by Prit Buttar
Even while Smetona and his ministers were holding their all-night meeting in Kaunas, Stalin had concluded that the Lithuanian issue was settled, and was moving against Latvia. A group of NKVD soldiers crossed the border into Latvia during the night and attacked a Latvian border post near the town of Masļenki. There was a brief exchange of fire, which left several Latvian soldiers dead or wounded, before the NKVD troops withdrew. They took with them ten Latvian soldiers and 27 civilians as prisoners.36 The purpose of this raid was never made clear, but even as Latvian officials awoke to the news that neighbouring Lithuania was being occupied, they learned of the night’s events in Masļenki. A day later, on 16 June, the Ulmanis government in Riga and the Päts government in Tallinn received ultimatums from Molotov. Citing the meetings of the three Baltic States during the winter, he accused them of plotting against the Soviet Union, and demanded that they allow the Red Army to enter their territory. The two countries also had to agree to create new Soviet-friendly governments, and were given barely eight hours to agree.
Both Estonian and Latvian ministers considered armed resistance. The Estonians were aware that their successes in their war of independence were only possible due to the support of both Finland and the Western Powers, and neither could be relied on in the current crisis; the Red Army was also a far more formidable force than it had been at the end of the First World War. Consequently, the Tallinn government concluded that fighting would be pointless. A few hours after Molotov’s ultimatum, a further message reached Riga, warning that any signs of troop mobilisation would result in the bombing of Latvian cities. Attempts to request the sale of weapons from Germany, or even German diplomatic intervention, were in vain. The governments had no choice but to agree, and Soviet troops crossed into their territory within hours. Ulmanis made a radio announcement to his people even as Soviet tanks rolled into Riga, calling on them to remain calm: ‘I remain in my place,’ he told them, ‘as you should in yours.’37 His words were generally heeded. Nevertheless, noisy demonstrations in Riga by residents of the ‘Moscow’ suburb – an area dominated by Jews and ethnic Russians and Belarusians – escalated into attacks on the Riga police. Shots were fired, leaving three demonstrators dead and 26 injured. Some 67 police officers were also injured before order was restored.38 It later transpired that this incident had been deliberately contrived. Soviet agitators had encouraged the residents of the Moscow suburb to demonstrate energetically, whilst at the same moment Soviet military authorities were urging the police to ensure that strict order was maintained. The purpose of the exercise, it seems, was to increase tension between the ‘downtrodden ethnic minorities’ and the ‘quasi-fascist state’. There were even reports of Soviet soldiers firing into the crowd from their armoured vehicles during the protests.39 There was also violence in the port of Liepāja, though here the Latvian authorities were forbidden from intervening by the Soviet garrison.
Now that the three Baltic States had been swallowed, the process of assimilating them began. Stalin sent some of his most capable colleagues, Andrei Vyshinski and Andrei Zhdanov, to Riga and Tallinn respectively to supervise the creation of pro-Soviet governments. Smetona’s departure from Lithuania was not greeted with universal dismay. Many had grown tired of his dictatorship, which had increasingly been dominated by his own personality cult, and even members of his government had been willing to accept the Soviet ultimatum as a means of getting rid of him. Nevertheless, Dekanozov left nothing to chance, declaring that as Smetona had left the country, he had effectively resigned as President. Although Prime Minister Merkys had resigned, he was now the acting President; Dekanozov had him dismissed. The new head of the government was Justas Paleckis, a left-wing journalist. At first, the government had only a minority of communists, but this increased over time. In any event, the power of the government was strictly curtailed. Dekanozov and his colleagues were effectively running the country.
