The Unknown War
In June of this year, England-based professional and academic book publisher Routledge released its first English-language book on Lithuania’s post-war partisans who maintained an armed resistance movement against the Soviets until 1953. Editor Arūnas Streikus said “Finally we have a solid academic book on the anti-Soviet armed resistance in Lithuania and its memory”. The book “is based on the newest research in the field and for the first time published by the leading international press”, according to Streikus.
The armed anti-Soviet resistance movement in Lithuania arose in the second half of 1944 as Soviet forces began to reoccupy the Baltic countries and Galicia (a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine). It sparked a nearly decade-long fierce military conflict. However, controversy regarding the nature of this “war after the war” and its legacies constitutes one of the core elements in the contemporary information warfare waged by Russia against its neighbouring countries. The origins of various distortions surrounding the story of the partisan war in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union can even be traced to the final stages of that war, when Soviet propaganda sought to discredit the campaign as a battle waged by criminal elements. In this example of a historical event charged with controversial memories and geopolitical connotations, a thorough academic approach is extraordinarily instrumental.
Responding to the growing need for historical research capable of providing international readers with the latest findings in the thematic field under question, six scholars from Vilnius University (Kęstutis Girnius, Dainius Noreika, Enrika Kripienė, Mingaile Jurkute, Aistė Petrauskienė, and Gintautas Vėlius) address the diverse aspects of this phenomenon as well as its role in the culture and politics of memory. Toward this end, this analysis – among the most comprehensive explorations of this history to date – is being released in both Lithuanian and English.“The origins of various distortions surrounding the story of the partisan war in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union can even be traced to the final stages of that war when Soviet propaganda sought to discredit the campaign as a battle waged by criminal elements.”
The book is available online from Routledge.
