Rise of Forest Brothers

The Forest Brothers were anti-Soviet partisans in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who took to the forests to fight against Soviet rule, first during the occupation of the Baltic states in 1940 and then in greater numbers after the Red Army returned in 1944. Many were former soldiers, farmers and students, and they lived in hidden camps and bunkers, attacking Soviet officials and security forces and trying to prevent the collectivization of agriculture. They hoped for Western help that never came. The Soviet security services crushed the movement with deportations, informants and mass arrests, and by the early 1950s it had been largely broken, though a few individuals hid for decades. In Lithuania the partisan commander Jonas Žemaitis was executed in 1954.

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