A tiny country between 3 large ones will be in a constant struggle to just survive. Sometimes that means fighting to preserve basic language skills, sometimes it means running to Cleveland, Ohio to be sustained by a diaspora in the faint hope of return. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp celebrates the 60th birthday of dictator Antanas Smetona. Earlier Baltic country stamps had an exuberance that seemed half way between Kaiser era Germany and early Soviet, an interesting combination. See, https://the-philatelist.com/2019/08/09/latvia-1919-ulmanis-slays-the-russian-dragon-to-take-kurland/ . Here we have an aging grey leader with no real answers on how Lithuania could survive. This is very reflective of the pessimism setting in. So you know, happy effing birthday.
Todays stamp is issue A43, a 30 Centai stamp issued by Lithuania in 1934. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.50 used.
Antanas Smetona was born to peasants on an estate belonging to the widely prominent Radziwill family. Lithuania was at the time under Czarist Russian rule. There was much promotion of the Russian language in Lithuania and local students were even forced to recite prayers in Russian. Poles and Germans in the same school were allowed to use their own language. Smetona protested and was expelled. He appealed to the Czar’s education minister and was allowed to return in exchange for the compromise of saying his prayers in Latin. He then abandoned studies toward a priesthood and began studying the history of the Lithuanian language. He helped write a more complete Lithuanian grammar book for students while working in a bank. Russia’s defeat by Germany saw the Baltic states get recognized as independent after the war. The area of Memel was further taken from Germany. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/06/21/memel-1920-the-french-worry-about-the-germans-and-forget-to-worry-about-the-lithuanians/ . There was much pressure from Soviet Russia, Poland, and Germany to receive the territory that Lithuania processed. There were also many ambitious Lithuanians wanting to serve the new government. Getting them to agree on much was next to impossible and there was much corruption involved in repatriating to Lithuanians assets that belonged to German, Russian, Jew, and Polish residents before independence.
In 1926 Smetona participated in a coup that made him President. Over the next few years he consolidated power until he was ruling by decree. He tried hard to limit foreign influence in Lithuania. He spent lavishly on the armed forces with the view that his greatest military threat was the Soviets. To that end he gave Memel back to Germany in order to turn them into an ally as they were in the First World War.
A year later Hitler and Stalin signed a non aggression pact that gave the Baltic states to the Soviets. Soon Smetona was packing his bags. He did not want to be the one to hand over the country to the Soviets and he hoped that he could lead a government in exile. He was stopped at the German border by Lithuanian border guards. He tried and failed to convince the local regiment commander to offer at least token resistance to the Soviets. They then let him and his family slip over the border. Smetona found himself unwelcome in Berlin as Hitler and Stalin were then unlikely allies. He applied for a visa from not yet at war USA that was granted on the condition that he stayed out of politics. Before taking the USA up on the offer, Smetona went to Switzerland in hopes of setting up a government in exile. In Bern he found many of his old rivals in exile and none wanted to be involved with the former dictator. After a long journey that included Portugal and Brazil, he finally made it to the USA. Again he found his old rivals had no place for him, The Lithuanian Ambassador that he appointed was in cahoots with the old rivals in Bern.
Smetona’s son upon arriving in the USA had taken a factory job in Cleveland, a city that then had a large Lithuanian community. Unlike most deposed dictators then and now, Smetona did not leave Lithuania with a great sum of money. Finding no support among the diaspora in the USA, Smetona and his wife ended up moving in with his son. He died in his son’s home in 1944 due to a housefire. The government in exile was not able to do much when the Soviets retook Lithuania from the Germans. By then the Soviets were American allies and the government in exile had collaborated too much with Germany. The only achievement was maintaining recognition of Lithuanian independence as granted by the League of Nations in 1919.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Antanas Smetona. Sure he wasn’t able to keep Lithuania independent but he was able to shut up his ambitious rivals while the country faced such challenges and proved himself not a crook when he left with no stolen money. Well above par, if we understand that par is pretty low. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.
