The KGB reports from Lithuania

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EN[...] The collapse of the Soviet Union definitely fits this description and therefore the time has come for the fullness of Chekist activity, as revealed through their own documents, to see the light. Nonetheless, since 1991 only limited materials have emerged. Yeltsin’s desire to compromise Gorbachev made the KGB annual reports for 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989 available. Dmitrii Volkogonov provided the 1967 version and Vladislav Zubok has reviewed the 1960 USSR KGB report. To the best of my knowledge, none of the KGB reports for the Soviet socialist republics have been published, despite the KGB’s primary responsibility for keeping the nationalities in line. It is this gap that the following pages hope to fill, at least in part, for the archives of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania provide a rare research opportunity. Romuald Misiunas describes the KGB headquarters in Vilnius and “the haste with which the final occupants departed in August 1991. The entire building was left strewn with debris, torn paper, burned and partially burned documents and abandoned intelligence operations equipment.“ [...] A few pages into the report, the KGB lists the seven points on which it “concentrated its attention” from January 1956 until April 1957. Points 1, 2, 4 and 5 detail focused efforts against nationalists in Lithuania, both armed (1) and unarmed (2), as well as émigré forces abroad (4) and attempting return to the homeland with the aid of enemy intelligence (5). Point 6 emphasizes “socialist legality” and “political maturity” to reassure the Communist Party that security forces would never again threaten party dominance as they had under Beria in 1953. Point 3 sets forth a strategy for gaining control of the Church hierarchy in deeply Catholic Lithuania, while Point 7 calls for an increased number of local agents, the only way to accomplish the aims of the previous six points.Soviet security’s decade of experience in the Baltic republics had made it clear that only Lithuanian nationals could undermine Lithuanian nationalist organizations from within. It was to this recruitment and penetration task that the next three decades would be devoted. [...].