Of course, survivors from the interwar republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not single survivals from the interwar years in 1990, helping make the continuity of the Baltic states and societies a sociological reality. The next and no less important asset of tokenist restoration politics in 1988–1991 was the survival of the Baltic states de jure as persons in international law. Knowledge of this legal fact was the main source of inspiration of fundamentalist tokenist restoration politics in the Baltic countries. The main cause of the de jure survival of the Baltic states was the US policy of non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, dating back to 23 July 1940.

On this day, Sumner Welles, the US acting Secretary of State, made a statement refusing to recognise the pending annexation of the Baltic states as Soviet republics and condemned their occupation by the Soviet Union. This statement was a manifestation of the 1932 Stimson Doctrine, proclaimed after Japan’s occupation of Northeastern China (Manchuria). In this doctrine, enunciated by Henry L. Stimson, the US Secretary of State, the United States committed to non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by military force (L’hommedieu 2008; Vitas 1990). By this act, the United States rejected Soviet attempts to legalise the annexation as the ‘voluntary’ self-incorporation of three independent states.

These attempts involved staging fake elections (there was a single list of candidates to vote for and no fair vote count) to elect ‘people’s assemblies’. As their first acts, they proclaimed the Baltic states as ‘Soviet Socialist Republics’, asking Moscow to accept them as additional three republics of the USSR. While some local communists could rejoice at this fulfilment of their party programmes, the broader populations were deeply shocked as the accession to the USSR was not part of the programme of the list of ‘people’s deputies’, proclaimed during the election campaign as ‘people’s legislatives’. The Soviets were greatly assisted by the ‘silent submission’ of Baltic dictators, who not only failed to order military resistance but did not even voice any diplomatic protest (Ilmjärv 2004).

While Smetona was able to flee to neighbouring Germany, Ulmanis and Päts were captured. The Soviets left them for a month in their presidential offices, forcing them to sign new legislation. In Lithuania, the Soviets took advantage of Lithuanian Prime Minister Antanas Merkys, who was the acting president after Smetona’s flight. This gave the policies of the puppet governments a cloak of legality, although many acts signed by the captive heads of state were unconstitutional, including the organisation of fake elections and self-abolition of independent states (Bleiere et al. 2014: 241–260; Laar and Hiio 2018, 1: 189–212; Senn 2007).

Swift abolition of the state independence of the Baltic states by ‘people’s assemblies’ prompted diplomatic legacies of the Baltic countries to refuse to comply to the orders of the ‘ministers of foreign affairs’ of the puppet governments to hand over buildings and documents to Soviet diplomats and to return home (for imprisonment or shooting). In refusing compliance, Latvian and Lithuanian diplomats followed secret instructions they had received before the Soviet invasion. The Latvian government appointed its minister in London Kārlis Zariņš as the head of its diplomatic corps (with the authority to appoint new representatives). The Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys authorised Stasys Lozoraitis for the same role, who was the Lithuanian representative in Rome, representing Lithuania both in Italy and the Vatican City. The Estonian consul in New York Johannes Kaiv took up this function for his state in the United States (Piirimäe 2014: 7–18).

Of course, the legacies of the Baltic states could survive and embark on the mission of giving testimony of their continuation only so long as there were states that recognised their mandates, following the United States in pursuing a non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexations. The practical implications of this policy were the arrest of accounts of the Baltic states held in the banks of states that stuck to a policy of non-recognition and preservation of the status of Baltic state diplomatic missions and their heads. They were allowed to use interest from the arrested funds of the Baltic governments to run the activities of these legations, including the issue of personal documents that continued to be recognised by most Western countries right up until the restoration of independence. The policies of the United Kingdom were similar, whereas Nazi Germany recognised the annexation of the Baltic countries. Democratic Sweden followed its lead in exchange for the Soviets’ promise to compensate its companies and citizens for property losses due to the nationalisations and to pay the debts of the Baltic countries to the Swedish government or private companies (Mälksoo 2003).

From December 1941, the United States and the Soviet Union became allies in the anti-Hitlerite coalition, while the United Kingdom was made a Soviet ally following Hitler’s attack on his former strategic partner in June 1941. However, neither US President Franklin Roosevelt nor British Prime Minister Winston Churchill renounced the policy of non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states. Roosevelt only gave a vague promise to Stalin to reconsider this policy after World War II if the Soviet Union would be able to ascertain the free will of the Baltic peoples to join the USSR in genuine plebiscites. ‘In the end, Washington disregarded the so-called political realities and did not recognise the annexation of the Baltic states, although for a time (1943–1945) the decision hung in the balance. The scales may have been tipped by Stalin’s stupidity or negligence’ (Medijainen 2008: 28).

In 1945–1947, on the agenda of relations between the Soviet Union and Western powers, the ‘Baltic question’ was overshadowed by many new issues, related to the fates of many other East European countries ‘liberated’ by the Red Army, not to mention the ‘German question’. When the tensions over these questions escalated into the Cold War, the ‘Baltic question’ remained a bone of contention between the Soviet Union and the allied Western powers, among many other issues, until its very end. This secured the de jure survival of the Baltic states until 1990, with several remaining legacies of these countries serving as their de facto survivals, along with the still significant shares of survivors from the first independence (Piirimäe 2014: 115–156; Piirimäe and Mertelsmann 2012).

