LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 24, No.1 - Spring 1978 Editor of this issue: Kęstutis Girnius ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1978 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

SAMIZDAT DOCUMENT ON SUSLOV'S ROLE IN LITHUANIA

The following document is a samizdat publication that circulated for a while in Lithuania, It appeared in a somewhat amended and abridged form in the first issue of the underground publication Varpas (The Bell). The sources cited at the end of the document are part of it, while the footnotes at the bottom of the page are the editor's annotations.

MIKHAIL SUSLOV—THE SECOND HANGMAN OF LITHUANIA

On the second day of the German-Russian war (June 23, 1941), almost all of Lithuania was in the hands of Lithuanian insurrectionists. (More than four thousand Lithuanian partisans died.) Because of this the German Army's losses in Lithuania were very insignificant. Yet despite this the Germans considered Lithuania an occupied territory and dismissed the Provisional Government 1. This action evoked the resistance of the Lithuanian populace against the new occupier. On May 13, 1942, the chief of police of Marijampolė, Schwarz, wrote to his superior in Kaunas concerning this resistance. He described the public demonstration of the people of Marijampolė that occurred when the Germans began to draft Lithuanians into auxiliary units of their army: ". . . between 3,000 and 4,000 people, two-thirds of them women and girls, came and started shouting to those detained: 'We are not Germans, do not go to the front,' and the like. Some of the draftees tore the white armbands from their arms, threw them on the ground, and stamped on them. At that moment seventy percent of the students from the Marijampolė Teacher's Academy and the high school arrived to support the demonstration. They assembled and sang the Lithuanian National Anthem, Lithuanian folk songs, and massed in the streets to march in a column into the city. They stoned a truck filled with soldiers of the Wehrmacht, which was driving in that direction. At this time the demonstrators unfurled flags and carried them in the column . . . while the National Anthem was being sung the policemen stood at attention, and two of them wept . . ."

Regardless of this and other acts of resistance against the occupiers by the Lithuanian nation, all realized that the returning Bolsheviks would doubtlessly avenge themselves on the Lithuanian nation for the insurrection of June 23. Therefore, Soviet propaganda spared no efforts to calm our nation, so that, seized by fear, it would not mobilize and, fully armed, stand together with the German occupiers to meet 'the liberating army.'

On December 2,1943, Moscow released "An Appeal to the Lithuanian Nation," signed by A. Sniečkus 2, J. Paleckis 3, and M. Gedvilas 4, which began with the following words: "Lithuanian brothers and sisters!" It enumerated the achievements of the Lithuanian nation in the struggle against the German occupiers and then these reassurances followed: "Do not believe the lies of the Germans and the Kubiliūnininka 5

that Soviet rule will pour its vengeance on the Lithuanians. Lithuanians! You did not bow your heads before the fascist occupiers . . . You destroyed the Nazi plans to mobilize the men of Lithuania into the Nazi army. You ruined the Nazi attempts to create a bandit legion of the Lithuanian SS. In this you dealt the Germans a painful blow . . ." The appeal ended with the slogan: "Long live the glorious Lithuanian nation, heroically struggling against the Nazi occupiers."

Early in 1944, on Stalin's orders, Major Gladkov was demonstrably removed from his position as the head of the NKGB of the Lithuanian SSR and was succeeded by A. Guzevičius 6. This was to show the Lithuanian nation that only Lithuanians would serve in the Lithuanian secret police, that the Red terror would not be the political instrument it was in 1940-1941.

In April 1944, an appeal of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, the Lithuanian Council of Ministers, the C.P.L., and the Lithuanian Communist Youth League declared: "Our Lithuanian nation cannot bear the responsibility for the deeds of a handful of disgusting butchers . . ."

On July 5, 1944, the Supreme Soviet, the Council of Ministers, the Central Committee of the C.P.L., acting on Stalin's orders of May 1, 1944, issued the appeal "Dear Lithuanian brothers and sisters!" Once again the Lithuanian nation, distrustful of the Communists, was reassured: "We know very well that the Lithuanian nation stood uphonorably during these hard historical trials, and that it is and cannot be held responsible for the treacherous deeds of the renegades Kubiliūnas, Ramanauskas 7, and others . . . Great is the suffering which our nation bore. But the noble spirit of the Lithuanian nation has not been broken, her honor has not been stained. The Lithuanian nation heroically resists the German pillagers . . ." The entire Chekist underground and Moscow radio, which translated Lithuanian programs eight times daily for a total of four hours and five minutes, were harnessed to the movement to Russify Lithuania.

