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102-486: Inaugurated in 1987, it picks up where its counterpart leaves off in the mid-nineteenth century to cover the political and social upheavals of the twentieth century. Its exhibits include historically dressed mannequins and recreations of domestic interiors. The 1940s and 1950s are represented by army uniforms and weapons. There is an original hut used by the Forest Brothers , the legendary partisans who fought against

204-776: A corresponding directive into the legislation. At the first stage, about 130 people were arrested who gave the necessary confessions under torture, and on December 17, 1933, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to extend criminal liability to "unnatural relationship". The article was added to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR on April 1, 1934 in the section "sexual crimes" under number 154-a. "Voluntary" sexual intercourse between two men

306-485: A failure of highly centralized resistance, as the organization was too dependent on Veverskis and other top commanders. In 1946 remaining leaders and fighters of LLA started to merge with Lithuanian partisans. In 1949 all members of presidium of Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters – captain Jonas Žemaitis-Tylius, Petras Bartkus-Žadgaila, Bronius Liesys-Naktis ir Juozas Šibaila-Merainis came from LLA. Supreme Committee for

408-805: A few grenades, usually saving one to blow themselves up to avoid being taken as prisoner, since the physical tortures of Soviet MGB/NKVD were very brutal and cruel , and to prevent their relatives from suffering. To combat the guerrillas, in May 1948 the Soviets carried out the largest deportation from Lithuania, Operation Spring , when some 40 to 50 thousand people associated with "forest brothers" were deported to Siberia. Captured Lithuanian Forest Brothers often faced torture and summary execution while their relatives faced deportation to Siberia (cf. quotation ). Reprisals against anti-Soviet farms and villages were harsh. NKVD units named People's Defense Platoons (known by

510-872: A long history in Tsarist Russia. Ivan the Terrible used the Oprichina , while more recently the Third Section and Okhrana existed. Early on, the Leninist view of the class conflict and the resulting notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat provided the theoretical basis of the repressions. Its legal basis was formalized into the Article 58 in the code of the Russian SFSR and similar articles for other Soviet republics . According to

612-788: A movement hostile to the Government of the United States under Section 13 of the Displaced Persons Act, as amended. The Latvian government has asserted that the Latvian Legion , primarily composed of the 15th and 19th Latvian Waffen-SS divisions, was neither a criminal nor collaborationist organization. The ranks of the resistance swelled with the Red Army's attempts to conscript in the Baltic states after

714-662: A small pension. In Lithuania, the third Sunday in May is commemorated as Partisans' Day. In 2005 there were about 350 surviving Forest Brothers in Lithuania. By 2024, Ruuben Lambur  [ et ] (1925–2024) was the last Estonian Forest Brother still well enough to make public appearances. In a 2001 lecture in Tallinn, U.S. Senator John McCain acknowledged the Estonian Forest Brothers and their efforts. The Canadian film Legendi loojad (Creators of

816-505: A theory difficult to credit given the shallow water and lack of cover at the site. Another noted member of Forest Brothers, Kalev Arro , evaded capture by disguising himself as a vagrant while hiding in the forests of southern Estonia for 20 years. He was killed in a shooting encounter with KGB agents in 1974. There were numerous attempts to hunt down relatives of the Forest Brothers. An Estonian who managed to escape deportation

918-634: A wound on the left side, both testicles and spermatic ducts are missing. Juozas Lukša was among those who managed to escape to the West; he wrote his memoirs in Paris – Fighters for Freedom. Lithuanian Partisans Versus the U.S.S.R. , and was killed after returning to Lithuania in 1951. Pranas Končius (code name Adomas ) was one of the last few Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance fighters, killed in action by Soviet forces on July 6, 1965 (some sources indicate he shot himself in order to avoid capture on July 13). He

1020-598: Is the best-known film portrayal of the conflict. The popular Soviet Latvian TV drama series Long Road in the Dunes (1980–1982) touches the topic of Latvian Forest Brothers from a Soviet perspective. Political repression in the Soviet Union Throughout the history of the Soviet Union , tens of millions of people suffered political repression , which was an instrument of the state since

1122-855: The 1917 Revolution in Russia , the Orlov-Davydovs leased out the manor. From 1933 to 1937, the manor hosted a restaurant and hotel opened. The manor was then purchased by the Estonian government who used it to house the Military Aviation School of the Republic of Estonia. The school closed when the Soviets began occupying Estonia, and in 1940, the Soviet Army took over the building. In 1987, the History of Revolution Museum of