In his insightful paper, famous Estonian American political scientist Taagepera counterfactually argues that by making the Baltic states nominally independent satellite states instead of annexing them, the Soviet Union would have not only made its post-World War II relations with the Western powers less complicated (Taagepera 2013). In the long run, this would have most probably saved the USSR from disintegration in 1990–1991, as only in the Baltic republics did the population majorities resolutely support separation from the Soviet Union, receiving international support for their cause. The Transcaucasian republics may be another case with separatist majorities.

However, because of conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Moscow had strong levers to enforce on Armenia and Azerbaijan membership in the reformed federation as a better alternative, compared to the prospect of perpetual confrontation as independent states. For Georgia, these levers were the Abkhazia and South Ossetia issues—the populations of these autonomous regions of Georgia preferred direct subordination to Moscow rather than life in the independent Georgian state. With no Baltic example or precedent, separatist movements in the Transcaucasian republics barely had any chances to prevail (Suny 1993, 2011).

In the same paper, Taagepera (2013) reports about his own attempt (together with a group of young Estonian political activists) in the late 1960s to save (without knowing about it at this time) the Soviet Union from its pending disintegration in 1990–1991. Taagepera and his associates argued that it may be in the interests of the Soviet Union itself to resolve the inveterate ‘Baltic question’ by granting to its Baltic republics the status enjoyed by so-called ‘popular democracy’ states like Hungary, Poland or Bulgaria: that of a Soviet satellite state with internationally recognised independent state status. Generally, Soviet diplomacy after Stalin’s death cared a great deal about the legal formalisation of Cold War divisions (Khudoley 2008). The Neue Ostpolitik (New Eastern Policy) of the FRG from 1969 included normalisation of relations between two German states and recognition of the border between Poland and Germany established at the Potsdam Conference of Allied powers in 1945. In this way, the ‘German question’ was resolved more or less according to Soviet wishes. Taagepera reasoned that the leaders of the Soviet Union could be attracted by the prospect of getting rid of the last remaining problem related to the international legal status of its Western borders. The solution of the Baltic question in the way proposed by Taagepera would have increased the number of seats under Soviet control in the UN and international organisations, which would have been an additional attractive feature.

For the Baltic nations themselves, the main bonus would be stopping immigration from other former Soviet republics, even if this came at the cost of granting citizenship rights to the Russophone immigrants already settled within the borders of the Baltic republics at the very moment of their secession. The realisation of Taagepera’s plan would have involved recognition of the legitimacy of the regime change in June 1940, even including preservation of the power monopoly held by the Communist Party. It would have amounted to the establishment of new Baltic states rather than a restoration of the status quo of June 1940. And of course, no property restoration would have to occur, preserving the socialist economic system. The implementation of Taagepera’s plan would have only led to a type restoration of the independent Baltic states; his ideas help illuminate the distinction between token and type restoration.

Taagepera’s plan for the restoration of the independent Baltic states was met with an outcry of indignation from the older generation of Baltic emigrants. He was exposed to ostracism from the majority of his Estonian compatriots in emigration. According to Taagepera’s ironic retrospective comment, this contributed greatly to the success of his academic career, as expulsion from the political and social activities of the Estonian emigrant community meant he could dedicate more time to academic research.

Importantly, Taagepera’s plan was not a purely intellectual venture addressing only the Estonian emigrant audience—the author had no illusions about its reaction. This was a political action, addressing those who held power in the United States and in the USSR. Namely, Taagepera himself did everything possible to expose his plan to publicity, trying to get published in the most-read American newspapers. Taagepera’s associate Helmo Raag used his contact with Zbigniew Brzezinski to get his plan read by officials in the US State Department, where it received (according to Taagepera’s report) a favourable reception (Taagepera 2013: 27–28).

However, to get a chance at realisation, Taagepera’s plan needed the favourable attention of the Soviet government. However, this side perceived it only as a sophisticated and therefore very dangerous ideological diversion—Taagepera was included on the list of persons who were forbidden to visit Estonia (Taagepera 2013: 40). Retrospectively, while Stalin’s rash annexation of the Baltic countries was one of his greatest blunders, predetermining the failure of the Soviet Union to survive Gorbachev’s perestroika, the implementation of Taagepera’s plan was possibly the last chance to correct it.

In fact, Soviet leaders had a strong interest in the resolution of the ‘Baltic question’. However, they expected that this question would be resolved during the ‘Helsinki process’, culminating in the signing of the Helsinki Accords during the meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held on 30 July–1 August 1975 after 2 years of negotiations (Morgan 2018). Alas, they miscalculated, as the United States continued with its policy of non-recognition. Baltic émigré organisations used further meetings of this conference to keep providing the Baltic question with publicity. ‘It seems that Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders became victims of their own propaganda campaign: they mistakenly believed that the post-Second World War borders in Europe had become inviolable in Helsinki and that occupation of some territories by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, including the Baltic states, had been recognised by the West’ (Khudoley 2008: 65).

