Lietuvių išeivijos įvaizdis sovietinio saugumo dokumentuose 1945–1991 m.

Abstract

Soviet State Security, as an integral part of the Soviet system, fostered a negative and denigrating attitude toward those Lithuanian emigrants who did not approve of the Soviet system in Lithuania. This attitude began to be actively promoted from 1945 onwards, when Lithuanian war refugees arrived in Western Germany. It was in their ranks that the Soviets found many enemies of the Soviet system. At first these refugees were accused of having collaborated with the Nazi occupying regime; later they were accused of cooperating with the intelligence services of Great Britain and the United States. A similarly negative and derogatory attitude was adopted toward those organizations that joined efforts to promote the liberation of Lithuania. It was only the so-called progressive, i.e., Communist-sympathizing Lithuanians living abroad the Soviets did not attack—they held them to be their support group in the Lithuanian emigration. Among Lithuanian diaspora organizations the Soviets held their fiercest enemy to have been the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (best known under its Lithuanian acronym VLIK ). It was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and later of working for American intelligence. But besides the denigrating evaluation there were indications that the Soviets un derstood VLIK ’s importance in the life of the emigrant community. Still it was often emphasized that the activities of VLIK had no future. Second on the list of the Soviet Union’s enemies was the Santara-Šviesa Federation. It was seen as posing a danger because it adopted camouflaged methods of working against the Soviet system. Other organizations negatively viewed by the Soviets included the World Lithuanian Community and the Lithuanian American Council. Negative attitudes were not only recorded in internal Soviet security documents but propagated in publications as well. A rticles and books directed against the anti-Communist Lithuanian emigration were prepared on the basis of material selected by the KG B and with the help of workers from that agency. These publications displayed the same negative and derogatory attitudes. Every publication was accompanied by propaganda and publicity actions. But their results were minimal in comparison to the planned-for goals. The KG B-fashioned image of the emigration was intended to be transmitted to all potential audiences: the inhabitants of Lithuania, foreign citizens, ordinary emigrants— thereby inculcating certain stereotypes into their thinking.