Introduction

Abstract

The armed anti-Soviet resistance movement that arose in the second half of 1944, as Soviet forces began to reoccupy the Baltic countries and Galicia – a region of Europe which had not been part of the USSR prior to the Second World War – has yet to become established in the common narrative of contemporary European history. The partisan war in Lithuania lasted much longer and was considerably fiercer than in neighbouring Latvia and Estonia and, unlike in Ukraine, where an anti-Soviet resistance manifested itself in a relatively small geographic area, the war in Lithuania encompassed nearly the entire country. The change in the nature of the armed anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania coincided with the escalation of the Cold War from Winston Churchill’s speech in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 to an address given by American President Harry Truman to the US Congress in March 1947.