Taagepera opined that his plan appeared too late to have any chance of practical success. This was the early Brezhnevist period, with its increasingly rigid conservatism, ultimately earning it the fame of the ‘stagnation era’. Nikita Khrushchev was the last Soviet leader (before Gorbachev with his perestroika) able to make daring experiments. However, he also sincerely believed that the communist utopia could be realised and was self-intoxicated by propaganda about the exemplary resolution of the ‘national question’ in the Soviet Union via the implementation of Leninist national policy. The last point applies also to Gorbachev (Lewin 1991 (1988)).

Although most historians still stick to the principle that history does not have a subjunctive mode, others accept the use of counterfactual and alternative history to explore historical junctures by explicating the futures that were lost by history taking the course it actually took. Accepting its use for this purpose, Taagepera’s retrospective comments about the viability of his plan can be expanded by the consideration that restoration of the independence of the Baltic states would have been most probable in the event of a power struggle among Stalin’s associates, where Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) would have emerged as the winner.

During some 4 months (March–June 1953), when he was the most powerful member in the triumvirate of Stalin’s successors (including also Malenkov and Khrushchev), Beria did attempt to reverse Stalin’s policy of Russification and to reinstate korenizatsiya (nativisation). This meant the promotion of the representatives of the titular nations of the union and autonomous republics in the nomenklatura of these republics. This reversal was perhaps most swift in the Baltic republics, where local cadres were not trusted at the higher levels of the administrative hierarchy (Knight 1993: 186–191; Wydra 2007: 165–166).

Beria is known of having personally interrogated the captive Lithuanian partisan leader Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas after his arrest on 30 May 1953 (the operatives were instructed to capture him alive at any cost) (Gaškaitė-Žemaitienė 2006: 43; Eidintas et al. 2019: 127–134). It is impossible to know the political role proposed for Žemaitis by Beria, if the latter had emerged victorious out of the coup d’etat organised by Nikita Khrushchev. In fact, Beria himself was arrested only a month later (on 26 June 1953). Beria is known for proposing to solve the ‘German question’ by agreeing to the restoration of capitalism in East Germany in exchange for the neutrality of united Germany (Gaddis 2005: 105–106; Knight 1993: 191–194).

It perhaps is not too reckless to speculate that the next step towards the solution of the ‘Baltic question’ could have been to grant the Baltic republics a status similar to that of other Soviet satellite states in Europe—exactly what Taagepera had proposed in vain more than one decade later. After all, for the author of the best scholarly study on this controversial Soviet politician, ‘it is not all that hard to imagine him as a “policeman-turned-liberal” in the same genre as Iurii Andropov, Brezhnev’s successor as party leader in 1982’ (Knight 1993: 226). But, again, this would have amounted only to a type restoration despite the still overwhelming overlap between populations in 1940 and by 1953. In reality, a token restoration of the Baltic states took place at the time when attrition of demographic continuity between the interwar and late Soviet Baltic populations was approaching its limits.

Most certainly, constitutional law is not the only tool or medium used by the contemporary Baltic states to affirm their continuity with the interwar Baltic states. Among other things, it is inscribed into the institutional chronology of these Baltic countries, disclosed in the official self-presentation of state offices. For example, the political system of the restored independent Republic of Latvia is functioning according to its 1922 Constitution; thus, its parliament (Saeima), elected on 6 October 2018, is identified as the 13th, with numeration starting from the first Saeima elected on 7–8 October 1922.Footnote 1 Accordingly, the Cabinet of the Ministers appointed on 23 January 2019 under Krišjānis Kariņš is numbered as the 40th, counting from the first provisional government under Karlis Ulmanis, established on 18 November 1918.Footnote 2 And so, the President Egils Levits, elected on 29 May 2019, is considered the 10th or 12th president of Latvia, counting from Jānis Čakste, elected on 7 November 1922.Footnote 3

The chronological list of Lithuanian parliaments (Seimas) is based on the same principles, starting with four parliaments from the interwar period and closing with the 13th Seimas, elected in October 2020.Footnote 4 Uniquely among the Baltic states, the list includes (as the fifth Seimas) the 12th Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, elected in February–March 1990, which proclaimed restoration of independence on 11 March 1990. In the Estonian and Latvian lists, the supreme Soviets that were elected according to Soviet legislation and restored independence under the watchful and worried gaze of the citizens’ congresses are counted separately and are not included into the overall numeration. The Estonian list closes with the 14th parliament (Riigikogu), elected on 3 March 2019, with overall numeration starting with the first parliament elected on 27–29 November 1920.Footnote 5

According to the Estonian official list of heads of state, published at the president’s office website, restored Estonia can boast of an uninterrupted lineage. It starts with Konstantin Päts, prime minister of the provisional government, appointed on the day of Estonia’s independence proclamation (24 February 1918), and closes with President of Estonia Alar Karis, elected on 31 August 2021. There is no gap for the period of de facto extinction of the independent Estonian state in 1940–1991 because the Estonian way of constructing the identity of its state includes retroactive recognition of the authority of various office-holders, who claimed authority during this period.Footnote 6

Monarchic legitimists applied the same reasoning in the years of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s empire, who considered entitled members of the deposed dynasty as legitimate rulers, who had been impeded from exercising their legitimate authority by ‘usurpers’ in possession of real power. In the view of the French Bourbon legitimists, Louis XVI did not cease to be the King of France after his deposition on 21 September 1792. After his execution, the legitimate ruler of France (as Louis XVII) was his son Louis (1785–1795), who never ruled, and after his death in a republican prison, legitimacy passed onto the brother of Louis XVI Count of Provence. According to the Bourbon legitimist perception (as well as in his own self-perception), he was the King of France Louis XVIII also in the years when real power was in the hands of the usurper Napoleon (Mansel 2011). Besides the actual constitution, continuity between the Estonian state in 1918–1940 and that since 1991 is bolstered by the image of succession of the top level of authority, with not a single day lapsed during the period when the Estonian state had no legitimate holder of supreme authority in opposition and parallel to the Soviet usurpers.

