Talk:Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic

Sources for the early period

Exclusively for Renata3 (;-P): sources for the quote "Initially the Lithuanian SSR was proclaimed much earlier, on December 16 1918, after the 1st Congress of the Lithuanian Communist Party had been held on October 1 1918. On February 27 1918 it was combined with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic to form the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (LBSSR, or "Litbel"), which existed until August 25 1919." are for example http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Lithuania.htm (chronology) http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/c/o.htm#lithuanian-communist-party

See also Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Rulzeng 18:01, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Now much better, clearer, and specific. See, all you need to do - check some sources :P Renata 18:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

POV concerns

I attached the {{POV}} tag to the article because I saw it overstressing the former country aspect and understressing the puppet regime aspect, thus resembling the state of Estonian SSR before {{WikiProject Estonia}} managed to neutralise it. I was then caught in a few other things regarding the {{Soviet occupation}} template which delayed my explanation of this issue, and apologise for that.

Accordingly, I will add once more the tag. No disrespect for Renata3 is intended, and if she'll revert again, I will this time consider her to have read my concern, and not readd. Digwuren 16:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Please provide reputable sources that deny it is a former country with a puppet regime before reapplying POV tag. --Doopdoop (talk) 19:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move to Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic

It seems that given that the formal name for this nation was "Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic", the soviet prefix abbreviation (-"SSR") shouldn't be in the full article name. Therefore, I propose to move the article to its full form, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. We wouldn't have an article about North Korea titled "DPRK", would we? --Micahbrwn (talk) 09:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Please discuss this multimove here --Lox (t,c) 11:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Any border change?

Were there any border changes to Lithuanian territory after the Soviet invasion and creation of the LSSR? In other words, was the territory of LSSR different from the territory of pre-1940 independent Lithuania? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Infobox changes

Elevatorrailfan (talk · contribs), your change has been reverted so therefore please discuss your proposed change on talk per WP:BRD. The template style guide is clear, "If the predecessor and successor are the same, and this predecessor/successor continued to exist during this period", the State continuity of the Baltic states is well established, the Estonian government-in-exile is not relevant to that continuity as discussed in the sources, and in fact Latvia and Lituania had no "government-in-exile". --Nug (talk) 19:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

predecessor and successor flags.

Without the previous and successor flags, anyone reading the article can not see/navigate the previous and successor, the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic's predecessor was the Republic of Lithuania (the Republic before 1940) then the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was under the German occupation. Then the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was succeeded the German occupation, and the present day Republic of Lithuania is the successor to the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. Elevatorrailfan (talk) 02:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

It is confusing to have Lithuanian SSR being the predecessor and successor of both Republic of Lithuania and Reichskommissariat Ostland, that is why the infobox guide says not to have them if the predecessor and successor are identical. I'll added a history of Lithuania template to help navigation. --Nug (talk) 18:32, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

It should have shown up as 1940-1941 1941-1991 instead of 1940–1991, unfortunately I did not notice it until I viewed the history of the articleElevatorrailfan (talk) 23:07, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Coat of arms

Hi,

Why is Coat of Arms linked to Coat of arms of Lithuania instead of Emblem of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic? I wanted to change it, but couldn't find the parameter which should be edited in order to have a correct link. Other USSR nations need to have links corrected too. Thanks in advance. – Sabbatino (talk) 17:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Missing history

Why is there no account of the 45 years between the end of WWII and Lithuania's declaration of independence in 1990? Very strange. Sca (talk) 22:05, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Red Army crimes in LSSR section

This discussion is started because of a section named "Red Army crimes in LSSR", which I added to this article with valid sources. Content of my added section looks like this:

"Upon entering Lithuania's territory, the Red Army immediately began committing atrocious war crimes. The situation in the state was so frightening that even the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania Antanas Sniečkus on July 23, 1944 complained to Lavrentiy Beria (who later handed over his words to Joseph Stalin) that "If such robbery and violence will continue in Kaunas, this will burst our last sympathy for the Red Army.".

