KGB-Historical Falsifications

In the Morass of Historical Falsifications


About a new propaganda film aiming to overthrow the fact of the occupation in the Baltic states

Arvydas Anušauskas

Russian television, openly assisting the Russian secret services, created a new propaganda product, the so-called documentary “The Baltic States: Lessons Not Learnt.”

It should be acknowledged that the primitive interpretation of the 20th century history, primarily of that related to the Baltic states, has gained the upper hand in Russia not yesterday. All that may be called the hangover of Soviet propaganda, even though it should be recognized that primitivism also does not stand still. All propaganda films, however, have one trait in common, which the authors of the films, created in Russia , will not get rid of for ever. This situation is similar to a trick of a conjurer where with the help of sleight of hand he distracts the attention of the audience. For that purpose, the Russian authors employ shamelessly speculations on the theme of holocaust. And if it is needed that the theme of occupation of the Baltic states would disappear finally, propaganda should be started from the Munich Treaty (it would perfectly replace the Moscow Treaty, more known as Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact) and finished by holocaust. The latter is part of history, especially painful for Jews and not subject to discussions, which will perfectly divert attention form thousands of children and adults deported to Siberia, from the GULAG camps and even from medical experiments therein. The figure of Dr. Mengele will perfectly replace the theme of GULAG physicians, who wrote theses about the survival of people under the conditions of the polar climate. Victims of the Salaspils camp will screen experiments conducted with people, who were previously exposed to exhaustion for that purpose in the GULAG camps…

“In Munich, the fate of all small countries was determined,” declares the voice off screen. No doubt, it follows that Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact, concluded later, is not a bit worse that the former treaties. Certainly, this thesis may be disputed – Munich by using dubious means pushed aside for some time the beginning of the war and the Western democracies did not become the allies of Hitler, and the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact just opened the door for World War II and occupation of many countries.

A similar opinion is also expressed by the German Egon Bahr. It was him that by his speculative speeches, ideally repeating the line of anti-Baltic propaganda, interested me most of all. So, who is that mysterious E. Bahr?

Is he that Egon Karl Heinz Bahr, a man with extensive life experience, who served in Wehrmacht and in the government of the chancellor Willy Brandt, and who maintained close contacts with KGB. This active organizer of the new eastern policy, as soon as the “ Prague spring’” was suppressed, in 1969 offered his help to Andropov. The Russian dissident, the forced emigrant Vladimir Bukovsky asserts that Egon Bahr was an old CPSU collaborator, who cooperated with the USSR leadership, making use of the KGB channels, and Bukovsky during his work in the Russian Constitutional Court could get the documents evidencing that fact. Thus he was an old “business” partner of the CPSU and KGB. Moreover, V. Bukovsky revealed one more trace of that “German friend” – when D.Dudayev was killed, the fund of E. Bahr and his old partner in the CPSU Valentin Falin (at the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was the leader of the international department of the CC CPSU) paid a prize of two million dollars for certain services to General Alexander Lebed, the secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. That money was intended for the payment of the special apparatus stolen in the USA for targeting a rocket to the radiation of a satellite telephone. The said Falin – Bahr fund is in Germany , and the money of the fund is the CPSU money. Thus the past is inseparable from the present, and the expert in the German external policy E. Bahr is further used consistently by the secret services of Russia .

After such experts, a necessity arose in other, “cleaner” ones. For this role the well-known physician Academician Viktor Kalberzs, who spent his childhood in Moscow , perfectly fitted. His evidence that in 1941 the deportations also concerned his near relations, but a wife with children went to Siberia on their own will, was simply invaluable for propaganda. How else could be grounded the once again revived Soviet thesis about the deported German agents. And here again the trick, diverting attention, is good – the crimes, committed by the Nazis. From here a conclusion suggests itself that the crimes of the Nazis were the real crimes, whereas Soviet deportations were just the “strengthening of the rear in the fight against the “Nazi agents”? Only in Lithuania alone, five thousand of juvenile “Nazi agents” were deported, but this should be known only to the residents of the Baltic countries. In other words, we are proposed to equal deportations to Siberia and GULAG with the internment of alien citizens in France and other fighting states.

