Being Lithuanian I was subjected to a lot of propaganda about the Soviet period, and I still don't really know how much of it is true or false. Over the past months I drifted hard to the left from my previous anarkiddy position and became an ML and thus looked up more info on Lenin, Stalin, muh 100 gorillions etc. and discovered just how much lies there are around Ukraine's and Poland's positions on the Soviet period, and now I want to know the truth about what really happened in my own country.
So the main myths that I can tell from memory right now (will post more if I remember them):
1. Soviets, after taking control in 1940 and later in 1944 (after kicking out the Germans) started purging the entire intelligentsia
2. By 1945 around 300,000 people were either incarcerated or gulag'ed (this seems really fishy as that is like 1 in 10 people at the time in Lithuania)
3. The country completely lost its independence and national self-determination and wasn't anything more than a puppet state of USSR. (From what I heard many of the original leaders of the LTSR from 1940 denounced the soviets after Germany took over in 1941 and I am very interested how legitimate these denunciations were
4. It is a popular propaganda talking point that USSR wasn't even trying to do communism in Lithuania, but tried to breed out and russify the local population by settling in Russian worker families, all for… well I don't even know why, because they hated Lithuanian spirit or some shit and something something red czar. This is obviously bullshit, but how do you counter it?
5. By wanting to crush the peoples support for the partisans, NKVD would do false flag operations and kill civvies publicly while dressed as them.
6. All friends and family of caught partisans would be banished to Siberia
7. Soviets invented lies about the partisans that they were German collaborators and jew killers. Really curious about this one, as it is really taboo to question this over here, and from my knowledge there were some collaborators from the Lithuanian army, which also formed the backbone for what later became the partisans.
8. There was no democracy and all of the elections were rigged.
These would be all that I currently remember. Really hope some history or fellow Lithuanian anons could help and inform how much of this bullshit is real and would also appreciate some general information about LTSR / related info about USSR if it is available
