The Soviet counterinsurgency in the western borderlands
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Kolektyvinė atsakomybė; Masinė deportacija; Aneksija; Lenkija (Lenkijos karalystė. Kingdom of Poland. Poland); Baltijos valstybės; Pasienis; Sovietų Sąjunga (SSRS; Soviet Union; USSR); Vokiečių okupacija; Nacionalinis pasipriešinimas; Bažnyčia; Soviet Union; Collective responsibility; Mass deportation; Annexation; Baltic States; Borderland; German occupation; Nationalist resistance; Church.
ENWhen Soviet partisans made their first deep raids into western Ukraine in early 1943, they met thousands of nationalist guerrillas. Some of them had rifles, often without sights or magazines; others carried only sabers, pikes made out of scythes, axes, or dummy rifles fitted with window bolts imitating a rifle bolt, so they looked real from a distance. They also had a few dummy machine guns with rattles and wheelbarrows equipped with tin funnels amplifying the sound of a rifle shot. The latter were meant to create the impression of artillery cannonade.1 Although the Soviet partisans scorned the weaponry of these guerrillas, they were surprised by the numbers of nationalists and their support from the local population. The partisans had orders to maintain neutrality toward the nationalists; they also had to urge any independent guerrilla force to fight the Germans. The nationalists, however, rejected any cooperation with the Soviets; the armistice between them only lasted for several months.2 After the Red Army reoccupied the territories the USSR had gained in 1939-1940, the Soviet administration faced an armed resistance in all western regions but Moldova. The two arms of the Soviet police, the NKVD and NKGB,3 quickly wrecked the urban nationalist underground, but they could not control rural areas for several years. The guerrilla war remained the major obstacle to the sovietization of these regions until the early 1950s. This book examines the Soviet fight against anti-Communist resistance in western Ukraine, western Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in the period following their incorporation into the USSR after the Nazi-Soviet pact (Figure I.1). [...]. [Extract, p. 1-2]
- Introduction / Arūnas Streikus. Unknown war: anti-Soviet armed resistance in Lithuania and its legacies / edited by Arūnas Streikus. London ; New York : Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. P. 1-12.
- Nuo suvaržymų iki liberalizmo : sovietinės migracijos politikos bruožai Vilniaus krašte (1944–1989 m.) / Vitalija Stravinskienė. Lietuvos istorijos metraštis. 2018, 2017/2, p. 131-148.
- Soviet Lithuanians, amber and the "New Balts” : historical narratives of national and regional identities in Lithuanian museums, 1940–2009 / by Eglė Rindzevičiūtė. Culture unbound. 2010, Vol. 2, p. 665-694.
- The Overflow of secrets : the disclosure of Soviet repression in museums as an excess / Eglė Rindzevičiūtė. Current anthropology. 2015, vol. 56, suppl. 12, p. 276-285.
- The Sovietization of Lithuania after WWII: modernization, transculturation, and the lettered city / Violeta Davoliūtė. Journal of Baltic studies. 2016, vol. 47, no. 1, p. 49-63.
