Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty

As the Bolsheviks were pushed from the Baltic region, Lenin sought to arrange peace treaties to ease anti-Bolshevik tensions in Europe.[5] The first Lithuanian–Russian attempt at negotiation took place on September 11, 1919, when the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia, Georgy Chicherin, sent a note with a proposal for a peace treaty. It was a de facto recognition of the Lithuanian state.[6] Similar proposals were delivered to Latvia and Estonia. On September 14 and 15, the Baltic states held a trilateral meeting in Tallinn and agreed to begin simultaneous peace talks with the Soviets.[7]

However, Lithuania delayed contacting Moscow and the collective negotiations did not take place.[7] Lithuanian feared that negotiations with communist Russia, which was isolated from European politics, would damage its relationships with the western powers that had not yet recognized Lithuania.[7] While Lithuania was preparing for the first democratic elections to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania, election campaigns urged the government to start negotiations.[7] On March 31, 1920, Augustinas Voldemaras, the Lithuanian minister of foreign affairs, informed Soviet diplomats that Lithuania was ready to open the talks if Moscow recognized Lithuania within its ethnic lands and acknowledged Vilnius as its capital.[8] The Soviets agreed to discuss the situation and suggested for preliminary negotiations to begin on April 15. The talks in Moscow did not begin until May 7.

The Lithuanian delegation, led by Tomas Naruševičius, demanded for Russia to recognise the independent Lithuania as a legal successor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but the Soviet delegation, led by Adolph Joffe, was prepared to recognize Lithuania only based on the self-determination principle.[9] Territorial disputes were the most contentious issue. Lithuania demanded the territories of former Kovno, Vilna, Grodno and Suwałki Governorates.[9] Those areas, according to the Lithuanians, were ethnically Lithuanian. M. Balinsky's census of 1857 was provided as evidence that the territory was inhabited primarily by Lithuanians. Lithuanians asserted that the large Jewish and Belarusian populations in the region wanted to be part of Lithuania. They brought a representative of each group, Simon Rosenbaum and Dominyk Semashko, to support that case.[9] It was agreed that the territory of Lithuania could be easily identified, as it was inhabited by Litvaks.[6] The Second Polish Republic also laid claim to the territory and had actual control over it at the time, especially Vilnius Region, and a few years later, the Republic of Central Lithuania was established.

The Soviets agreed to recognize the territory to Lithuania if it agreed to form a military alliance against Poland, which was engaged in the Kiev offensive against Soviet Russia.[9] The Lithuanians were tempted by the opportunity to regain Vilnius but refused. Even though the Soviets seemed a natural ally against Poland, Lithuanians reasoned that staying on good terms with Poland and its allies, France and Britain, was a better long-term strategy.[9] Lithuania informed Britain about Soviet plans on the hope that such a move would prove Lithuania's trustworthiness and would put indirect pressure on Poland to reach an agreement regarding Vilnius that was acceptable.[9] Those tactics did not prove successful since Poland was invariably backed by France and indirect British pressure was not strong enough to change Poland's foreign policy.[9]

The negotiations were long and difficult. While the Russians were losing ground to the Poles, who took Kiev in May 1920, the Lithuanians sought to delay the talks. On May 22, 1920, the Lithuanian delegation even threatened to withdraw from the peace talks. However, as the situation changed, and Russia successfully counterattacked, the Lithuanians were pressured into signing the treaty on July 12.[7] After some debate over whether the treaty was sincere, and the Soviets had assumed any real liability, the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania ratified it on August 8, 1920.