However, a very great part of the Lithuanian nation, particularly its intelligentsia, did not let itself be fooled. Only those intellectuals remained in Lithuania who were prevented by circumstances from withdrawing to the West, who had decided to fight in the underground, and those who were convinced that Soviet rule had taken a turn for the better.

Soon the true face was revealed. In 1940 the Red Army in Lithuania was disciplined and correct, but it returned to Lithuania in 1944 full of vengeance. It did as it pleased.

On October 1,1944, according to the Russified Soblys's 8 Order No. 1, "Concerning the mobilization of the draftees born between 1909-26," the new occupiers, transgressing against the 52nd article of the Hague Convention which prohibits the mobilization of a country's citizens into an occupying army, proclaimed a general mobilization in Lithuania. However even before the formal declaration of the mobilization, units of the Red Army surrounded entire villages to capture their men, shoot those who tried to flee, transported them to district towns, laid them down in the market and other public places, mocked their bodies, and led mothers and other family members to look at them, demanding that they recognize their sons. In July Lithuania's horizons were lit up by flames that died down only after 10-15 years. In his memoirs "The Forest Front" Albertas Barauskas 9 admits that Lithuanian members of Soviet partisan units were disarmed, placed in uniform, and sent to the front. Former members of the 29th Territorial Corps 10, who had hid in their homes during the German occupation, were arrested and placed in death brigades. The few who survived were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Altogether about 40-45 thousand captured Lithuanian youths were clothed in Russian uniforms. No one bothered to count the number that died.

Usually the towns of 'liberated Lithuania' were handed over in three or four hours to Major Gen. Isak Kabukov's NKVD troops who made mass arrests and sent 'the enemies of the people' to concentration camps. In September these units were replaced by new NKVD detachments under the command of Major Gen. Vasily Kiseliov.

Meanwhile Stalin, who saw that the Germans did not succeed in mobilizing two hundred thousand Lithuanians into their army and that the Western Powers were silently acquiescing to the slavery he was imposing on the nations of Eastern Europe, discarded his disguise. A. Guzevičius was removed from his post and replaced by the Russian Major Gen. Piotr Kapralov. The former assistant to the Head of Internal Security, Colonel Balys Baranauskas, was made head of the agricultural section of the Central Committee of the C.P.L.

At this time the 4th Infantry Division of the NKVD enforced order in Lithuania and was soon reinforced by the 7th Division. Kapralov transported a thousand Chekists into Lithuania. After Lithuania's 'liberation,' the following NKVD border detachments, all under the command of Major Gen. Bonych, comprised still further reinforcements: the 20th border regiment (under the command of Major Yatsenko),, operating in the Vilnius sector (the districts of Vilnius, Trakai, and Alytus); the 33rd Koenigsberg border regiment (chief of staff Colonel Govorov), also in the Vilnius sector; the 31st border regiment (led by Col. Kotov), in the Vilnius sector; the 12th Riga border regiment (under Col. Timofeev), in the district of Švenčionis); the 86th Koenigsberg border regiment (under Col. Tselikov), in the district of Panevėžys; the 13th Minsk border regiment (under Guards Col. Khemieliuk), in the district of Marijampolė; the 217th border regiment, operating in the district of Ukmergė.

Beside the aforementioned 4th and 7th NKVD divisions and the border regiments, the Lithuanian border district, equivalent to a whole division, under the command of Major Gen. Byckovski, fought the Lithuanian partisans. For its 'merits' this district was awarded two Orders of Lenin and an Order of the Red Star. 'When the need arose' other units of the NKVD were also ordered into Lithuania. NKVD units were stationed for years in the forests and the Lithuanian villages adjacent to them.

During these decisive years in the struggle for the existence of the Lithuanian nation, the LLA 11 was comprised of 100-110 thousand armed men. According to unofficial sources, about thirty thousand died in 1944-1945. According to official documents, forty thousand surrendered to the authorities at the conclusion of the war. The rest fought on for seven to eight years in an uneven and hopeless struggle, presenting the occupiers with a 'justification' for the physical and spiritual destruction of the Lithuanian nation.

Approximate calculations show that during World War II and the years immediately after, 850,000 Lithuanians were either killed, fled, or were deported from Lithuania, Thus, Lithuania lost a third of its inhabitants (A. Stanaitis, P. Adlys, Lietuvos TSR Gyventojai, 1973, p. 13).