In the film, some other methods of secret services – discredit is used. The last presidents of the Baltic countries were positioned in the same line – as if Smetona, Ulmanis and Päts used Soviet money. But this information almost ten years ago was dragged out to daylight from the Russian archives of foreign policy not by the Russian historians, but the historians of the Baltic countries. The true information as a matter of fact is not so one-sided and ambiguous as it is attempted to be presented, on the other hand, it shows the methods by which Soviet interests in Latvia and Estonia were realized. Already later the books of the General of Soviet Secret Service Pavel Sudoplatov appeared where it was said that “we could allow ourselves to make arrangements with them about the location of our military subunits, about a new government, about small compromises, since they even were unscrupulous to take money from our fixed-post spies, from the confidential agents. All that is also proved by the archival documents. Thus there was not any annexation in the Baltic countries. This was an action of foreign policy…” In this context it would be worth to repeat the main assertions of P. Sudoplatov: “The most impressive was the collaboration between the Estonian President Konstantin Päts and the resident of Russian intelligence service V. Yakovlev.” One statement of Sudoplatov is being passed over in silence: the Estonian President did not sign on 1930 the obligation for collaboration with GPU, though maintained the financial relations with the Soviets even until 1940.

If to speak about the Baltic countries, all of them are estimated as if being the whole one, though each state had its own historical experience and its own foreign policy. And just here when it is wanted to demonstrate one more justification of occupation – the Pro-German moods of the Baltic people, the position of Lithuania is being hushed up. You should not declare that the first trial of the Nazis in Kaunas, which resounded over the whole Europe , is more important that the newspaper “National-Socialist” hardly known to anybody. After all, then the deliberately built propaganda house of cards will be ruined. Thus it would be better to keep silent about those facts. Like about the collaboration of the Lithuanian secret service with France and Czechoslovakia in the field of information exchange about Germany, and to focus only on the collaboration of the Estonian military men with Abwehr, the department of Admiral Canaris.

But it is necessary to acknowledge that propaganda tricks do not stop here. Practically, all the time references are made to the Latvian pilot Herbert Cukurs. Why? In order once again to make a speculative use of the theme of the Holocaust of Jews. H. Cukurs, who was attempted to be kidnapped by the Mossad agents, was assassinated in 1965 in Montevideo , and is accused in the murder of Jews under the so-called Arajs Commando. The regular speculation on the sore subject has become just the means for diverting attention and justifying the deportation of 1000 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian military men to the Norilsk camp before the beginning of the war and their slow death here. Were there any Pro-German disposed pilots? It is if no importance, but justified for the “noble purpose.”

As a matter of fact, in the propaganda they have no aversion for using comparisons from the same arsenal of ideological conjurers. Annexations of the Czech and Albania , being realized by Germany and Italy , should justify the annexation of the Baltic countries. Due to the former treaties between Germany and Poland – they are shown as the allies, but the treaties on nonaggression, friendship and cooperation between the Soviet Union and Germany in dividing Europe by the allies were not made by those states. “The armies of the Baltic countries do not resist, since at that time nobody considered it to be the occupation,” state glorious propagandists, certainly, forgetting to answer to the question, why several Lithuanian and Latvian border guards were killed, and several days before the declaration of the ultimatum a group of the expeditionary force was secretly landed. But the most interesting thing is that the activity of Stalin emissaries Dekanozov, Vyshinsky and Zhdanov in the Baltic countries already after their occupation turned out to be found among the facts kept in silence. For silencing, the assertion that the brought in Soviet army was not interfering the internal affairs which needed no proof was used again. But is it that Soviet army participated in the formation of policy, is it not that the policy formation was not usurped by Stalin and the Communist Party under his control, for which the army was just the instrument? It is understandable that no answer will be given to those questions by the authors.

Historical speculations are based on passing over in silence, new interpretations are being created, facts are quietly substituted, the necessary phrases from the speeches of the Nazis and politicians of the democratic states of the period are distorted and cut out of the context. No doubt, that such propaganda attacks, directed against the population of the Baltic countries, will become still more intensive. Books by Dyukov (see Regnum.ru), prepared for publishing, are waiting for their turn. Here the author tries to prove that residents deported from Estonia went to Siberia in the passenger coaches, under the supervision of polite medical staff.