The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, to the end of the Battle of Memel on January 28, 1945. At first the Germans were welcomed as liberators from the repressive Soviet regime which had occupied Lithuania . In hopes of re-establishing independence or regaining some autonomy, Lithuanians organized a Provisional Government that lasted six weeks.
187-773: In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact and its Secret Additional Protocol , dividing Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence . Lithuania was initially assigned to the German sphere, likely due to its economic dependence on German trade. After the March 1939 ultimatum regarding the Klaipėda Region , Germany accounted for 75% of Lithuanian exports and 86% of its imports. To solidify its influence, Germany suggested
374-670: A rubber stamp institution that the Germans used as a scapegoat for unpopular decisions. Three of the advisers resigned within months, and other four were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp when they protested several German policies. Overall, local self-government was quite developed in Lithuania and helped to sabotage or hinder several German initiatives, including raising a Waffen-SS unit or providing men for forced labor in Germany . Before
561-488: A British-Polish alliance led to a restructuring of strategy towards Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg wrote that he had spoken to Hermann Göring of the potential pact with the Soviet Union: "When Germany's life is at stake, even a temporary alliance with Moscow must be contemplated". Sometime in early May 1939 at Berghof , Ribbentrop showed Hitler a film of Stalin viewing his military in a recent parade. Hitler became intrigued with
748-672: A German–Lithuanian military alliance against Poland and promised to return the Vilnius Region , but Lithuania held to its policy of strict neutrality. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Wehrmacht took control of the Lublin Voivodeship and eastern Warsaw Voivodeship , which were in the Soviet sphere of influence. To compensate the Soviet Union for this loss, a secret codicil to
935-491: A better life but was actually signing them up for Hell. Peasants feared that if they joined the collective farm they would be marked with the stamp of the Antichrist. They faced a choice between God and the Soviet collective farm. Choosing between salvation and damnation, peasants had no choice but to resist the policies of the state. These rumours of the Soviet state as the Antichrist functioned to keep peasants from succumbing to
1122-423: A class. The methods Stalin used to eliminate the kulaks were dispossession, deportation, and execution. The term "Ural-Siberian Method" was coined by Stalin, the rest of the population referred to it as the "new method". Article 107 of the criminal code was the legal means by which the state acquired grain. The Soviet government responded to these acts by cutting off food rations to peasants and areas where there
1309-535: A definition of "indirect aggression" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted had to be reached at the same time as any political agreement. One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo pessimistically expected
1496-494: A direct admission that ten million people perished as a result of collectivization. Since the second half of the 19th century, Siberia had been a major agricultural region within Russia, espеcially its southern territories (nowadays Altai Krai , Omsk Oblast , Novosibirsk Oblast , Kemerovo Oblast , Khakassia , Buryatia , Irkutsk Oblast ). Stolypin's program of resettlement granted a lot of land for immigrants from elsewhere in
1683-511: A dramatic decline in German–Soviet trade. Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell to 223 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ in 1934 by the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserting power and by the abandonment of postwar Treaty of Versailles military controls, both of which decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports. In 1935 Germany, after a previous German–Polish declaration of non-aggression , through Hermann Goring proposed
1870-519: A fairly negative impact upon their arrival as the peasants brought with them their habits from the farms. They struggled with punctuality and demonstrated a rather poor work ethic, which hindered their ability to perform in the workplace. In 1929, especially after the introduction of the Ural-Siberian Method of grain procurement, resistance to grain seizures became widespread with some violent incidents of resistance. Also, massive hoarding (burial
2057-625: A few months later for refusing to obey orders. In particular, the relations between Lithuanians and the Poles were poor. Pre-war tensions over the Vilnius Region resulted in a low-level conflict between Poles and Lithuanians. Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian units, primarily the Lithuanian Secret Police , were active in the region and assisted the Germans in repressing the Polish population. In autumn 1943, Armia Krajowa started retaliation operations against
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#17328525059022244-499: A flurry of suggestions and counterplans on a potential political and military agreement. Informal consultations started in April, but the main negotiations began only in May. Meanwhile, throughout early 1939, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France. The Soviet Union, which feared Western powers and
2431-526: A limousine operated by the NKVD to travel to Red Square . The limousine arrived close to Stalin's office and was greeted by Alexander Poskrebyshev , the chief of Stalin's personal chancellery. The Germans were led up a flight of stairs to a room with lavish furnishings. Stalin and Molotov greeted the visitors, much to the Nazis' surprise. It was well known that Stalin avoided meeting foreign visitors, and so his presence at
2618-710: A military alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, but this was rejected. In 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War , but the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic . Thus, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1936, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact . and they were joined
2805-405: A million migrated to other regions of Central Asia and 1.5 million to China. Of those who remained, as many as a million died in the resulting famine. In Mongolia , a so-called 'Soviet dependency', attempted collectivization was abandoned in 1932 after the loss of 8 million head of livestock. Historian Sarah Cameron argues that while Stalin did not intend to starve Kazakhs, he saw some deaths as
2992-489: A more urban and industrial look insulted peasant women. After local activists in a village in North Caucasus actually confiscated all blankets, more fear dispersed among villagers. The common blanket meant that all men and women would sleep on a seven-hundred meter long bed under a seven-hundred-meter long blanket. Historians argue that women took advantage of these rumours without actually believing them so they could attack
3179-503: A necessary sacrifice to achieve the political and economic goals of the regime. Cameron believes that while the famine combined with a campaign against nomads was not genocide in the sense of the United Nations (UN) definition, it complies with Raphael Lemkin 's original concept of genocide, which considered destruction of culture to be as genocidal as physical annihilation. Historian Stephen Wheatcroft criticized this view in regard to
3366-584: A revolt was put down by the Red Army in 1929 . It has since been perceived by historians such as Lynne Viola as a Civil War of the peasants against the Bolshevik Government and the attempted colonization of the countryside. In 1928 within Soviet Kazakhstan, authorities started a campaign to confiscate cattle from richer Kazakhs, who were called bai, known as Little October. The confiscation campaign
3553-439: A secret German–Soviet pact. On 23 August, a ten-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included consultation, arbitration if either party disagreed, neutrality if either went to war against a third power and no membership of a group "which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other". The article "On Soviet–German Relations" in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia of 21 August 1939, stated: Following completion of
3740-435: A single famine responsible for 3 to 5 million deaths. Some peasants viewed collectivization as the end of the world. By no means was joining the collective farm (also known as the kolkhoz ) voluntary. The drive to collectivize understandably had little support from experienced farmers. The oversimplified intent was to withhold grain from the market and increase the total crop and food supply via state collective farms, with
3927-505: A single pro-Soviet candidate listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assemblies immediately requesting admission into the Soviet Union, which was granted. (The Soviets annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the Šešupė area, which had been earmarked for Germany.) Finally, on 26 June, four days after the armistice between France and Nazi Germany , the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum that demanded Bessarabia and unexpectedly Northern Bukovina from Romania. Two days later,
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#17328525059024114-514: A source of power beyond the control of the Soviet government. Although the income gap between wealthy and poor farmers did grow under the NEP, it remained quite small, but the Bolsheviks began to take aim at the kulaks , peasants with enough land and money to own several animals and hire a few labourers . Kulaks were blamed for withholding surpluses of agricultural produce. Clearly identifying this group
