Keeping the British Liberal Party flag flying high

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pipisme

Leonas Bistras appointed Juozas Urbsys as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Lithuanian provisional government. [1] In a surprise development Motiejus Sumauskas, Minister of Education in the Council of Ministers in the Lithuanian SSR, announced his support for the provisional government. [2]

[1] Here is entry on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juozas_Urbsys.

[2] Here is his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justas_Paleckis.
 
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idumea

idumea

Who has defected to the Provisional Government from the Soviet authority, Justas Paleckis or Motiejus Šumauskas?
 

pipisme

In Moscow on 5 June 1956, the Politburo made the widely expected decision crush the Provisional Government of Lithuania, which it denounced as bourgeois and Nazi counter revolutionaries. It called upon the Lithuanian people to defend Socialism.

Lithuania was bordered by the German Federation, Poland and Latvia SSR. [1] So Soviet troops would have to go through Latvia, to stay in Soviet territory to reach Lithuania.

[1] See this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lithuania_territory_1939-1940.svg. Lithuania comprised the area shown in yellow, plus Klaipeda Region and Sudovia west of the Sesupe River.
 
Augenis

Augenis

The Soviets always kept a presence of around 30k soldiers in Lithuania at any given time in OTL, so they can just use those to reassert authority, no need to send additional ones from Moscow.

Or you can just send them by air without needing to go through land.
 

pipisme

Starting at 3pm on Tuesday 5 June 1956 over an estimated two hundred thousand people assembled in the square in front of Kaunas Town Hall. [1] They carried sprigs of rue [the national plant of Lithuania] and sang the Lithuanian national anthem, Tautiska giesme [The National Song].

They were confronted by armed Russian soldiers pointing their guns at them. A young woman who looked about eighteen years old gave a sprig of rue to a soldier. He shot her dead. Then after another woman and two men had tried to give rue to the soldiers and were shot dead, a middle-aged woman offered a sprig of rue to a soldier, who was young enough to be her son. He accepted it and they embraced. Immediately an army officer shot him dead. But then something completely unexpected happened. The soldiers put down their weapons and accepted the rue which the people gave them. The people and the soldiers embraced.

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Hall,_Kaunas.

[2] For rue see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rue. For the national anthem see http://www.nationalanthems.info/lt.htm.
 
Augenis

Augenis

pipisme said:
Starting at 3pm on Tuesday 5 June 1956 over an estimated two hundred thousand people assembled in the square in front of Kaunas Town Hall. [1] They carried sprigs of rue [the national plant of Lithuania] and sang the Lithuanian national anthem, Tautiska giesme [The National Song].
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I don't think you could find two hundred thousand ruta flowers in all of Lithuania.
 

pipisme

On 6 June there was a demonstration of an estimated 100,000 people in Klaipeda, and other rallies of tens of thousands of people in other cities, in support of the Lithuanian provisional government.

The demonstrations in Kaunas, Klaipeda and other cities were shown on television and in film newsreels, and reported on radio and in newspapers, in the Western democracies. The question of international recognition of the Lithuanian provisional government was now being actively considered by Western governments.

On Thursday 6 June 1956 the British cabinet met in 10 Downing Street. Among the matters discussed was the recognition of the provisional government as the legitimate government of Lithuania. The Prime Minister, Megan Lloyd George, and the Foreign Secretary, Robert Bernays, argued strongly in recognition on the grounds that recent events had shown clearly that it was in control of the country. For the Socialist Labour members, Clement Attlee [Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons] spoke in favour of recognition. The cabinet's decision in favour of recognition was unanimous.
 

pipisme

On 7 June 1956, Robert Bernays appointed Sir Eric Berthoud as British Ambassador to Lithuania. [1] France, the German Federation, Poland and the United States also recognised the provisional government of Lithuania. William Averell Harriman was Secretary of State in the Democratic administration of Robert Samuel Kerr.

[1] Here is Berthoud's entry in Wilkipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Berthoud.
 

pipisme

It was pretty well inevitable that the Soviet regime would crush the Lithuanian independence movement. Tens of thousands of troops were flown from Russia to Lithuania. On Saturday 9 June 1956 they took control of government buildings in Kaunas and arrested the prime minister, members of his government and Motiejus Samauskas. After a mock trial they were all convicted of being counter-revolutionary traitors to the Soviet Union and executed by a bullet in the back of the head. Soviet troops also took control of other cities and towns in Lithuania.

Demonstrators in the streets of Kaunas and other cities were ruthlessly shot by the Soviet army. The exact casualty figure in not known, but the most accurate estimate is that two to three hundred people were killed or seriously injured.
 

pipisme

Archangel said:
Will this mark a decline in communist membership in the west, like the otl Hungarian Revolution of 1956 reportedly did?
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To some extent, but Communist parties did not benefit from the boost of their memberships as there was in OTL because of the Soviet victory in World War II. So the decline in membership was from a lower base.
 

pipisme

Following the crushing of the independence movement in Lithuania, there was renewed persecution of the Catholic Church. Vincentas Sladkevicius, the Archbishop of Kaunas, was shot by firing squad, and over two hundred priests were deported to Siberia. Seminaries were closed and priests were forced to sign a loyalty oath to the Soviet regime and to help organise the Living Church which was to be independent of Rome and loyal to the Soviet regime. [1] Nearly five hundred churches and chapels were closed, and the remainder permitted to remain open only on payment of very heavy taxes.

[1] See http://www.lituanus.org/1985/85_1_04.htm.
 
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Archangel

I can see a hardening of international public opinion against the Soviets (especially among catholic communities around the world, and a weakening of catholic popular support for communist guerrillas, or communist factions within guerrillas).
 

pipisme

1956 was a presidential election year in the United States and the Republicans were very hopeful of regaining the presidency. Four years previously no candidate received an overall majority of the electoral votes, and the choice of president and vice president was decided by Congress. They voted for Robert Kerr to become president and Paul Dever for vice president.

At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in August 1956, the delegates chose Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., senator from Massachusetts as candidate for president, and William Knowland, senator from California and Majority Whip in the Senate, as vice-presidential candidate. Lodge had been the Republican candidate for vice president in 1952.
 
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pipisme

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1956, Robert Samuel Kerr was re-nominated as candidate for president. The vice-president, Paul Andrew Dever having decided to retire, Adlai Stevenson, the Governor of Illinois, was chosen as vice-presidential candidate.
 
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