We do not know the resolutions of the Third Plenum of the C.P.L., but it seems that they aroused the Kremlin's dissatisfaction with the Lithuanian Communists. As a consequence the All-Union Communist Party's October 30, 1944 resolution "Concerning the deficiencies in the work of the C.P.L." accused the Lithuanian Communists of a lack of zeal in implementing the land reform and of "insufficient determination in uncovering Lithuanian-German bourgeois nationalists." On November 11, 1944, an All-Union Communist Party Central Committee bureau for Lithuanian affairs was organized 12, and Mikhail Suslov appointed its chairman. He brought with himself a detailed plan for the spiritual and physical destruction of the Lithuanian nation.

Hitler had said: "Were there no Jews, we would have to invent them." Because the hybrid 'Lithuanian-German nationalist' did not exist, Suslov invented him. This was a conscious act of Chekist treachery! Of the roughly four million soldiers of the Red Army captured by the Germans, a million agreed to serve under the German colors. Soviet historians calculate that only eight thousand Lithuanians were in that number. However, even to this day Suslov has not once called Vlasov 13 a Russian-German nationalist. Although about sixty thousand Belgians, one hundred thousand Frenchmen, and volunteers of other countries served in SS and other German formations, Suslov has never accused the Belgians, the French, much less the Russians, of treason. But the Lithuanians?—Here is another fact! Only 286 volunteers enlisted in the SS legion that the Germans were organizing. Thus, on March 17, 1943, the Germans cancelled the formation of the legion, closed all the higher educational institutions of Lithuania, and deported many Lithuanian intellectuals to concentration camps. On November 8, 1966, the Soviet journalist L. Steponauskas wrote in an article in Tiesa 14 that 3,250 Lithuanians were imprisoned in Dachau alone. But the majority of them, to use the expression of M. Suslov, were 'Lithuanian-German nationalists', because according to official documents only thirty-eight Communists were deported from Lithuania to Germany.

Thus, despite their heroic conduct during the German occupation, the Lithuanians, almost all Lithuanians (excluding the handful of Communists who numbered 1,177 on October 1,1945) were declared German collaborators and were in fact placed outside the law. Every Russian colonist could now, without fear of punishment, shoot, imprison, send to concentration camps, or deport Lithuanians to Siberia.

On August 24,1944, the Soviets began to organize the so-called 'battalions of destruction (istrebitelnyi)' renamed 'defenders of the people' on December 18, 1945. There were about six thousand of them at the end of 1946. For more than a year, fifty percent of the 'stribai' 15 received no salary, and on half of them received food coupons. From August 1, 1945, they received a salary of forty cervonc per month, when a loaf of bread cost six or eight cervonc. This meant that Suslov actually sanctioned the pillaging of the Lithuanian nation. Most of the 'stribai' were Russian Old-Believers and Russian prisoners of war who had been sheltered by Lithuanians. The latter, fearful of Stalin's repressions for having been captured by the Germans, showed particular zeal in robbing and killing Lithuanians.

It is claimed today that the Lithuanian partisans killed about eighteen thousand inhabitants of Lithuania. Understandably some of those killed were decent Lithuanians. Suslov, who controlled the fictitious staff of the Lithuanian partisans that was led by J. Markulis 16 (now an associate professor in the faculty of Medicine at the University of Vilnius) and V. Pečiūra, used the partisans to treacherously murder Lithuania's inhabitants.

On Suslov's orders, secret instructions to the NKVD stationed in Lithuania claimed that the Lithuanian 'bandits' killed all Russians. The January 14, 1945 letter of the Chief Political Instructor of the 4th NKVD division, Col. Ivan Gerasimenko, sent to the political units of all U.S.S.R. NKVD divisions characteristically states: "One old Russian was burned alive . . . There have been cases recorded of the bandits slaughtering entire Russian families." At the same time Russian members of the Lithuanian Communist Youth League were publishing their newspaper Svobodnoje slovo (The Free Word).

It is noteworthy that until 1957 the occupier's propaganda was almost completely silent about German atrocities and sought to place all the blame on the Lithuanian-German nationalists. Balys Sruoga's 17 memoirs Forests of the Gods were not allowed to be published for many years. The Russian-speaking had to be convinced that all Lithuanians collaborated with the Germans. With this aim in mind reports from the trials of Lithuanian partisans were almost exclusively published in Sovietskaja Litva. Thus, one should not be surprised that, unable to find Lithuanian partisans in the forests, the NKVD indiscriminately killed every Lithuanian man and adolescent, frequently placing the blame for these murders on the Lithuanian partisans.