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1224-596: The 20th Waffen-SS Division (1st Estonian) who wished to stay and defend their homes to do so – and in the fate of Army Group Courland , among the last of Hitler's forces to surrender after it became trapped in the Courland Pocket on the Courland Peninsula in 1945. Many Estonian and Latvian soldiers, and a few Germans, evaded capture and fought as Forest Brothers for years after the war. Others such as Alfons Rebane and Alfrēds Riekstiņš escaped to

1326-848: The Cadets who were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, then proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and foreign capitalist military forces . In one incident in Baku , the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of the Bolshevik Party who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections. As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against

1428-600: The Chekists themselves waited outside. I told people to drive me away, as I had been sent by the security organs." In Latvia, preparations for partisan operations began during the German occupation, but the leaders of these nationalist units were arrested by Nazi authorities. Longer-lived resistance units began to form at the end of the war, composed of former Latvian Legion soldiers and civilians. On 8 September 1944 in Riga ,

1530-635: The Doctors' Plot , and others. The secret police forces conducted massacres of prisoners on numerous occasions. Repression took place in the Soviet republics and in the territories occupied by the Soviet Army during and following World War II , including the Baltic states and Eastern Europe . State repression led to incidents of popular resistance, such as the Tambov peasant rebellion (1920–1921),

1632-924: The House of the Brotherhood of the Blackheads . In 1842, the Estonian Literary Society ( German : Estländische Literärische Gesellschaft ) and began collecting materials to form a museum. In 1864, the Provincial Museum of the Estonian Literature Society was founded at Canute Guild . During the Soviet occupation of Estonia , the museum was nationalized, and its collections given to other museums. Unfortunately, some of its materials were destroyed. In 1952,

1734-645: The Kronstadt rebellion (1921), and the Vorkuta Uprising (1953); the Soviet authorities suppressed such resistance with overwhelming military force and brutality. During the Tambov rebellion, Mikhail Tukhachevsky (chief Red Army commander in the area) authorized Bolshevik military forces to use chemical weapons against villages with civilian population and rebels. Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with

1836-710: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , all three Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, a move that the Western Allies deemed illegitimate. When Nazi Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union , the Soviet Red Army was driven out of the Baltics and the area came under German military occupation . After the departure of Soviet troops from the region, formal independence to

1938-642: The October Revolution . It culminated during the Stalin era , then declined, but it continued to exist during the " Khrushchev Thaw ", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Brezhnev era , and it did not cease to exist until late in Mikhail Gorbachev's rule when it was ended in keeping with his policies of glasnost and perestroika . Secret police had

2040-776: The Red Army , occupied the Baltic states in 1940, completing their occupation by 1941. After a period of German occupation during World War II, the Soviets reoccupied Lithuania from 1944 to 1945. As Soviet political repression intensified over the following years, tens of thousands of partisans from the Baltics began to use the countryside as a base for an anti-Soviet insurgency. According to some estimates, at least 50,000 partisans (10,000 in Estonia, 10,000 in Latvia and 30,000 in Lithuania) in addition to their supporters were involved in

2142-609: The Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the " Forest Brothers ", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars" ( Estonian : metsavennad , Latvian : mežabrāļi , Lithuanian : žaliukai ), these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II . Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria , Poland , Romania and Ukraine . Soviet forces, consisting primarily of

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2244-671: The ethnically cleansed territories. In most cases their destinations were underpopulated and remote areas (see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union ). Entire nations and ethnic groups were collectively punished by the Soviet government for their alleged collaboration with the enemy during World War II . At least nine distinct ethnic-linguistic groups, including ethnic Germans , ethnic Greeks , ethnic Poles , Crimean Tatars (recognized as genocide), Balkars , Chechens , and Kalmyks , were deported to remote and unpopulated areas of Siberia (see sybirak ) and Kazakhstan . Koreans and Romanians were also deported. Mass operations of

2346-456: The "conspiracy of the homosexual community" in Moscow , Leningrad and Kharkiv . As Yagoda pointed out in the explanatory note, "the conspirators were engaged in the creation of a network of salons and other organized formations, with the subsequent transformation of these associations into direct spy cells". Stalin ordered "to punish the scumbags" in a demonstrative way, and to introduce

2448-658: The 31st anniversary of the February 16, 1918, declaration of independence, by elements of the resistance unified under the "Movement of the Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania". ... a universal, organised, armed resistance namely, self-defence, by the Lithuanian State, did take place in Lithuania during 1944–1953, against the soviet occupation ... the goal ... was the liberation of Lithuania, relying upon