Klaipėda region was one of the primary war crimes centers. For example, Head of the Klaipėda NKGB Operational Group Kuzmin in his special report about situation in the Klaipėda region wrote that "A beautiful city Šilutė, left by the Germans without a battle, currently looks repulsive: there is not one remaining store, almost no flats that are suitable for living. (...) Metal scrap collection teams are blowing up working agricultural machinery, engines of various kinds, stealing valuable equipment from the companies. There is no electricity in Šilutė because an internal combustion engine was blown up.". In the same report, Kuzmin also wrote that in Klaipėda and Šilutė regions mass raping of women entrenched, regardless of their nationality, physical condition and age: "Seventy year old women and fourteen year old girls are being raped, even in the presence of parents. For example, in November 1944, eleven soldiers raped a Priekulė County resident in the presence of her husband. In Šilutė district, two soldiers, covering her head with a bag, at the doorway raped a seventy year old woman. On December 10, two soldiers shot a passing by elderly woman.". After occupying the Klaipėda region, the Red Army began arresting 17-48 year old men and moving forefront inhabitants. Red Army soldiers did not gave enough time for them to prepare and moved them by only wearing a single shirt. In this way, inhabitants of the Curonian Spit were left without cattle and bread. A number of cases have been identified that cattle and other property was sent to the depth of Lithuania and later traded for a home made vodka. In December 1944, Chief of the Priekulė KGB Kazakov wrote to the LSSR Minister of the Interior Josifas Bertašiūnas that due to the soldiers violence most of the houses in Priekulė are unsuitable for living: windows are knocked out, fireplaces are disassembled, furniture and agricultural inventory are broken and exported as scrap. Most of the soldiers are engaged in robbery, women raping and even killing. Inhabitants, after seeing soldiers during the night time, are running from their homes and hiding.

{{quote box|width=24em|align=right|quote="On the night of October 20, aviation unit senior M. Kapylov, by taking revenge that a 14 year old Marija Drulaitė refused to have a sexual intercourse, killed her, her mother, uncle Juozas and severely injured a 12 year old teenager." |source=— G. Svečnikov, Chief of the Kaunas' NKVD.

However, other regions of the LSSR also suffered heavily from the Red Army brutality. For example, on December 26, 1944, Kaunas' NKGB representative Rodionov wrote to the USSR and LSSR Ministers of the Interior that due to the counterintelligence units SMERSH violence in Kaunas and mass arrests, many Kaunas' inhabitants moves to a illegal situation. Eleven raging SMERSH subdivisions do not obey any local authority orders, even the NKGB requirements. In August 1944, Chief of the Vilnius Garrison P. Vetrov in his order described recent discipline violations in the garrison territory: on August 18 a soldier arbitrarily went to explode fishes in the Neris river, on August 19 without any reason a fifteen minutes firefight took place between the garrison soldiers and prison guards, on August 22 completely drunk officers of the garrison shooted at each other and so on. On October 1, 1944, Chief of the Kaunas' NKVD G. Svečnikov in his report wrote that on the night of October 19 two aviation unit soldiers of Garliava executed Vytautas Mavraušaitis family: him, his mother Ona and sister Marija due to the burglary purposes. On January 17, 1945, Chairman of the Alytus Executive Committee requested the LSSR People's Commissars Council to stop the border guards unit, which was sent to fight with the Lithuanian partisans, because it not only burns the enemies homesteads, but also the innocent people homesteads. They are also robbing local inhabitants, takes away their cattle and other property."

References:

@Sabbatino: removed this section completely by motivating that it violates Wikipedia:NPOV and Wikipedia:OR. His other argument was that the .pdf files can't be translated through Google Translate. Here are my contrarguments:
1) NPOV. I see no issues about the NPOV here because all these sentences are based on completely authentic documents by simply translating their details. These documents were created by communists themselves to inform other communists about inner issues in the state, so there are absolutely no doubt if they are reliable because these are not some public propaganda texts, but secret documents which were only available to the high-ranking communist officials. All these documents were uploaded by a state organization Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, so there are no risks that any fake edits were made to the original documents.
2) OR. Same as above. How authentic documents translations can be an original research? These are FACTS provided by a state organization, not any kind of research.
3) Translation issue because the original documents are written in Russian. These pdf files will be translated in the near future (kgbveikla.lt is currently searching for a Russian speaking volunteers who would like to help), so I decided to include the primary source of the information. However, this whole section was based on the 15min article and is easily accessible in Lithuanian language.
@Ke an: and @Renata3: you are well known current editors of the Lithuanian topics, so I think that your opinion here would be very useful, because a two-sides discussions often takes long and are ineffective. -- Pofka (talk) 10:33, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

