LETTONIE - RUSSIE, Traités et documents de base

Excerpts from the Third Interim Report of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives.

Excerpts from the Third Interim Report of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives.

Introduction, Basic Findings, Conclusions, Recommendations.
Publ. October, 1954.

This is the third interim report of the Committee on Communist Aggression (formerly the House Baltic Committee) on the subject of the illegal incorporation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia into the USSR (1) In 1939, the USSR, after concluding a secret pact with the Nazis which divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, did impose so-called mutual assistance pacts upon Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

(2) The mutual-assistance pacts 50 imposed upon the Baltic States called for the establishment of Soviet Russian military bases and airfields in each of those nations, at the same time guaranteeing that there would be no interference with their internal affairs, including their political structure and social and economic systems.

(3) Contrary to the provisions of those mutual assistance pacts and other existing treaties, the Soviet Union, without provocation, did in June 1940 invade and take military and political control over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

(4) Under the protection of the occupying Red army forces, political commissars of the Kremlin (Vishinsky, Dekanozov, and Zhdanov) did dissolve the legal governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and arbitrarily established puppet governments to control the people.

(5) A network of political agents of the USSR did on July 14, 1940, conduct elaborately staged mock elections in the Baltic States with the support of powerful Red military forces, the results of which were completely assured long before the first ballot was cast. Only one list of candidates, hand-picked by the Kremlin representatives, was presented to the voters, and the exercise of the secret ballot was denied.

(6) By the process of mock elections the political commissars of the USSR did install puppet parliaments in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which on July 21-22, 1940, adopted a resolution prepared in Moscow, petitioning the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union for recognition as a Soviet Republic. This action by the puppet parliaments was in violation of the sovereign will of the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian people and in violation of the legal constitutions of those nations which required a popular referendum on such an issue.

(7) The USSR has been and is now engaged in a ruthless program of sovietization in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, employing the well-known Communist tactics of arrest and detention without cause, torture chambers, mass deportations to slave-labour camps, population transfers, and wide-scale political murders.

CONCLUSIONS

(I) The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were forcibly occupied and illegally annexed by the USSR Any claims by the USSR that the elections conducted by them in July 1940 were free and voluntary or that the resolutions adopted by the resulting parliaments petitioning for recognition as a Soviet Republic were legal are false and without Foundation in fact.

(II) That the continued military and political occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by the USSR is a major cause of the dangerous world tensions which now beset mankind and therefore constitutes a serious threat to the peace.

RECOMMENDATION5

(1) That the Secretary of State take such steps as are necessary to cause this threat to world peace to lie brought to the urgent attention of the current session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

(2) That the United States delegation to the United Nations take the initiative in removing this threat to world peace by sponsoring a resolution in the General Assembly calling for the full and rapid withdrawal of all the military, political, and administrative personnel of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the territories of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Source:
cité dans American Latvian Association in The United States, "Lettonie, en commémoration du 50ème anniversaire de la Déclaration d'Indépendance de la République de Lettonie" , Washington D.C., 1968, p.71.