In a cramped basement cell in the former KGB prison in Vilnius, now a museum chronicling the genocide of Lithuanians under Soviet rule, stand two dozen sacks the size of household rubbish bags.
They are filled with shredded paper, documents the Russian secret police attempted to destroy in the months preceding the collapse of Soviet power and Lithuania's declaration of independence in 1990.
Not all the secret files were destroyed, however, and more than 1,400 former KGB collaborators have stepped forward to declare themselves this month, taking an amnesty offered to all but important officials, members of the judiciary and those running for political office. The names of those who have come clean will be kept secret unless they have been found to have lied under oath about their activities on behalf of the communist authorities.
"The remainder will have their names publicised by the government newspaper. But before we can do this we will need to take them to court and prove they were collaborators," said Mr Vytautas Damulis, chairman of the government commission responsible for administering the amnesty.
Mr Damulis admits that some of those who confessed were unsure if they had actually collaborated with the KGB. But in the tense atmosphere of today's Lithuania, less than two months away from a general election, nobody is taking any chances.
Of the three Baltic States, Lithuania has enjoyed the warmest relations with Moscow since independence. But that could change if Vilnius goes ahead with a plan to demand financial compensation for the damage caused by Soviet occupation.
Parliament has approved a bill proposed by Mr Vytautas Lands bergis, Lithuania's first post-independence leader and now the parliamentary speaker, which mandates the government to calculate the damages (estimated at billions of dollars) and present it to Moscow by November 1st.
Few observers expect the Russians to pay up and Mr Algirdas Brazauskas, Lithuania's former president, who has emerged from retirement to become the country's most popular politician, has criticised the demand. As a former first secretary of the Communist Party when Lithuania was a Soviet republic, Mr Brazauskas points out that much of Lithuania's present infrastructure was financed by the Soviet Union.
But Mr Vytas Gruodis, a former businessman who returned seven years ago from a lifetime of exile in Canada to head the Lithuanian Development Agency, maintains that the claim against Moscow is valid.
"It's irritating the bear. I think better timing could have been chosen for that. But you only need to look at Finland. Finland was on the verge of becoming a Soviet republic or a satellite and they avoided that by a hair's breadth. Look at Finland today. We look at the economic damage to Lithuania and the compensation question is a valid one," he said.
Most Lithuanians acknowledge there is little danger that Russia will attempt to occupy the country again but the residual threat is enough to persuade the majority that they would be safer as members of NATO. Popular support for joining the military alliance is stronger than for EU membership, despite the fact that Russian opposition makes it unlikely that NATO will accept any of the Baltic states at the organisation's next summit in 2002.
This has not stopped the Lithuanian government from spending almost two per cent of its annual budget on defence as it upgrades the armed forces to NATO standards. Some foreign advisers fear that the high level of defence spending could slow Lithuania's progress towards EU membership and siphon off badly needed resources from education and health services.
Mr Rytis Martikonis, who heads the European Integration Department at the Foreign Ministry, dismisses such fears but admits that many Lithuanians blame the EU for painful reforms to the economy.
The enduring influence of Lithuania's neighbour to the east was demonstrated two years ago when the Russian economic crisis drove Lithuania into recession, a shock the country is still recovering from. Most political analysts predict that the Prime Minister, Mr Andrius Kubilius, and his conservative government will pay the price for Lithuania's economic difficulties in October's election.
Mr Brazauskas's decision to lead a left-wing bloc has boosted the popularity of the left but the next government is likely to be a coalition of centrist parties. One of its first tasks will be to improve relations with Lithuania's powerful neighbours in Moscow and to limit the fall-out from the current national preoccupation with the crimes of the past.