4301-421: A temporary halt to the process: It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 percent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivized. That means that by February 20, 1930, we had overfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization by more than 100 per cent.... some of our comrades have become dizzy with success and for the moment have lost clearness of mind and sobriety of vision. After
4488-511: A two-front war, which changed the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands on Poland. On 25 August, Hitler was surprised when Britain joined a defense pact with Poland . Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion of Poland on 26 August to 1 September. In accordance with the defence pact, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland from
4675-458: A year in kind and then in cash, but salaries were very small and at times farmers went unpaid or even ended up owing money to the kolkhoz. Farmers still had small pieces of land (not larger than 0.5 ha) around their houses where they grew food for themselves. Along with collectivization, the government tried to uproot the custom of living in individual farmsteads by resettling people in villages. However this process failed due to lack of money since
4862-597: A year later by Italy , despite Italy having previously signed the Italo-Soviet Pact . On 31 March 1939, Britain extended a guarantee to Poland that "if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid". Hitler was furious since that meant that the British were committed to political interests in Europe and that his land grabs such as
5049-538: Is estimated that 80% of the Lithuanian Jews were killed before 1942, many by or with the active participation of Lithuanians in units, such as Police Battalions. The surviving 43,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilnius , Kaunas , Šiauliai , and Švenčionys Ghettos and forced to work for the benefit of German military industry. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer
5236-507: Is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies" or that "it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies". At the same time, British, French, and Soviet negotiators scheduled three-party talks on military matters to occur in Moscow in August 1939 that aimed to define what
5423-581: Is part of the Odessa Oblast , which is also now in Ukraine. The pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, in pursuit of the ideological goal of Lebensraum . The Anglo-Soviet Agreement succeeded it. After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed. Molotov died in 1986. The outcome of World War I
5610-416: Is that the total death toll (both direct and indirect) for Stalin's collectivization program was on the order of 12 million people. There is a popular story that at the 1945 Yalta Conference when Winston Churchill asked Joseph Stalin how many died in the famine, the Soviet leader responded with a shrug , a gesture that on account of Stalin's raised hands having 10 fingers, has been cited by historians as
5797-572: The City of London [British financiers] and the English shopkeepers." The agreement stunned the world. John Gunther , in Moscow in August 1939, recalled how the news of the 19 August commercial agreement surprised journalists and diplomats, who hoped for world peace. They did not expect the 21 August announcement of the non-aggression pact: "Nothing more unbelievable could be imagined. Astonishment and skepticism turned quickly to consternation and alarm". The news
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5984-631: The Communist Party of Lithuania and its youth branch allowed to exist. All banks (including all accounts above 1,000 litas ), real estate larger than 170 square metres (1,800 sq ft), private enterprises with more than 20 workers or more than 150,000 litas of gross receipts were nationalized . This disruption in management and operations created a sharp drop in production. Russian soldiers and officials were eager to spend their appreciated rubles and caused massive shortages of goods. To turn small peasants against large landowners, collectivization
6171-671: The Generalkommisssar of Generalbezirk Litauen and took over all government functions in Lithuania. The Provisional Government resigned on August 5; some of its ministers became General Advisers ( Lithuanian : generalinis tarėjas ) in charge of local self-government. The Germans did not have enough manpower to staff local administration; therefore, most local offices were headed by the Lithuanians. Policy decisions would have been made by high-ranking Germans and actually implemented by low-ranking Lithuanians. The General Advisers were mostly
6358-795: The German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty transferred Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence, which was the justification for the Soviet Union to occupying Lithuania on June 15, 1940 and establishing the Lithuanian SSR . Almost immediately after the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, the Soviets pressured the Lithuanians into signing the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty . According to this treaty, Lithuania gained about 6,880 square kilometres (2,660 sq mi) of territory in
6545-452: The Holodomor famine. Due to the high government production quotas , peasants received, as a rule, less for their labour than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work. Merle Fainsod estimated that, in 1952, collective farm earnings were only one-fourth of the cash income from private plots on Soviet collective farms. In many cases, the immediate effect of collectivization
6732-686: The Karelia and Salla regions in Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union following the Winter War . The Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania ( Bessarabia , Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region ) followed. Stalin's invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis. The territories of Poland annexed by
6919-717: The Katyn massacre , 22,000 members of the military as well as intellectuals were executed, labelled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" or kept at camps and prisons in western Ukraine and Belarus . In mid-June 1940, while international attention focused on the German invasion of France , Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania , Estonia and Latvia . State administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, who deported or killed 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians. Elections took place, with
7106-584: The Lithuanian Jews in the Ninth Fort . At the time a rogue unit led by the infamous Algirdas Klimaitis rampaged through the city and the outskirts. The Germans did not recognize the Lithuanian government, and at the end of July formed their own civil administration, part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland , which was divided into four Generalbezirke (General Districts). Adrian von Renteln became
7293-707: The Luftwaffe against Lithuanian cities and claimed lives of some 4,000 civilians. Most Russian aircraft were destroyed on the ground. Germans rapidly advanced, encountering only sporadic resistance from the Soviets and help from Lithuanians, who saw them as liberators and hoped that the Germans would re-establish their independence or at least autonomy. Lithuanians took up arms against the Soviet for independence. Groups of men took control of strategic objects such as railroads, bridges, communication equipment and food warehouses, protecting them from potential scorched earth tactics. Kazys Škirpa , founder of LAF, had been preparing for
7480-460: The Munich Agreement that followed the conference agreed to a German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in late 1938, but in early 1939 it had been completely dissolved. The policy of appeasement toward Germany was conducted by the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier . The policy immediately raised the question of whether
7667-474: The New York Times reported Japanese anger and French communist surprise over the pact. The same day, however, Tolischus filed a story that noted Nazi troops on the move near Gleiwitz (now Gliwice ), which led to the false flag Gleiwitz incident on 31 August 1939. On 28 August 1939, the New York Times was still reporting on fears of a Gleiwitz raid. On 29 August 1939, the New York Times reported that
German occupation of Lithuania during World War II - Misplaced Pages Continue
7854-582: The New York Times reported a Soviet buildup on its Western frontiers by moving 200,000 troops from the Far East . On 22 August, one day after talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day. The Soviets were still negotiating with the British and the French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered
8041-600: The Red Army invaded Finland, launching the Winter War with the aim of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union. The Soviets formed the Finnish Democratic Republic to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. The leader of the Leningrad Military District, Andrei Zhdanov , commissioned a celebratory piece from Dmitri Shostakovich , Suite on Finnish Themes , to be performed as the marching bands of
