History Wars: Lithuania’s Next

Smears, nit-picking, and conspiracy theories are ammunition for the Kremlin.

By Edward Lucas

History, in the hands of Kremlin propagandists, is a weapon. Vladimir Putin’s war manifesto was a 5,000-word essay arguing that Ukrainians were “historically” Russian. Now, a new 400-page history of Lithuania takes an alarmingly similar approach. The aim is to present Lithuania as an artificial creation riddled with Nazism. The book is not some fringe publication. It comes from MGIMO, Russia’s top foreign-policy institute, and is financed by a grant from a public body specializing in (read: weaponizing) Russia’s diaspora. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has penned an approving foreword. 

The result is horrible in many senses. I read it so that you don’t have to. 

The opening contention is that Lithuania existed chiefly as a proxy for Polish terrorism against Russia (in past centuries) and plays the same role for Western imperialists now. Lithuanians are highly ungrateful, given that Russian and later Soviet rule was wise, kind, and generous, punctuated only by justifiable exasperation with a few rebellious extremists. Lithuania’s departure from the Soviet Union in 1991 was fraudulent and undemocratic. After 1918, the result has been unstable and plagued by extremism. 

Among the nine authors is Giedrius Grabauskas, a hard-left Lithuanian gadfly who has sought political asylum in Russia. Another is Maxim Grigoriev, a political scientist who has fought in Ukraine and chairs an “International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis”. He noted at the book launch that he published a similar work about Ukraine two years ago.

For all its elaborate footnotes, bibliography, and (in some other cases) credentialled authors, the book will win no prizes from real historians. But it does rise to world-class levels of euphemism. Here is how it describes the Soviet annexation of 1940: “The revolutionary enthusiasm of a part of the Baltic population may have had some influence on this decision, but geopolitical considerations were, of course, the main ones.” This entailed “nationalization of property for a certain part of the elite, and for those associated with the dictatorship of [pre-war ruler Antanas] Smetona and members of Nazi organizations, potential arrests and expulsions.” 

That final, fleeting reference is the only allusion to the mass deportations from the Baltic states, in which 200,000 people were wrenched from their homes and dumped in remote regions of Russia. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, whose secret protocols set the stage for these traumatic events, appears only in an elliptical mention of the first public protest against an (unspecified) “Soviet-German agreement,” in 1987. 

Lying about history is bad enough. A modern German government that denied the Holocaust and justified Hitler’s landgrabs might strike its neighbors as a bit threatening. But as we have seen in Ukraine, Russia couples distortions about the past with lies about the present, depicting a country so despicable and threatening that coercion is the only responsible course. The book argues that Lithuania’s “official pro-Nazi state ideology” is based on “Russophobia, oblivious to history,…a radical form of nationalism that justifies any crimes committed in the past by Lithuanian nationalists.” It depicts a “systematic policy of pressure and assimilation of ethnic Russians” with eradication of their language and education, persecution of media and the Orthodox Church, and expropriation of property.

One question is why the Kremlin is targeting Lithuania, which of the three Baltic states has had since 1991 the least controversial language and citizenship policies towards its small (5%) Russian minority. Will Estonia and Latvia get the same treatment soon? And what comes next? 

The book, with its incompetent construction, gaping holes, and leaden prose, is ridiculous. But as a signal of Kremlin intent, it should be taken with the utmost seriousness.

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By Edward Lucas. Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Article and pictures first time published on CEPA web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.