According to this Estonian legitimist narrative, after the Soviets (17 June 1940) took the President of Estonia Konstantin Päts into captivity and made him their puppet, the legitimate head of state became the last prime minister of independent Estonia, Yuri Uluots, who went into hiding after being dismissed from office. In fact, this was Uluots’ own self-perception, shared by many of his compatriots. It was based on a ruling in the 1937 Constitution, where it was outlined that when the president of the republic cannot perform his duties, they are taken over by the prime minister. Importantly, Uluots’ authority was not just symbolical. When in February 1944 Uluots called all able-bodied men born in 1904–1923 to report for German military service, up to 38,000 draftees heeded his call, helping the Germans defend Estonia from Soviet invasion for more than 6 months (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993 (1983): 48–49, 60; Smith 2001: 36).

Uluots used this authority to appoint an Estonian government under Otto Tief on 18 September 1944, just before the German departure. Tief’s government attempted to take under Tallinn its control, with its small volunteer military force clashing both with German and Soviet forces. Estonian forces seized government buildings and replaced the flag of Germany with the Estonian tricolour in the Pikk Hermann flag tower. However, they could not prevail over the advancing Red Army, who captured Tallinn on 22 September 1944. Tief’s government went into hiding. Most of its members (including Tief) were caught, executed or deported by the Soviets, and only a few were lucky enough to flee to Sweden (Laar and Hiio 2018, 1: 226–234).

Surely Uluots and Tief understood that a small Estonian power will not be able to hold onto Tallinn. What reasons then motivated their actions? Most probably, they simply decided to reenact the events of late February 1918, when a group of Estonian politicians, then in hiding from the Bolsheviks, proclaimed Estonian independence on 24 February 1918 making the most of the power vacuum created by the flight of the Bolsheviks from the advancing German military. Taking Tallinn, the Germans did not recognise the Estonian government that had gone into hiding. However, its emissaries approached Allied governments, urging them to support Estonia’s independence in expectation of or after Germany’s defeat, making appeals to the very fact of the proclamation of Estonia’s independence, even if it had only symbolic meaning on 24 February 1918 (yet remains celebrated as the Estonian Independence Day until now) (Raun 2001 (1987): 104–107).

In 1944, it looked as if history was repeating itself, the difference being that now the Germans were fleeing and the Soviets were advancing. Having no illusions about their intentions, Estonian politicians calculated that the largely symbolic act of the restoration of Estonia’s independence could increase the chances of its real restoration at the expected peace conference regulating postwar settlement. The Warsaw Uprising, which was still not ultimately crushed at the time of the outbreak of its twin in Tallinn, may have served as another example and source of inspiration for Estonian insurgents because the political (mis)calculations of the Estonian and Polish insurgents proved to be very similar. This time however, their expectations were disappointed. Although the United Kingdom and the United States did not grant formal recognition to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, the Baltic question was not discussed at the Yalta (4–11 February 1945) or the Potsdam (17 July–2 August 1945) conferences, where their leaders discussed key issues concerning postwar settlement in Europe (Piirimäe 2014).

This is what Estonian politicians, attempting to restore the Estonian state based on the assumption that the Estonian constitution of 1937 was still in power, could not know in September 1944. Uluots, who was suffering from gastric cancer by this time, departed for Sweden after appointing Tief’s government, where he died on 9 January 1945. August Rei, who was foreign minister in Tief’s government, assumed the role of acting president, receiving the support of its members who managed to emigrate from Estonia. This decision was substantiated in the 1937 Estonian Constitution, which ruled that when the prime minister could not perform his duties (and Tief was under Soviet arrest), they were to be fulfilled by the eldest member of the government (Made 2008).

On 12 January 1953, Rei appointed an Estonian government under Johannes Sikkar in Oslo, making Estonia the first and only Baltic state with a government in exile, which is another established practice to perpetuate the legal continuation of de facto extinct states. It was not successful in getting international recognition, nor were its successors. After the death of Rei in 1963, the position of acting president was taken by Prime Minister Aleksander Warma (Made 2008). He was succeeded by Tõnis Kint in 1970, and Kint by Heinrich Mark in 1990. After Rei’s death, a single person assumed the duties of both acting president and prime minister, bearing the title ‘Prime Minister in the duties of the President’. However, in 1990 these offices were separated again, with Heinrich Mark continuing as the acting president (1 March 1990–8 October 1992) and Enno Penno as prime minister (1 March 1990–7 October 1992) (Maasing 2018: 101–106). When Estonian independence was also restored in Estonia itself on 20 August 1991, for nearly a year Estonia had two governments (one in Estonia, another in exile) claiming legitimacy.

