Forest Brothers
숲의 형제들
The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian armed partisans who fought the Soviet occupation from bases in the forests during and after World War II. At least 50,000 are estimated to have taken part between the Soviet reoccupation of 1944 and about 1956; the resistance was best organised in Lithuania.
In depth
The term was first used in the Baltic region in the 1905 revolution, and “Forest Brothers” was used mainly in Estonia and Latvia; in Lithuania the partisans were called žaliukai (“green ones”) or simply partisans. When the German-Soviet war began in the summer of 1941, Estonian Forest Brothers fought the retreating Soviet forces. When the Soviets returned in 1944–1945, men evading Red Army conscription, soldiers who had fought on the German side and members of the disbanded Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force went into the forests.
Estimates put their number at no fewer than 50,000 (10,000 each in Estonia and Latvia and 30,000 in Lithuania), with other estimates giving 10,000–15,000 for Latvia. In Lithuania the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters was founded in 1949. Suppression by the MGB and the destruction battalions, the mass deportations and collectivisation of 1948–1949 and infiltration by the intelligence services broke most of the resistance by the early 1950s, and many laid down their arms under the amnesty after Stalin’s death in 1953. The war cost at least 50,000 lives.