Lithuanians in Siberia Publicly Hide Their Identities, Back Putin and His War, But Fear a Bloodbath after It is Over, ‘People of Baikal’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 23 – The People of Baikal portal, based in Irkutsk, has begun a new series of articles on what is happening to Lithuanians who were deported to Siberia by Stalin and those of their descendants who remain there or even have returned there after trying to reintegrate into Lithuania.

            The situation the portal paints is truly depressing. Many ethnic Lithuanians in Siberia have been cut off from their homeland since Putin’s war in Siberia began, they have stopped identifying themselves in public as Lithuanians, and they express support for Putin’s war (baikal-journal.ru/2024/09/23/v-rossii-ne-govori-chto-ty-litovka-a-v-litve-ne-govori-chto-ty-russkaya/ and baikal-journal.ru/2024/09/23/konkretnoe-tabu-kak-zhivut-potomki-ssylnyh-litovczev-v-sibiri/).

            What makes this trend especially sad is that until Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, there was an active Lithuanian community in the Irkutsk region and much travel back and forth between there and Lithuania. Now, that has all but ended. Community organizations have been shuttered, the people silenced, and once again they are living in fear.

            Many Siberian Lithuanians with whom the People of Baikal portal spoke defended their own silence and even support for Putin’s actions by saying that they now lived in the Russian Federation and had no basis for criticizing its leaders or their policies. But it is clear that their behavior reflects intimidation and fear rather than anything else.

            Some with whom the portal met said that criticism of Moscow would not have any effect on Moscow but would lead to serious negative consequences for them. And several expressed the fear that once the war is over, there will be a bloodbath inside Russia with returning veterans striking out at any critics of minorities.

            Only a few hundred ethnic Lithuanians are left in Irkutsk Oblast of the thousands who were deported there. In Soviet times, they interacted with Lithuania which was under Soviet occupation; and after independence, this expanded and included serious research about them and flowering of interest in language study and culture.

            For examples of that, see the remarkable collection of oral testimonies and other studies of the Lithuanians in Siberia (as well as of other groups deported there by Stalin) at gulagmemories.eu/ru/MEDG-publication. Tragically, those efforts ended when the current war started, and the new series of articles about this group could be one of the last testaments.