2550-521: The Baltic states was not restored by Germany. Meanwhile, Allied declarations such as the Atlantic Charter offered promise of a post-war world in which the three Baltic states could re-establish themselves. Having already experienced occupation by the Soviet regime then the Nazi regime, many people were unwilling to accept another occupation at the end of the war. Unlike Estonia and Latvia, where

2652-590: The British ( MI6 ), American and Swedish secret intelligence services. That support played a key role in directing the Baltic resistance movement, but it diminished significantly after MI6's Operation Jungle was severely compromised by the activities of British spies ( Kim Philby and others ) who forwarded information to the Soviets and enabled the MGB to identify, infiltrate and eliminate many Baltic guerrilla units and cut others off from any further contact with Western intelligence operatives. The conflict between

2754-597: The Catholic church. By the end of 1945, an estimated 30,000 armed people lived in the forests in Lithuania. The partisans were well-armed. During 1945–1951 Soviet repressive structures seized from partisans 31 mortars, 2,921 machine guns, 6,304 assault rifles, 22,962 rifles, 8,155 pistols, 15,264 grenades, 2,596 mines, and 3,779,133 cartridges. The partisans replenished their arsenal by killing istrebiteli , members of Soviet secret-police forces or by purchasing ammunition from Red Army soldiers. Every partisan had binoculars and

2856-645: The Cheka, having been organized by the Red Army as well. In 1924, anti-Bolshevik Popular Socialist Sergei Melgunov (1879–1956) published a detailed account on the Red Terror in Russia, where he cited Professor Charles Saroléa 's estimates of 1,766,188 deaths from the Bolshevik policies. He questioned the accuracy of the figures, but endorsed Saroléa's "characterisation of terror in Russia", stating it matches reality. Modern historian Sergei Volkov, assessing

2958-500: The Estonian SSR opened in the manor. When Estonia regained independence in 1991, the museum was renovated and updated. The Film Museum, established in 2006, moved to the palace's complex in 2017. Forest Brothers [REDACTED]   Soviet Union ~13,000 Soviet fatalities: The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic ( Latvian , Lithuanian and Estonian ) partisans against

3060-606: The Germans conscripted the local population into military formations within the Waffen-SS , Lithuania never had a Waffen-SS division. In 1944, the German authorities created an ill-equipped but 20,000-man strong Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force under General Povilas Plechavičius to combat Soviet partisans led by Antanas Sniečkus . The Germans came to see this force as a nationalist threat to their occupation. Its senior staff were arrested on May 15, 1944, and Plechavičius

3162-653: The Gulag system has become primarily known as a place for political prisoners and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the Soviet state ." During the early years of World War II , the Soviet Union annexed several territories in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the German–Soviet Pact and its Secret Additional Protocol . In the Baltic countries of Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania , repressions and mass deportations were carried out by

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3264-571: The Legend) about the Estonian Forest Brothers was released in 1963. The film was funded by donations from Estonians in exile. The 1966 Soviet drama film Nobody Wanted to Die ( Lithuanian : Niekas nenorėjo mirti ) by Soviet-Lithuanian film director Vytautas Žalakevičius shows the tragedy of the conflict in which "a brother goes against the brother." The film garnered Žalakevičius the USSR State Prize and international recognition, and

3366-520: The Liberation of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Vyriausiasis Lietuvos išlaisvinimo komitetas , VLIK), was created on November 25, 1943. VLIK published underground newspapers and agitated for resistance against Nazis. The Gestapo arrested the most influential members in 1944. After the reoccupation of Lithuania by the Soviets, VLIK moved to the West and set its goal as maintaining non-recognition of Lithuania's occupation and disseminating information from behind

3468-400: The Lithuanians as pl. stribai , from Russian : izstrebiteli – destroyers , i.e., the destruction battalions), used shock tactics such as displaying executed partisans' corpses in village courtyards to discourage further resistance. The report of a commission formed at a KGB prison a few days after the October 15, 1956, arrest of Adolfas Ramanauskas ("Vanagas"), chief commander of

3570-410: The Marxist historian Marcel Liebman , Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties either took up arms against the new Soviet government , or participated in sabotage, collaborated with the deposed Tsarists , or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. Liebman noted that opposition parties such as