At the same time, Vyshinski and Zhdanov presented the Ulmanis and Päts governments with lists of ministers for their new governments. Both Baltic leaders rejected the lists, resulting in further orchestrated demonstrations against the nationalist governments. In Tallinn, the protesters surged through police barracks, supported by Soviet troops, and there was a brief exchange of fire between them and the police.40 Again, the governments bowed to the inevitable. Augusts Kirhenšteins became the new government leader in Latvia, and Johannes Vares became the Estonian prime minister. Ulmanis and Päts continued as heads of state until they were forced to resign in mid-July. By the end of the month, both had been taken to the Soviet Union. Ulmanis died in captivity in 1942; Päts, who was returned to Estonia after the war, was forced to receive psychiatric treatment on the grounds that he continued to insist that he was the President of Estonia, and was moved back to the Soviet Union as too many people in Estonia recognised him, even in hospital. He died in 1956. Other significant figures also disappeared into the Soviet Union. Antanas Merkys was arrested when he attempted to flee to Sweden, and was held in captivity until 1954. Although he was released, he was forbidden from returning to Lithuania, and died the following year. Juozas Urbšys, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, was in Moscow for talks, and was simply detained there. He was sent to Siberia, and remained there for 13 years; however, he lived to see the restoration of Lithuanian independence, and died in 1991.
As the new administrations settled down to their tasks, the first to feel the wind of change were the senior officials, both military and civilian, who rapidly found themselves unemployed. The armies were reorganised along Soviet lines, and now included Institutes for Political Instruction. Those politicians who had thought that they might be able to establish a modus vivendi with the Soviet Union began to grow alarmed. The new Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Vincas Mickevičius, met Molotov on 30 June to express concern at how the Lithuanian government was being sidelined by Soviet officials. Molotov’s reply left him in no doubt about what lay ahead: ‘You must take a good look at reality and understand that in the future small nations will have to disappear. Your Lithuania along with the other Baltic nations, including Finland, will have to join the glorious family of the Soviet Union.’41
Mickevičius submitted his resignation on his return to Lithuania, and non-communist members of the three governments began to follow his lead. Meanwhile, it was announced that all three countries would hold new elections in mid-July. Candidates could only be nominated by ‘legal’ institutions; this effectively meant only the communist parties, which were now the only legal political parties. Admittedly, most of the candidates put forward were not members of the communist parties, but to a large extent this reflected their very limited membership. The three communist parties had all been illegal until the arrival of the Red Army the previous month, and in the case of Latvia, most Latvian communists had spent the inter-war years in the Soviet Union, where they were caught up in the Latvian Operation of the late 1930s. In Estonia, opposition groups managed to get 78 candidates nominated, but Zhdanov instructed the government to take steps to invalidate them. Most withdrew in the face of intimidation and violence, and although a few managed to make it to the ballot, their votes were then summarily discounted. Attempts to create lists of alternative candidates in Latvia and Lithuania were also blocked.
The Soviet authorities went to considerable lengths to pressurise people into taking part in the elections. Nevertheless, the turnout in Lithuania was so low that voting was extended by a day. As was usually the case with Soviet-controlled elections, the result was a foregone conclusion. The cynicism of the process was sometimes astonishing. In at least one case – in Estonia – election officials calculated how many votes were required to record a turnout of 99.6 per cent, and topped up the completed ballot papers with unused ones to achieve the total.42 Nobody can have been surprised when it was announced that over 90 per cent of the votes in each country were in favour of the list of communist candidates. Documents found in Estonia after Soviet forces were driven out in 1941 showed that the C
entral Electoral Committee alone forged over 35,000 votes, presumably in addition to malpractice at lower levels.43
The three new People’s Assemblies met on 21 July. Their first acts were to declare the creation of Soviet Socialist Republics, followed by application for membership of the USSR. This amounted to the total of their political activity. Delegates were dispatched to Moscow, where the Supreme Soviet received the applications for membership on 1 August. Within six days, it had accepted all three applications. The Baltic States had effectively ceased to exist as independent nations. As a final settlement of German and Soviet bargaining, Moscow paid Berlin $7.5 million in gold as compensation for Germany not receiving the south-west part of Lithuania. It was the culmination of an extraordinary series of events, in which the Soviet Union had effectively conquered the Baltic States with barely a shot fired. Heavily involved in fighting in the west, Hitler was in no position to intervene, even if he had wanted to.
