Baltic Puppet
Governments' Petitions to Join the USSR Are Granted After Due
Deliberation
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August 3,5,6, 1940 Baltic puppet governments'
petitions to join the USSR are granted after due deliberation |
The last act of this performance took place in Moscow where at
the 7th session of the USSR Supreme Council, on August 3, 5 and 6, 1940, the
delegations of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian "People's Parliaments"
"requested" the incorporation of their respective republics. Afterwards,
at its 2nd session in Riga, on August 30, the Latvian Parliament adopted the
common standardized Constitution of the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic, the
13th section of which reads: "the LSSR voluntarily has united into a
federated State - the USSR." Naturally, also in this document, fabricated
by the Kremlin, like in all other Stalin's Constitutions, is the famous
paragraph (§97) which caused embarrassment to the minds of so many
foreign intellectuals and workers, and which announces that "the citizens of
the LSSR are by law guaranteed freedom of speech, press, assembly and
demonstration, in conformity with the interests of the working people."
This clause is decisive, because in Russia it is not the working people and
their organizations which decide what is in their interests, but solely the
Bolshevik party and the Politbureau. |
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Hitler's Germany was first to recognize the incorporation of
the Baltic States into USSR. Some days later the German Minister in Latvia -
Ulrich von Kotze - congratulated the Soviet Minister Vladimir Derevjanski and
expressed his gratitude for solving the "Baltic Problem". |
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everyone was asleep at the wheel, a matter of little consolation. It was only
on May 29, 1957 that the United States Department of State declared,
"the incorporation of Latvia by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is
not recognized by the government of the United States." Too little, too
late. |
As early as July 23, in reaction to these events, Mr. Sumner
Welles, Undersecretary of State, on behalf of the U.S. Government, stated to
the press that this was a "devious process" and that "the people of
the United States are opposed to predatory activities, no matter whether they
are carried on by use of force or by the threat of force." Also, Professor
A. de Lapradelle, the well-known authority on international law, has given his
opinion of the incorporation, requested by the Baltic Diets in the staging of
the Russian occupation powers: "The mode of action pursued by the Soviet
Union bears the distinct mark of an infamous double-dealing. A silent
annexation would have been a worthier under taking." (La Jeune
Suisse, 19 Febr. 1944) |
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| Siberian
deportations date as far back as 1925 |
Although the revolution of March 1917 did away with
administrative deportation and forced labour by court sentence, provided for in
the Penal Code valid since 1885, the Soviet Government re-introduced these two
institutions of the Tsarist regime as early as 1922, authorizing the Cheka to
transfer all "socially dangerous elements" to forced labour camps for a
duration up to 3 years. This practice was legalized by all Soviet criminal
codes. In addition, the programme of the Bolshevik party provides for a
"transfer of inhabitants according to plan, for the purpose of balancing the
distribution of man-power" which began in 1925 when several million Soviet
citizens from European Russia were deported to Siberia, Central Asia and the
Far East. Thus, deportation and forced labour had developed into a system of
extermination of whole social groups ("bourgeois", "kulaks") and of genocide in
that sense and understanding which made the UNO Plenary Meeting in Paris, on
December 9, 1948, pass the convention on the punishability of genocide. |
| NKVD
deports Latvian and Estonian heads of state prior to incorporation into
USSR |
Since Red Terror, genocide and the slave economy, provided for
in the economic structure of the Soviet State, are the foundation of the
bolshevik regime, it is easy to understand that all these methods were
automatically put into effect immediately after the occupation of the Baltic
States in June 1940. The incorporation of these countries had not yet taken
place when the NKVD started its work, in all three Baltic countries, not only
by deporting the State presidents of Latvia and Estonia (the Lithuanian
President was the only one who escaped the Soviets), but also the governments
and the most prominent of the social workers and politicians of the three
countries. After the incorporation, the Order No. 001223 which referred to
the registration of "anti-Soviet elements" with the view of subsequently
punishing them, and issued by the NKVD as early as October 11, 1939, was
revived to its full extent. No sooner was the Soviet Latvian Constitution
decreed on August 30, 1940, according to which the Latvian People's
Commissariat of State Security was "federal-republican", i.e. common
with that of the USSR, than the specialists in the matters of the NKVD, sent
from Russia, could under the direction of the NKVD commissar A. Novik (in
autumn 1940) and the NKGB commissar S. Shustin (early in 1941) "legally" start
their activity. |
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The premises of the former Ministries of Home and Social
Affairs, a conspicuous building in the central part of Riga, was turned into
the NKVD main headquarters. In November 1940 the ground-floor and cellars of
this building were remodelled into a special prison for interrogation, and
provided with cells measuring 80x80 cm [31.5 inches square] on plan and
called "dog-kennels" (in Russian "sobachniki"), where the
prisoners could neither stand nor lie. After all kinds of devilishly subtle
methods of torture the prisoners were put into these cells to "recover" until
they were again summoned for interrogation which usually began late in the
evening and lasted the night through with the purpose of extorting a confession
from the prisoner. The NKVD had at its command an extensive net of agents whose
reports were worked out by specialists. All prisons were under the control of
the NKVD which had at its disposal special military units. Even the militia,
Workers' Guard, the members and candidates of the Bolshevik party, members of
the Communist Youth and the rest of the ancillary party organizations had to
obey NKVD orders and instructions. |
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Who, then, were the unfortunate people who sooner or later had
to succumb to the NKVD? The secret order, signed on November 28, 1940, at
Kaunas by the Lithuanian NKVD commissar A. Guzevicius, which was found in the
summer of 1941 among the documents left by the NKVD (cf. K. Pelekis,
Genocide, p. 265-267, published by Venta, Germany 1949), gave the answer
to this question. Taking into account that the NKVD in the three Baltic
countries only executed the orders which they received from Moscow, there is
every reason to assume that confidential orders of a similar content were
issued to their subordinate authorities also by the Latvian and Estonian NKVD
commissars. |
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This circular order of November 28, 1940, contains the
following passage: |
November 28, 1940 "Annihilation" of anti-Soviet elements
ordered |
"For the task of operative work it is of
profound importance to know how many former policemen, white-guardists, ex-army
officers, members of anti-Soviet political parties and organizations are in the
territory of Lithuania and where this element is concentrated. This is
necessary in order to define the counter revolutionary force and to direct
our apparatus of active agencies for their annihilation and liquidation.