It seems like the members of the Constitutional Assembly working on the new Constitution of Estonia in 1991–1992 did not take the Estonian government in exile seriously. Otherwise, the Assembly could have used its services to resolve a legal difficulty, which Assembly members perceived as an insurmountable obstacle for reinstatement of the 1937 Constitution. This was the prime concern to the leaders of the Congress of Estonia, with their legalistic frame of mind, who were the main supporters of its reintroduction. According to the 1937 Constitution, in nominating presidential candidates, a major player was the Upper Chamber of the parliament. However, some of its members were appointed by the president. As by 1991 almost all members of the Upper Chamber in 1940 and Konstantin Päts were dead, there was a legal impasse. There appeared to be no legal way of electing a new Estonian president if the 1937 Constitution would be reintroduced (Taagepera 1994: 216).

In principle, it could be resolved simply by asking Heinrich Mark, the incumbent Prime Minister in the duties of the President of the Republic of Estonia of its government in exile, to appoint new members to the Upper Chamber. However, this solution was never considered. Nevertheless, after election of the first President of restored Estonia Lennart Meri, the latter invited the acting president in exile Heinrich Mark to participate in the inauguration ceremony on 8 October 1992. At the ceremony, Mark handed over his credentials to the incoming president. In turn, Meri made a speech thanking Estonia’s government in exile for maintaining the legal continuity of the Estonian state (Made 2008:140; Maasing 2018: 107). In this way, the embarrassment of Estonia’s having two governments, which continued for more than 1 year after the complete de facto restoration of its independence in August 1991, was ultimately resolved.

As the restored Latvian and Lithuanian states had no governments in exile, they were spared of similar perplexities in the construction of their continuity with their interwar predecessors. However, Lithuania followed Estonia’s example of retroactive legalisation of authorities that had made attempts between 1940 and 1990 to restore the de facto extinct state in 1940; they will be discussed shortly below. Latvia displayed least activity in this kind of legislation for two reasons. Firstly, reinstatement of the 1920 Constitution made the additional construction of acts of state continuity redundant. Secondly, in the years 1940–1990, struggles for the restoration of independence in Latvia never progressed to the extent that a government effectively claiming control over the country or its part was ever established.

Among Latvian emigrants, there were attempts to establish a government in exile under the Chairman of the Latvian Central Council Bishop Jāzeps Rancāns, who was Deputy Speaker of the Latvian Parliament at the time of Ulmanis’ coup in 1934 and presented himself as the ‘acting president’ of the Republic of Latvia (Deksnis and Beķere 2017: 238). However, they were never finalised due to resistance from Latvian diplomats in exile, who considered themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of the de jure surviving Latvian state. There was a similar conflict between the Estonian government in exile and its surviving diplomatic legacies (Made 2008).

Lithuania can boast of even two domestic attempts at independence restoration, providing rich historical material for the tokenist legitimist narrative on continuity of the Lithuanian state in 1940–1990. While Estonian patriots did attempt to restore independence using the vacuum of power created by the retreat of the Germans in 1944, Lithuanian insurgents did so in June 1941, using the flight of the Soviets as their opportunity. They seized the Kaunas radio station and on 23 June 1941 proclaimed the restoration of Lithuanian independence under a provisional government. Actually, it had already been secretly formed in Berlin on 22 April 1941 by the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), which prepared for the anti-Soviet uprising in collaboration with the German intelligence service (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993: 47–48; Žaldokas 2011).

The leader of the LAF, the former minister of Lithuania in Germany Kazys Škirpa, took the position of prime minister. However, the Germans did not allow him or other members of the provisional government to depart to Kaunas to take up their responsibilities. Nevertheless, under acting Prime Minister Juozas Ambrazevičius, the provisional government was able to establish its authority over the complete territory of Lithuania up to early August 1941, when it was disbanded by the Germans (Brandišauskas 2006 [2002]). Anniversaries of the Kaunas insurrection were celebrated during the first decade after the independence restoration in 1990. However, the reputation of its many activists is tarnished by participation in the Jewish Holocaust. Therefore, its memories became overshadowed by the glory of the anti-Soviet resistance war, waged in 1944–1953 (Girnius 1990; Gaškaitė et al. 1996; Pocius 2009), which culminated in the restoration of the Lithuanian state in the guise of an underground partisan state.

This is how contemporary Lithuanian historians (Gailius 2006a; Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019; Vaitkevičius 2020) interpret the declaration signed by eight Lithuanian partisan leaders, representing all the regions of Lithuania, in a bunker in Minaičiai (Radviliškis District Municipality) during their meeting on 2–22 February 1949 (Eidintas et al. 2019: 101–112). They are supported by Lithuanian experts in constitutional law, including the Chairman of the Constitutional Court (in 2014–2021) of this country, Dainius Žalimas (2011). The declaration was signed on 16 February 1949, on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the proclamation of Lithuanian independence. The Minaičiai meeting and signing of this declaration completed the formation of a Lithuanian underground partisan state, which had started in 1946.

