The 1944-1953 Lithuanian partisan war with the Soviet Union

• ResearchGate: knygos tekstas

ENThe 1944–1953 armed resistance in defence of democratic values and the sovereignty of the state began in Lithuania during the summer of 1944, when World War II was still taking place and Lithuanians had their highest hopes set on the future peace conferences. The Lithuanian partisan war was one of the longestlasting partisan wars in twentieth-century Europe; it took thousands of lives, and resulted in tens of thousands of Lithuanians being imprisoned and deported. For half a century, the events of this war were like a dark spot in the history of Lithuania, shrouded in myth and enlaced with lies; one that came to light only after independence was restored. The topic of armed resistance has, therefore, not lost its relevance. Based on the political stipulations of international and national law, various issues of the partisan war and its significance are still being examined by historians, political scientists and politicians to this day. Even now, little is known in Western Europe and elsewhere about the Soviet terror and the political, ideological and military processes that took place in the countries of Eastern Europe after World War II. The global propaganda that the Soviets disseminated for so many years about the Baltic countries ‘voluntarily’ joining the USSR and the civil war concept applied to the independence struggles fought by individual nations – the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians – created conditions for conflicting and often erroneous interpretations of this period of history in foreign countries. This most probably also influenced the compilers of the Correlates of War quantitative research project in their presentation of the post-war armed conflicts in the Baltic countries. The data and evaluation of the Lithuanian partisan resistance to the Soviet occupation presented in this project do not correspond with historical facts.This presentation of incorrect data was also predetermined by the historiography used for the Correlates of War project, which does not include a source analysis substantiated by scientific research. And it could not have done so, as some of the material was published prior to the restoration of the independence of the Baltic countries in 1990–1991, when there were still no opportunities to research the documentation of Soviet repressive structures, and little information was available about the opposition struggles. Without any deeper historical research, there are many misleading facts and statistics in the published works. Only the booklet published by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania stands out for its accuracy; however, it does not contain a lot of information – this richly illustrated, concise booklet was only meant for non-specialist foreign readers. Over the two decades since Lithuanian independence was restored and opportunities emerged to study the previously inaccessible documentation on Soviet repressive structures, numerous scientific studies of consequence devoted to the Lithuanian partisan war have been published. This subject stands out for an abundance of research sources consisting of archival documents and their publications, research-based academic work, and memoirs [p. 225-226].