Here is a summary of Lithuania's struggle against Communism.
Tell a Lithuanian that it was today, the 9th of May 1945, that his country was liberated and peace after WWII restored. Tell him that this 2010 May it is 65 years since the Soviet Union and the Western world defeated Hitler's Nazi regime, and that Lithuania since then has been a free, happy country in line with what other European countries experienced after they were occupied in 1939 ?1940 and liberated in 1945. Do not be surprised if you get an angry and annoyed look back. For while we in the Western world, in Russia and in other parts of the world joyfully could celebrate the liberation and the recovered freedom after the World War, Lithuania, the other two Baltic states, and Ukraine were forced to realize that one war had been replaced by a new, much bloodier and more protracted war, lasting from 1944 to at least 1953. What we in the west celebrated in May 1945 was by Lithuanians and the other occupied countries experienced only in 1990 ?1991.
Read it all here:
http://vilnews.com/?p=1739Many lessons to be learned from what went on behind the Wall in the East from 1945 through 1989.
The book,
Diary of a Partisan, can be found below.
Diary of a Partisan can be found here for sale and background:
http://stores.homestead.com/VKarnila/-strse-255/lithuanian-partisan-book-resistance/Detail.bok The diary of the partisan Lionginas Baliukevicius (1925-1950) lay for forty years in the KGB archives in Vilnius. Now the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania has transferred his memoirs into a fascinating and well worth reading book.
It shows the tragic personality of an idealist. His views, longings and aspirations are show against the background of bitter fighting. Out of the context of everyday life crystallize general statements about essential issues for the survival of the nation and the state. Having accurately pointed out the causes which brought Lithuania to its knees in 1940 and the first Soviet occupation, Baliukevicius analyses the political, national and moral issues of the postwar times and reflects on the problems and everyday lives of the partisans.
Here is a wonderful book review for you.
New Notes from the Underground: The Partisan War
Lionginas Baliukevičius. The Diary of a Partisan. A Year in the Life of the Postwar Lithuanian Resistance Fighter Dzūkas. Translated by Irena Blekys and Lijana Holmes. Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2008, 182 pages.
Reviewed by Antanas ?ileika
Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians are intensely aware of the history of the ?forest brothers? who fought a doomed guerilla war against the Soviets from 1944 into the 1950s. To say the West knows little of them is an understatement, and those who do know are not always sympathetic. Not long ago, I was having coffee with a friend whose grandfather survived the Nazis in Latvia by withdrawing with the Soviets in 1941. He had heard of the Lithuanian partisans, but he only knew them as ?fascist bandits.? He was skeptical about my claim that tens of thousands of young men and women had fought the Soviets not because they were ?war criminals,? but because they were defending their homeland and believed it was better to die fighting than be deported to Siberia. But the story remains contentious to some, especially after decades of Soviet disinformation. So it?s an uphill battle to get the story out and see it in proper perspective.
The story of the postwar partisan war against the Soviet occupation is very important to Balts and Ukrainians. It corrects the ugly claim that Lithuania and the others joined the Soviet Union willingly. A young Lithuanian historian, Bernardas Gailius, in Partizanai tada ir ?iandien (The partisans then and now), makes a book-length argument that the partisan resistance was a full and proper war, albeit one unrecognized in the West.
This matter of Western recognition of the historic suffering of the Balts and Ukrainians is problematic. The West never did pay much attention to the East. The extension of NATO and the EU eastwards can be said to have made up for the historical oversight. The latest battle is the battle for understanding and sympathy for the horrors that Lithuania (and others) went through. These horrors have never been broadly known, overshadowed by the horror of the Holocaust and by current horrors. But recognition is growing, as can be seen from recent histories such as Norman Davies?s Europe at War and Tony Judt?s Postwar. In both of those histories, the importance of the partisan war in the Ukraine and the Baltic States has been recognized.
Read it all here:
http://www.lituanus.org/2009/09_3_05%20Sileika.html