This makes the Lithuanian case unique among the Baltic countries. In all three, armed underground anti-Soviet activities started immediately after the Red Army reconquered them from Germany in 1944–1945. In all these reconquered territories, Soviets proclaimed mobilisation to the Red Army, which most young men fit for military service attempted to avoid by going into hiding. However, in Estonia and Latvia, there was little manpower to mobilise in the first place, as in these countries most males of draft age complied when German occupation authorities proclaimed their mobilisations in 1943–1944. The key factor for successful mobilisation was the support of interwar-period influential political leaders who survived Soviet repressions. They made young Estonians and Latvians believe they would be fighting for the restoration of the independence of their homelands, even though the Germans did not make any promises of this kind. Latvian and Estonian SS legions were created and engaged in heavy fighting against the Red Army on the Eastern front (Kott et al. 2017).

After all of this fighting, armed anti-Soviet movements had few human resources to rely on because the most patriotically motivated members of the young generation, who were determined to fight for the independence of their homelands, had already been killed in action by 1944 or had retreated with the German army. Thus, the formations of Estonian and Latvian anti-Soviet ‘forest brothers’, who continued their activities until the late 1950s, were rather small and scattered and did not attempt to establish centralised organisational structures beyond the regional level. They acted only locally under leaders who can be described as warlords (Anušauskas 2006 (2002); Laar 2007; Turčinskis 2017).

Very differently, Lithuanian political elites who survived the Soviet deportations in 1944–1945 encouraged the Lithuanian youth to shirk German mobilisation, and so the German attempt to build Lithuanian SS units failed. By the end of the war, the forests of Lithuania were full of young men, hoping to live to see the independence of Lithuania restored at the expected peace conference or until war between former allies in the anti-Hitlerite coalition would break out. Due to the scale and vitality of the anti-Soviet military resistance, most rural areas of Lithuania were characterised by a classical situation of divided or dual sovereignty: Soviets exercised their authority in the daytime, while the partisans were in control at night. Regionally centralised command structures had emerged already by 1946 (Girnius 1990; Gaškaitė et al. 1996; Gaškaitė-Žemaitienė 2006).

The centralisation of the Lithuanian partisan movement was completed by Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas, who was in command of partisans in Western Lithuania, successfully organising the all-Lithuanian summit of partisan commanders in Minaičiai in February 1949. At the summit, the partisan movement was given the title of the Lithuanian Freedom Fight Movement (LFFM; Lietuvos laisvės kovos sąjūdis; LLKS) and included three regional commands: Western Lithuania (Jūra), Southern Lithuania (Nemunas) and Eastern Lithuania (King Mindaugas). The declaration of 16 February 1949 proclaimed that the Council of the LFFM was the highest political body of the nation. Until the ‘end of occupation’, the double role of the partisan high command and the provisional underground government was given to the Presidium of the LFFM, with Žemaitis-Vytautas taking the office of its chairman, equivalent to that of the head of the underground state. It was also explicitly stated that after the liberation of Lithuania, the chairmen of the Presidium of the LFFM Council would take up the position of acting president of Lithuania and would appoint its provisional government (Eidintas et al. 2019; Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019).

Only the Polish underground state (known as the Polish Secret State) of 1939–1944 can serve as a parallel to the underground institutions created by Lithuanian partisans. However, the Polish underground state subordinated itself to the Polish government in exile, followed its instructions and received some support in arms and equipment transported by the Allied air force. Very differently, the LFFM Council took the central role for itself. There were no regular communications between Lithuanian partisans and political centres in emigration. Only a few emissaries managed to break through the ‘iron curtain’ and come back. As the Cold War took off, American and British secret services made several attempts to establish contact with anti-Soviet partisans in Lithuania and the other Baltic countries, redirecting their activities to the collection of intelligence information. They failed because the British secret service was infiltrated by a network of Soviet spies around Kim Philby (Mockūnas 1997).

Even before construction of the Lithuanian partisan state was finalised, most partisan commanders conceived themselves as officers of the Lithuanian Army. Partisans wore the uniforms of the Lithuanian interwar army and adopted its ranks. There was a ladder of promotions, with Žemaitis-Vytautas receiving the rank of general. Partisans also established their system of military decorations. Both promotions and decorations were meticulously documented, with many partisan archives escaping seizure by the Soviet secret police until the restoration of Lithuanian independence (Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019: 34–37). The surviving partisan archives also contain detailed financial documentation. Where they could afford to do so, partisans did pay the food or accommodation they received from their supporters in the civilian population. These impressive remains of the clandestine ‘bunker bureaucracy’ provide conclusive evidence that there was indeed an underground partisan state, not just ‘bands’ as Soviet propaganda insinuated (Gailius 2006a; Vaitkevičius 2020).

The declaration of 16 February 1949 proclaimed the ultimate aim of the partisan struggle to be the restoration of the Lithuanian parliamentary republic of 1920–1926. This idea is symptomatic of the partisans’ critical attitudes towards the dictatorship of Antanas Smetona (1926–1940), which is well documented in extant sources (Pocius 2020). This attitude was related not only to the foreign policy of the nationalist regime during the last 2 years of its existence (1938–1940), involving three capitulations: yielding to the Polish ultimatum in March 1938 to renounce from claims upon Vilnius, which was the official capital according to Lithuania’s constitutions; surrendering to Germany in March 1939 over the ‘Klaipėda question’; and ‘silent submission’ to the Soviet occupation in October 1939–June 1940. Partisans were also critical of the widening divide between the military and administrative elite of independent Lithuania and the ‘common people’, which made parts of the Lithuanian population vulnerable to communist propaganda (Pocius 2020).

