Voices from Lithuania and Belarus
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1Since the launch of our oral history project in 2019, we have documented the lived realities of war across former Soviet states, presenting history not as a chronicle of events, but as a tapestry woven from the voices of those who experienced its upheavals. In Parts One and Two of the project we published interviews with veterans and those affected by the Soviet-Afghan War and the Nagorno-Karabakh War in the last years of the Soviet Union, wars that spread across former Soviet republics in the 1990s including those in Georgia-Abkhazia, Moldova-Transnistria, the First and Second Chechen Wars, and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Our scope of interviewees has included conscripts, officers, brigadier-generals, army chaplains, refugees, and leaders of non-government organizations that support veterans of war.
- 1 S. V. Chervonopiskii and A. A. Kostyria. Istoriografiia voiny v Afganistane. Kiev: MITs Medinform. (...)
- 2 Markus Balázs Göransson, “At the Service of the State. Soviet-Afghan War Veterans in Tajikistan, 19 (...)
- 3 For numbers in the Baltic republics see: “O voine,” Litovskaia assotsiatsiia uchastnikov voiny v Af (...)
- 4 Amnesty International, “Lithuania: The January Events 1991,” 22 January 1991, https://www.amnesty.o (...)
- 5 “DEMOCRACY - One Defining Moment,” Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada, 7 February 2021, https://w (...)
- 6 “January 13: the Way We Defended Freedom,” Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, accessed 6 May 2025, https: (...)
2Our third installment focuses primarily on Lithuanian veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War and contributes to our growing understanding of how the 40th Army was composed of many nationalities. Of the 625,000 Soviet citizens deployed to Afghanistan, 125,000 were from Ukraine1 while as many as 130,000 hailed from Central Asia.2 Of the 10,300 afgantsy from the Baltic republics3 approximately 5,000 came from Lithuania and to many citizens, they were symbolic of Soviet occupation since 1940. The deployment of Soviet troops to seize control of Vilnius on 11-13 January 1991 under the command of General Valentin Varennikov, who served in Afghanistan from 1984-89, reinforced negative attitudes toward the afgantsy as a Soviet rather than Lithuanian collective. A military intervention that left 14 Lithuanians dead, the number of injured reported has ranged from over 160 in Amnesty International’s report on 22 January 19914, to over 500 by the Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada5 to “about 1,000” in an exhibit titled “SWORN TO NEVER RETREAT: Lithuania’s Stance in the Face of the 1991 Soviet Aggression” unveiled by the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania in 2021.6 The growth of numbers and the ever-changing definition of “injured” in written reports underscores the need for greater documentation of oral history provided by those who lived through or participated in armed conflicts on Soviet and post-Soviet space to provide a balance to the revision of statistics, oft tinted with political biases. With President Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the Lithuanian afgantsy have in essence had to cut their ties with Russian organizations and look to the Lithuanian government for greater support. Now more than ever it is important to record their voices as a counterpoint to sharply politicized literature on the conflict.
- 7 Pam'iati Borisa Ratibora Rusakova, rosiisk'ogo dobrovol'tsia, shcho voiuvav ne za mir, a za sprave (...)
3No less significant is an interview with Alexandre Klachko, a former combatant of the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, a military unit of Belarusian volunteers. Drawn from meetings in 2022 and 2024, it offers insight into the challenges faced by foreign volunteers and how their integration with Ukrainian forces and acceptance by the public has developed over time. From his icy reception in L’viv as a volunteer from Russia’s political ally to his solidarity with combatants at war, Klachko’s decision to fight on the side of Ukraine was at once one of solidarity with a neighbouring country, and his opposition to Aleksandr Lukashenko since the disputed Presidential election of 2020. Klachko’s experience highlights an overlooked aspect of foreign soldiers’ participation on the side of Ukraine: what fate awaits the volunteers whose actions have ostracized them from their mother countries? It is a question that remains largely answered 11 years since the war began. Among the lasting impressions from my fieldwork in Ukraine in 2015 was the public funeral on Maidan Square held for Boris Rusakov, a Russian volunteer known by the call name of Ratibor. Originally from Novosibirsk, he was commanding a platoon of the Azov Battalion in Donetsk when he was fatally wounded by shrapnel from a 120 mm shell. He died nine days later.7 Contrary to enduring Western impressions of Ukrainian nationalism run amok, a member of Right Sector held a Russian flag by Ratibor’s coffin while lines of young recruits held Azov flags on Maidan Square. Flown in the for the funeral was Ratibor’s mother, who kneeled sobbing by the body of her son. “Today on Maidan square there was a farewell ceremony to a fallen soldier,” the Azov Battalion stated.
