Lost Freeway
Banned
I'm sure supporters of South Africa would argue that their treatment of minorities, while bad, is nowhere near as horrific as the Soviet Union.
Twilight of the Red Tsar
- Thread starter Napoleon IV
- Start date
-
- Tags
- dystopia stalin lives
- Status
Napoleon IV gave me permission to write about Soviet Lithuania during the course of the TL.
However, all of LKP's patriotic plans were turned inside out and crushed by Stalin's recovery in the same year, and the First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party under the CPSU, Antanas Sniečkus was quick to realize which way the wind was blowing. Dark times were on the horizon. Sniečkus [...] had already gotten into odds with the Politburo and Stalin himself in 1950, where he defended his old communist friends in the LKP from persecution, and coupled with the fact that the Baltic communists were historically viewed by the CPSU with suspicion, it was clear that teasing Moscow any more than he already has would result in his removal. As the grim days of the 30's were returning to the Soviet Union, the leader of the Lithuanian Communist Party took up the same role that the hated imperial governor Mikhail Muravyov did in the 1860s - doing the dirty work for the Tsar in the Northwestern Krai.
[...]
Sniečkus held a very active role during the Second Great Purge, though his influence and actions were limited to the branch of the Communist Party that he himself had control over, this being the LKP. It was no secret that outside of the remaining Old Bolsheviks within his party that posed a threat to his rule and other victims, Stalin was seeking to eliminate influential minority figures within the Union, this manifesting in the purging of such politicians as Otto Kuusinen, Grigory Artyunov and Aleksandre Mirtskulava, among others, and there was real threat that Sniečkus was in the list of potential targets - he had to show his loyalty. It's hard to tell what exactly was going on in the First Secretary's head at the time, keeping memoirs or diaries was far too dangerous for him, but it's safe to say that his pragmatism easily won over his hidden nationalism, because his previous stance on protecting the old members of his party was dropped almost immediately.
In October of 1953, as the Second Great Purge was starting, marked with the Trial of the 14, "Tiesa"[2] published a long article, titled "Kova su kontrrevoliucija tęsiasi - fašistų ir kapitalistų šunys slepiasi Lietuvoje!" ("Battle with the Counter-Revolution - Fascist and Capitalist dogs are hiding in Lithuania"), and this marked the beginning of Sniečkus's own "Little Purge" within the LKP. Sniečkus's primary targets were the members of the "Third Front", an Interwar Lithuanian underground left-wing newspaper, many of who's members were members of the infamous "People's Seimas" that applied for joining the USSR in 1940. Now, their members were dispersed among the Party and the Lithuanian SSR, working in higher institutions, and their independence and non-Bolshevik past were a perceived danger.
1953 and 1954 were marked with a number of high-profile arrests across the LSSR, and the most important members of the "counter-revolutionaries" were tried in the Trial of the Nine in April of 1954. These included such famous writers like Kazys Boruta, Kostas Korsakas and Antanas Venclova, the rector of the University of Vilnius, Jonas Bučas, some other important figures, and the "most important traitor of all", the "leader of the Western conspiracy in Lithuania", Justas Paleckis, the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR. Paleckis was not affiliated with Moscow before 1940, he was a simple journalist and a Social Democrat who was picked by Vladimir Dekanozov as the puppet leader of the People's Seimas in 1940, and yet he had managed to retain his position in the LSSR after the fact. His non-Bolshevik past and questionable ideology made him a prime target for Sniečkus's purges. In a trial overseen by the MGB, all nine persons were convicted with treason, spying for Western countries and myriads of other convictions and sentenced to death via firing squad. This was merely the signal for the beginning of the purges, however.
Sniečkus had been infamous for the organization of the mass deportations of political opponents and innocents from Lithuania, and the beginning of the Second Great Purge reignited his vigor to continue. In 1941 and between 1944 to 1952, over 130 000 people, 70% of which were women and children, had been deported to Siberia and Central Asia, and this doesn't even count the over 150 000 Lithuanian partisans and political prisoners sent to Gulag prison camps. Words like "Vesna" ("spring"), "Priboi" ("coastal surf") and "Osen" ("autumn") were burned into the minds of the Lithuanians as the names of horrifying mass deportations from the country[3], and in 1955, this list was updated with a new word that used to mean joy, "Leto" ("summer"). Over 8000 families "of kulaks, enemies of the state and bandits", above 30 000 people, were forcibly deported from Lithuania into the Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk Krai within the span of a few weeks. Sniečkus was the man who signed the order.
[...]