Another feature of the agreement between Moscow and Berlin related to the fate of ethnic Germans in the Baltic States. Since 1938, Nazi Germany had pursued a policy known as Heim ins Reich, under which German communities living outside Germany were encouraged to return to their homeland. Even prior to the Soviet takeover of the Baltic States, treaties had been agreed with Latvia and Estonia to allow Baltic Germans to sell their possessions and return to Germany, where they would be used to repopulate the annexed portions of Poland. By spring 1940, nearly 14,000 Baltic Germans had left Estonia, and about 51,000 had left Latvia. Many Baltic Germans chose to stay in Estonia and Latvia, but over the next year the Soviet annexations of the three Baltic States made the majority think again. In addition, as German plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union developed, Berlin sought to remove as many Germans as possible from what it foresaw would become a war zone. Consequently, an additional 7,000 Baltic Germans now left Estonia, and 10,500 left Latvia. Like those who had departed the previous year, most went to what had been western Poland. When they arrived in Poland, they were carefully assessed according to their racial purity, before they were given Polish farms and businesses to replace those that they had left behind in Estonia and Latvia; the money from the sale of their previous possessions was kept by the German state.44
Full-scale Sovietisation of the Baltic States swiftly followed their annexation, with nationalisation of private firms, both small and large. The departure of the Baltic Germans, who despite the reforms of the 1920s and 1930s had remained major landowners, did a great deal to accelerate the process. Although workers received substantial pay rises, these lagged far behind galloping inflation, leaving almost everyone far worse off. But while these changes caused hardship, the most significant impact of the Soviet occupation was from a series of arrests, commencing at the time of the elections. Seen from a Soviet point of view, these mass arrests made perfect sense. Marxist doctrine stated that a primary purpose of any organisation is to perpetuate itself. Therefore, it was reasoned, organisations that had existed before Sovietisation would attempt to recreate themselves in their pre-Soviet shape. In order to ensure that all parts of society developed in line with Soviet thinking, it was necessary to carry out radical surgery to prevent any such process. And, of course, the widespread fear created by such radical surgery would guarantee that social control was maintained.
The number of arrests increased steadily through 1940, reaching an average of over 200 per week in Lithuania alone by the end of the year. Most of those arrested received only the most rudimentary legal process. Distinct categories were drawn up for the arrests, including members of any anti-Soviet political parties, jail guards, former Czarist and White Russian officers and former White Russian volunteers, men who had been officers in the armies of the Baltic nations, Polish officers who had sought refuge in Lithuania, people who had been expelled from the communist parties, clergy, former landowners and industrialists, high-ranking civil servants, and all those with foreign ties. This latter group included those with completely innocent links with the outside world, such as philatelists.45 Even though the Soviets continued to try to exploit ethnic differences, being a Jew or an ethnic Russian was no protection against arrest if the individual conformed to one of the identified groups:
It has been discovered that the entire staff of the Jewish School in Liepāja is made up of reactionary elements, who were already working in the school during the Ulmanis era and had been put in place by the Ulmanis regime, while Komsomol members with education certificates and training were not taken on.46
At first, the NKVD found it difficult to identify people in these groups, as they had to rely on Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian documents, and struggled with the language barriers they faced. Consequently, it was only in 1941, shortly before the German invasion, that mass arrests and deportations really gathered pace. The NKVD was long-practised in such activities, and it seems that planning started in detail in May, when Lavrenti Beria, the head of the NKVD, handed Stalin plans drawn up by one of his deputies, Vsevolod Merkulov, entitled ‘An Operation to Cleanse the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics of Anti-Soviet, Criminal and Socially Dangerous Elements’.47 A few months earlier, communist party workers in the three countries had been exhorted to start identifying ‘enemies of the people’. Late on 13 June, the arrests began. Thousands of people were rounded up and herded onto cattle trains, which rumbled off on the first stage of the long journey to Siberia. It is not known how many died before they reached their destination; some estimates put the figure as high as 40 per cent.48 In some cases – particularly officers of the old nationalist armies – those arrested were simply shot on the spot. By 17 June, Merkulov was able to report to Stalin that 40,170 people had been rounded up in the three countries.