While the treaty was being negotiated and signed, most of the territory granted by the treaty to Lithuania was already controlled by Bolshevik forces.[6] As the Poles were retreating from western Russia, Lithuania attempted to secure the borders outlined in the treaty. Lithuanian forces crossed the Foch line on July 19, seeking to take control of the territories granted to Lithuania by the Soviet Union, advancing rapidly despite Polish protests and, in several cases, fighting skirmishes with the retreating Polish forces.[12] That led to clashes in southern Lithuania over the towns of Sejny, Augustów and Suwałki.[14] According to historian Piotr Lossowski, the Lithuanians also provided the Soviets with logistical support.[12]

The Bolshevik forces were the first to enter Vilnius on July 14, 1920, although the treaty did not transfer it to the Lithuanians.[15] The Soviets installed a puppet government, the former Litbel, with the intent of fomenting a socialist revolution. Leon Trotsky and Mikhail Tukhachevsky were preparing the overthrow of the Lithuanian government.[11] The plans never came to pass since Poland defeated Soviet forces in the Battle of Warsaw between August 13 and August 25.[16] On August 26, as the Polish Army was approaching the southern borders of Lithuania, the Soviets finally transferred Vilnius to Lithuanian control and the Red Army retreated.[17][18]

In September, when the Poles had gained an upper hand and were pursuing the Soviets back to the east, Soviet forces moved at will through Lithuanian-controlled territory, but Polish forces that tried to pursue them were arrested and interned.[12] Lithuania's declared neutrality was challenged by Poland, which accused Lithuania of allowing free Soviet passage through its territory, which Lithuania could not deny.[15] The treaty did not create a formal military alliance between the Soviets and the Lithuanians but it diminished Lithuania's standing as a neutral state.[9][12] Łossowski wrote that Lithuania's lack of neutrality towards Poland was such that "the Polish government could have with full justification treated Lithuania as a country participating in the war on the other side, with all of its political and legal implications".[12] Historian Alfred E. Senn wrote that "the Lithuanians cannot claim to have been 'strictly neutral'", and that "the Lithuanians should not have been surprised when, at the end of August, Warsaw refused to recognize Kaunas's neutrality".[19]

In late August, Lithuanian and Polish missions met in Kaunas to negotiate the situation. While the talks were underway, Polish troops retook Sejny, Augustów, and Suwałki in the south.[15] The Suwałki Region held great symbolic importance for the Lithuanians as a locus of their independence movement.[20] Lithuania mounted military operations in the area. Poland also wanted to reclaim Vilnius, which it had been forced to abandon during the Soviet offensive in July. The clashes led to a war on a wide front between Poland and Lithuania in September.[14][15] An intervention was made by the League of Nations, which brokered the Suwałki Agreement on October 7, 1920, which was to have taken effect on October 10. However, on October 9, Polish General Lucjan Żeligowski staged a mutiny, invaded Lithuania and took over Vilnius. Most of the Vilnius and Suwałki Regions would remain under Polish control during the interwar period, and interwar Polish–Lithuanian relations were described as "no war, no peace".[21]

The treaty represented a major breakthrough in Lithuania's quest for international recognition. The provision that permitted the return of Lithuanian World War I refugees and prisoners was a welcomed development. However, the Soviet Union did not pay all its reparations and never seriously considered returning the cultural and historical property.[10] Lithuanian politicians and historians continue to seek the return of those items, but the Russian government claims that they are lost.

Modern Belarusian historiography regards the treaty, especially the cession of territories of modern Belarus to Lithuania (primarily Hrodna, Shchuchyn, Lida, Ashmyany, Smarhon, Pastavy, Braslaw but also the contemporary Vilnius Region with Vilna) as a unilateral act by the Soviet authorities that disregarded the national interests of the Belarusian people and was aimed at immediate military and political gains.[22]

Some historians have asserted that if Poland had not prevailed in the Polish–Soviet War, Lithuania would have been invaded by the Soviets, and would never have experienced two decades of independence.[23] Despite the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, Lithuania was very close to being invaded by the Soviets in summer 1920 and being forcibly incorporated into that state, and only the Polish victory derailed this plan.[23]

The bilingual treaty was signed in two copies of equal power and the Lithuanian copy, which prior to the 1940 occupation of Lithuania was first evacuated to Sweden and later to Canada by the Lithuanian diplomat Vytautas Jonas Gylys, was found in 2021 and was transferred to the Lithuanian Central State Archive.[24]