The Great Pogrom was a major problem for the First Secretary, but it was a prime example of Sniečkus's cold blooded pragmatism. The news of the Soviet Holocaust most worried his wife Mira Bordonaitė, a Lithuanian Jew - was she going to be deported along with the rest of the Litvaks? Sniečkus's mind was quick to calculate the result - trying to protect his wife and his two children (both half-Jews) from deportation would most likely result in his own removal, and thus, his response was swift - as soon as orders for the mass-arrest of the Jews arrived to the LSSR, he ordered the MGB to arrest Mira and their two children, Vladas and Marytė, along with the rest of the 25 000 Lithuanian Jews within the Soviet Republic. Lithuanian Jews, the Litvaks, used to be among the largest Jewish communities in Europe, both in it's size and it's impact - and yet by the end of the 20th century, it was gone. The Nazis dealt the first blow, then Stalin in Moscow and Sniečkus in Vilnius finished it off.
Mira died in deportation in May 1957, remaining as a devout Communist until her death. Marytė didn't survive either. Vladas Sniečkus, however, endured the long years in Siberia, and when he was freed with the rest of the Jews, he moved to the United States to live the rest of his days there. Someone with his surname wouldn't have a long life in his homeland.
[...]
Despite all that Sniečkus had done to prove his loyalty - actively participating in the Great Pogrom and the purges, deporting and genociding his own population, using any means possible to achieve the production requirements set by the Central Committee, from using the MGB to punish unproductive regions and collective farms to inviting Soviet settlers - his relations with Moscow were souring. After the successful Baltic Genocide, Stalin's goons set their sights on Lithuania. Much like in Latvia and Estonia, plans were drawn up for the removal of the local communist leaders in favor of more direct rule from Moscow, and the Lithuanians were set to be deported. However, in a stroke of luck, Stalin died before this travesty could have been accomplished, and the new government led by Mikhail Suslov cancelled the plans for such deportation - after all, the economy of the Union itself was starting to fall.
Antanas Sniečkus presided over the Lithuanian SSR for eight more years, becoming one of the few party secretaries of the 14 subservient Soviet Republics to rule from World War II to the August Revolution. He was an expert in controlling and befriending the nomenklatura, and his years of experience in Soviet affairs even before the creation of the LSSR easily showed. Lithuania was turned into an industrial nation, one of the wealthiest in the Union[4]. But at what cost!
But with all his swimming in the Soviet System, even the Second Mikhail Muravyov did not predict the August Revolution.
---
Footnotes:
1. IOTL, a Lithuanian professor who has written numerous works on music, politics and history, but most famous for being the leader of the Lithuanian independence movement in the 1980s. Obviously, he didn't get such an honor ITTL.
2. "Pravda", the Lithuanian version.
3. All three were OTL mass deportations from Lithuania and the rest of the Baltic States. The Soviets liked to give them nice names.
4. In the OTL Soviet Union, the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, enjoyed a higher quality of life than the rest of the USSR, thus earning the colloquial name "Soviet West". Because of the Baltic Genocide, however, only Lithuania enjoys this success ITTL.
The Red Governor-General
Excerpt from the book "History of Lithuania, 1918-1968", by Vytautas Landsbergis[1]
[...]Excerpt from the book "History of Lithuania, 1918-1968", by Vytautas Landsbergis[1]
However, all of LKP's patriotic plans were turned inside out and crushed by Stalin's recovery in the same year, and the First Secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party under the CPSU, Antanas Sniečkus was quick to realize which way the wind was blowing. Dark times were on the horizon. Sniečkus [...] had already gotten into odds with the Politburo and Stalin himself in 1950, where he defended his old communist friends in the LKP from persecution, and coupled with the fact that the Baltic communists were historically viewed by the CPSU with suspicion, it was clear that teasing Moscow any more than he already has would result in his removal. As the grim days of the 30's were returning to the Soviet Union, the leader of the Lithuanian Communist Party took up the same role that the hated imperial governor Mikhail Muravyov did in the 1860s - doing the dirty work for the Tsar in the Northwestern Krai.
[...]
Sniečkus held a very active role during the Second Great Purge, though his influence and actions were limited to the branch of the Communist Party that he himself had control over, this being the LKP. It was no secret that outside of the remaining Old Bolsheviks within his party that posed a threat to his rule and other victims, Stalin was seeking to eliminate influential minority figures within the Union, this manifesting in the purging of such politicians as Otto Kuusinen, Grigory Artyunov and Aleksandre Mirtskulava, among others, and there was real threat that Sniečkus was in the list of potential targets - he had to show his loyalty. It's hard to tell what exactly was going on in the First Secretary's head at the time, keeping memoirs or diaries was far too dangerous for him, but it's safe to say that his pragmatism easily won over his hidden nationalism, because his previous stance on protecting the old members of his party was dropped almost immediately.
In October of 1953, as the Second Great Purge was starting, marked with the Trial of the 14, "Tiesa"[2] published a long article, titled "Kova su kontrrevoliucija tęsiasi - fašistų ir kapitalistų šunys slepiasi Lietuvoje!" ("Battle with the Counter-Revolution - Fascist and Capitalist dogs are hiding in Lithuania"), and this marked the beginning of Sniečkus's own "Little Purge" within the LKP. Sniečkus's primary targets were the members of the "Third Front", an Interwar Lithuanian underground left-wing newspaper, many of who's members were members of the infamous "People's Seimas" that applied for joining the USSR in 1940. Now, their members were dispersed among the Party and the Lithuanian SSR, working in higher institutions, and their independence and non-Bolshevik past were a perceived danger.
1953 and 1954 were marked with a number of high-profile arrests across the LSSR, and the most important members of the "counter-revolutionaries" were tried in the Trial of the Nine in April of 1954. These included such famous writers like Kazys Boruta, Kostas Korsakas and Antanas Venclova, the rector of the University of Vilnius, Jonas Bučas, some other important figures, and the "most important traitor of all", the "leader of the Western conspiracy in Lithuania", Justas Paleckis, the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR. Paleckis was not affiliated with Moscow before 1940, he was a simple journalist and a Social Democrat who was picked by Vladimir Dekanozov as the puppet leader of the People's Seimas in 1940, and yet he had managed to retain his position in the LSSR after the fact. His non-Bolshevik past and questionable ideology made him a prime target for Sniečkus's purges. In a trial overseen by the MGB, all nine persons were convicted with treason, spying for Western countries and myriads of other convictions and sentenced to death via firing squad. This was merely the signal for the beginning of the purges, however.
Sniečkus had been infamous for the organization of the mass deportations of political opponents and innocents from Lithuania, and the beginning of the Second Great Purge reignited his vigor to continue. In 1941 and between 1944 to 1952, over 130 000 people, 70% of which were women and children, had been deported to Siberia and Central Asia, and this doesn't even count the over 150 000 Lithuanian partisans and political prisoners sent to Gulag prison camps. Words like "Vesna" ("spring"), "Priboi" ("coastal surf") and "Osen" ("autumn") were burned into the minds of the Lithuanians as the names of horrifying mass deportations from the country[3], and in 1955, this list was updated with a new word that used to mean joy, "Leto" ("summer"). Over 8000 families "of kulaks, enemies of the state and bandits", above 30 000 people, were forcibly deported from Lithuania into the Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk Krai within the span of a few weeks. Sniečkus was the man who signed the order.
[...]
The Great Pogrom was a major problem for the First Secretary, but it was a prime example of Sniečkus's cold blooded pragmatism. The news of the Soviet Holocaust most worried his wife Mira Bordonaitė, a Lithuanian Jew - was she going to be deported along with the rest of the Litvaks? Sniečkus's mind was quick to calculate the result - trying to protect his wife and his two children (both half-Jews) from deportation would most likely result in his own removal, and thus, his response was swift - as soon as orders for the mass-arrest of the Jews arrived to the LSSR, he ordered the MGB to arrest Mira and their two children, Vladas and Marytė, along with the rest of the 25 000 Lithuanian Jews within the Soviet Republic. Lithuanian Jews, the Litvaks, used to be among the largest Jewish communities in Europe, both in it's size and it's impact - and yet by the end of the 20th century, it was gone. The Nazis dealt the first blow, then Stalin in Moscow and Sniečkus in Vilnius finished it off.
Mira died in deportation in May 1957, remaining as a devout Communist until her death. Marytė didn't survive either. Vladas Sniečkus, however, endured the long years in Siberia, and when he was freed with the rest of the Jews, he moved to the United States to live the rest of his days there. Someone with his surname wouldn't have a long life in his homeland.
[...]
Despite all that Sniečkus had done to prove his loyalty - actively participating in the Great Pogrom and the purges, deporting and genociding his own population, using any means possible to achieve the production requirements set by the Central Committee, from using the MGB to punish unproductive regions and collective farms to inviting Soviet settlers - his relations with Moscow were souring. After the successful Baltic Genocide, Stalin's goons set their sights on Lithuania. Much like in Latvia and Estonia, plans were drawn up for the removal of the local communist leaders in favor of more direct rule from Moscow, and the Lithuanians were set to be deported. However, in a stroke of luck, Stalin died before this travesty could have been accomplished, and the new government led by Mikhail Suslov cancelled the plans for such deportation - after all, the economy of the Union itself was starting to fall.
Antanas Sniečkus presided over the Lithuanian SSR for eight more years, becoming one of the few party secretaries of the 14 subservient Soviet Republics to rule from World War II to the August Revolution. He was an expert in controlling and befriending the nomenklatura, and his years of experience in Soviet affairs even before the creation of the LSSR easily showed. Lithuania was turned into an industrial nation, one of the wealthiest in the Union[4]. But at what cost!
But with all his swimming in the Soviet System, even the Second Mikhail Muravyov did not predict the August Revolution.
---
Footnotes:
1. IOTL, a Lithuanian professor who has written numerous works on music, politics and history, but most famous for being the leader of the Lithuanian independence movement in the 1980s. Obviously, he didn't get such an honor ITTL.
2. "Pravda", the Lithuanian version.
3. All three were OTL mass deportations from Lithuania and the rest of the Baltic States. The Soviets liked to give them nice names.
4. In the OTL Soviet Union, the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, enjoyed a higher quality of life than the rest of the USSR, thus earning the colloquial name "Soviet West". Because of the Baltic Genocide, however, only Lithuania enjoys this success ITTL.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Man, the word "Sneickus" could replace the word "Quisling" to describe traitor. This guy is even worse than Quisling. He embodies how Stalinism is basically the same as Nazism. Because both ideologies make it a virtue out of selling out everybody around you.
You're being very idealistic about America. The USA has done plenty of such things with no such strong election-losing backlash as you describe.
the finns are probably even more paranoid and heavily armed then otl
QueerSpear
Banned
Jesus! 
That man deported 130 000 people before the POD.
Are you going to make a post about the effects of the August Revolution and the Second Civil War in Lithuania?
That man deported 130 000 people before the POD.
Are you going to make a post about the effects of the August Revolution and the Second Civil War in Lithuania?
If Napoleon IV doesn't write about that himself, I could.Jesus!
That man deported 130 000 people before the POD.
Are you going to make a post about the effects of the August Revolution and the Second Civil War in Lithuania?
Or how TTL Soviet leaders turned themselves into the tormenters of their own nations in order to save their skin.
I fear he wasn't alone to sacrifice his family to save himself; OTL, Mikhail Kalinin couldn't save his froend nor even his wife from Stalin's NKVD.
As for his wife still holding to her Communist ideals, I bet some of the victoms of the Soviet Golocaust or the mass purges will have issues with Stockholm Syndrome - they might even found it earlier and name it from this fact! Artur London reported some of his friends arrested by the secret police had to be persuaded they were victims of repression, so ingrained was in them the idea the Party could do no wrong.
Such is the fate of these collaborators: despised both by their victims and their employers.
OTL, the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup of the Paris Jews was codenamed by the Vichy France police Vent printanier, or Spring Winds.
This wasn't even the first time Sniečkus acted so, to be honest. I think I've already said that here in this thread, but before the POD, he had his brother and his family arrested and deported to Siberia because they were "kulaks". No remorse. Even his mother, who fled to the West, disowned him.
People like Stalin and Hitler are considered evil because they are crazy or insane, but Sniečkus has that "honor" because of his cold-blooded pragmatism. He was a smart man, no doubt, he knew how the system works, and he did horrible things because that's what the system gratified.
Perhaps this is why he is still viewed somewhat positively in OTL Lithuania today, at least among the generation that lived in his era. They see him as a strong leader who protected Lithuania from Moscow's hand, and they emphasize the stability of his reign.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Well, TTL, he'll be remembered as a Quisling. Because of the Baltic Holocaust, and because he destroyed what remained of Lithuania's Jews. @Augenis said most Lithuanians were upset by the murder of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis and their collaborators. The fact that he finished the job is going to incense everybody,
All of which makes him one of, if not THE biggest RatFucking bastards to ever take up power in the Modern history of Continental Europe because Pragmatism to THIS degree is just proof he was just a psychopath in the truest sense of the word. I just hope the Lithuanian populace realize this as well after the August Revolution.
Speaking of the August Revolution, does he die, WAS IT SLOW AND PAINFUL?
The best.I swear this is starting to become a collaborative TL.
And in five years, we shall increase story post production by 450%!
I swear this is starting to become a collaborative TL.
Seems like it.
Though in a sense, that shows how good a quality it is.
I gave the readers the means of production.I swear this is starting to become a collaborative TL.
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