Lithuanian Men in the Forced Soviet Army

International Law and the Laws of the Occupants

On the 15^th of June 1940, the USSR occupied the Republic of Lithuania, a member of the League of Nations. The USSR committed an international crime, but World War II was under way and the Bolshevik Russian Empire had concluded a treaty with Nazi Germany and felt like it was the master of the situation, so it created a puppet formation in Lithuania and called it the LSSR. The consequences of this coercive act, like the annexations of the other Baltic States, were not recognised by Great Britain, the Vatican, Switzerland, the United States and some South American countries. However, the USSR ignored this.

Even after the end of the war, until the very end of its age of agony, it did not comply with the international agreements, their additions, and other acts that it had signed itself or were otherwise binding. The same policy continues under the successor of the communist empire – today’s Russia.

Hague Convention IV

LSSR 1970 Criminal Code. Article 79 of this Code provided prison sentences from one to five years, depending on the circumstances, for Lithuanian men who avoided being called up for actual military service. Meanwhile, Article 80 of the Code, titled “Evading mobilisation call-up”, provided prison sentences from three to ten years or even the death penalty, depending on the circumstances. Vilnius, 1970
(Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights)

Forced mobilisation into the Soviet occupation army was carried out in Lithuania from August 1944 to May 1945 in violation of 1907 Hague Convention IV, which was binding on both ratifying and non-ratifying countries. The convention forbade conscripting the people of a conquered land into an occupation army or otherwise using them for purposes or war, as well as compelling the inhabitants of an occupied territory to swear allegiance to the enemy’s government (J. R. Bogušauskas, The Ideological Apologetics of the Communist Party in Suppressing the Resistance Fight of the Lithuanian Nation (1944–1953 m.)

Geneva Convention

Article 51 of the 1949 Geneva Convention states that “The Occupying Power may not compel the protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. No pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment is permitted.”

Geneva Convention of the 12th of August, 1949 due to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Article 51. 1949
(“Valstybės žinios” (“The State News”), Official Gazette of the Republic of Lithuania, 29 July 2000)

“Historical Right”

Cover of the Statutes of the Internal Service of the Military Forces of the USSR. RSFSR (Moscow), 1966.
(Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights)

The USSR based its aggression on the “historical right” of the Russian Empire, and considered the spread of communism as the mission of the Russian people to “bring progress and a higher culture to the world”. During the Stalin era, the USSR undoubtedly felt like it was the same imperialist Russia, only dressed in the clothes of a socialist state – even the national anthem opens with the lyrics “An unbreakable union of free republics, The Great Rus’ has sealed forever” (Ф. И. Кожевников, Советское государство и международное право, Москва, 1948, p. 34).

Criminal Code

In 1940, the Kremlin brought the Criminal Code of the RTFSR into force in Lithuania. Under this Code, law enforcement subjected Lithuanian residents to repression and prosecuted them for alleged crimes, committed before the occupation, when the Code was not yet in force. According to this Code and other legal acts of the USSR, Lithuanian men were punished for deserting or evading compulsory military service and “violations of military service”.

In 1961, the USSR government issued a slightly modified version of the Russian Criminal Code, applicable to the annexed Lithuania – the Criminal Code of the LSSR. Time passed, but nothing changed. Article 29 of a new version of the Constitution of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic of 1978 that was applicable to annexed Lithuania stated: “For the defence of the Soviet people’s socialist victories, peaceful work, state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Armed Forces of the USSR have been created and universal military conscription has been established.

The duty of the Armed Forces of the USSR to the people is to reliably defend the socialist Fatherland, and to constantly be in a state of combat readiness that would guarantee an immediate rebuff to any aggressor.” (Gazette of the Supreme Council and the Government of the Lithuanian SSR, 1978, No. 11-130).

In 1941, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR was translated in occupied Lithuania. According to the articles of this Russian Code, residents were punished for the acts, committed before the 15th of June, 1940 occupation. Once the reoccupation of Lithuania began in 1944, deserters and other Lithuanian men, evading mobilisation into the Soviet Army, were tried under paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 of Article 59 of the Code. Kaunas, 1941
(Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights)