Bolshevising the Borderlands: Mikhail Suslov in Lithuania, 1944–1946

The career of the Soviet statesman and leading ideologue Mikhail Andreevich Suslov remains relatively understudied, a lacunae which a forthcoming archive-based biography seeks to correct.Amongst the many neglected aspects of his career, his role in Lithuania between 1944 and 1946 has received relatively little scholarly attention, beyond repeating popular dissident accounts of his malign role as an oppressor.This essay revises this popular account, revealing both his unique contribution to local counterinsurgency, and his perhaps surprising support for a formula of 'national communism' promoted locally by chairman of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet Justas Paleckis .ON 17 JULY 1965, ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE establishment of Soviet power in Lithuania, a celebratory speech to mark the occasion was delivered in Vilnius by Mikhail Andreevich Suslov, present as an official representative of the Central Committee (CC) of the CPSU.Suslov by this stage in his political career was already universally recognised as the supreme guardian of ideological orthodoxy within the entire Soviet Union, the manager for decades both of domestic Soviet art and culture, and of relations with all the major foreign Communist parties.His authority had recently been only further underlined by his leading public role in Khrushchev's ouster in October 1964, when the Presidium session forcing Khrushchev's retirement had been opened by a long address by Suslov himself denouncing the First Secretary's extensive shortcomings.This notable event also led Western scholars for many years to assume that Suslov was the central ringleader behind Khrushchev's overthrow, although