Spies and spying have always been an important part of international relations. Between the two world wars, when Poland and Lithuania had no official relations, Kaunas was brimming with spies recruited by Warsaw.
Sigita Černevičiūtė, a researcher at the Lithuanian Social Science Centre, looked at court cases from the 1920s and 1930s where suspects were tried for spying. At the time, espionage was considered a crime of high treason aimed at undermining the independence of the state.
In 1919-1940, the largest number of espionage convictions concerned people gathering information for Poland – 138 in total. Lithuania had no diplomatic relations with Warsaw for most of that period, since it did not recognise Poland’s claim to Vilnius and considered the city to be Lithuanian territory under occupation.
Germany was another country with active spying networks, especially after 1936.
According to Černevičiūtė, most of Berlin’s spies were Germans with Lithuanian citizenship, while those spying for Warsaw were ethnic Lithuanians with some kind of connection to Poland.
“Spies for Germany mostly lived in Kaunas, only a few came from the Klaipėda region, and one person lived in Germany,” she said.
One German spy came from Czechoslovakia and claimed to be a journalist. When photographs of military objects were found in his possession, he insisted that they were intended for a book on the Baltic states.
Caught red-handed
According to Černevičiūtė, the harshest punishment for espionage could be the death penalty – a way to deter would-be spies. One high-profile espionage case was tried before a military court in 1931.
“Steponas Vilkickas was recruited by an acquaintance and passed on to a Polish intelligence agent. Vilkickas provided information about the composition of the Lithuanian armed forces and the Riflemen’s Union. [...] For the information he provided, he received remuneration both directly and through bank transfers,” the researcher said.
Vilkickas was arrested with the evidence at Kaunas railway station and sentenced to death by the military court.
Between 1919 and 1927, four people were accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Two of them did not go to trial, while the others were sentenced to death and executed, according to Černevičiūtė.
One of them was Konstantin Kleshchinsky, a retired general. Had been recruited by the USSR in 1924 and was caught red-handed in his apartment in 1927, together with a representative of the Soviet Embassy in Lithuania.
“Kleshchinsky was at the time transmitting a report on the locations of troop deployments. [...] The Soviet Embassy’s employee was released and Kleshchinsky was handed over to the court-martial.
“He explained to the court that he had only been providing information from 1926-1927, and that he had done so only because of his own poor material situation, and that he had mostly taken information from newspapers, public speeches, sometimes even making things up, and had not actually revealed any state secrets,” according to the researcher.
However, the court-martial was unconvinced and found Kleshchinsky guilty of providing the Soviet Union with secret information about the moods and functioning of the government, the military, the numbers and deployments of the armed forces, the composition of the chiefs and staffs, and so on. The retired general was sentenced to death and, failing to secure a presidential pardon, executed on June 1, 1927.
Hardened ideological spy
While many spies were doing it for material rewards, Černevičiūtė gives an example of one that was motivated by ideological convictions: Aleksandras Greško. He was tried for high treason in 1921, the time when Lithuania and Poland were at war over Vilnius. Greško deserted the Lithuanian volunteer army and joined the army of the enemy, Poland.
According to Černevičiūtė, Greško was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in hard labour camp. This was later reduced to 10 years, under a 1922 amnesty law, and finally Greško received the president’s pardon in 1927 and was released.
After six years in prison, Greško immediately left for Polish-controlled Vilnius, where he joined the Polish military structure, according to Černevičiūtė.
Not long after that, Greško was arrested on suspicion of spying. He immediately confessed and was tried alongside other members in the spy network. This time Greško was sentenced to death by firing squad and was not pardoned by the president. It is said that before his execution Greško shouted, in Polish: “Long live Poland!”
“A hardened ideological spy indeed,” according to Černevičiūtė.
Invisible ink
Another espionage case was that of Mykolas Šilanskis, who was accused of sending a letter written in secret ink to Polish military intelligence in 1938. He used a Latvian intermediary to inform Polish intelligence about the composition of the Lithuanian army’s anti-aircraft unit, its armaments, its mobilisation preparations, and the mood of the population at the time of the Polish ultimatum.
“The accused sent a secretly inked letter via a person living in Vilnius to the Polish military intelligence, in which he wrote when and in which direction the manoeuvres of the Lithuanian army would take place. [...] He was found guilty and sentenced to four years of hard labour,” the investigator said.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