3672-431: The NKVD were needed to deport millions of people, many of whom died. According to various sources, more than 6 million people were deported, with the death toll ranging from 800,000 to 1,500,000 in the USSR only. The Gulag "was the branch of the State Security that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit camps and prisons. While these camps housed criminals of all types,

3774-443: The Red Army in 1921. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's dracionan measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to

3876-456: The Red Terror are at least 10,000. Estimates for the whole period go for a low of 50,000 to highs of 140,000 and 200,000 executed. Most estimations for the number of executions in total put the number at about 100,000. However, social scientist Nikolay Zayats from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus has argued that the figures have been greatly exaggerated due to White Army propaganda. According to Vadim Erlikhman's investigation,

3978-527: The Red Terror as the entire repressive policy of the Bolsheviks during the years of the Civil War (1917–1922), estimates the direct death toll of the Red Terror at 2 million people. Volkov's calculations, however, do not appear to have been confirmed by other major scholars. Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy, pursued between 1928 and 1933, to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms ( Russian : колхо́з , kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy ). The Soviet leaders were confident that

4080-470: The SS (2nd Latvian), was recruited with 15 other Latvians into a Nazi stay-behind unit at the close of the war. Escaping to the forest, the group, led by Krastiņš, avoided all contact with local residents and relatives, robbing trucks for money while simultaneously maintaining an apartment in the center of Riga for reconnaissance operations. At first they assassinated low-level Communist party managers, but later focused their efforts on attempting to assassinate

4182-425: The SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph, who became or remained members of the organization with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter, or who were personally implicated as members of the organization in the commission of such crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in

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4284-596: The Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging from approximately 3 million to nearly 9 million. Some scholars still assert that the death toll could be in the tens of millions. American historian Richard Pipes noted: "Censuses revealed that between 1932 and 1939—that is, after collectivization but before World War II—the population decreased by 9 to 10 million people. In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Robert Conquest states that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, at least 15 million people were killed "by

4386-515: The Soviet armed forces and the Forest Brothers lasted over a decade and cost at least 50,000 lives. Estimates of the number of fighters in each country vary. Misiunas and Taagepera estimate that figures reached 30,000 in Lithuania, between 10,000 and 15,000 in Latvia and 10,000 in Estonia. On the other hand, professor Heinrihs Strods, based on NKVD reports, claims that in 1945, 8,916 partisans were killed in Lithuania, 715 in Latvia and 270 in Estonia, which makes Lithuanian losses around 90%. Even though

4488-607: The Soviet authorities. A number of notable dissidents , including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , Vladimir Bukovsky , and Andrei Sakharov , were sent to internal or external exile. Estimates of the number of deaths attributable specifically to Joseph Stalin vary widely. Some scholars assert that record-keeping of the executions of political prisoners and ethnic minorities are neither reliable nor complete; others contend archival materials contain irrefutable data far superior to sources utilized prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants. Those historians working after

4590-420: The Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under the Stalinist regime. Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved. At times,

4692-407: The Soviet occupation, and a replica of a desk used by a communist party secretary. The museum has four locations: Maarjamäe Palace , the Great Guild hall , the Film Museum, and the Theatre and Music Museum . In 1802, Tallinn pharmacist Johann Burchard started a collection called Mon Faible (My Weakness). Its first item was an opium pipe from China . In 1822, Buchard hosted an exhibition in

4794-419: The Soviets from Tartu, behind the Rivers Pärnu – Emajõgi line. Thus they secured South Estonia under Estonian control by July 10. The NKVD murdered 193 people in Tartu Prison on their retreat on July 8. The German 18th Army crossed the Estonian southern border on July 7–9. The Germans resumed their advance in Estonia by working in cooperation with the Forest Brothers and the Omakaitse . In North Estonia,

4896-449: The Soviets were driven out from Estonia, German Army Group North disarmed all the Forest Brother and Omakaitse groups. Southern Estonian partisan units were yet again summoned in August 1941 under the name of Estonian Omakaitse. Members were initially selected from the closest circle of friends. Later, candidate members were asked to sign a declaration that they were not members of a Communist organization. Estonian Omakaitse relied on

4998-400: The Soviets. The Serov Instructions , "On the Procedure for carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia" , contained detailed procedures and protocols to observe in the deportation of Baltic nationals. Public tribunals were also set up to punish "traitors to the people": those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting their countries into

5100-425: The Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge." Conversely, some historians believe that the official archival figures of

