2018 sees the centenary of Lithuania’s modern statehood. Congratulations Lithuania!
I wanted to blog this year, then, about some of the many people who have contributed to a close relationship between our countries over the past 100 years. (Although I may go further back in time than that, given Lithuania’s longer history).
My first choice is Sir Thomas Hildebrand Preston. He was the British representative in Kaunas in the 1930s (as the interwar capital – called Kovno by the UK Foreign Office at the time). As my predecessor, his portrait hangs outside my office alongside the more recent Ambassadors. He was the sixth British Consul in Kaunas, and the representative who stayed the longest. He seems a bit of a polymath, composing a ballet – The Dwarf Grenadier – during his time in Lithuania; it was first performed at the State Theatre in Kaunas.
Thomas Preston had an interesting career before arriving in Kaunas. He was posted as Consul to Ekaterinburg at the time of the murder of the Romanov family in July 1918. He held a number of other roles in the Soviet Union before moving to Kaunas in 1929.
He also served in Lithuania during a critical time in the nation’s history. His was the advice which went to London on what was happening politically, economically and socially in Lithuania at that time. His report to London from late 1940 on the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States makes fascinating reading, even today.
In September 1940 he left Lithuania, travelling via Moscow to Odessa. As well as the political impressions, there is plenty of local flavour in his report: ‘The Lithuanian train, (our last trip on a civilised train until we reached Turkey) in which we travelled as far as Vilna, was on time; and an excellent lunch, at a moderate price, was served in the Restaurant car.’
There is another reason to recall Thomas Preston’s contribution to Lithuania. Last week, the UK honoured him with a Heroes of the Holocaust award. In 1940, in Kaunas, Thomas Preston issued 800 legal travel certificates (and at least 400 illegal ones) to enable Jews to travel to Palestine in 1940. Hundreds of Jews were able to flee.
Of course the British Consulate in Kaunas then shut. We reopened our diplomatic premises in Vilnius in 1991. This year, to celebrate the Centenary, we want to restore the plaque on the building which served as our Consulate in Kaunas until 1940. I hope we can remember all those British diplomats posted here in the first half of the 20th Century, and the work they did to support Lithuania and Lithuanians.