Therefore, partisan leaders envisaged the restored independent Lithuanian state as being more socially just and cohesive and thus more resistant to any new attempts to undermine the restored independent Lithuanian state from within. The declaration of 16 February 1949 stated that ‘social care is not a matter of individual citizens or organisations alone, but it is rather one of the priority tasks of the State’ (Art. 19).Footnote 7 Agrarian reform was also promised as one of several reforms to be implemented soon after liberation: ‘a rational settlement of the social problems and the reconstruction of the State economy are linked to the reform of agriculture, municipalities and industry, which shall be implemented at the very outset of independent existence’ (Art. 20). Thus, restoration of independence was coupled with reforms, which were meant to create a better and more resilient Lithuanian state, compared to what existed in 1940 (Pocius 2020).

On 12 January 1999, the parliament of the restored Republic of Lithuania (Seimas) passed a law, stating in its second article that ‘the Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania, having adopted the February 16, 1949 Declaration (included with a facsimile copy of the original), constituted the supreme political and military structure, leading this struggle and was the sole legal authority within the territory of occupied Lithuania’. Footnote 8 The next article states that ‘The February 16, 1949 Declaration by the Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania shall constitute a legal act of the State of Lithuania’. These statements were retroactive recognition of the restoration of the Lithuanian state on 16 February 1949.

The validity of this interpretation is supported by the next decision of the Lithuanian parliament (dated 12 March 2009), which proclaimed Jonas Žemaitis acting president of Lithuania from 16 February 1949 until his execution by the Soviets on 26 November 1954.Footnote 9 Now this status of Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas is firmly established in the official historiography of Lithuania, as documented by textbooks for primary and secondary schools, written according to the obligatory guidelines set by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Lithuania. According to this narrative, Brigade GeneralFootnote 10 Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas is the fourth President of the Republic of Lithuania, following Antanas Smetona (1919–1920 and 1926–1940), Aleksandras Stulginskis (1920–1926) and Kazys Grinius (1926). This is of course much more than the posthumous achievement of the leader of the Breton royalist rebels Georges Cadoudal (1771–1804), who was posthumously named the Marshall of France by the restored Bourbons.

In 2018, the Lithuanian Seimas also inserted Žemaitis’ deputy Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas into the official outline of the history of the Lithuanian state. The occasion was the state reburial of Vanagas’ remains, after a grave was found and the identity was confirmed by biological anthropological expertise (Anušauskas 2018). On 20 November 2018, the Lithuanian parliament passed another retroactive law, stating that from the execution of Jonas Žemaitis on 26 November 1954 until the execution of Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas himself on 29 November 1957, he was the ‘top official of the Lithuanian state surviving at this time and Head of the Lithuanian state in the fight against the occupation’.Footnote 11 This formulation allows the situation that subsequent partisans (next in the partisan hierarchy, surviving Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas) can be retroactively appointed as heads of state in Lithuania. Antanas Kraujelis-Siaubūnas (who committed suicide during his attempted arrest on 17 March 1965), who is celebrated as the last acting Lithuanian partisan, may be the last possible candidate (Šyvokienė 2019).

What are the legal implications of the assumption that the Lithuanian state not only survived as a legal person of international law, represented by its foreign legacies, but also continued to exist de facto, represented by Lithuanian partisans and even had its acting president with emergency powers? Firstly, this means that partisans who committed acts of terror against Soviet institution employees and their families cannot be indicted—especially in cases when these acts were committed according to verdicts handed down by partisan courts. Next, surviving Lithuanian citizens who worked in the repression apparatus at the time when there were surviving top officials of the independent Lithuanian state, continuing its de facto existence underground, have to be prosecuted for high treason, especially if they committed specific acts against representatives of the partisan underground state (Gailius 2006b).

The first minister of internal affairs of the repeatedly restored independent Lithuanian state (March 1990–August 1991), Marijonas Misiukonis (2018), who started his career as a KGB officer, had to suffer these implications of the doctrine about partisans as legitimate agents of the continuing Lithuanian state, when he was prosecuted in 2009–2016 for participating in the operation to capture Antanas Kraujelis-Siaubūnas in 1965. He was ultimately acquitted by the court of the last instance (the Supreme Court of Lithuania) but only because its judges allowed Misiukonis’ defence to persuade them that the defendant (who was at this time a junior KGB officer, playing a minor role in the operation) could not have been aware of Kraujelis’ status as a partisan, judging him simply as a dangerous brigand (Šyvokienė 2019).

There is a broader question that remains hotly discussed by historians and the media in all the Baltic countries but is most topical in Lithuania because of its official doctrine of partisan leaders as holders of legitimate authority under Soviet occupation (e.g. see Kasperavičius 2001; Tininis 2001; Truska 2001; Putinaitė 2007; Šopauskas 2016). Generally, the doctrine of state continuity under Soviet occupations implies that members of the Lithuanian Communist Party and officials in the Soviet administration (with the possible exception only of its rank and file workers) were collaborators and traitors. Thus, they are subject to criminal prosecution in the same way as members of the local pro-Nazi parties and movements were prosecuted in Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and other West European countries after World War I (Gailius 2006a, b).

