Mažeikis says Lithuanian Mein Kampf edition could aid Kremlin propaganda

Philosopher Gintautas Mažeikis has criticized publishing house Obuolys’s plan to release Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Lithuanian, saying the Kremlin could use the publication for propaganda while Russia continues its war in Ukraine, LRT reported.

“Could Vladimir Putin and his aggressive ideologues and propagandists have been given a better gift than publishing this book in Lithuania now?” Mažeikis wrote on Facebook.

Obuolys says the limited edition will run to 800 pages and include more than 1,500 historical footnotes, comments and explanations prepared by Polish historian and political scientist Eugeniusz Cezary Król. Historian Arūnas Bubnys wrote the introduction for the Lithuanian edition and oversaw the translation’s historical accuracy.

Mažeikis said the critical commentary would not prevent the book from being used in Russian propaganda. “Russian propaganda will not comment on the texts by Król or Bubnys; it will present the fact of the book’s publication as supposed evidence of ‘Nazification’,” he said. “I do not support publishing this book now.”

He noted that a critical edition was published in Poland in 2021, before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Mažeikis also questioned the value of a Lithuanian edition, saying scholars could read the book in other languages while the general public might not be interested in its scholarly commentary. He said the Foreign Ministry could also be called on to explain the publisher’s decision.

First published in 1925 and 1926, Mein Kampf set out Hitler’s political and ideological views, based on antisemitism, racism and expansionism. Those ideas later became the basis of Nazi Germany’s policies.