8228-511: The Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. The Soviet–Lithuanian Treaty was described by The New York Times as a "virtual sacrifice of independence." Similar pacts were proposed to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. Finland was the only state to refuse, and that sparked the Winter War . This war delayed the occupation of Lithuania: the Soviets did not interfere with Lithuania's domestic affairs and Russian soldiers were well-behaved in their bases. As
8415-594: The Supreme Soviet had failed on its first day of convening to act on the pact. The same day, the New York Times also reported from Montreal , Canada, that American Professor Samuel N. Harper of the University of Chicago had stated publicly his belief that "the Russo-German non-aggression pact conceals an agreement whereby Russia and Germany may have planned spheres of influence for Eastern Europe". On 30 August 1939,
8602-633: The United Partisan Organization led by Abba Kovner , attempted to start an uprising in the Vilna Ghetto , and later engaged in sabotage and guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupation. In July 1944, as part of its Operation Tempest , the Polish Home Army launched Operation Ostra Brama in an attempt to recapture that city. There was no significant violent resistance directed against
8789-529: The Vilnius Region (including Vilnius , Lithuania's historical capital) in return for allowing five Soviet military bases in Lithuania (total 20,000 troops). The territories that Lithuania received from the Soviet Union were former territories of the Second Polish Republic , disputed between Poland and Lithuania since the Polish-Lithuanian War of 1920 and occupied by the Soviet Union following
8976-424: The antisemitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism , both of which they opposed . Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by " Jewish Bolshevik " masters. Hitler had spoken of an inevitable battle for the acquisition of land for Germany in the east. The resulting manifestation of German anti-Bolshevism and an increase in Soviet foreign debts caused
9163-431: The ascension of Joseph Stalin . It began during and was part of the first five-year plan . The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into nominally collectively-controlled and openly or directly state-controlled farms: Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase
9350-653: The kolkhozes were rewarded with higher quality land and tax breaks, whereas peasants were unwilling to join the kolkhozes were punished with being given lower quality land and increased taxes. The taxes imposed on the peasants was primarily to fund the industrial blitz that Stalin had made a priority. If these lesser forms of social coercion proved to be ineffective then the central government would resort to harsher forms of state coercion. Stalin had many kulaks transported to collective farms in distant places to work in agricultural labour camps. In response to this, many peasants began to resist, often began arming themselves against
9537-744: The successor state to the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The territories annexed from Romania were also integrated into the Soviet Union (such as the Moldavian SSR , or oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR ). The core of Bessarabia now forms Moldova . Northern Bessarabia , Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region now form the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine. Southern Bessarabia
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#17328525059029724-531: The 1938–1939 deal discussions , after tripartite discussions with the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France had broken down, and committed neither government would aid or ally itself with an enemy of the other, for the next 10 years. Under the Secret Protocol, Poland was to be shared, while Lithuania , Latvia , Estonia , Finland and Bessarabia went to the Soviet Union. The protocol also recognized
9911-524: The 1980s, when Soviet farmers averaged about 10 percent of the output of their counterparts in the United States. To make matters worse, tractors promised to the peasants could not be produced due to the poor policies in the Industrial sector of the Soviet Union. When quotas were not met, Stalin enforced collectivization by sending special regimes to confiscate any food they can find. The kulaks argued to
10098-460: The Communist Party repeatedly said that collectivization would not occur forcibly, but rather voluntarily and by example. To encourage collectivization high taxes were enforced and new farms were given no government support. But after 1945 the Party dropped its restrained approach as the voluntary approach was not yielding results. Latvians were accustomed to individual holdings ( viensētas ), which had existed even during serfdom, and for many farmers,
10285-408: The German collapse, a multinational Allied-led army intervened in the civil war (1917–1922). On 16 April 1922, the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union agreed to the Treaty of Rapallo in which they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other. Each party also pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against the other with the Treaty of Berlin (1926) . Trade between
10472-461: The German occupation. Germany began a campaign of " Germanization ", which meant assimilating the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. 50,000–200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanised. Collectivization in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union introduced forced collectivization ( Russian : Коллективизация ) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during
10659-434: The Holocaust , Lithuania was home to about 210,000 or 250,000 Jews and was one of the greatest centers of Jewish theology, philosophy, and learning which preceded even the times of the Gaon of Vilna . The Holocaust in Lithuania can be divided into three stages: mass executions (June–December 1941), ghetto period (1942 – March 1943), and final liquidation (April 1943 – July 1944). Unlike in other Nazi-occupied countries where
10846-477: The Holocaust was introduced gradually (first limiting Jewish civil rights, then concentrating Jews in ghettos, and only then executing them in death camps), executions in Lithuania started on the first days of war. Einsatzkommando A entered Lithuania one day behind the Wehrmacht invasion to encourage self-cleansing. According to German documents, on June 25–26, 1941, "about 1,500 Jews were eliminated by Lithuanian partisans . Many Jewish synagogues were set on fire; on
11033-436: The Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ). The Polish commander of the Wilno ( Vilnius ) region was Aleksander Krzyżanowski . The activities of Soviet partisans in Lithuania were partly coordinated by the Command of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement headed by Antanas Sniečkus and partly by the Central Command of the Partisan Movement of the USSR. Jewish partisans in Lithuania also fought against the Nazi occupation. In September 1943,
11220-473: The Kazakhs. Most historians agree that the disruption caused by collectivization and the resistance of the peasants significantly contributed to the Great Famine of 1932–1933, especially in Ukraine , a region famous for its rich soil ( chernozem ). This particular period is called " Holodomor " in Ukrainian. During the similar famines of 1921–1923, numerous campaigns – inside the country, as well as internationally – were held to raise money and food in support of
11407-443: The Lithuanian units and killed hundreds of mostly Lithuanian policemen and other collaborators during the first half of 1944. The conflict culminated in the massacres of Polish and Lithuanian civilians in June 1944 in the Glitiškės (Glinciszki) and Dubingiai (Dubinki) massacres. The Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania as part of the Baltic Offensive in 1944 , a two-fold military-political operation to rout German forces and "liberate
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#173285250590211594-541: The Nazi emissaries stepped off the plane, a Soviet military band played " Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles ". The Nazi arrival was well planned, with all aesthetics in order. The classic hammer and sickle was propped up next to the swastika of the Nazi flag that had been used in a local film studio for Soviet propaganda films. After stepping off the plane and shaking hands, Ribbentrop and Gustav Hilger along with German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik , entered
11781-485: The Nazis originating from the Lithuanian society. In 1943, several underground political groups united under the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania ( Vyriausias Lietuvos išlaisvinimo komitetas or VLIK). It became mostly active outside of Lithuania among emigrants and deportees, and was able to establish contacts in Western countries and get support for resistance operations inside Lithuania (see Operation Jungle ). It persisted abroad for many years as one of
11968-415: The Polish government feared that if the Red Army entered Polish territory, it would never leave. On 19 August, the 1939 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed. On 21 August, the Soviets suspended the tripartite military talks and cited other reasons. The same day, Stalin received assurances that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would place
12155-457: The Red Army would be parading through Helsinki. After Finnish defenses surprisingly held out for over three months and inflicted stiff losses on Soviet forces, under the command of Semyon Timoshenko , the Soviets settled for an interim peace . Finland ceded parts of Karelia and Salla (9% of Finnish territory), which resulted in approximately 422,000 Karelians (12% of Finland's population) losing their homes. Soviet official casualty counts in
