The Power of Freedom. Mart Laar

one, it was necessary to free people from the fear on which the Communist system was built. The people who marched in long columns under red flags and slogans praising Communism one month were ready to march against it the next if they felt that the system of terror was weakening and they had a chance of success. Fear also disappeared in stages, from one event to another, distributing the power of courage to ever-greater sectors of society. Whenever the Soviet empire displayed signs of weakness, fear decreased among its captive people and they became more active. Uprisings were often the result of a weakening of the centre – the Soviet Union. Since the local Communists remained in power only by reason of Soviet tanks, if Moscow showed signs of weakness, this encouraged people to rise up against Communism. Conflict among the local Communists also demonstrated a weakening of the system; it is no coincidence that the uprisings against Communism often coincided with internal splits among the ruling Communists. The international situation also played an important role in resistance activities. Even though there was no centre to coordinate the resistance movement, if protests or uprisings started in one Communist country, the spirit of opposition and unrest soon spread to other socialist states too. Success in one country demonstrated that it was possible to get rid of Communism, thus encouraging the opposition movement. The domino effect was strongly working in Central and Eastern Europe.

      Western radio broadcasts also played a crucial role in the distribution of free information. Early in 1942, the United States started to broadcast radio programmes to the territories occupied by Japan or Germany under the name of ‘Voice of America’, but from 1947, when programmes in Russian were also introduced, the ‘Voice of America’ concentrated increasingly on the countries under Communist rule. In 1946, the American forces in Berlin founded a new radio station, Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), which, within a few years, had become a highly effective tool for delivering free information to the East Germans. One example of RIAS’ activities in these years was the programme it broadcast from 1950 onwards, ‘Radio Free Europe’, which was aimed at the countries that had been conquered by Communism. The US administration actively supported such broadcasts. President Eisenhower stressed that only if people from the countries under Communist rule ‘[were] reminded that the outside World had not forgotten them … [would] they remain potential deterrents to Soviet aggression.’119 From 1949 onwards, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries started actively jamming the Western shortwave broadcasts, but this did not stop people listening to them. Soviet authorities’ reports demonstrate that the influence of ‘foreign voices’ was at times even underestimated in the West; the Central Committee of the CPSU, for example, became very worried about the rise in the amount of short-wave radios among the population. In 1950, only 2 % of Soviet citizens had short-wave radios yet by the 1980s, half the population had access to one. The Soviet leadership took measures to prevent domestically manufactured radios receiving Western stations, which they jammed. According to a report sent by the KGB to the Soviet leaders, the main instrument of hostile foreign influence was foreign radio propaganda that was listened to more or less regularly by 80 % of university students.120

      The ongoing hope that Western support would be forthcoming also played an important role in resistance to Communist power. The captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe were sometimes more sure of the power of democracy and freedom than the Western countries were themselves. Seeing the weakness of the Communist system from within, they knew that the West could crush Communism and simply could not understand why it was so hesitant and afraid to do this. Hope was particularly strong during the immediate post-war years when the West had yet to awaken to the seriousness of the new threat. Because of this inertia, the first battles against Communism held in Central and Eastern Europe went entirely unnoticed in the West. This was a forgotten war.

      The forgotten war: armed resistance to Communism 1944-1956

      During the Second World War, the guiding principles for Central and Eastern European nations were announced in the Atlantic Charter signed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in 1941. Even though the promises of the Charter were violated during the early stages of the war, Central and Eastern Europe continued to believe in them. For them, it simply defied belief that the democratic world, which had entered into the war to save Central and Eastern Europe from one bloody dictatorship, would now deliver those very same nations into the hands of another. As a result, most people living in the territories conquered by the Red Army in 1944-1945 saw the Soviet presence as only temporary. They were sure that it was only a matter of time before a new war started between the former allies and the captive nations were liberated. Such rumours about an impending war proliferated in Central and Eastern Europe and even among the Soviets themselves. Thus, a partisan war against the Soviets began in all of the countries occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940 as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This resistance to the Soviets was mostly built upon the structures created to fight the Nazis during the German occupation, for example, the Polish Armia Krajowa (AK), the Ukrainian Insurgence Army (UPA) or the Lithuanian Liberation Army.

      In Latvia and Estonia, the goal of resistance between 1944 and 1945 was initially simply to survive the Soviet onslaught, hiding in the forests and swamps while waiting for the new war to start when they would be able to participate in the liberation of their country. In 1945, as it became obvious that a war between the West and the USSR was not imminent, the ‘Forest Brothers’, as they called themselves, converted their efforts to active fighting against the Soviets. In Lithuania and the Ukraine, battles with the Red Army commenced as soon as it entered the territories controlled by the partisans. The arrival of the Red Army heralded a new wave of terror including mass arrests and forced conscription, leading more people to join the partisans. In Lithuania, smaller partisan detachments started to combine to form larger units early in 1944, as a result of which seven partisan regions (apygarda) were formed. This provided the partisans with material resources, printing equipment and medicine, as well as facilitating distribution of their publications. The activities of the partisans were regulated by the statutes of the former Lithuanian army. In resistance to the formation of a Soviet civil government in Lithuania, the partisans assaulted smaller towns, destroying government institutions, disarming punitive units, liberating prisoners and destroying call-up documents. Villages were under partisan control at night and in some locations even during the day. The partisans gathered in the forests in groups of a hundred or more and built well-fortified camps. Between 1944 and 1945, there were several bigger battles between the partisans and Soviet units, in which airborne reconnaissance and mortars were used against the partisans. The Soviet leaders gave the order to destroy the partisan movement in Lithuania ‘within a fortnight’, but the resistance continued.121

      1

      Davies 1996.

      2

      Pipes 2001.

      3

      Gellately 2007.

      4

      Laar 2006,

119

Puddington 2000, p. 15.

120

Gaidar 2007, pp. 72-73.

121

The Anti-Soviet resistance in the Baltic States 1999.