5202-466: The USSR. In the first year of Soviet occupation, from June 1940 to June 1941, the number confirmed executed, conscripted, or deported is estimated at a minimum of 124,467: 59,732 in Estonia, 34,250 in Latvia, and 30,485 in Lithuania. This included 8 former heads of state and 38 ministers from Estonia, 3 former heads of state and 15 ministers from Latvia, and the then-president, 5 prime ministers and 24 other ministers from Lithuania. After Stalin's death ,

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5304-413: The Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, noted the following: The right eye is covered with haematoma, on the eyelid there are six stab wounds made, judging by their diameter, by a thin wire or nail going deep into the eyeball. Multiple haematomas in the area of the stomach, a cut wound on a finger of the right hand. The genitalia reveal the following: a large tear wound on the right side of the scrotum and

5406-471: The United Kingdom and Sweden and participated in Allied intelligence operations in aid of the Forest Brothers. While the Waffen-SS was found guilty of war crimes and other atrocities and declared a criminal organization after the war, the Nuremberg trials explicitly excluded conscripts in the following terms: The Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of

5508-485: The Victims of Political Repression (День памяти жертв политических репрессий) has been officially held on 30 October in Russia since 1991. It is also marked in other former Soviet republics except Ukraine, which has its own annual Day of Remembrance for the victims of political repressions by the Soviet regime, held each year on the third Sunday of May. Members of the Memorial society took an active part in such commemorative meetings. Since 2007, Memorial had also organised

5610-408: The areas to be abandoned on July 3. About 10,000 Forest Brothers, organized into countrywide Omakaitse (Home Guard) organizations, attacked the NKVD , destruction battalions and the 8th Army (Major General Ljubovtsev), killing 4,800 and capturing 14,000. The battle of Tartu lasted for two weeks, and destroyed a large part of the city. Under the leadership of Friedrich Kurg, the Forest Brothers drove

5712-413: The armed fighters while the organizational sector was tasked with passive resistance , including supply of food, information, and transport to Vanagai . In the middle of 1944, the LLA had 10,000 members. The Soviets killed 659 and arrested 753 members of the LLA by January 26, 1945. Founder Kazys Veverskis was killed in December 1944, and the headquarters was liquidated in December 1945. This represented

5814-441: The break of the 21st century radically changed this perception, and the information was uncovered about the so-called Vesna Case , a massive series of Soviet repressions targeting former officers and generals of the Russian Imperial Army who had served in the Red Army and Soviet Navy , a major purge of the Red Army during 1930-1931. In his book, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky , Trotsky also argued that

5916-460: The brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 did not bring about an intervention by, or a supportive response from, Western Powers, organized resistance in the Baltic States declined further. As the conflict was relatively undocumented by the Soviet Union (the Baltic fighters were formally charged as common criminals), some consider it and the Soviet-Baltic conflict as a whole to be an unknown or forgotten war. Discussion of resistance

6018-511: The campaigns against them. Many of the remaining Forest Brothers laid down their weapons when offered an amnesty by the Soviet authorities after Stalin's death in 1953, although isolated engagements continued into the 1960s. The last individual guerrillas are known to have remained in hiding and evaded capture into the 1980s, by which time the Baltic states were pressing for independence through peaceful means. (See Sąjūdis , The Baltic Way , Singing Revolution ) Many Forest Brothers persisted in

6120-437: The categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete. In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Canadian historian Robert Gellately and British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed. A Day of Remembrance for

6222-414: The collapse of the Russian Empire . The ideals of nationalism and self-determination had taken hold with many people as a result of the independence of Estonia and Latvia for the first time since the 13th century. Lithuanians re-established a sovereign state with a rich former history, the largest country in Europe during the 14th century, occupied by the Russian Empire since 1795 . In the aftermath of

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6324-613: The consolidation of Soviet rule through ambush, sabotage, assassination of local Communist activists and officials, freeing imprisoned guerrillas and printing underground newspapers. On 1 July 1944, Lithuanian Liberty Army (LLA) declared the state of war against the Soviet occupation and ordered all its able members to mobilize into platoons, station in forests and not to leave Lithuania. The departments were replaced by two sectors – operational, called Vanagai (Hawks or Falcons; abbreviated VS), and organizational (abbreviated OS). Vanagai , commanded by Albinas Karalius (codename Varenis), were

