Throughout the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, KGB recruited thousands of people to collaborate. What do we know about them?
Historian Kristina Burinskaitė is the author of the book Secret KGB Accomplices: The Activities of Agents in the 1960-90s. She estimates that about 100,000 people worked as KGB agents throughout the Soviet occupation in Lithuania, while around 5,000-6,000 people were on the agents' list at one time.
"The question is how many were actually actively working, [maybe] they were simply put on the lists," Burinskaitė said in an interview with LRT RADIO. "You can simply report information about the weather, but you can also harm someone."
According to her, 1,589 people have confessed to being KGB agents in Lithuania so far, and information about them has been classified for 75 years.
Discussions on whether the lists should be made public have resurfaced in Lithuania on multiple occasions, leading to controversies.
According to Burinskaitė, many agents were forced to collaborate, while the recruitment process often lasted up to two years.
"Recruitment is the manipulation of the most sensitive aspects of a person's life. Anyone can fall into that trap. What you do, whether you accept or not, is up to you," she said. "You always have a choice, it's just a question of what the consequences will be."
There are no statistics on how many people refused to work with the KGB, according to Burinskaitė. In Lithuania, many people attempt to sensationalise alleged collaboration with the KGB, she added.
“They don't really care about the KGB's activities [...]. Everything stops at the name, and for me, the most important thing is what the person actually did as an agent," the author said.
The most recent sensation in Lithuania centred on the KGB file related to President Gitanas Nausėda.
The president revealed that he had requested permission to go to Germany in 1990, which was approved by various institutions including the KGB. Nausėda himself denied any contact with the KGB.
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According to Burinskaitė, the KGB had to approve permissions to go abroad, and it was a common bureaucratic procedure.
"Not everyone [who went abroad] was recruited, this is a myth," she said.
Other countries in Eastern and Central Europe have also faced controversies surrounding the alleged links of high-ranking state officials with the KGB.
There, "it turned out that prominent people, [including] dissidents, had also at some point collaborated with the KGB", she said.
"The fact that a person had some kind of ties with the KGB is like a huge [...] black spot. As if he should be underestimated then, it negates all his merits. I think that's the wrong attitude," said Burinskaitė.
"Until we come to terms with our Soviet past, who are collaborators, how to evaluate this or that person, we probably won't be able to calmly accept that an agent is not a bad person in principle," she added.
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