@Pofka: Well there is NPOV issue since it portrays all of the occupant soldiers as savages when not all of them where like that. In addition, basing all section on one article on the internet is OR. More sources are needed for claims. The other problem is that you tend to add too much detail, which makes it excessive. The same information can be written in less words. There are also two pages (Soviet war crimes and Occupation of the Baltic states) where this information would be better presented. – Sabbatino (talk) 07:53, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@Sabbatino: As I previously mentioned in my long post, this information was based on primary sources originally written in Russian and I already explained their translation situation, so it is not based on one article - it just simply provides these documents translated version. LSSR page has sections about deportations and armed resistance, so I believe war crimes of the Red Army does fit here as well (because it greatly explains why the armed resistance began together with the deporations section). And for argument that the Red Army soldiers were not savages you aren't right. Anyone who crosses other country border to kill/rob/rape their citizens are savages. War crimes doctrine notes that the war crime is committed despite the fact that it was an order from the higher rank soldier, so it is not an excuse. Red Army committed dozens of war crimes all across Europe where it went. Read about the German women situation during WW2 and you will understand what percentage of these soldiers were savages rapists/robbers. Their brutality is equal to Nazis. These examples illustrates crimes from different largest Lithuanian cities/regions, so I don't think that it is too detailed because it illustrates all these cities/regions situation. -- Pofka (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

First of all, you said that this whole section was based on the article from 15min. Then which is it? Is it the article, is it the documents or both? Secondly, your statement "And for argument that the Red Army soldiers were not savages you aren't right. Anyone who crosses other country border to kill/rob/rape their citizens are savages." is not true and you completely misunderstood what I meant. Not all soldiers of the occupying forces were savages. Some of those soldiers just did their job and did not join their colleagues in killing, robbing or raping Lithuanian citizens. And this is coming from a personal experience of my family, because my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents suffered very much from the Soviets, but per their memories a very small number of Soviet soldiers were in fact friendly, polite and/or helpful, and did not really want to be here, but the higher ranking officers sent them to Lithuania. Moving back to your statement, if we go by your logic then the Lithuanian soldiers who served in NATO missions in Afghanistan and Iraq (or anywhere else) are also savages, because per your thought they crossed the border of other country to kill, rob or rape other country's citizens (I am not going to discuss anything related to Afghanistan or Iraq wars and this is just an example based on your statement). Or what about the Lithuanians (this also applies to every other Soviet soldier) who fought in the Soviet–Afghan War? Does their participation make them savages? No, because most of them did not want to be there and many of them could not avoid that war since the Soviets tried to take every possible person to their army even if they were against it (the options to not go there were going to jail or faking a health problem). The armed resistance in Lithuania did not start because of low morality of the majority of the Red Army's soldiers. It started because the majority of Lithuanian citizens did not want to be part of other country and there were other factors involved (deportations, collectivization, etc), while the low morality of some soldiers was just a sign that the occupying forces' officers could not control every soldier that was transferred to Lithuania. I understand that you want to improve pages regarding Lithuania, but do not get carried away and mark every person from the Red Army as savage. – Sabbatino (talk) 15:28, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@Sabbatino: Well, you just confirmed that most of the Red Army soldiers were savages by writing "per their memories a very small number of Soviet soldiers were in fact friendly, polite and/or helpful". Your other examples were completely not related. You compare WW2 to war with terrorists? I am not very familiar with the Soviet-Afghan War, however if Lithuanians being part of the army committed war crimes - yes, they are war criminals. What if they were told to kill innocent people by their commanders? They are same type war criminals. I don't think there is a need to go to off-topic because such topics wastes time, so lets stick to the Red Army soldiers in LSSR. You said that they did not wanted to be there and so on. Well, read a bit about Nazis arguments why they were not guilty during the Nuremberg trials. Most of them said that it was higher ranking commanders orders and that they only executed these orders (including, that they were affraid of their or their families lives if they refused to do these orders). What the court said? Well, they simply hanged these Nazis without any mercy and they were right, because if you are doing a war crime - you can always stand back (or die trying, because every human has an equal right to live). Why Red Army soldier and his family lives are more important than other countries citizens lives/families? I will repeat important sentence from my previous post: commander order to execute a war crime is not an excuse in a court and the executer will be punished anyway. -- Pofka (talk) 22:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Grammar

I've changed the Grammar in all of the article feel free to change back --Etholod (talk) 09:57, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Flag

Sabbatino: I see you made couple reverts concerning the flag. To be fair, I don't see how the current representation is consistent. LSSR had another flag before 1953: why is that one unlisted? However, more to the point: United States had many flag designs in the history, but the article lists only one; even USSR had a few and so did the RSFR (notice the 1991 one; in fact many SSRs went through such transition). Yet all articles list one flag. Why do you think this article should be an exception? --Mindaur (talk) 18:45, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Mistake in ref

In the Svechnikov testimony the ref in question on that site does not show anything about this event. There must be a mistake. However the head of the Kaunas NKVD was effectively called Svechnikov and I've found his full name on memo.ru. Synotia (moan) 17:07, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Found it and fixed it. All good now. Synotia (moan) 17:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

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Move discussion in progress

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