6426-412: The day-long "Restoring the Names" ceremony at the Solovetsky Stone in Moscow every 29 October. The organization was banned by the Russian government in 2022. Some of Memorial's human rights activities have continued in Russia. The Wall of Grief in Moscow, inaugurated in October 2017, is Russia's first monument ordered by presidential decree for people killed during the Stalinist repressions in

6528-428: The death toll in the range of six to 13 million. The Great Purge ( Russian : Большой террор , transliterated Bolshoy terror , The Great Terror ) was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938. It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , repression of peasants , deportations of ethnic minorities , and

6630-422: The destruction battalions had the greatest impact, being the last Baltic territory captured from the Soviets. The joint Estonian-German forces took Narva on August 17 and the Estonian capital Tallinn on August 28. On that day, the red flag shot down earlier on Pikk Hermann was replaced with the flag of Estonia by Fred Ise only to be replaced yet again by a German Reichskriegsflagge a few hours later. After

6732-399: The forest brothers of this era either as peasants revolting or as schoolteachers seeking refuge in the forest. The term Forest Brothers was used and known only in occupied Estonia and Latvia. In Lithuania partisans were called žaliukai (Green People), miškiniai (Forest People) or just partizanai (partisans). Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained their independence in 1918 after

6834-462: The former regulations of Estonian Defence League and Estonian Army , insofar as they were consistent with the laws of German occupation. The tasks of the Omakaitse were as follows: On 15 July, the Omakaitse had 10,200 members; on 1 December 1941, 40,599 members. Until February 1944 membership was around 40,000. By the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the Forest Brothers were provided with supplies, liaison officers and logistical coordination by

6936-405: The head of the Latvian SSR , Vilis Lācis . The group recruited a Russian woman working at the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR who told them Lācis' transportation schedule. They set up a roadside ambush when Lācis was traveling from Riga to Jūrmala , but shot up the wrong car. The second attempt likewise relied on a female collaborator, who proved to be an undercover NKVD agent. The entire group

7038-424: The hope that Cold War hostilities between the West, which never formally recognized the Soviet occupation , and the Soviet Union might escalate to an armed conflict in which the Baltic states would be liberated. This never materialized, and according to Mart Laar many of the surviving former Forest Brothers remained bitter that the West did not take on the Soviet Union militarily. (See also Yalta Conference ). When

7140-420: The insurgency. The partisans continued to carry out an armed struggle until 1956, when the superiority of the Soviet security forces, largely in the form of secret agents which infiltrated the partisan groups, caused the Baltic population to change tactics and use other forms of resistance. The term Forest Brothers first came into use in the Baltic region in the 1905 Russian Revolution . Varying sources refer to

7242-408: The iron curtain – including information provided by the Lithuanian partisans. Former members of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, Lithuanian Liberty Army, Lithuanian Armed Forces , Lithuanian Riflemen's Union formed the basis of Lithuanian partisans. Farmers, Lithuanian officials, students, teachers, even pupils joined the partisan movement. The movement was actively supported by society and

7344-697: The leadership of the Latvian Central Council adopted the Declaration on the restoration of the State of Latvia . It was intended to restore de facto independence to the Latvian republic. In addition it was hoped international supporters would take advantage of the interval between changeovers of the occupying powers. The Declaration prescribed that the Satversme was the fundamental law of

7446-647: The matter, and who had committed no such crimes. In 1949–1950 the United States Displaced Persons Commission investigated the Estonian and Latvian divisions and on September 1, 1950, adopted the following policy: The Baltic Waffen SS Units are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the Commission holds them not to be

7548-563: The museum moved to the Great Guild Hall. In 1989, it was renamed the Estonian History Museum. In 1873, Count Anatoli Orlov-Davydov (1837–1905) purchased the plot of land Maarjamäe Palace sits on today from Christian Abraham Rotermann, who had built a steam mill and factories on the land. Orlov-Davydov named the land Marienberg, likely in honor of his wife Maria. Maarjamäe is the Estonian version of Maria. Due to

7650-444: The number of the Red Terror's victims is at least 1,200,000 people. According to Robert Conquest , a total of 140,000 people were shot in 1917–1922. Candidate of Historical Sciences Nikolay Zayats states that the number of people shot by the Cheka in 1918–1922 is about 37,300 people, shot in 1918–1921 by the verdicts of the tribunals—14,200, i.e. about 50,000–55,000 people in total, although executions and atrocities were not limited to

