Perestroika in Lithuanian Historiography: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Abstract

While history on occasion may appear to be politics projected on the past, politics can also reflect history as projected on the present: witness Mikhail Gorbachev's approval on June 1, 1989, of the formation of a special commission to investigate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939. The Soviet president's decision surprised many people, but Baltic historians had already been attacking the official image of the pact for more than a year. On June 1, as a matter of fact, the Lithuanian offensive on the topic could be called exactly one year old; it was my good fortune in 1988 to have participated in some of the historical debates on the topic. The history of German-Soviet relations in 1939-1940 is fairly well known. According to a secret protocol attached to the pact of August 23, 1939, the Soviets recognized Lithuania as belonging to the German sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. After Soviet troops had moved into eastern Poland, on September 28 the two powers signed a new agreement, according to which Lithuania passed into the Soviet sphere of influence. Moscow then forced the Lithuanians to sign a mutual assistance pact and to admit Soviet troops within their borders; it softened the blow by giving the Lithuanians the city and region of Vilnius, which Soviet forces had just taken from Poland. In the subsequent winter and spring of 1939-1940 the Soviets carefully refrained from overt intervention in Lithuanian domestic affairs. Late in the evening of June 14, 1940, Soviet Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov charged that the Lithuanians had mistreated Soviet soldiers and that the government was plotting provocative actions in conjunction with Latvia and Estonia, its allies in the Baltic Entente. He demanded that the Lithuanians admit more Soviet troops and that they form a new government more friendly to Moscow. Soviet troops poured over the frontier on June 15, and under their watchful eyes the people elected a new legislature, the People's Seimas, which requested incorporation into the Soviet Union. In August 1940 Lithuania became the fourteenth republic of the USSR.