KGB STRUGGLE WITH ANTISOVIET MANIFESTATION IN LITHUANIA AND ABROAD:

Summary

One of the main aims of soviet regime in Lithuania is to crush innternal and external enemies. Discreditation of enemy – creation of their negative image and opinion in the society is one of the means of that fight.

Political changes after the death of Stalin and changes of USSR international position forced KGB to use the means of the psychological influence, pressure besides physical repression, actions of falsehood, discreditation, varies provocations and intimidation. In such way KGB wanted to hide political repression.

In a struggle with inner enemies KGB used method of discreditation, which aims to damage authority, good name of an opponent, and trust of society in him by leaking out or interpreting negatively the facts of his life and activity in order to suppress their activity, lower number of supporters and to justify the repression. Time of appearance of discreditable information, its form, to what part of society it designed is very important. In Soviet Lithuania the discreditable information is related with the person’s past, his activity in independent Lithuania, during first soviet, and nazi occupation, and after war period. Personal information, like diseases, lover affairs, sexual orientations, crimes, mistakes in the past was used also.

After crushing armed resistance in 1953, antisoviet opposition turned into unarmed form of resistance. It is difficult to crush it with the force that is why every more important national, religion, civil antisoviet action, was followed by discreditation actions. There were couple forms of discreditation actions – falsehood and slander campaign through press and spreading the rumors, letters or petitions incited by KGB, criminalisations of political trials, putting dissent into mental hospital. Those campaigns were carried out until the ninth decade, but during the rebirth period they did not made any affect to the public opinion. The biggest discreditation actions were carried against the biggest critics of Soviet systems – Lithuanian Catholic Church, dissidents, fighters for human rights and liberties, emigration’s organization and most active persons.

Discreditation method was efficient just partly, because KGB did not reach the main target – to make oposition end their antisoviet activity, although they overshadowed their good name, moral and activity.