2024-07-26 08:02:16
What was one of Joseph Stalin’s greatest nightmares came from the forests of the Baltic countries. For two decades, a group of warriors known as the ‘Forests’ have been wreaking havoc on the Supreme Army. Your reason? Fight against the bloody repression of the dictator in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Not without controversy – Vladimir Putin has emphasized time and again the way some of his members through the German war – his members have become symbols of freedom for their communities. Although, as often happens, it depends on what source you go to.
Repression
History places the birth of this group at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time many young people refused to join the ranks to fight for the Russian Empire, and a good part of them decided to create the ‘Brothers of the Forest’. The guerrillas, always present in the region, however, fell into oblivion until 1940, the year in which it recovered after Joseph Stalin expanded his weapons through the territories of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after gaining of the non-aggression pact signed with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
In practice, Stalin took over three countries in the summer of 1940, the old relics of the empire were lost after World War I, and started a repression that favored the return of the ‘Brothers of the Forest’. Writers Ken Cole, John Cameron and Chris Edwards remember in their studies on the subject how the Soviet fist tried to break Lithuania: “In August 1940 it was incorporated into the USSR as a republic. Many local leaders were imprisoned or exiled, while others fled to Western Europe. And the same thing happened in Estonia and Latvia, as the historian Álvaro Lozano explains well in ‘Stalin, the red civilian’: “The operation was a disaster for the Baltic people. The total number of those killed or driven out of the city is staggering: in Latvia, about 34,250 people; in Estonia, 75,000; and in Lithuania, 75,000.
The NKVD, the Soviet secret service, went to such absurd lengths as to kill citizens of these regions for publicly singing popular songs from their lands. Aware of these atrocities, many citizens left their homes and, as their parents and grandparents had once done, went to the forests to give as much battle as possible to Stalin’s men. Now, a group of guerrillas began to appear in the area, which is mostly made up of border guards, former soldiers and former commanders from the Baltic countries. All of them were with the citizens who were tired of enduring the Soviet tyranny.
Captain Olavi Punga, of the Estonian army, recalled this fact in his account ‘Estonian Forest Brothers in 1941: goals, capabilities, and results’ and pointed out that, as the months passed, ” more people responded by arresting refugees and hiding in forests and swamps to escape any further deportation. At the same time, it is in favor of the fact that, today, the idea that the Baltic countries joined the USSR voluntarily is being discredited. Something that tells a lie.
Change jacket
The struggle of the ‘Forest Brothers’ continued only until the middle of July 1941, the same day that Adolf Hitler broke the pact with Stalin and attacked the USSR in the so-called Operation Barbarossa. That summer, in July, the Germans arrived in the Baltic countries and worked to drive the Red Army out of the region. Since then, and until 1943, some members of this group were assigned to the German army. This is how the historian Kevin O’Connor explains it in the ‘History of the Baltic States’: “Many members of the resistance fought in the Waffen SS organized from 1943.”
The group went to the rear although, for a few weeks, it cooperated in disposing of small pockets of Stalin’s troops in the area. However, the fate is not dire with the Baltic countries; and especially with Latvia. In 1944, after the Battle of Stalingrad, the USSR retook the area while its troops pursued the German army.
Departures
With the Soviet regime the red terror arrived again. From 1944 to 1951, more than 600,000 Baltic people were sent to Siberia. The data supports the brutality of the supreme peer. In 1959 the Latvian population in Latvia had decreased from 80% to 62%. And the same has happened in Estonia, where it dropped from 88% to 75%.
The community’s reaction to the mass exodus is to bring the ‘Brothers of the Forest’ to work again. Carlos Flores Juberías explains it this way in ‘Spain and Eastern Europe: so far, so close’. The same as the Lithuanian politician Vytautas Landsbergis, the latter, in the speech he gave in 1994 when he received the IX International Ramón Llul Award:
“Soviet troops forced their way into Lithuania. Those who tried to escape were shot. Many men hid in the forest and became ‘Forest Brothers’. “They joined the guerrillas who decided to fight against the red war.”
The resistance ends at almost a dozen. “Many high school students went to the forest to die, although no one forced them to do so. […] But the hopes that the fight will be won are destroyed because of the terrible division and the indifference of the world,” the local politician explained in his speech. Although the number of warriors varies from region to region, the ‘Forest Brothers’ number in the thousands. In Estonia alone the data suggests that between 14,000 and 15,000 of these fighters resisted Stalin.
However, for all these ‘Forest Brothers’ the fight is not easy. From 1944 to 1953 they were surrounded by the NKVD. This secret service, along with the Red Army, explores the forests to find and destroy Russian enemies. In addition, they infiltrated their agents into guerrilla groups. When they did not see their enemies, they began to use more brutal tactics. Landsbergis said: “The special gangs of criminals created by the NKVD left their men as guerrillas, killing entire peasant families to make them hate the real soldiers.”
This political vision has been criticized by Russia, from where it has been stated many times that the ‘Forest Brothers’ kill any man, woman or child who collaborates with the Soviets. The party remained active until 1953, the year Stalin died. From then on their activities decrease until they dissolve.
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