- 8 “<Azov> poproshchavsia iz 'Ratiborom', iakii priikhav iz Rosii, shchob borotis' za spravedlivist' ta prot</Azov> (...)
Ratibor was a true warrior, who fought for the liberation of Ukrainian lands from Putin’s occupiers. … Russians such as Ratibor who are fighting in the ranks of the Azov Battalion know that the road back has been closed to them. … Our brothers sworn in by ceremony have expressed dissatisfaction with the delayed process of foreign volunteers receiving Ukrainian citizenship. They have earned the right to be our compatriots. Now they are in limbo, essentially having no country or flag.8
4After the public funeral, Ratibor was transported to Kazakhstan where he was cremated and an urn holding his ashes discreetly sent to his parents in Russia. In 2025, the fates of international volunteers on the side of Ukraine is a topic that remains largely untouched.
- 9 See for example Vassily Klimentov. “From the Soviet-Afghan War to the Russian-Ukrainian War,” Curre (...)
- 10 For example, Anthony Arnold, “Parallels and Divergences Between the US Experience in Vietnam and th (...)
5Oral history is a key means of addressing such questions and is of great importance since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has prompted a renewed school of comparative history that places the Soviet-Afghan War alongside the Russo-Ukrainian War.9 Not unlike studies of the Soviet-Afghan War vis-a-vis the Vietnam War popularized during the 1980s and 1990s10, soldiers’ voices are largely overlooked or politicized. The interviews gathered in oral history projects humanize studies of war and deepen our understanding of conflicts’ long-term ramifications, providing a valuable counterpoint to archival sources and state-driven narratives.
Notes
1 S. V. Chervonopiskii and A. A. Kostyria. Istoriografiia voiny v Afganistane. Kiev: MITs Medinform. 2005. 7, 57.
2 Markus Balázs Göransson, “At the Service of the State. Soviet-Afghan War Veterans in Tajikistan, 1979-1992” (PhD diss., Aberystwyth University, 2016), 36–37.
3 For numbers in the Baltic republics see: “O voine,” Litovskaia assotsiatsiia uchastnikov voiny v Afganistane, http://www.afganai.lt/ru/, accessed 11 May 2025; “Otkrytie pamiatnika – synam Latvii, pogibshim v Afganskoi voine (1979-1989)”, https://pamjatnikvtihomsadu.jimdofree.com/открытие-памятника/, accessed 11 May 2025; and “Pavshie,” Relvavendlus – Eesti Afganistani sõja veteranide ühing.” http://www.relvavendlus.ee/content/5/avshie/1/, accessed 11 May 2025.
4 Amnesty International, “Lithuania: The January Events 1991,” 22 January 1991, https://www.amnesty.org/ar/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/EUR460041991ENGLISH.pdf.
5 “DEMOCRACY - One Defining Moment,” Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada, 7 February 2021, https://www.lithuanianheritage.ca/home/explore/january-13/.
6 “January 13: the Way We Defended Freedom,” Lietuvos Respublikos Seimas, accessed 6 May 2025, https://www.lrs.lt/sip/portal.show?p_r=39493&p_k=2.
7 Pam'iati Borisa << Ratibora>> Rusakova, rosiisk'ogo dobrovol'tsia, shcho voiuvav ne za mir, a za spravedlivist',” Azov. 12 brigada NGU <<Azov>>, 30 June 2020, https://azov.org.ua/news/pamyati-ratibora/.
8 “<<Azov>> poproshchavsia iz 'Ratiborom', iakii priikhav iz Rosii, shchob borotis' za spravedlivist' ta proti putins'koi agresii,” Vikna, 9 July 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20190715190436/http://vikna.if.ua/news/category/all/2015/07/09/36843/view.
9 See for example Vassily Klimentov. “From the Soviet-Afghan War to the Russian-Ukrainian War,” Current Affairs in Perspective, N° 2, February 2024, https://www.fondation-pierredubois.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2024-no2-Klimentov.pdf; Bruce Riedel, “Could Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan?,” Brookings Institution. February 24, 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/could-ukraine-be-putins-afghanistan.
10 For example, Anthony Arnold, “Parallels and Divergences Between the US Experience in Vietnam and the Soviet Experience in Afghanistan,” Central Asian Survey, 7, 2/3 (1988): 111-32; Douglas A. Borer, Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and Afghanistan Compared, London: Frank Cass, 1999.
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References
Electronic reference
Ben McVicker, “Voices from Lithuania and Belarus”, The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies [Online], Issue 24 | 2025, Online since 17 April 2025, connection on 16 June 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/pipss/6599; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/1421s
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