12342-414: The Romanians acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviets occupied the territories. The Hertsa region was initially not requested by the Soviets but was later occupied by force after the Romanians had agreed to the initial Soviet demands. The subsequent waves of deportations began in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina . At the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to
12529-508: The Soviet Baltic peoples" beginning in summer 1944. Lithuania suffered significant losses in World War II and the first post-war decade. Historians attempted to quantify population losses and changes, but their task was complicated by the lack of precise and reliable data. There were no censuses taken between the 1923 , when Lithuania had 2,028,971 residents, and the Soviet census of 1959 , when Lithuania had 2,711,400 residents. Various authors provide different breakdowns but generally agree that
12716-416: The Soviet Union approved the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin , stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland . After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a new border between them on formerly Polish territory in the supplementary protocol of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty . In March 1940, parts of
12903-534: The Soviet Union following the 1939 Soviet invasion east of the Curzon line remained in the Soviet Union after the war and are now in Ukraine and Belarus . Vilnius was given to Lithuania. Only Podlaskie and a small part of Galicia east of the San River , around Przemyśl , were returned to Poland . Of all the other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940, those detached from Finland (Western Karelia , Petsamo ), Estonia ( Estonian Ingria and Petseri County ) and Latvia ( Abrene ) remain part of Russia,
13090-453: The Soviet Union had never been happy with private agriculture and saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem. Lenin claimed, "Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in vast proportions." Apart from ideological goals, Joseph Stalin also wished to embark on a program of rapid heavy industrialization which required larger surpluses to be extracted from
13277-441: The Soviet Union also needed to secure the frontier in the Soviet–Japanese Border Wars . On 17 September, the Red Army invaded Poland , violating the 1932 Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact , and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. That was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its west desperately tried to delay
13464-524: The Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared: After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for lasting peace in the region, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve
13651-506: The Soviet Union as "inevitable". Concerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were expressed first by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states only days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during the negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States ). The day after
13838-524: The Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list. The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes. For Germany, an autarkic economic approach and an alliance with Britain were impossible and so closer relations with
14025-476: The Soviet Union to obtain raw materials became necessary. Besides economic reasons, an expected British blockade during a war would also create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials. After the Munich Agreement, the resulting increase in German military supply needs and Soviet demands for military machinery made talks between the two countries occur from late 1938 to March 1939. Also,
14212-467: The Soviet Union. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius , which was part of Poland during the interwar period . Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia , which was then part of Romania . As a result, Bessarabia as well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by
14399-406: The Soviet famine because he believes that the nominally stated high expectations of central planners was sufficient to demonstrate their ignorance of the ultimate consequences of their actions and that the result of them would be famine. Niccolò Pianciola goes further than Cameron and argues that from Lemkin's point of view on genocide all nomads of the Soviet Union were victims of the crime, not just
14586-659: The Soviet invasion of the Polish Kresy , the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation , allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania, with the exception of the left bank of the River Scheschupe , the "Lithuanian Strip", from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviet sphere. On 28 September 1939,
14773-460: The Soviet radio station at Minsk , allegedly "for urgent aeronautical experiments". Hitler declared at Danzig: Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles treaty . That is guaranteed not only by Germany , but also ... Russia . In the opinion of Robert Service , Stalin did not move instantly but was waiting to see whether the Germans would halt within the agreed area, and
14960-409: The Soviet state continued to undermine the church through expropriations and repression. They cut off state financial support to the church and secularized church schools. Peasants began to associate Communists with atheists because the attack on the church was so devastating. The Communist assault on religion and the church angered many peasants, giving them more reason to revolt. Riots exploded after
15147-441: The Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union. At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s. They characterised Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet–German relations and stated that the Anti-Comintern Pact was aimed not at the Soviet Union but actually at Western democracies and "frightened principally
15334-559: The Soviets planned to move houses as well. Sources: Sotsialisticheskoe sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR , Gosplanizdat, Moscow-Leningrad, 1939 (pp. 42, 43); supplementary numbers for 1927–1935 from Sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1935 , Narkomzem SSSR, Moscow, 1936 (pp. 630, 634, 1347, 1369); 1937 from Great Soviet Encyclopedia , vol. 22, Moscow, 1953 (p. 81); 1939 from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1917–1987 , Moscow, 1987 (pp. 35); 1940 from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1922–1972 , Moscow, 1972 (pp. 215, 240). The official numbers for
15521-541: The Soviet–German trade and credit agreement, there has arisen the question of improving political links between Germany and the USSR. There was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, so as to influence Lithuania. According to the protocol, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet " spheres of influence ". In
15708-643: The USSR. After these deportations, the pace of collectivization increased as a flood of farmers rushed into kolkhozes. Within two weeks 1740 new kolkhozes were established and by the end of 1950, just 4.5% of Latvian farmsteads remained outside the collectivized units; about 226,900 farmsteads belonged to collectives, of which there were now around 14,700. Rural life changed as farmers' daily movements were governed by plans, decisions, and quotas formulated elsewhere and delivered through an intermediate non-farming hierarchy. The new kolkhozes, especially smaller ones, were ill-equipped and poor – at first farmers were paid once
15895-704: The Ukrainian people". After the Soviet Occupation of Latvia in June 1940, the country's new rulers were faced with a problem: the agricultural reforms of the inter-war period had expanded individual holdings. The property of " enemies of the people " and refugees , as well as those above 30 hectares, was nationalized in 1940–44, but those who were still landless were then given plots of 15 hectares each. Thus, Latvian agriculture remained essentially dependent on personal smallholdings, making central planning difficult. In 1940–41
16082-675: The Winter War ended in March and Germany was making rapid advances in the Battle of France , the Soviets heightened their anti-Lithuanian rhetoric and accused Lithuanians of kidnapping Soviet soldiers from their bases. Despite Lithuanian attempts to negotiate and resolve the issues, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum on June 14, 1940. Lithuanians accepted the ultimatum and Soviet military took control of major cities by June 15. The following day identical ultimatums were issued to Latvia and Estonia. To legitimize
16269-533: The activists sent from the towns. As a form of protest, many peasants preferred to slaughter their animals for food rather than give them over to collective farms, which produced a major reduction in livestock. Collectivization had been encouraged since the revolution, but in 1928, only about 1% of farmland was collectivized, and despite efforts to encourage and coerce collectivization, the rather optimistic first five-year plan only forecast 15 per cent of farms to be run collectively. The situation changed quickly in
16456-399: The affected areas was restricted. According to Stalin in his conversation with the prize-winning writer Mikhail Sholokhov , the famine was caused by the excesses of local party workers and sabotage, I've thanked you for the letters, as they expose a sore in our Party-Soviet work and show how our workers, wishing to curb the enemy, sometimes unwittingly hit friends and descend to sadism. ...