The effect of these deportations on the population of the three Baltic States was enormous. Combined with other losses – ethnic Germans had already left for Germany, and the June wave of arrests was merely the largest and latest in a process that had begun with the arrival of the Red Army in force the previous year – it is estimated that Estonia lost 60,000 citizens, Latvia 35,000, and Lithuania 34,000 before the departure of the Soviets in 1941.49 The high figure for Estonia is probably due to the fact that it was the last area to be overrun by the Wehrmacht, and the Soviets therefore had additional time for further arrests, and for conscription into the Red Army after the German invasion began. However, it could have been worse. There are indications that a second wave of mass arrests was planned for late in June. One Lithuanian government official later claimed to have seen a document suggesting that up to 700,000 deportations were envisaged from Lithuania alone.50 Although this seems a huge number, amounting to perhaps a quarter of the population, it is consistent with the scale of deportations seen within the Soviet Union, particularly in 1944 and after, when Stalin exacted a terrible revenge on the ethnic communities that he regarded as having been friendly to the Germans.
Whilst the deportations resulted in widespread terror in all three countries, they also hardened anti-Semitic feelings in Lithuania and Latvia. The Jews were widely seen as being pro-Soviet, and there was a general view that they had played a major part in the deportations. In some cases, events were remembered in a way that emphasised the role of the Jews in the Communist Party:
When they began to ship the people away [aboard the cattle trains], the tension between Jews and Lithuanians reached its peak. When the truck carrying Russian soldiers drove into the village to round people up, a young Jew came with them, wearing the red star. And one saw that the Russian soldiers were not to blame for what happened, that the leader and chief executioner was just this one.51
The bitter irony was that in many of the categories of those arrested, the Jews deported during June formed a greater percentage of deportees than Jews made up in the overall population – in other words, the Jewish communities suffered more in percentage terms than Lithuanians and Latvians. Moreover, many Jews did not welcome the annexation of Lithuania and Latvia by the Sov
iet Union, and tried to escape from the region. The Japanese Consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, collected information about German and Soviet moves for his government, using a number of Polish officers and officials who had fled to Lithuania after their country was overrun by its neighbours and had since avoided arrest. He used his position to grant them Japanese passports, and arranged for some to travel by rail to the Soviet Far East and from there to Japan. Over time, many Jews also contacted Sugihara, and several thousand escaped via the same route; they travelled on from Japan to Palestine and the United States.52 Nevertheless, in other areas of life, too, there was huge resentment at the apparent advancement of Jews and ethnic Russians in preference to Baltic nationals. In Latvia, Jews played a prominent part in many media, such as the (state-controlled) press, films and radio. After the years of the Ulmanis regime’s policy of ‘Latvia for Latvians’, when ethnic minorities were generally marginalised, even a relatively small increase in the presence of Jews in the media would have been immediately noticeable. Even Latvian members of the Communist Party were worried at the way things were developing; one recorded that ‘The Russians are stirring up hatred between nationalities everywhere.’53 It was inevitable that when the opportunity came, Lithuanians and Latvians would not be slow to take their revenge.
Chapter 2
ROSENBERG, GENERALPLAN OST AND PREPARATIONS FOR BARBAROSSA
Alfred Rosenberg was born in 1893 in Tallinn, which was then part of the Czar’s empire. His parents were Baltic Germans, descendants of settlers who had come to the area during preceding centuries; his father was a businessman from Latvia, and his mother was from the Estonian community of Baltic Germans. He studied in Riga and Moscow, and left for Germany when the Bolsheviks seized power, having chosen to support the White Russian cause. He was an early adherent of the National Socialists, and together with his mentor, Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, he was one of those who planned the failed ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ of 1923. Scheubner-Richter was killed during the attempted putsch – he was shot while walking arm in arm with Hitler, and as he fell he dislocated Hitler’s shoulder – and Rosenberg became leader of the National Socialists while Hitler was in prison. It was not a particularly successful appointment, and Hitler later suggested that he had deliberately chosen someone who would not be able to supplant him in the long term.1 Given that there was no reason at the time to doubt that Rosenberg would do a competent job, and that Hitler cannot have known how long he would be incarcerated, this comment may well have been made with the benefit of hindsight.