Executing the Order of the People's Commissar of NKVD of USSR No. 001223
referring to a report on the anti-Soviet element, and the demand to be most
careful in the exact execution of that task, I issue the following order:
| § 5.
Into the alphabetic files must be entered all those persons who, because of
their social and political past, their nationalistic-chauvinistic inclinations,
religious beliefs, moral and political instability, are hostile to the
socialistic form of State, and consequently might be exploited by foreign
intelligence services and counter-revolutionary centres for their anti-Soviet
purpose. Among such elements are to be counted: |
| a) all former members of anti-Soviet
political parties, organizations and groups: Trotskyites, right-wingers,
Essers, Mensheviks, Social Democrats, anarchists, etc. |
| b) all former members of
nationalistic, chauvinistic anti-Soviet parties, Nationalists, Christian
Democrats, the active members of student fraternities, of the National Guard
etc. |
| c) former policemen, officers of the
criminal and political police and of prisons. |
| d) former army officers and members of
military courts. |
| e) persons who are dismissed from the
Communist Party and Communist Youth Organization for various offences against
the party. |
| f) all refugees, political emigrants,
immigrants, repatriants and contrabandists |
| g) all citizens of foreign states,
representatives of foreign firms, employees of foreign state institutions,
former citizens of foreign states, former employees of foreign legations,
firms, concessions, and stock companies. |
| h) persons who maintain personal
contact or are in correspondence with foreign countries, legations and
consulates, with philatelists and esperantists. |
| i) former officials of Ministerial
Departments. |
| j) former Red Cross officials. |
| k) clergy of religious communities,
Orthodox priests, Roman Catholic priests, sectarians and active members of
religious congregations. |
| l) former noblemen, estate owners,
merchants, bankers, businessmen, owners of factories and shops, owners of
hotels and restaurants. |
§ 6. For the completion of
the alphabetic files for all anti-Soviet elements there must be made the most
careful use of all sources, among them: reports of agencies, material of
special investigations, material of Party and Soviet Organizations,
declarations of citizens, testimonies and other, official material must be
proved at first in the agential way. ... § 9. The chief of the 1st
Special Branch of the NKVD is under obligation to report to me daily about the
progress of this Order." |
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This enumeration is not complete, as is proved by other
documents. Thus, in the above Order are only mentioned members of military
courts, but after the NKGB was established on February 3, 1941, the latter had
lists prepared which included even public prosecutors, inquestors of the
specially important trials, members of Courts of Appeal and Supreme Tribunals,
district prefects, military commandants of districts, officers of the
Intelligence Section of the General Staff, officers of the Frontier Guard
Corps, all officers of the former white Armies, prison guards of the ranks,
former employees of the Baltic legations abroad, members of the families of the
participants of counter-revolutionary nationalist organizations, whose family
heads had been sentenced to death or were in hiding from government organs;
families of traitors of the homeland who had fled abroad. |
| Standing
order of the Cheka gives the lie to the Constitution of the LSSR |
Let us remember the Order of the Cheka, published on
December 25, 1918: "Your first duty is to ask the prisoner what class he
belongs to, what were his origin, education and occupation. These questions
should decide the fate of the prisoner." The citizens of the Baltic States
at that time naively believed that in the course of the 30 years after the
bolshevik subversion in Russia the primary terror and methods of civil warfare
had been entirely abolished or, at least adjusted to the principles of right,
declared in Stalin's Constitution. Thus, sections 84 and 85 of the Constitution
of the LSSR declared that: "In all courts of the LSSR, to the extent that
the law does not provide exceptions, cases are tried publicly, ensuring the
defendant the right of counsel. Judges are independent and subject only to the
law." |
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