immediately find and return the missing soldiers or else the Soviet government would be forced to use whatever means necessary to obtain satisfaction. Urbšys's impression was that Stalin and Molotov were picking a fight.

Following a meeting of the President of Lithuania and his ministers, and after an investigation of the allegations found them to be baseless, a note was transmitted to Pozdniakov stating that the Lithuanian government found no incriminating facts but that it would continue its inquiry if it were given additional data regarding the individuals and offices which Molotov had in mind.

21-ojo Ministrų kabineto nariai su Lietuvos Respublikos Prezidentu A. Smetona prezidentūroje.
Iš kairės: K. Musteikis, A. Merkys, A. Tamošaitis, A. Smetona, E. Galvanauskas, K. Skučas,
K. Bizauskas, J. Urbšys, J. Masiliūnas, K. Jokantas, J. Audėnas. Kaunas, 1939 m.

Molotov's response to Natkevičius was that he did not take the note seriously. Furthermore, he had no intention of providing any further information, but rather, continued to angrily assert that the Lithuanian government refused to take any steps whatsoever.)

p. 26

What sort of steps did he deem necessary? Only the gods and, of course, he and Stalin, knew.

Not long ago Molotov had said that "any imperialist country would occupy Lithuania and that would be that. Unlike us who do not do such things. We would not be Bolsheviks if we did not search for new ways." The ways may be new but was not the end result the same as from the old ones?

Day after day, the atmosphere surrounding the relations between the two countries was made more and more complex (just as Ribbentrop and Hitler had done before taking Klaipėda.) Everyday more and more of a smokescreen was created, apparently to cover up these "new ways."

A lot of "smoke" was not necessary in Europe at that time. As the war begun by Hitlerite Germany spread, everyone had enough problems of his own. What is more, the West was simply waiting for the Soviet Union to make a move in Germany's direction — with those two battling each other, the easier it would be for the West.

The official publication "Falsifikatory istorii — Historical information. Ogiz, Gozpolitizdat, 1948," on page 63, portrays and justifies the massive entry of Soviet troops into Lithuania in mid-June of 1940 thusly:

In this way the Soviet Union's defense against Hitlerite aggression was also strengthened in the North by moving the line of defense in the Leningrad region 150 kilometers to the north of Leningrad, up to and including Vyborg.

But that does not mean that the formation of the "Eastern" front has been completed from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Pacts had been signed with the Baltic countries but there were still not enough Soviet troops necessary to maintain the defenses. Moldavia and Bukovina were once again formally joined to the Soviet Union, but there again, there were not enough Soviet troops for defense purposes. In the middle of June, 1940, the Soviet army marched into Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. That same year, on June 27, the Soviet army entered Bukovina and Moldavia, both of which had been rent from the Soviet Union following the October revolution by Romania. This is how the Eastern front was formed from the Baltic to the Black Sea as a counter to Hitlerite aggression."

So that is why the Soviet army entered sovereign independent republics. Evidently, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian territory was needed to protect the Soviets against Hitlerite aggression (which at the time was only a possibility since aggression against the Soviet Union broke out but a year later.)

(...)

p. 27

On May 28, 1940 the Lithuanian government delivered another note to the government of the Soviet Union informing it that it had created a special commission to investigate the Soviet allegations and repeatedly asking it for more information without which it could not begin its work. The Lithuanian government proposed that representatives from the Soviet garrisons also be a part of the commission.

However, that same evening, TASS publicly declared the accusations against Lithuania. The situation was becoming tragic. Day in and day out Stalin and Molotov were terrorizing the Lithuanian government with reproaches and accusations which it could neither trace nor verify since the authors of these accusations were maliciously sabotaging the investigations. To keep the atmosphere from heating up any further and still believing that relations could be normalized, the Lithuanian government was not making any public declarations. At any rate, it could only categorically deny the accusations made against it and thus come into open conflict with the Soviet Union. Understandably, such a forced silence on the part of the Lithuanian government in view of the accusations, publicly and categorically, lodged against it was making the Lithuanian people very uneasy.

TASS's declaration alluded to an event which actually occurred involving a Red Army soldier by the name of Butayev. The soldier had deserted his unit and gone into hiding somewhere. The Soviet garrison command asked Lithuanian authorities to find Butayev and return him to his unit. The Lithuanian police had a difficult time finding him, more so since they could not publicize the search. They finally succeeded in locating him. When the police asked him to come with them, Butayev jumped out the window and started to run. The police pursued him and Butayev, seeing that there was no escape, shot himself. The incident was reported immediately to the Soviet army command in Lithuania which sent its own commission in to investigate. The commission made a sketch of the area and took possession of the corpse. Initially it was thought that he had shot himself through the mouth since he was bleeding from that orifice. After the Soviets had examined the body and performed an autopsy, it was evident that he had shot himself in the chest. At first there was some doubt as to whether Butayev had shot himself or had been shot at, but the autopsy made clear that he had committed suicide. That was how this particularly unpleasant incident was dealt with at the time. Now, however, TASS had interwoven this incident with its other insinuations seemingly hoping that it would lend them greater credence.

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