Between 1944 and 1946, thousands of Polish independence fighters actively opposed the new communist regime, attacking country offices of NKVD, SMERSH and the Polish communist secret service (UB). The events of the late 1940s amounted to a full-scale civil war according to some historians, especially in the eastern and central parts of the country (see: the Cursed soldiers). According to depositions by Józef Światło and other communist sources, the number of members of the Polish underground, rounded up by order of Lavrentiy Beria of the NKVD and deported to Siberia and various gulags in the Soviet Union reached 50,000 in 1945 alone. Their political leaders were kidnapped by the Soviet Union, interrogated under torture and sent to prison after a staged Trial of the Sixteen in Moscow. None survived. About 600 people died as the result of the Augustów roundup.