16643-493: The agreement would specify on the reaction of the three powers to a German attack. The tripartite military talks , started in mid-August, hit a sticking point on the passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms. Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops into Polish territory if Germany attacked; Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck pointed out that
16830-435: The agricultural sector in order to feed a growing industrial workforce and to pay for imports of machinery (by exporting grain). Social and ideological goals would also be served through the mobilization of the peasants in a co-operative economic enterprise that would provide social services to the people and empower the state. Stalin was suspicious of the peasants, viewing them as a major threat to socialism. Stalin's use of
17017-591: The anti-Soviet sentiment and increased already existing, traditional anti-Semitism. Lithuanians formed several units that actively assisted Germans: 10 of the Lithuanian police battalions, working with the Nazi Einsatzkommando , were involved in mass killings, and are thought to have executed 78,000 individuals. Many members of the Lithuanian construction units were asked to join the Waffen-SS, of whom up to 40% eventually did, although no Lithuanian national unit
17204-594: The autumn of 1929 and the winter of 1930. Between September and December 1929, collectivization increased from 7.4% to 15%, but in the first two months of 1930, 11 million households joined collectivized farms, pushing the total to nearly 60%. To assist collectivization, the Party decided to send 25,000 "socially conscious" industry workers to the countryside. This was accomplished from 1929 to 1933, and these workers have become known as twenty-five-thousanders ("dvadtsat'pyat'tysyachniki"). Soviet officials had hoped that by sending
17391-411: The capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces could not mount significant resistance against the Soviets. On 18 September, The New York Times published an editorial arguing that "Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism ...The world will now understand that the only real 'ideological' issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand and despotism , terror and war on
17578-476: The case of German aggression. The Soviets proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an "indirect aggression" towards the Soviet Union. Britain opposed such proposals because they feared the Soviets' proposed language would justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany. The discussion of
17765-495: The city of Vilnius and its environs. On 8 October 1939, a new Nazi-Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German ambassador. The Baltic states of Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania were given no choice but to sign a so-called "Pact of Defence and Mutual Assistance", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them. After the Baltic states had been forced to accept treaties, Stalin turned his sights on Finland and
17952-509: The closing of churches as early as 1929. Identification of Soviet power with the Antichrist also decreased peasant support for the Soviet regime. Rumors about religious persecution spread mostly by word of mouth, but also through leaflets and proclamations. Priests preached that the Antichrist had come to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants and that the Soviet state was promising the peasants
18139-515: The collective farm "under the guise of irrational, nonpolitical protest." Women were less vulnerable to retaliation than peasant men, and therefore able to get away with a lot more. Peasant women were rarely held accountable for their actions because of the officials' perceptions of their protests. They "physically blocked the entrances to huts of peasants scheduled to be exiled as kulaks , forcibly took back socialized seed and livestock and led assaults on officials." Officials ran away and hid to let
18326-451: The collectivization process served to not only address the grain shortages, but his greater concern over the peasants' willingness to conform to the collective farm system and state mandated grain acquisitions. This demand for more grain resulted in the reintroduction of requisitioning which was resisted in rural areas. In 1928 there was a 2-million-ton shortfall in grains purchased by the Soviet Union from neighbouring markets. Stalin claimed
18513-456: The collectivized areas (the column with per cent of sown area in collective use in the table above) are biased upward by two technical factors. First, these official numbers are calculated as a per cent of sown area in peasant farmsteads, excluding the area cultivated by sovkhozes and other agricultural users. Estimates based on the total sown area (including state farms) reduce the share of collective farms between 1935 and 1940 to about 80%. Second,
18700-498: The collectors that starvation was inevitable, but they still seized everything edible from the kulaks to make up for the quotas, regardless if the kulaks had anything for themselves. Although there were recorded instances of people hiding food, this was out of survival. One notable instance was a mother hiding flour under her baby's cradle. When the brigade found it, she cried and beg saying her baby would die of hunger without it. The brigade took it anyway. Stalin falsely denied there even
18887-402: The coming negotiations to go nowhere and formally decided to consider German proposals seriously. The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by the retired admiral Sir Reginald Drax , French delegation headed by General Aimé Doumenc and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov , the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov , chief of
19074-443: The countryside. The Battle of Raseiniai began June 23 as Soviets attempted to mount a counterattack, reinforced by tanks, but were overpowered by the 27th. It is estimated that the uprising involved some 16,000 to 30,000 people and claimed lives of about 600 Lithuanians and 5,000 Soviet activists. On June 24, Germans entered both Kaunas and Vilnius without a fight. Within a week, the Germans had sustained 3,362 losses, but controlled
19261-601: The criminal code. Many peasant families were forcibly resettled in Siberia and Kazakhstan into exile settlements , and some of them died on the way. Estimates suggest that about a million so-called ' kulak ' families, or perhaps some 5 million people, were sent to forced labour camps . On August 7, 1932, the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property proclaimed that the punishment for theft of kolkhoz or cooperative property
19448-506: The dangers of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany. The contrasting attitudes partly explain why the Soviets have often been charged with playing a double game in 1939 of carrying on open negotiations for an alliance with Britain and France but secretly considering propositions from Germany. By the end of May, drafts had been formally presented. In mid-June, the main tripartite negotiations started. Discussions were focused on potential guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe in
19635-443: The destruction of crops and livestock. Readings and reinterpretations of Soviet newspapers labelled collectivization as a second serfdom . Villagers were afraid the old landowners/serf owners were coming back and that the villagers joining the collective farm would face starvation and famine. More reason for peasants to believe collectivization was a second serfdom was that entry into the kolkhoz had been forced. Farmers did not have
19822-598: The elections to the People's Parliament, the Soviets arrested some 2,000 prominent political activists. These arrests paralyzed any attempts to create anti-Soviet groups. An estimated 12,000 were imprisoned as " enemies of the people ." When farmers were unable to meet exorbitant new taxes, some 1,100 of the larger farmers were put on trial. On June 14–18, 1941, less than a week before Germany's invasion, some 17,000 Lithuanians were deported to Siberia , where many perished due to inhumane living conditions (see June deportation ). Some of
20009-637: The empire, creating a large portion of well-off peasants and stimulating rapid agricultural development in the 1910s. Local merchants exported large quantities of labelled grain, flour, and butter into central Russia and Western Europe. In May 1931, a special resolution of the Western-Siberian Regional Executive Committee (classified "top secret") ordered the expropriation of property and the deportation of 40,000 kulaks to "sparsely populated and unpopulated" areas in Tomsk Oblast in
20196-475: The entire country. During the first days of war, German military administration, chiefly concerned with the region's security, tolerated Lithuanian attempts to establish their own administrative institutions and left a number of civilian issues to the Lithuanians. The Provisional Government in Kaunas attempted to establish the proclaimed independence of Lithuania and undo the damage of the one-year Soviet regime. During
20383-465: The esteemed grain-growers of your district (and not only of your district alone) carried on an 'Italian strike' (sabotage!) and were not loath to leave the workers and the Red Army without bread. That the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (without blood) does not change the fact that the esteemed grain-growers waged what was in fact a 'quiet' war against Soviet power. A war of starvation, dear com[rade] Sholokhov. This, of course, can in no way justify
20570-467: The fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures. On 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg , the German ambassador in Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was willing to cede
20757-473: The famine. However, it's been pointed out that the registered deaths in the archives were substantially revised by the demographics officials. The older version of the data showed 600,000 fewer deaths in Ukraine than the current, revised statistics. In The Black Book of Communism , the authors claim that the number of deaths was at least 4 million, and they also characterize the Great Famine as "a genocide of
20944-521: The following nights another 2,300 were killed." The killings provided justification for rounding up Jews and putting them in ghettos to "protect them", where by December 1941 in Kaunas, 15,000 remained, 22,000 having been executed. The executions were carried out at three main groups: in Kaunas ( Ninth Fort ), in Vilnius ( Ponary massacre ), and in countryside ( Rollkommando Hamann ). In Lithuania, by 1 December 1941, over 120,000 Lithuanian Jews had been killed. It