7752-501: The organization controlled dozens of villages and towns, creating considerable nuisance to Soviet supply transports that required an armed escort. August Sabbe , one of the last surviving Forest Brothers, was discovered in 1978 by KGB agents posing with his fellow fishermen. Instead of surrendering he leaped into the Võhandu . was caught on a log, and drowned. The KGB insisted that the 69-year-old Sabbe had drowned while trying to escape,

7854-415: The partisans inflicted damage on uniformed military personnel, party cadres (particularly in rural areas), buildings, and ammunition depots. The Communist authorities reported 1,562 Soviet personnel killed and 560 wounded during the entire resistance period. One account of a typical Forest Brothers action is provided by Tālrīts Krastiņš. He, a reconnaissance soldier of the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of

7956-429: The peasantry, with the exception of the poorest part, resisted the collectivization policy, the Soviet government resorted to harsh measures to force the farmers to collectivize. In his conversation with Winston Churchill , Joseph Stalin gave his estimate of the number of " kulaks " who were repressed for resisting Soviet collectivization as 10 million, including those forcibly deported. Recent historians have estimated

8058-524: The persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and killings. Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 1,2 million. On September 15, 1933, the deputy head of the OGPU , Genrikh Yagoda reported to Joseph Stalin about the disclosure of

8160-406: The poison gas. The Internal Troops of the Cheka and the Red Army practiced the terror tactics of taking and executing numerous hostages, often in connection with desertions of forcefully mobilized peasants. According to Orlando Figes , more than 1 million people deserted from the Red Army in 1918, around 2 million people deserted in 1919, and almost 4 million deserters escaped from

8262-653: The provisions of the Atlantic Charter and a sovereign right acknowledged by the democratic world, by bearing arms against one of the World War II Aggressors ;... The Council of the Movement of the Struggle for Freedom of Lithuania ... constituted the supreme political and military structure ... and was the sole legal authority within the territory of occupied Lithuania. In Latvia and Lithuania, Forest Brothers veterans receive

8364-423: The ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000-132,000 deserters to the army. For a long time historians assumed that the destruction of the officer cadre of the Red Army happened during Stalin's Great Purge . However new data that emerged on

8466-602: The real numbers were even larger, many believe this reveals the ratio of the size of resistance among the three countries. In Estonia 14,000–15,000 men participated in the fighting between 1944 and 1953: The Forest Brothers were most active in Võru County along the borderlands between Pärnu and Lääne counties and included significant activity between Tartu and Viru counties as well. From November 1944 to November 1947, they carried out 773 armed attacks, killing about 1,000 Soviets and their supporters. At its peak in 1947,

8568-644: The reign of terror began with the White Terror under the White Guard forces and the Bolsheviks responded with the Red Terror. There is no consensus among the Western historians on the number of deaths from the Red Terror in Soviet Russia . One source gives estimates of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922. Estimates for the number of people shot during the initial period of

8670-476: The replacement of individual peasant farms by kolkhozy would immediately increase food supplies for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports generally. Collectivization was thus regarded as the solution to the crisis in agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed since 1927 and was becoming more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program. As

8772-573: The repressed were called the enemies of the people . Punishments by the state included summary executions , sending innocent people to Gulag , forced resettlement , and stripping of citizen's rights . Repression was conducted by the Cheka secret police and its successors , and other state organs. Periods of increased repression include the Red Terror , Collectivization , the Great Purges ,

8874-564: The restored Republic of Latvia, and provided for the establishment of a Cabinet of Ministers that would organise the restoration of the State of Latvia. Some of the most prominent LCC accomplishments were related to its military branch – General Jānis Kurelis group (the so-called "kurelieši") with the Lieutenant Roberts Rubenis battalion, which carried out the armed resistance against Waffen SS forces. The number of active combatants peaked between 10,000 and 15,000, while

8976-452: The suppressed census of January 1937, of fifteen to sixteen million, by making reasonable assumptions about how this was divided between birth deficit and deaths." Australian historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft claims that prior to the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of

9078-426: The suppression of dissent was dramatically reduced and it also took new forms. The internal critics of the system were convicted of anti-Soviet agitation , anti-Soviet slander , or they were accused of being "social parasites" . Other critics were accused of being mentally ill, they were accused of having sluggish schizophrenia and incarcerated in " psikhushkas ", i.e. mental hospitals which were used as prisons by

9180-433: The three countries, the resistance was best organized in Lithuania, where guerrilla units controlled whole regions of the countryside until 1949. Their armaments included Czech Škoda guns , Russian Maxim heavy machine guns , assorted mortars and a wide variety of mainly German and Soviet light machine guns and submachine guns . When not in direct battles with the Red Army or special NKVD units, they significantly delayed