In a March 8, 1963 meeting with writers and artists, N. Khrushchev admitted that "Stalin aimed to destroy a large part of the creative intelligentsia of the Soviet Ukraine." Obviously Stalin's plans for the Lithuanian intelligentsia did not differ.

In the twenty years of its independence Lithuania did not have time to educate a numerous intelligentsia. During 1922-1940 the University of Vytautas the Great in Kaunas prepared 3,769 specialists, many of whom (particularly lawyers, doctors, and businessmen) were not Lithuanians. Many died in 1940-1941, many were murdered by the Germans. In 1944 most of those surviving withdrew to the West: 90% of graduate foresters, about 400 engineers, 300 doctors, 350 lawyers, 230 priests, 2,000 university students, 3,300 high school students, 300 primary grade teachers, 800 high school teachers, and more than 400 of the staff of the institutions of higher education (more than half). Understandably only a very limited number of intellectuals remained. However, Stalin decided to destroy even them. On Suslov's initiative the Fourth Plenum of the C.P.L. was called in order to legalize the genocide of the Lithuanian nation. Suslov made such an address that, even now after twenty-eight years, he did not dare to include it in his selected works.

Remembering Stalin's words that "the border regions do not easily lend themselves to destruction" (a frequent complaint of the Russian Tsars), Suslov quoted Lenin, who argued that it is better "to capture and incarcerate, sometimes even shoot a hundred traitors than to wait until they themselves start shooting."

Falsifying the historical facts, Suslov asserted that the LLA was formed "according to the directives of the German Gestapo . . . and in many cases was led by German officers." In the Plenum Suslov unambiguously accused the Lithuanian Communists of alleged liberalism in the struggle with the Lithuanian nation's resistance: ". . . one must be reminded that the Republic's Party organization from the Central Committee to the Party's primary organizational units should demonstrate an uncompromising attitude toward bourgeois nationalists, even with those nationalists who carry a Party card in their pockets . . ." The style of A. Sniečkus's speech at the Plenum shows that , it was translated from Russian. He also declared that the Party's chief task was "the struggle with the politically suspect, foreign, and even at times hostile elements."

Cognizant of the fact that during the German occupation the Lithuanian administration sabotaged all the German efforts to economically exploit and colonize Lithuania, Suslov decided now to Russify and destroy Lithuania. After the Fourth Plenum the 'Lithuanian-German nationalists' in Lithuania's administration began to melt away. They were arrested at night . . . even for merely knowing a foreign language, or because they had visited a foreign country during  the years of independence. Even former prisoners of German concentration camps were jailed because they had become too clever by surviving.

The Lithuanian Writers' Association was subjected to particularly severe repressions and lost over forty members; i.e., more than half. Characteristically—V. Montvila, K. Jakubė-nas, and K. Boruta had been jailed more than once by the Smetona regime 18. Montvila was shot by the Germans, Jakubėnas and Boruta were arrested by the Bolsheviks. Finally after returning from a concentration camp in Kazachstan and still showing no desire 'to improve,' K. Jakubėnas was killed early in 1950. The following were deported to concentration camps: j. Keliuotis, A. Poška, A. Miškinis, J. Greičiūnas, A. Biliūnas, P. Juodelis, A. Vengrys, and others. With the aid of sadistic moral methods Genrikas Zimanas 19 succeeded in ruining the broken health of Balys Sruoga, a former prisoner of a German concentration camp, and driving him prematurely to his grave.

From August 15,1945 to June 1,1946, over sixty percent of the chairmen and vice-chairmen of city and district Executive Committees were replaced. In 1946, 2,414 employees of the state administration were fired, and Russian colonists were appointed to their posts. As of April 1,1945, 6,116 'specialists' with primary and incomplete secondary education were sent to Lithuania. Cattle-cars were routed to Russia, packed with 'politically suspect and foreign elements,' including the citizens of Marijampolė who had stoned the German occupiers and were now singing the Lithuanian National Anthem in tears. They passed by the 'specialists' travelling to Lithuania in comfortable trains.

The Fourth Plenum of the C.P.L. removed the Second Party Secretary,V. Niunka, replacing him with A.M. Isachenko The post of the Third Secretary was filled by a merchant from the Ukraine who called himself Kazimieras Liaudis; Mamaev and Sokolov became assistants to the Chairman of the Lithuanian Council of Ministers.