21131-626: The food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for the processing industry, and agricultural exports via state-imposed quotas on individuals working on collective farms. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program , meaning that more food would be needed to keep up with urban demand. In October 1929, approximately 7.5% of
21318-643: The formation of collective farms on a voluntary basis. According to Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation . Other scholars have argued that the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced policy of collectivisation implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement. The pre-existing communes, which periodically redistributed land, did little to encourage improvement in technique and formed
21505-415: The general staff. Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question of whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded. From April to July, Soviet and German officials made statements on
21692-462: The ghettos and joining the Jewish partisans . The genocide rate of Jews in Lithuania, up to 95–97%, was the highest in Europe. This was primarily due, with few notable exceptions, to widespread Lithuanian cooperation with the German authorities. Jews were widely blamed for the previous Soviet regime (see Jewish Bolshevism ) and were resented for welcoming Soviet troops. Targeted Nazi propaganda exploited
21879-562: The government. The attacks on religion and the Church affected women the most because they were upholders of religion within the villages. Dovzhenko 's film Earth gives example of peasants' skepticism with collectivization on the basis that it was an attack on the church. Coiner of the term genocide , Raphael Lemkin , considered the repression of the Orthodox Church to be a prong of genocide against Ukrainians when seen in correlation to
22066-499: The grain had been produced but was being hoarded by "kulaks." Stalin tried to appear as being on the side of the peasants, but it did not help, and the peasants as a whole resented the grain seizures. The peasants did everything they could to protest what they considered unfair seizures. Instead of raising the price, the Politburo adopted an emergency measure to requisition 2.5 million tons of grain. The seizures of grain discouraged
22253-400: The groups representing Lithuania in exile. In 1943, the Nazis attempted to raise a Waffen-SS division from the local population as they had in other countries, but widespread coordination between resistance groups led to a boycot. The Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force ( Lietuvos vietinė rinktinė ) was eventually formed in 1944 under Lithuanian command, but was disbanded by the Nazis only
22440-508: The half of Poland east of the Vistula River as well as Latvia , Estonia , Finland and Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August. On 25 August 1939, the New York Times ran a front-page story by Otto D. Tolischus , "Nazi Talks Secret", whose subtitle included "Soviet and Reich Agree on East". On 26 August 1939,
22627-457: The household plots of kolkhoz members (i.e., collectivized farmsteads) are included in the land base of collective farms. Without the household plots, arable land in collective cultivation in 1940 was 96.4% of land in collective farms, and not 99.8% as shown by official statistics. Although there is no arguing with the fact that collectivization was sweeping and total between 1928 and 1940, the table below provides different (more realistic) numbers on
22814-417: The idea of allying with the Soviets and Ribbentrop recalled Hitler saying that Stalin "looked like a man he could do business with". Ribbentrop was then given the nod to pursue negotiations with Moscow. Hitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons that Britain and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless. In
23001-400: The importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought the Germans in various ways for a decade prior to signing the pact. Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that "fascism is a matter of taste". For its part, Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, but Hitler still viewed an attack on
23188-479: The independence of Poland, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Turkey. On 6 April, Poland and Britain agreed to formalise the guarantee as a military alliance , pending negotiations. On 28 April, Hitler denounced the 1934 German–Polish declaration of non-aggression and the 1935 Anglo–German Naval Agreement . In mid-March 1939, attempting to contain Hitler's expansionism, the Soviet Union, Britain and France started to trade
23375-507: The interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius region . In the west, rumoured existence of the Secret Protocol was proven only when it was made public during the Nuremberg trials . A week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland . On 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol , and one day after the Supreme Soviet of
23562-512: The late 1950s did Soviet farm animal stocks begin to approach 1928 levels. Peasant slaughter of livestock was significant, for instance in the Central Black Earth Region 25% of cattle, 55% of sheep, 53% of pigs and 40% of chickens were slaughtered within the first three months of 1930. Despite the initial plans, collectivization, accompanied by the bad harvest of 1932–1933, did not live up to expectations. Between 1929 and 1932 there
23749-449: The latter city. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German–Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of Sovietisation of the newly acquired areas. The Soviets organised staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimisation of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland. Eleven days after
23936-413: The main culprits. Women were given sentences to serve as a warning, not as a punishment. Because of how they were perceived, women were able to play an essential role in the resistance to collectivization. Collectivization did not just entail the acquisition of land from farmers but also the closing of churches, burning of icons, and the arrests of priests. Associating the church with the tsarist regime,
24123-479: The many political prisoners were massacred by the retreating Red Army . These persecutions were key in soliciting support for the Nazis. On June 22, 1941, the territory of the Lithuanian SSR was invaded by two advancing German army groups: Army Group North , which took over western and northern Lithuania, and Army Group Centre , which took over most of the Vilnius Region . The first attacks were carried out by
24310-532: The meeting showed how seriously that the Soviets were taking the negotiations. In late July and early August 1939, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details of a planned economic agreement and specifically addressed a potential political agreement, which the Soviets stated could come only after an economic agreement. The German presence in the Soviet capital during negotiations can be regarded as rather tense. German pilot Hans Baur recalled that Soviet secret police followed every move. Their job
24497-511: The north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement": the areas east of the Pisa , Narew , Vistula , and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia , was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to
24684-610: The northern part of the Western-Siberian region. The expropriated property was to be transferred to kolkhozes as indivisible collective property and the kolkhoz shares representing this forced contribution of the deportees to kolkhoz equity were to be held in the "collectivization fund of poor and landless peasants" (фонд коллективизации бедноты и батрачества). A notable uprising against collectivisation in Siberia occurred in Buryatia, where
24871-499: The now-famous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on. The same day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth , whose grandmother was Jewish, informed Italian diplomat Guido Relli and American chargé d'affaires Charles Bohlen of the secret protocol on the vital interests in the countries' allotted "spheres of influence" but failed to reveal the annexation rights for "territorial and political rearrangement". The agreement's public terms so exceeded
25058-492: The occupation, the Soviets staged elections to the so-called People's Seimas , which then asked to join the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic . This allowed Soviet propaganda claiming that Lithuania has voluntarily joined the Soviet Union. Soon after the occupation started, Sovietization policies were implemented. On July 1, all political, cultural, and religious organizations were closed, with only
25245-590: The other." On 21 September, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov , German military attaché General Köstring , and other officers signed a formal agreement in Moscow co-ordinating military movements in Poland, including the "purging" of saboteurs and the Red Army assisting with destruction of the "enemy". Joint German–Soviet parades were held in Lviv and Brest-Litovsk , and the countries' military commanders met in
25432-572: The outrages, which, as you assure me, have been committed by our workers. ... And those guilty of those outrages must be duly punished. About 40 million people were affected by the food shortages including areas near Moscow where mortality rates increased by 50%. The center of the famine, however, was Ukraine and surrounding regions, including the Don , the Kuban , the Northern Caucasus and Kazakhstan where
25619-471: The pact was signed, the Franco-British military delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiator Kliment Voroshilov . On 25 August, Voroshilov told them that "in view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation". The same day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing
25806-552: The peasant households were in collective farms, and by February 1930, 52.7% had been collectivised. The collectivization era saw several famines , as well as peasant resistance to collectivization. During the period of war communism introduced during the Russian Civil War the policy of prodrazvyorstka was introduced (the same policy was used even before the October Revolution during World War I ), which meant that
