Eastern European Anti-Communist Insurgencies

Eastern European Anti-Communist Insurgencies

The Eastern European Anti-Communist Insurgencies fought on after the official end of the Second World War against the Soviet Union and the communist states formed under Soviet occupation.

Eastern European Anti-Communist Insurgencies
Date 1945–1960s Location Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe Result Anti-Communist partisans defeated
Belligerents
Soviet Union Eastern Bloc States	Romanian Partisans Baltic Partisans Polish Partisans Ukrainian Partisans Hungarian Revolutionaries

Prominent movements include:

In Poland

The 'cursed soldiers' (Polish: Żołnierze wyklęci) is a name applied to a variety of Polish resistance movements that were formed in the later stages of World War II and afterwards. Created by former members of the Polish underground resistance organizations of World War II, these organizations continued the struggle against the pro-Soviet government of Poland well into the 1950s. Most of these anti-communist groups ceased operations in the late 1940s or 1950s. However, the last known 'cursed soldier', Józef Franczak, was killed in an ambush as late as 1963, almost 20 years after the Soviet take-over of Poland.

In the Baltic States

The Forest Brothers (also: Brothers of the Forest, Forest Brethren; Forest Brotherhood; Estonian: metsavennad, Latvian: meža brāļi, Lithuanian: miško broliai) were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during, and after, World War II. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Croatia and western Ukraine.

The Soviet Army occupied the independent Baltic states in 1940–1941 and, after a period of German occupation, again in 1944–1945. As Stalinist repression intensified over the following years, 50,000 residents of these countries used the heavily-forested countryside as a natural refuge and base for armed anti-Soviet resistance.

Resistance units varied in size and composition, ranging from individually operating guerrillas, armed primarily for self-defense, to large and well-organized groups able to engage significant Soviet forces in battle.

In Romania

An armed resistance movement against the communist regime in Romania was active from the late 40s to the mid 50s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime. It wasn’t until the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu in late 1989 that details about what was called “anti-communist armed resistance” were made public. It was only then that the public learnt about the several small armed groups, which sometimes termed themselves "haiducs", that had taken refuge in the Carpathian Mountains, where some hid for ten years from authorities. The last fighter was eliminated in the mountains of Banat in 1962.

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