Guerrilla war in Lithuania | |||||||
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Part of the guerrilla war in the Baltic states and the Cold War | |||||||
![]() Lithuanian partisans of the Vytautas military district Tigras (Tiger) team, 1947. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Units involved | |||||||
NKVD NKGB MGB Destruction battalions | LLKS | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
200,000 NKVD personnel 2000–5000 "stribai" 1,500 NKGB personnel |
50,000 partisans more than 100,000 support staff[1] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
12,921 killed[2] |
20,323 killed 20,000 captured[2] | ||||||
90,000 civilians killed, circa 200,000 deported (including partisan supporters) |
Eastern Bloc |
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Lithuanian partisans (Lithuanian: Lietuvos partizanai) were partisans who waged guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. An estimated total of 30,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters were killed.[3] The Lithuanian partisan war lasted almost for a decade, thus becoming one of the longest partisan wars in Europe.
At the end of World War II, the Red Army pushed the Eastern Front towards Lithuania. The Soviets invaded and occupied Lithuania by the end of 1944. As forced conscription into Red Army and Stalinist repressions escalated, thousands of Lithuanians took to the forests in the countryside as a refuge. These spontaneous groups became more organized and centralized culminating in the establishment of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in February 1948. In their documents, the partisans emphasized that their ultimate goal was the recreation of independent Lithuania. As the partisan war continued, it became clear that the West would not interfere in Eastern Europe (see Western betrayal) and the partisans had no chance of success against a far stronger opponent. Eventually, the partisans made an explicit and conscious decision not to accept any new members. The leadership of the partisans was destroyed in 1953 thus effectively ending the partisan war, though individual fighters held out until the 1960s.