25993-550: The peasantry was obligated to surrender the surpluses of agricultural produce for a fixed price. When the Russian Civil War ended, the economy changed with the New Economic Policy (NEP) and specifically, with the replacement of prodrazvyorstka with less drastic prodnalog or "food tax." Leon Trotsky and the Opposition bloc had advocated a programme of industrialization which also proposed agricultural cooperatives and
26180-401: The peasants and less grain was produced during 1928, and again the government resorted to requisitions, much of the grain being requisitioned from middle peasants as sufficient quantities were not in the hands of the " kulaks ." The impact that this had on poorer peasants forced them to move to the cities. The peasants moved in search of jobs in the rapidly expanding industry. This, however, had
26367-423: The peasants resulted in food shortages in the cities. Although grain had nearly returned to pre-war production levels, the large estates which had produced it for urban markets had been divided up. Not interested in acquiring money to purchase overpriced manufactured goods, the peasants chose to consume their produce rather than sell it. As a result, city dwellers only saw half the grain that had been available before
26554-523: The plots awarded to them by the interwar reforms were the first their families had ever owned. Furthermore, the countryside was filled with rumours regarding the harshness of collective farm life. Pressure from Moscow to collectivize continued and the authorities in Latvia sought to reduce the number of individual farmers (increasingly labelled kulaki or budži ) through higher taxes and requisitioning of agricultural products for state use. The first kolkhoz
26741-632: The population losses between 1940 and 1953 were more than one million people, a third of the pre-war population. The three largest categories of this number are: Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact ,
26928-459: The population of the affected regions. Nothing similar was done during the drought of 1932–1933, mainly because the information about the disaster was suppressed by Stalin. Stalin also undertook a purge of the Ukrainian communists and intelligentsia, with devastating long-term effects on the area. Many Ukrainian villages were blacklisted and penalized by government decree for perceived sabotage of food supplies. Moreover, migration of population from
27115-412: The possibility of "capitalist encirclements", had little hope either of preventing war and wanted nothing less than an ironclad military alliance with France and Britain to provide guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany. Stalin's adherence to the collective security line was thus purely conditional. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that since the Soviet Union
27302-429: The potential for the beginning of political negotiations, but no actual negotiations took place. "The Soviet Union had wanted good relations with Germany for years and was happy to see that feeling finally reciprocated", wrote the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg . The ensuing discussion of a potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet Union had to be channeled into the framework of economic negotiations between
27489-450: The publication of the article, the pressure for collectivization temporarily abated and peasants started leaving collective farms. By 1930 only 23.6% of peasants were collective farms, i.e., the numbers dropped by 50%. But soon collectivization was intensified again. In particular, March 1931 decrees "О совхозном строительстве" and "О колхозном строительстве" forbade peasants to leave collective farms. By 1936, about 90% of Soviet agriculture
27676-407: The remaining Jews to concentration camps . Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated, while Kaunas and Šiauliai were turned into concentration camps and survived until July 1944. Remaining Jews were sent to camps in Stutthof , Dachau , Auschwitz . Only about 2,000–3,000 of Lithuanian Jews were liberated from these camps. More survived by withdrawing into Russia's interior before the war broke out or by escaping
27863-416: The revolution. To the peasants, the revolution was about giving more freedom and land to the peasants, but instead, they had to give up themselves, with any land or livestock they had to the centrally controlled ‘collective farm’ in accordance with the state's policies. Women were the primary vehicle for rumours that touched upon issues of family and everyday life. Fears that collectivization would result in
28050-453: The right to leave the collective without permission. The level of state procurements and prices on crops also enforced the serfdom analogy. The government would take a majority of the crops and pay extremely low prices. The serfs during the 1860s were paid nothing but collectivization still reminded the peasants of serfdom. To them, this "second serfdom" became code for the Communist betrayal of
28237-410: The riots run their course. When women came to trial, they were given less harsh punishments as the men because women, to officials, were seen as illiterate and the most backward part of the peasantry. One particular case of this was a riot in a Russian village of Belovka where protestors were beating members of the local soviet and setting fire to their homes. The men were held exclusively responsible as
28424-595: The six weeks of its existence, the Government issued about 100 laws and decrees, but they were largely not enforced. Its policies can be described as both anti-Soviet and antisemitic . The government organized volunteer forces, known as the Tautinio Darbo Apsaugos Batalionas (TDA), to serve as a basis for the re-established Lithuanian Army , but the battalion was soon employed by the Einsatzkommando 3 and Rollkommando Hamann for mass executions of
28611-536: The socialization of children, the export of women's hair, communal wife-sharing, and the notorious common blanket affected many women, causing them to revolt. For example, when it was announced that a collective farm in Crimea would become a commune and that the children would be socialized, women killed their soon-to-be socialized livestock, which spared the children. Stories that the Communists believed short hair gave women
28798-497: The surplus funding future industrialization. The kulaks were coerced into giving up their land to make way for these collective farms or risk being killed, deported, or sent to labor camps . Inexperienced peasants from urban areas would then replace the missing workforce of the agriculture sector, which is now considered overstaffed, inefficient and import-dependent. Under Stalin's grossly inefficient system, agricultural yields declined rather than increased. The situation persisted into
28985-527: The takeover of Czechoslovakia would no longer be taken lightly. His response to the political checkmate would later be heard at a rally in Wilhelmshaven : "No power on earth would be able to break German might, and if the Western Allies thought Germany would stand by while they marshalled their ' satellite states ' to act in their interests, then they were sorely mistaken". Ultimately, Hitler's discontent with
29172-476: The terms of an ordinary non-aggression treaty—requiring that both parties consult with each other, and not aid a third party attacking either—that Gunther heard a joke that Stalin had joined the anti-Comintern pact. Time Magazine repeatedly referred to the Pact as the "Communazi Pact" and its participants as "communazis" until April 1941. Soviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize
29359-478: The third Soviet five-year plan required new infusions of technology and industrial equipment. German war planners had estimated serious shortfalls of raw materials if Germany entered a war without the Soviet supply. On 31 March 1939, in response to Germany's defiance of the Munich Agreement and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , Britain pledged its support and that of France to guarantee
29546-714: The toll was one million dead. The countryside was affected more than cities, but 120,000 died in Kharkiv , 40,000 in Krasnodar and 20,000 in Stavropol . Whilst there is no comprehensive official account of famine deaths known of, historians R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft used official archival soviet 'registered death' statistics of 2,577,065 deaths from all causes in Ukraine to extrapolate an 'excess registered mortality' of 1,544,840 from 1932 to 1933. Alec Nove claims that registration of deaths largely ceased in many areas during
29733-418: The true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will, therefore, direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if the occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible. Should, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate
29920-433: The twenty-five thousanders to the countryside that they would be able to produce grain more rapidly. Their hopes were that key areas in the North Caucasus and Volga regions would be collectivized by 1931, and then the other regions by 1932. Collectivization sought to modernize Soviet agriculture, consolidating the land into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment using the latest scientific methods of agriculture. It
30107-598: The two countries , since close military and diplomatic connections that existed before the mid-1930s had been largely severed. In May, Stalin replaced his foreign minister from 1930 to 1939, Maxim Litvinov , who had advocated rapprochement with the West and was also Jewish , with Vyacheslav Molotov to allow the Soviet Union more latitude in discussions with more parties, instead of only Britain and France. On 23 August 1939, two Focke-Wulf Condors , containing German diplomats, officials, and photographers (about 20 in each plane), headed by Ribbentrop, descended into Moscow. As
30294-512: The two countries had fallen sharply after World War I, but trade agreements signed in the mid-1920s helped to increase trade to 433 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ per year by 1927. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party 's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs , who were considered " Untermenschen " (subhuman) according to Nazi racial ideology . Moreover,
30481-542: The uprising since at least March 1941. The activists proclaimed Lithuanian independence and established the Provisional Government of Lithuania on June 23. Vilnius was taken by soldiers of the 29th Lithuanian Territorial Corps , many of them deserters from the Red Army , which had gang-pressed them when Lithuania and the Lithuanian Army changed hands. Smaller, less organized groups emerged in other cities and in
