For Lithuanian resistance, Soviet WWII win meant new war

Jonas Kadzionis was just 17 when the Soviet Union celebrated victory in WWII. But for him and thousands of other Lithuanians, it only marked the start of another brutal conflict.

By the time Kadzionis was 20, the Soviets had deported his parents to Siberia and he had joined Lithuanian resistance to fight Moscow's rule in the Baltic nation.

The region had already spent years living in fear of Moscow, after the Soviets arrested or deported tens of thousands of people to Siberia in 1941. When the Soviets returned, they raided villages and began forced conscription into the Red Army.

"The partisan resistance started spontaneously. The forest was our refuge," said Kadzionis, now 87 and decked out in his green Lithuanian military uniform, complete with state awards.

"My elder brother died fighting the Soviets in 1945. We had to bury him secretly. I kissed his face, destroyed by a grenade, and pledged to follow in his steps."
While May 9 is celebrated as Victory Day in Russia, for many in Lithuania and fellow Baltic states Estonia and Latvia, it marks the start of decades of Soviet occupation rather than liberation.

The Soviets invaded the Baltic states in 1940 under their infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Nazi Germany. A year later, in June, they deported some 43,000 Baltic citizens.

That drive was cut short when Germany turned on its former allies the same month, pushing the Red Army out of the Baltic region as it invaded the Soviet Union.

In 1944-45, the Soviets put an end to the Nazi occupation -- during which almost all of the region's Jews were killed -- heralding the renewed deportations of hundreds of thousands.

- Soviet terror -

Soviet terror and forced conscription into the Red Army prompted the armed resistance in Lithuania between 1944-1953.

Now living in Kavarskas, a small village north of the capital Vilnius, Kadzionis vividly recalls the bloody battles against Soviet troops and years of hiding in forests.

"Once they surrounded us and opened fire when we tried to escape. I decided to shoot myself so that they couldn't take me alive, fearing torture," he told AFP.
"I put the pistol to my head. But then I saw my commander crawling nearby, and it brought me renewed hope," he said of a 1949 battle that left three of his comrades dead.

"He stood up and fired a machine gun. We jumped over the road and escaped. Later I found in the archives that the Soviets called it Operation Failure."

Kadzionis said many Lithuanians at first believed America would liberate them after WWII.

"We did not know we had been betrayed and handed over to the Soviet zone of influence," he said, referring to the 1945 Yalta agreement between Western powers and the USSR that carved up Europe and launched the Cold War.

"In 1948, when my family was deported to Siberia, I was working in another district. When I found out, I quit my job, and three days later I met the partisans."

Enjoying broad support in the countryside, the partisan movement numbered around 20,000 people in its initial stages, but that number was soon down to 5,000, and by 1952 only several hundred active partisans remained.

More than 20,000 "forest brothers" and their supporters were killed during the "war after war".

After years of hiding in underground bunkers or in heaps of hay in a barn, once six days without any water, Kadzionis was arrested in 1953 and sent to Russia for 25 years of forced labour.

- New fear of Russia -

It was only in March 1990 that Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence, before joining the European Union and NATO in 2004.
"We managed to restore our independence without guns, but with a partisan spirit. It was a miracle," Kadzionis said.

Relations have been strained ever since, stoked by Moscow's refusal to recognise its five-decade rule as occupation.

Since Russia's intervention in Ukraine, the Baltic nation of three million people has reintroduced military conscription, upped its defence budget and seen an increase in the number of paramilitary recruits.

"For the majority of Lithuanians, the partisan movement showed that their grandfathers were willing to sacrifice their lives for independence," said Kestutis Girnius, a philosopher and author of a book about Lithuanian guerrilla warfare.

"No less is expected of them today were Russia to invade."