360M.1121 Devenis, Michael: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 11—5 p.m.]
733. My 285, February 15, 2 p.m. The Embassy is in receipt of a further note from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in the Devenis matter, the pertinent parts of which read as follows:
“According to supplementary information obtained from the competent organs citizen Devenis was accepted into Lithuanian citizenship upon his personal application which fact is confirmed by the copy of the Devenis petition dated March 20, 1934 addressed to the Department of Protection of Citizens attached to the Ministry for the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania. A copy of his petition which contains his request for admission into Lithuanian citizenship is attached hereto together with a copy of the order of the Ministry for the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania dated March 26, 1934.
“According to the ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of February 7, 1940, regarding the procedure for acquiring Soviet citizenship by a citizen of Lithuania,43 citizen Devenis, who accepted Lithuanian [Page 952] citizenship in 1934 and who is at present a resident of the Soviet Union, is a Soviet citizen from the day of the admission of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic into the Soviet Union.”
An examination of the copy of the petition which purports to be signed by Dr. Mikolas Devenis, M. D., residing at the estate Levampolis, Volostdeltuva, Vezduk, merely indicates that it contains a request to be admitted to Lithuanian citizenship for the following reasons: (1) that he was “born and brought up” in the village of Klauyugyai, Lithuania, studied at and graduated from the high school at Pernovo in 1914 and thereafter joined his brother in America where he entered the University of Yale from which he graduated with a degree of M. D.; (2) that upon graduation he settled down for permanent residence in Petersburg in America and accepted American citizenship before the creation of the Lithuanian Republic; (3) that having resided in America for some time he returned to Lithuania where he married a Lithuanian woman and acquired real estate, to wit: the estate of Levampolis, at which he alleged he was residing at the time of the execution of the petition; (4) that he “has not the slightest desire to return to the United States and has decided to remain in Lithuania”; (5) that he presents as supporting documents his birth certificate, pre-war passport for travel abroad, American certificate of naturalization; and (6) begs to be granted the rights of Lithuanian citizenship and to be issued a passport.
The petition is dated March 2, 1934. Annexed thereto is a copy of an order of the Ministry for the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania, No. 42,230, dated Kaunas March 26, 1934, signed by the “referee on citizenship” and the “secretary,” decreeing that the commission granting the rights of citizenship at its session on March 24, 1934, having examined the case of Mikolas Devenis, has decided “to recognize his rights to Lithuanian citizenship according to article II of paragraph 1 of the temporary statute on citizenship.”
- Concerning the procedure under which various classes of persons in the Baltic States could acquire Soviet citizenship in accordance with the ukase of September 8, 1940, by the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union, see telegram No. 1134, September 8, 1940, from the Chargé in the Soviet Union, and footnote 41, Foreign Relations, 1940, vol. i, p. 438.↩