9282-455: The total number of resistance fighters was as high as 40,000. One author gives a figure of up to 12,000 grouped in 700 bands during the 1945–55 decade, but definitive figures are unavailable. Over time, the partisans replaced their German weapons with Soviet makes. The Central Command of Latvian resistance organizations maintained an office on Matīsa Street in Riga until 1947. In some 3,000 raids,

9384-421: The war, and fewer than half the registered conscripts reported in some districts. The widespread harassment of disappearing conscripts' families pushed more people to evade authorities in the forests. Many enlisted men deserted, taking their weapons with them. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Joseph Stalin made a public statement on the radio calling for a scorched earth policy in

9486-485: The whole range of Soviet regime's terrors". Rudolph Rummel in 2006 said that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, although he includes those killed by the government of the Soviet Union in other Eastern European countries as well. Conversely, J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft insist that the opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by "revisionist" scholars. Simon Sebag Montefiore in 2003 suggested that Stalin

9588-442: Was Taimi Kreitsberg. She recalled that Soviet officials "...took me to Võru, I was not beaten there, but for three days and nights I was given neither food nor drink. They told me they were not going to kill me, but torture me [until] I betrayed all the bandits. For about a month they dragged me through woods and took me to farms owned by relatives of Forest Brothers, and they sent me in as an instigator to ask for food and shelter while

9690-595: Was apprehended and sentenced to prison in 1948. The Latvian Forest Brothers were most active in the border regions, including Dundaga , Taurkalne , Lubāna , Aloja and Līvāni . In the eastern regions, they had ties with the Estonian Forest Brothers; and in the western regions, with the Lithuanians. As in Estonia and Lithuania, the partisans were killed off and infiltrated by the MVD and NKVD over many years. As in Estonia and Lithuania, assistance from Western intelligence

9792-605: Was awarded the Cross of Vytis posthumously in 2000. Benediktas Mikulis, one of the last known partisans to remain in the forest, emerged in 1971. He was arrested in the 1980s and spent several years in prison. By the early 1950s, the Soviet forces had eradicated most of the Forest Brother resistance. Intelligence gathered by the Soviet spies in the West and MGB infiltrators within the resistance movement, in combination with large-scale Soviet operations in 1952, managed to end

9894-626: Was deported to a concentration camp in Salaspils , Latvia. Approximately half the remaining forces formed guerrilla units and dissolved into the countryside to prepare for partisan operations against the Red Army as the Eastern Front approached. Guerrilla operations in Estonia and Latvia had some basis in Adolf Hitler 's authorization to withdraw from Estonia in mid-September 1944 – he allowed soldiers of his Estonian forces, primarily

9996-466: Was sentenced to three to five years in the camps , and for "cohabitation" with the use of violence - from five to eight. Nikolai Klyuev was the first known homosexual to suffer from Soviet repressions. The poet was accused of writing love lyrics that "were written from a male person to a male person." In February 1934, Klyuyev was arrested in his apartment on charges of "composing and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works", and in 1937 he

10098-423: Was severely compromised by Soviet counter-intelligence and Latvian double agents such as Augusts Bergmanis and Vidvuds Sveics . Furthermore, the Soviets gradually consolidated their rule in the cities: help from rural civilians was less forthcoming, and special military and security units were sent to control the partisans. The last groups emerged from the forest in 1957 to surrender to the authorities. Among

10200-525: Was shot . In later times, the most famous victim of the Soviet repression against the LGBT was a film director Sergei Parajanov . Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be divided into the following broad categories: deportations of " anti-Soviet " categories within the population, who were often classified as " enemies of the workers "; deportations of nationalities; labor force transfer; and organised migrations in opposite directions in order to fill

10302-470: Was suppressed under the Soviet regime. Writings on the subject by Baltic emigrants were often labelled as examples of "ethnic sympathy" and disregarded. Laar's research efforts, begun in Estonia in the late 1980s, are considered to have opened the door for further study. In 1999, the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament) enacted a declaration of independence that had been made on February 16, 1949,

10404-408: Was ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million people. Some of these estimates rely in part on demographic losses. Conquest explained how he arrived at his estimate: "I suggest about eleven million by the beginning of 1937, and about three million over the period 1937–38, making fourteen million. The eleven-odd million is readily deduced from the undisputed population deficit shown in

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