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Notes
Notes
1. Throughout this essay I will use the Lithuanian name for the city, ‘Vilnius’, for the sake of clarity.
2. Rocznik statystyczny Wilna 1937 (Wilno, Skład Główny w centralnym biurze statystycznym m. Wilna, 1939), p. 9.
3. Recently the Lithuanian historian Česlovas Laurinavičius suggested that the Soviet authorities may have considered forming a Lithuanian SSR without Vilnius. However, I find this argument rather speculative and contradicted by policies followed from July 1944 in the city (Anušauskas & Laurinavičius Citation2007, pp. 181–7).
4. ‘Podpisanie Układu’, Prawda Wileńska, 26 September 1944, p. 1. It is remarkable that after this front-page announcement of the signing of this agreement, the planned evacuations are not again mentioned until the very end of the year. (‘Zawiadomienie do Polaków i byłych obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej, zamieszkałych w Litewskiej SRR,’ in Prawda Wileńska 135, (397), 27 December 1944, p. 1).
5. Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybės Archyvas, Vilnius (LCVA), f. R-841, ap. 10, b. 9.
6. LCVA, f. R754, ap. 13, b. 40, ll. 20–24; 88–91. The excerpts from letters, in Russian translation (with the remark ‘translated from Polish’), formed part of frequent NKVD Spetssoobshcheniia.
7. LCVA, f. R841, ap. 10, b. 27, l. 64.
8. For correspondence regarding individuals of ‘doubtful’ nationality, see LCVA, f. R841, ap. 10, b. 37.
9. This proposed name change is rather perplexing, though the desire to get rid of the famous religious leader of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Gaon (‘genius’), is readily understandable. Samuel Strashun, who died in 1872, was also a well-known local Talmudist (who left a rich library of religious works to the city) and for that reason was probably unpalatable to communists. Dr. Shabad had been a distinguished physician and community leader who had only died in 1935. Mark Antokolskii was, of course, born in Vilnius but made his career in St. Petersburg and Paris. As a Russified (at least by language) and non-religious Jew he was probably less offensive to communist sensibilities.
10. Vilniaus Apskrities Archyvas (VAA), f. 761, ap. 9, b. 71. The documents in this file are a remarkable mixture of Lithuanian and Russian texts, including one (ll. 72–3) pointing out that the Russian versions of street names should not simply be a transliteration of the Lithuanian but should follow Russian grammar (e.g., not ‘Antokol'skio’ in Russian but Antokol'skogo). This suggestion was not, however, consistently adopted in Soviet times.
11. VAA, f. 761, ap. 4, b. 135.
12. VAA, f. 5, b. 1014; and f. 5, b. 598 contain dozens of pictures of the devastated city in late 1944 and early 1945.
13. For a final (Soviet) report on the carrying out of the evacuations of Poles, see LCVA, f. R841, ap. 10, b. 27, ll. 94–101. A somewhat different report covering the same events was published in Kołodziej (Citation1997).
14. See the several dozen files in LCVA, f. R1390. These files are available in microfilm at the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, General Directorate of Lithuania Archives collection, 1998. A. 0073, reel 52. Unfortunately in many cases we do not have the artifacts or documents themselves, only lists of material which was later lost.