Did the Soviet Red Army store chemical weapons in Lithuania prior to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941? The document found in the Lithuanian KGB archive offers some circumstantial evidence that this was the case. It also tells a story of how a group of Lithuanian villagers almost lost their lives because they were unaware that there were chemical weapons in their vicinity.
What is known about the case comes from a top secret report by Soviet Lithuania’s Minister of Internal Affairs Juozas Bartašiunas to Lithuania’s Communist leaders Antanas Sniečkus and Mečislovas Gedvilas on June 11, 1949. The report was recently digitized by the Genocide and Resistance Centre of Lithuania and posted on the Internet.[1] It is still considered a state secret in Putin’s Russia.
Bartašiunas reports that on June 2, 1949, three villagers from the village of Rasskazy near the capital Vilnius went to the local cemetery to fix the crosses of their recently deceased family members. They stopped by a house near the cemetery to ask for a shovel. The owner of the house, whose name is redacted from the report, in addition to the shovel, also offered them a bucket of dark brown liquid which he poured from a bigger 20-pound container. He told them that he used the liquid against various types of pests around his house and that it proved very effective. The villagers covered the bases of the wooden crosses with the liquid and left the cemetery.
However, during the following day, they all developed red marks on their bodies, primarily on their arms and legs, and, also, in one case, on genital organs, which soon turned into blisters. One of the villagers was admitted into the hospital on the next day, and the others, including the villager who owned the liquid, on June 6. They were later transported to a specialized hospital in Vilnius.
According to Bartašiunas, in the meantime, the unknown liquid was seized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and transported to the laboratory of the Ministry of Health. After running several tests, it was determined that the liquid was the mustard gas (also known as sulfur mustard), a deadly chemical weapon massively used during World War One.
How did a Lithuanian villager come into the possession of a chemical weapon? It did not take long to solve the mystery. During the interrogation, he stated that in 1941, before the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, he was employed at the Red Army warehouse No. 988 on Algerdo Street in Vilnius. In the chaotic days of the Red Army withdrawal, he simply took two containers of liquid home to use against pests.
The fate of the rest of chemical weapons stored at the same facility is not mentioned in the report. Whether they were evacuated by the Red Army, seized by the advancing Nazis, or taken by other Lithuanian warehouse employees remains unknown.
There is also a bigger question as to why the Red Army would store chemical weapons in Vilnius in 1941. But tackling that question goes well beyond the scope of this blog post.
[1] “LSSR VRM ministro J. Bartašiūno spec. pranešimas LKP CK sekretoriui A. Sniečkui apie valstiečių apsinuodijimą nuodingosiomis karinėmis medžiagomis [Special Report by J. Bartasiūnas, Minister of Internal Affairs of the LSSR, to A. Sniečkas, Secretary of the CC of the LKP, on the Poisoning of Peasants with Toxic Military Substances],” F. V-141, ap. 2, b. 41, 1. 153-154. Top Secret. Digitized on August 29, 2018, http://www.kgbveikla.lt/docs/show/5913/from:538.
