IV An Uncertain Winter “We declare that the twaddle about ‘sovietization’ of the Baltic countries is useful only to our common enemies and to all sorts of anti-Soviet provocateurs.” —Molotov, October 31, 1939 “On this occasion I cannot stop without having expressed my satisfaction with the high leadership of the Soviet Union.” —Antanas Merkys, to the Lithuanian Seimas, October 28, 1939 “The need for order is greater and more important that the need for freedom.” —Domas Cesevičius, head of the Tautininkų sąjunga The winter of 1939–1940, between the first and the second intrusion of Soviet forces into Lithuania, constitutes a point d’appui for sharply conflicting interpretations of the subsequent sovietization of the country. At the one extreme Soviet historians celebrated the good behavior of the Red Army units in Lithuania and focused their attention on the authoritarian practices of the Smetona regime as well as on the social and economic troubles of the country. In their interpretation, the Red Army did not compromise Lithuania’s sovereignty; it only strengthened its security. At the other extreme, writers critical of the Soviet system have pictured the Soviet forces as simply biding their time while Lithuanians desperately looked for a way to escape the noose; in their accounts, there would seem to have been little sympathy in Lithuania for the prospects of joining the world of Joseph Stalin. In between these extremes lie all the various denunciations of the Stalin regime and the Smetona regime as well as explanations of the imperatives of Realpolitik in the chaos of the developing World War. The question of Soviet attitudes toward Germany and toward the conflict between Germany and the Anglo-French alliance lies at or near the core of all the controversies in understanding and evaluating Soviet policies in the Baltic in the period from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in August 1939 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Did the pact arise from defensive or aggressive motives? Was it a means of avoiding conflict with Germany or of encouraging Germany’s conflict with the western democracies so as to improve the prospects of the spread of Soviet communism across Europe? This study concerns itself with the Soviet move into Lithuania; therefore, Stalin’s motives in approving the agreements of August 23 and September 28 lie outside its purview. Nevertheless one must consider Stalin’s own comprehension of Hitler’s intentions after the start of the war and what he could do about them. 66 Alfred Erich Senn Did the almighty Soviet leader view the non-aggression and friendship pacts of 1939 as a stopgap measure to win time in preparing for an inevitable attack? (And then did he actually prepare for such an attack?) Or did he accept the pacts at their face value and did the Soviet government really mean its repeated public declarations of German-Soviet friendship in that crucial period? Between these two extremes, there are other lines of thought suggesting that over time Stalin’s position gradually shifted from a calculated acceptance of the German initiative in 1939 as a useful agreement with considerable territorial compensation, over to a genuine belief that Hitler would not recklessly attack the Soviet state. The events of 1941–1945 so colored the historical memory of the pre-war period that the modern reader can all too easily dismiss the propaganda fog that obscured the actual course of events in 1939–1940 and confused the people of Lithuania and the Baltic. In the fall of 1939, as Soviet forces took their positions in the three Baltic republics, many people in those states were predicting conflict between the Soviets and the Germans, and government leaders in Lithuania believed that the western Allies would defeat Germany in the war. For Lithuanians, to be sure, the prospect of an Allied victory raised concern about the future of the Vilnius region. The Soviet press, meanwhile, trumpeted German-Soviet friendship, and both the Soviet government and the Soviet press evidenced far more hostility toward Britain and France than to Germany. Soviet officials constantly pointed out that Lithuania had now received Vilnius not once but twice from Soviet largesse—and what had the League of Nations or England or France done for Lithuania? Moscow pressed the Lithuanians to yield to Germany’s economic demands and objected to Lithuanian sympathies for the cause of the western powers. As time went by, and Berlin and Moscow strengthened their political and economic relations, the German-Soviet “axis,” as Lietuvos aidas called it, seemed to become stronger, and Soviet propaganda services denounced any who doubted the firmness of German-Soviet friendship. Once Stalin’s Moscow had established the line of German-Soviet friendship, it was difficult, if not dangerous, for Soviet citizens to suggest anything else. In his memoirs of this period, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg related that when he returned to Moscow from Paris in the late summer of 1940, he was convinced that the Germans intended to attack the Soviet Union. The Moscow press, however, declared “that friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Germany had grown stronger.” Ehrenburg spoke of his concern to Solomon Dridzo-Lozovsky, a deputy commissar of foreign affairs, but Lozovsky “listened to me absent-mindedly, without looking at me and with a melancholy expression.” When Ehrenburg challenged his nonchalance, Lozovsky replied, “Personally I find it very interesting. But you know that we have a different policy.” 120 Whatever Molotov’s own views might have been—he was a member of the Politburo as.