The Lithuanian parliament passed a resolution on Tuesday, condemning the Soviet occupation and calling on Russia to pay reparations.
The resolution, passed unanimously by 114 members of the Seimas, comes in response to Russia's failure to recognise the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. The parliament also said Russia had been attempting to rewrite Lithuania’s history.
The document states that on June 15, 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, at least a tenth of its citizens, as well as Polish nationals who were granted asylum in Lithuania, fell victim to Soviet repressions.
“The Soviets systematically sought to annihilate [...] the Lithuanian nation and, thus, undermine the possibility for an independent state to be restored in the future,” the resolution reads.
Russia maintains that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined the Soviet Union and were not occupied.
Read more: Lithuania commemorates the beginning of mass Soviet deportations
The resolution also states that Lithuania must continue research into the period of armed anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi resistance and present their results to the public.
The Seimas also called on the government to demand compensation for occupation damages from Russia, as it took over the rights of the Soviet Union.
Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis told reporters that Lithuania should raise the issue of reparations “and never forget it”.
“That's the position of our state, adopted a very long time ago,” he said.
Russia’s historical revisionism
Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, Viktoras Pranckietis, said Russia was reversing its decision made three decades ago to condemn the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.
The Soviet Union admitted the unlawfulness of this agreement in 1989 but “attempts are being made today to revise those decisions”, he said.
Signed in August 1939, the pact divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and led to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic nations in 1940.
In 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union adopted a resolution on “the political and legal assessment” of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact to condemn this document and invalidate it.
In late May, Russian Duma Deputy Aleksey Zhuravlyov, the leader of the Rodina party, registered a proposal to recall that political decision, saying that it “doesn’t match the principles of historic justice” and was adopted “in a year of growing political instability, accompanied by pressure from external forces”.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius called out the move as an attempt to falsify history.
Read more: The day when Soviets occupied Lithuania, all eyes were on Nazis in Paris
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