Читать книгу The Power of Freedom - Mart Laar - Страница 11

During the Second World War, the guiding principles for Central and Eastern European nations were announced in the Atlantic Charter signed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in 1941. Even though the promises of the Charter were violated during the early stages of the war, Central and Eastern Europe continued to believe in them. For them, it simply defied belief that the democratic world, which had entered into the war to save Central and Eastern Europe from one bloody dictatorship, would now deliver those very same nations into the hands of another. As a result, most people living in the territories conquered by the Red Army in 1944-1945 saw the Soviet presence as only temporary. They were sure that it was only a matter of time before a new war started between the former allies and the captive nations were liberated. Such rumours about an impending war proliferated in Central and Eastern Europe and even among the Soviets themselves. Thus, a partisan war against the Soviets began in all of the countries occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940 as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This resistance to the Soviets was mostly built upon the structures created to fight the Nazis during the German occupation, for example, the Polish Armia Krajowa (AK), the Ukrainian Insurgence Army (UPA) or the Lithuanian Liberation Army.

In Latvia and Estonia, the goal of resistance between 1944 and 1945 was initially simply to survive the Soviet onslaught, hiding in the forests and swamps while waiting for the new war to start when they would be able to participate in the liberation of their country. In 1945, as it became obvious that a war between the West and the USSR was not imminent, the ‘Forest Brothers’, as they called themselves, converted their efforts to active fighting against the Soviets. In Lithuania and the Ukraine, battles with the Red Army commenced as soon as it entered the territories controlled by the partisans. The arrival of the Red Army heralded a new wave of terror including mass arrests and forced conscription, leading more people to join the partisans. In Lithuania, smaller partisan detachments started to combine to form larger units early in 1944, as a result of which seven partisan regions (apygarda) were formed. This provided the partisans with material resources, printing equipment and medicine, as well as facilitating distribution of their publications. The activities of the partisans were regulated by the statutes of the former Lithuanian army. In resistance to the formation of a Soviet civil government in Lithuania, the partisans assaulted smaller towns, destroying government institutions, disarming punitive units, liberating prisoners and destroying call-up documents. Villages were under partisan control at night and in some locations even during the day. The partisans gathered in the forests in groups of a hundred or more and built well-fortified camps. Between 1944 and 1945, there were several bigger battles between the partisans and Soviet units, in which airborne reconnaissance and mortars were used against the partisans. The Soviet leaders gave the order to destroy the partisan movement in Lithuania ‘within a fortnight’, but the resistance continued.121