page_title: Lithuanian partisans
section_title: Aftermath, memorials and remembrances
hierarchical_section_title: Lithuanian partisans / Aftermath, memorials and remembrances
caption_attribution_description: English: Original Lithuanian Partisans Declaration of February 16, 1949, exhibited in the National Museum of Lithuania.Lietuvių: Lietuvos laisvės kovos sąjūdžio 1949 m. vasario 16 d. deklaracija, eksponuojama Lietuvos nacionaliniame muziejuje.
context_page_description: The Lithuanian partisans were partisans who waged a guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Galicia. It is estimated that a total of 30,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters were killed.
  At the end of World War II, the Red Army pushed the Eastern Front towards Lithuania. The Soviets invaded and occupied Lithuania by the end of 1944. As forced conscription into Red Army and Stalinist repressions intensified, thousands of Lithuanians used forests in the countryside as a natural refuge. These spontaneous groups became more organized and centralized culminating in the establishment of the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters in February 1948. In their documents, the partisans emphasized that their ultimate goal is recreation of independent Lithuania. As the partisan war continued, it became clear that the West would not interfere in Eastern Europe and that the partisans had no chance of success against the far stronger opponent.
context_section_description: Many nationalist partisans persisted in the hope that Cold War hostilities between the West, which never formally recognized the Soviet occupation, and the Soviet Union might escalate to an armed conflict in which Lithuania would be liberated. This never materialized, many of the surviving former partisans remained bitter that the West did not take on the Soviets militarily.
  As the conflict was relatively undocumented by the Soviet Union (the Lithuanian fighters were never formally acknowledged as anything but "bandits and illegals"), some consider it and the Soviet-Lithuanian conflict as a whole to be an unknown or forgotten war. Discussion of resistance was suppressed under the Soviet regime. Writings on the subject by the Lithuanian emigrants were often labelled by Soviet propaganda as examples of "ethnic sympathy" and disregarded.
  In Lithuania, freedom fighter veterans receive a state pension. The third Sunday in May is commemorated as Partisan's Day. As of 2005, there were about 350 surviving partisans in Lithuania.
  Žaliukas ("Green man") is the Lithuanian partisans inspired qualification patch in the Lithuanian Special Operations Forces given for the very best. Žaliukas is the word for the state of alert of the unyielding part of the nation in the face of danger.
caption: Lithuanian Partisans Declaration of February 16, 1949, exhibited in 2019
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