Because Lithuanians did not wish to enroll in the Party and Suslov also prevented them from joining (of the 638 Lithuanian Communists who survived the German occupation, only forty-six were readmitted, while fifty-seven new members were newly registered; it is not clear how many were Lithuanians), Russians were soon in charge of these Lithuanian departments: communications and mail—Kharitonov (later, for twenty years—Bielianin); the municipal economy— Astafaev; the State Bank—Biriukov (after the latter's embezzlements—Edinovic); Department of Energy—Bosaev; railroads—Kozukovskii; Department of Fuel—Yevdokimov; cellulose and paper industry—Filipionok; light industry— Teriosin; fisheries—Zasypkin; local industry—Skodin; productive co-operatives—Kalugin; timber industry— Ponomanev; agricultural co-operatives—Mamaev.

Russified Lithuanians who never did learn to speak Lithuanian, such as Bartašiūnas, Augustinaitis, V. Banaitis, Penkauskas, Vladas Martinaitis, Mikutis, Žemaitis, and others, began to supervise a number of sectors of the economy and other departments.

Even the zealous Guzevičius was appointed only to the post of chairman of Cultural-Educational Affairs. Suslov remained dissatisfied even with these results. He ordered the convening of the Fifth Plenum. The speeches that Suslov delivered are also absent from his selected works. During the Fifth Plenum of the Central Committee of the C.P.L., which met on April 10, 1945, Suslov declared: "We are obligated not to lessen but to intensify the work of purging the personnel of the Soviet economy from hostile and foreign elements, treating this not as a short-term campaign, but systematically and with determination—that is our first task."

On April 4-6, 1946, the Ninth Plenum was in session, and once more demands were voiced that the NKVD and the security police intensify the struggle with the Lithuanian-German nationalists.

It is difficult to conceive the whole magnitude of the crimes committed in Lithuania. An underground publication dedicated to Victory Day 20 asserts that of the 540,000 inhabitants of Lithuania killed between 1940-1950, roughly half died after May 9, 1945, More than ten percent of all Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. Mikhail Suslov was the initiator of all these killings and deportations.

Mikhail Murav'ev, the suppressor of Lithuania's Insurrection of 1863, hung, killed, jailed or deported to Siberia around ten thousand Lithuanians. For his merits, the Tsar conferred upon him the title of 'Graf.' The Lithuanian nation 'baptized' him The Hangman. The number of Suslov's victims in Lithuania is ten-fold. The new Russian Tsar bestowed on him the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, the Order of Lenin, and several other orders. For a long time now the Lithuanian nation has considered him The Second Hangman.

A widely disseminated rumor has it that after the Fourth Plenum Suslov told a narrow group of like-minded individuals: "Lithuania will be without Lithuanians." In 1946 he left Lithuania convinced that his dreams will come true. But the riots in Kaunas and Vilnius ten years later showed that the Lithuanian nation was still alive. In July 1960, he personally traveled to Lithuania to become convinced of this. On the day of his arrival, a new riot by the people of Kaunas occurred in the Sports Hall during the U.S.S.R. boxing championships. During the demonstration the police killed ten youths and wounded another dozen or so. The car cavalcade transporting Suslov's party was halted by the funeral procession at whose head were borne the caskets of the dead. Angered by the insolence of the people of Kaunas, The Second Hangman commandeered an airplane and flew off (although it is known that he can barely stand plane rides), refusing to attend an official reception at an officer's club and to see the Song Festival. The Second Hangman returned to Lithuania two more times. Both times all traffic at the Vilnius railroad station was halted and all passengers evicted. None of Russia's Tsars were as well guarded as this one.

Hitler's associate Hess has now been in jail for thirty-five years, but Stalin's lackey M. Suslov freely travels the world and is received with respect. In their sleep retired Western diplomats frequently rub their hands in their pillows, hands that once greeted Hitler, Ribbentrop, Goering, and other Nazis. Contemporary Western diplomats do not find a need to clean their hands after greeting Suslov. But let them know that the hands of M. Suslov, who pretends to be a decent man, are far more bloody than those of Hess, that the blood of the Lithuanian and other nations has not yet dried.