30668-406: The war exceeded 200,000 although Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the casualties may have been one million. Around that time, after several Gestapo–NKVD conferences , Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps that were a selection process to determine who would be killed. On 5 March 1940, in what would later be known as
30855-427: The war. Before the revolution, peasants controlled only 2,100,000 km divided into 16 million holdings, producing 50% of the food grown in Russia and consuming 60% of total food production. After the revolution, the peasants controlled 3,140,000 km divided into 25 million holdings, producing 85% of the food, but consuming 80% of what they grew (meaning that they ate 68% of the total). The Communist Party of
31042-414: The west. Within a few days, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians and POWs, which took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of the German occupation. The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and by carrying out a bombing campaign. The Soviet Union assisted German air forces by allowing them to use signals broadcast by
31229-411: Was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Northern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 (backdated 23 August 1939) by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop . The treaty was the culmination of negotiations around
31416-466: Was a famine and prohibited journalists from visiting the collective farms. In order to cover up for the poor harvests, the Soviet government created a fierce propaganda campaign blaming the kulaks for the famine. The propaganda said they were creating an artificial food shortage by hiding crops only to sell them when prices were high. Rumors circulated in the villages warning the rural residents that collectivization would bring disorder, hunger, famine, and
31603-449: Was a massive fall in agricultural production resulting in famine in the countryside. Stalin and the CPSU blamed the prosperous peasants, referred to as ' kulaks ' (Russian: fist ), who were organizing resistance to collectivization. Allegedly, many kulaks had been hoarding grain in order to speculate on higher prices, thereby sabotaging grain collection. Stalin resolved to eliminate them as
31790-707: Was carried out by Kazakhs against other Kazakhs, and it was up to those Kazakhs to decide who was a bai and how much to confiscate from them. This engagement was intended to make Kazakhs active participants in the transformation of Kazakh society. More than 10,000 bais may have been deported due to the campaign against them. In areas where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding, collectivization met with massive resistance and major losses and confiscation of livestock. Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million. Restrictions on migration proved ineffective and half
31977-408: Was collectivized. Later a number of authors suggested that this Stalin's article was picking scapegoats , putting the blame on rank-and-file functionaries for his own excesses and quenching the rising discontent. Stalin's efforts to implement agricultural collectivization played a significant role in the overall mortality figures attributed to his regime, notably evidenced by the Ukrainian famine,
32164-649: Was confident that its capitulation could be attained without great effort. The Soviets demanded territories on the Karelian Isthmus , the islands of the Gulf of Finland and a military base near the Finnish capital, Helsinki , which Finland rejected. The Soviets staged the shelling of Mainila on 26 November and used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact . On 30 November,
32351-509: Was difficult, though, since only about 1% of the peasantry employed labourers (the basic Marxist definition of a capitalist ), and 82% of the country's population were peasants. According to Robert Conquest , the definition of "kulak" also varied depending on who was using it; "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres [~2 ha] more than their neighbors" were labeled kulaks" in Stalin's first Five Year Plan. The small shares of most of
32538-583: Was disastrous for both the German and the Russian empires. The Russian Civil War broke out in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin , the first leader of the new Soviet Russia , recognised the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Moreover, facing a German military advance, Lenin and Trotsky were forced to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , which ceded many western Russian territories to Germany. After
32725-472: Was established only in November 1946 and by 1948, just 617 kolkhozes had been established, integrating 13,814 individual farmsteads (12.6% of the total). The process was still judged too slow, and in March 1949 just under 13,000 kulak families, as well as a large number of individuals, were identified. Between March 24 and March 30, 1949, about 40,000 people were deported and resettled at various points throughout
32912-510: Was ever formed under the Waffen-SS, and all volunteers served on an individual basis. The majority of anti-Nazi resistance in Lithuania came from the Polish partisans and the Soviet partisans . Both began sabotage and guerrilla operations against German forces immediately after the Nazi invasion of 1941 . The most important Polish resistance organization in Lithuania was, as elsewhere in occupied Poland ,
33099-482: Was held in common: Also, various cooperatives for the processing of agricultural products were installed. In November 1929, the Central Committee decided to implement accelerated collectivization in the form of kolkhozes and sovkhozes . This marked the end of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Peasants that were willing to conform and join
33286-537: Was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware of only the British–French–Soviet negotiations, which had taken place for months; by Germany's allies, notably Japan; by the Comintern and foreign Communist parties; and Jewish communities all around the world. On 24 August, Pravda and Izvestia carried news of the pact's public portions, complete with
33473-421: Was not introduced in Lithuania. All land was nationalized, farms were reduced to 30 hectares (74 acres), and extra land (some 575,000 hectares (5,750 km)) was distributed to small farmers. In preparation for eventual collectivization, new taxes between 30% and 50% of farm production were enacted. The Lithuanian litas was artificially depreciated to 3–4 times its actual value and withdrawn by March 1941. Before
33660-632: Was often claimed that an American Fordson tractor (called "Фордзон" in Russian) was the best propaganda in favour of collectivization. The agricultural means of production (land, equipment, livestock) were to be totally "commonalised" ("обобществлены"), i.e. removed from the control of individual peasant households. The zeal for collectivization was so high that the March 2, 1930, issue of Pravda contained Stalin's article Dizzy with Success ( Russian : Головокружение от успехов , lit. 'Dizziness from success'), in which he called for
33847-422: Was opposition to collectivization, especially in Ukraine . For peasants that were unable to meet the grain quota, they were fined five-times the quota. If the peasant continued to be defiant the peasants' property and equipment would be confiscated by the state. If none of the previous measures were effective the defiant peasant would be deported or exiled. The practice was made legal in 1929 under Article 61 of
34034-415: Was so weakened by the Great Purge that it could not be a main military participant. Many military sources were at variance with the last point, especially after the Soviet victories over the Japanese Kwantung Army in the Manchuria. France was more anxious to find an agreement with the Soviet Union than Britain was. As a continental power, France was more willing to make concessions and more fearful of
34221-423: Was the common method) and illegal transfers of grain took place. Faced with the refusal to hand grain over, a decision was made at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1929 to embark on a nationwide program of collectivization. Several forms of collective farming were suggested by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture (Narkomzem) , distinguished according to the extent to which property
34408-477: Was the death sentence, which "under extenuating circumstances" could be replaced by at least ten years of incarceration. With what some called the Law of Spikelets ("Закон о колосках"), peasants (including children) who hand-collected or gleaned grain in the collective fields after the harvest were arrested for damaging the state grain production. During the Famine of 1932–33 it's estimated that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died from starvation. The implication
34595-792: Was the reduction of output and the cutting of the number of livestock in half. The subsequent recovery of the agricultural production was also impeded by the losses suffered by the Soviet Union during World War II and the severe drought of 1946 . However, the largest loss of livestock was caused by collectivization for all animals except pigs. The numbers of cows in the USSR fell from 33.2 million in 1928 to 27.8 million in 1941 and to 24.6 million in 1950. The number of pigs fell from 27.7 million in 1928 to 27.5 million in 1941 and then to 22.2 million in 1950. The number of sheep fell from 114.6 million in 1928 to 91.6 million in 1941 and to 93.6 million in 1950. The number of horses fell from 36.1 million in 1928 to 21.0 million in 1941 and to 12.7 million in 1950. Only by
34782-491: Was the thanks he got for having done his best for us to get him into prison. We knew perfectly well it was forbidden to take tips." In early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal and started to discuss a political agreement. Both countries' diplomats explained to each other the reasons for the hostility in their foreign policy in the 1930s and found common ground in both countries' anticapitalism with Karl Schnurre stating: "there
34969-413: Was to inform authorities when he left his residence and where he was headed. Baur's guide informed him: "Another car would tack itself onto us and follow us fifty or so yards in the rear, and wherever we went and whatever we did, the secret police would be on our heels." Baur also recalled trying to tip his Russian driver, which led to a harsh exchange of words: "He was furious. He wanted to know whether this
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