Actually, this is what most radical tokenists in all three Baltic countries demanded in 1989–1991. The difficulty of this demand was that members, functionaries and even leaders of communist parties in the Baltic countries made an important (if not decisive) contribution to the restoration of independence, with many of them continuing their careers in the service of the restored independent state. The career of Algirdas Brazauskas, who was the last first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1988–1990 and then the freely elected president of the restored Lithuanian independent state in 1993–1998, provides perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of this complexity. Most perceptive communist functionaries did understand the criminal law implications of the assumption of state continuity and therefore advocated only type restoration. Indeed, the definition of restored states as new states still did imply moral responsibility for serving the politically and economically regressive regime (as in the East European states which remained independent) but not for the crime of high treason.

According to most influential researchers, when approaching how the paradox of the restoration of Lithuanian independence by collaborators and traitors should be resolved, the line in time is drawn between two periods (Gailius 2006a, b). In the first, membership in the Communist Party (or even in the Komsomol as its youth organisation) was still an act of high treason and collaboration justly prosecuted by the partisans. In the later period, it remained morally reproachable but ceased to be a criminal act. According to another influential argument (e.g. Genzelis 2008), by avoiding membership in the Communist Party, Lithuanians would leave vacant positions of responsibility for immigrant Russians, who in fact dominated quantitatively both in the Lithuanian Communist Party and in the Soviet administration in 1944–1953. In the long run, this could only end in the emergence of an ethnic division of labour (closely resembling the situation which existed in Lithuania by 1914), with Lithuanians reduced to taking low-skilled manual jobs, and all leading positions in administration and higher education occupations being taken by the Russian-speaking minority. This would have greatly complicated the restoration of Lithuanian independence in the way it eventually unfolded or would have made it impossible altogether.

The theory grounding this book (see Part I and Norkus 2023) implies that, indeed, all persons who were born in the Republic Lithuania (as well as in the other Baltic republics) and were adults at the time of occupation may be considered as guilty of treason or collaboration if they joined the Communist Party and took positions of responsibility. However, it does not allow considering minors, who were still not adults by 1940 according to the law of agency, as traitors or collaborators. In particular, concepts of high treason or collaboration cannot be applied to persons, who were born and socialised after the complete establishment of the Soviet regime.

For Estonia and Latvia, this involves all persons born after de facto extinction of these states in 1940. For Lithuania, the year 1950 can be considered as a critical date because the Lithuanian underground partisan state did not survive long after its centralisation was completed in 1949. Indeed, centralisation made it easier for the Soviet secret police to disrupt or take under its control communication between top partisan leaders. Only those who did go into self-isolation (including Žemaitis himself and his deputy Vanagas) avoided arrest or killing for a longer time. Žemaitis was not able to perform his duties already from December 1951, when he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and was paralysed (Eidintas et al. 2019: 119). Prolonging the existence of the Lithuanian underground state until 1957 by its retroactive legislation, the Lithuanian parliament may provide a huge symbolic award to perished Lithuanian leaders and create a moral inconvenience for those Lithuanians who did join the Communist Party in 1953–1957, but it cannot overturn the fact that neither Žemaitis nor Vanagas exercised any power in 1951–1957.

In fact, the entire partisan underground state was already paralysed by this time, as on 25–28 March 1949 (only a month after the summit of leaders of the partisan underground state), the Soviets launched a mass deportation campaign in all three Baltic countries, which was the largest among all that had been conducted since June 1941. A total of 27,929 people (8407 families) were deported from Lithuania (Strods 1997), including many volunteer activists from the civilian population, who provided military partisan units with effective infrastructural power. In all three Baltic countries, the threat of deportation broke the passive resistance of farmers against collectivisation, bringing a decisive breakthrough in the Stalinist transformation of the received economic system. However, in Lithuania it also undercut the sinews of power of the underground partisan state, demonstrating its inability to protect the population under its claimed sovereignty and intimidating the remaining population from continuing to support the partisans.

The underground partisan state did not recover from these blows to its grass-and-roots basis shortly after its centralisation. The next (and last) deportation campaign in October 1951, which hit only Lithuania, destroyed its remainders. However, before 1949–1950 the presence of the partisan underground state in the complete territory of Lithuania was very strong, except for its eastern regions that were part of Poland in 1920–1939 and the Klaipėda region, where most of the population fled together with the retreating German army. This provides strong reasons to consider 1950 as an alternative date for the establishment of the communist regime in Lithuania—almost at the same time when this happened in those East European countries where the Russian Revolution was exported after World War II.

Thus, among the former communist countries, Lithuania is unique for its protracted war of resistance in 1944–1953, delaying the establishment of the communist regime by one decade. This provided Lithuania with a larger share of survivors from the pre-communist system, making the continuity between the pre-communist and post-communist social systems more solid. This accounts for the pioneering role of Lithuania in the dismantling of the Soviet internal empire, inaugurated by its bold proclamation of the restoration of independence on 11 March 1990.