1 The formation of the Provisional Government was announced on Kaunas radio on June 23. Its aim was to restore Lithuania's independence and to take over the administration of the country before the German s consolidated their rule. Ignored by the German authorities, it was forced to resign on August 5, 1941. For more information about the German and Soviet occupations, see V. Stanley Vardys (ed.), Lithuania Under the Soviets: Portrait of a Nation, 1940-1965 (New York: Praeger, 1965).
2 Antanas Sniečkus was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party (henceforth, C.P.L.) from 193o until his death in 1973.
3 Justas Paleckis was appointed by the Soviets to be their first puppet Prime Minister and acting President of Lithuania after Lithuania's occupation in June, 1940.
4 Mečislovas Gedvilas was Lithuania's first Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
5 'Kubiliūnininkai' was a derogatory term for the associates of Gen. Petras Kubiliūnas, the first Counselor General of Lithuania during the German
occupation. After the war he was kidnapped from the Western zone of Germany by the Soviets, returned to Lithuania, and secretly executed.
6 Aleksandras Guzevičius was the People's Commissar of the Interior in 1940-1941.
7 Adolfas Ramanauskas was the General Counselor for agricultural affairs during the German occupation.
8 Jonas Soblys fought with the Red Army against the Lithuanian government in 1919. That year he fled to the U.S.S.R. where he resided until 1944. He was Lithuania's Military Commissar in 1944-1945.
9 Albertas Barauskas was a leader of Soviet partisans in Lithuania. In his memoirs Miškų frontuose (Vilnius, 1968), he mentions that he was disarmed, sternly interrogated, but released. He writes (p. 351): "More than two thirds of the members of my partisan unit shortly donned army uniforms and together with the Red Army joined in the further struggle against the cruel enemy."
10 In August 1940, the Lithuanian army was integrated into the Red Army and renamed the 29th Territorial Corps. At the start of the war many of the troops revolted and refused to retreat into Russia. On several occasions they arrested political commissars and attacked Soviet troops.
11 Lietuvos Laisves Armija (The Lithuanian Freedom Army), a conspiratorial resistance organization, was formed in 1942. Its units called Vanagai (Hawks) fought against the Russians in Western Lithuania at the end of 1944, at which time many of its leaders were killed or captured. The designation LLA was also generally applied to all Lithuanian partisan units, many of which appeared and operated without instructions from any organized central command.
12 The existence and power of this bureau was confirmed by Col. Burlitski of the NKVD, who defected to the West in 1953. In his testimony to the Kersten Committee, he declared:
For instance, at the central committee for the Lithuanian Communist Party the Soviet Government had created a bureau, ORG bureau, organizational bureau. This ORG Bureau which was established by the Soviet Government was headed a t that time by d member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and now one of the secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Suslov. This ORC Bureau in actuality was the supreme party, exercised party leadership, and was superior in its functions and in its rights to the central committee of the Communist Party of the Lithuanian Republic . . . The ORG Bureau as its principal aim had the liquidation, the securing of power and the liquidation of the so-called bandit movement in the territory of Lithuania. The ORG Bureau in actuality took over the entire political, administrative, and economic life of the Republic. Any kind of orders or directives which were issued by this Suslov were a must for the government of Lithuania. 
Fourth Interim Report of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, Eighty-Third Congress, Second Session, pp. 1371-72.
13 Colonel Gen. Andrei A. Vlasov, Red Army commander captured in 1942, set up a Free Russia Committee and eventually commanded two divisions of Red Army deserters and captives in battles against Soviet troops. He was executed in Moscow on August 1, 1946.
14 Tiesa is the Lithuanian newspaper equivalent of Pravda.
15 'Stribai' was a shortened and derogatory name for the istrebitelnyi.
16 Juozas Markulis, a Soviet agent, infiltrated the top echelons of the Lithuanian resistance movement and was even a founding member of its central organization, the B.D.P.S. His treachery was uncovered in January 1947, just a few weeks before the leaders of most of Lithuania's partisan units were to meet in Vilnius. Because the partisans of Eastern Lithuania still trusted Markulis, he managed to have many of their leaders killed and units destroyed. In 1948 he moved to Leningrad.
17 Balys Sruoga, writer and professor, was arrested by the Germans and sent to the Stutthof concentration camp. After his release from the camp, he returned to Lithuania where he died in 1947. His memoirs were published in 1957.
18 'Smetona regime' refers to the authoritarian rule of Antanas Smetona from 1926 to 1940.
19 Genrikas Zimanas, a high Party official, was at that time the editor-in-chief of Tiesa.
20 Victory Day is May 9, the date of the German surrender.