Was Smuglianka a Lunatic or a Siguranţa's Agent-Provocateur? Peculiarities of the Soviet Partisan Struggle in the Western Borderlands

Abstract

Soviet partisans faced formidable challenges in regions annexed after the Nazi–Soviet Pact. In the pre-1939 territories, most partisans were locals; they operated within a familiar, often friendly social environment; their political goals were secondary to their military ones; and they targeted the Axis forces and their collaborators. In the western provinces, however, most partisans were outsiders; their political objectives dominated others; and they fought local nationalists as much as they did the Axis. Borderland residents were either indifferent or hostile to communist ideology, yet their attitude towards the partisans was complex. It depended on their economic status, regional variations of the Soviet policy in 1939–41, Axis occupation practices, the situation on the fronts, the strength of nationalist sentiments, local political culture and ethnic strains. The intricate interaction of these factors determined whether partisans succeeded or failed.

Key Words:

• Soviet Partisans
• Resistance
• Ukraine
• Belarus
• Estonia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Moldova
• Karelia
• OUN
• UPA

Notes

¹In the summer of 1941, 147 partisan units and sabotage groups with a total strength of 1,479 men were organised in Ukraine and sent to Moldova. S. Ia. Afteniuk et al. (eds.), Moldavskaia SSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 2 (Kishinev: Shtiintsa 1975), 250.

²V.A. Zolotarev (ed.), Partizanskoe dvizhenie (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole 2001), 178.

³Anatolii Chaikovskii, ‘Pomoshch sovetskogo tyla v organizatsii partizanskoi bor'by protiv fashistskikh zakhvatchikov’ (PhD dissertation: Moscow 1991), 454.

⁴These two brigades contained only 0.2 per cent of Moldovans, who were five times fewer in number than Uzbeks, and ten times fewer than Georgians. At 92 per cent, Slavs made up the overwhelming majority of the fighters. Chaikovskii, ‘Pomoshch’ sovetskogo tyla', 454.

⁵ Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii[Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, hereafter cited as RGASPI], f.625, op.1, d.12, ll.279–81v; RGASPI, f.625, op.1, d.44, l.633.

⁶V.A. Zolotarev (ed.), Russkii arkhiv. Velikaia Otechestvennaia, vol. 9 (Moscow: Terra 1999), 544; I. F. Kuras and A.V. Kentii, Shtab nepokorennykh (Kyiv: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury 1988), 131.

⁷Dmitrii Elin, Partizany Moldavii (Kishinev: Kartia Moldaveniaske 1974), 220–3.

⁸The partisans claimed to have killed 401,292 enemy soldiers during 1941 and 1942 alone, when the anti-Nazi resistance was at its nadir. See Zolotarev, Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 161. The Germans estimated their own losses to partisans for the entire war at a maximum of 20,000, excluding collaborators. See Matthew Cooper, The Phantom War (London: Macdonald & Jane's 1979), ix.

⁹S.A. Vaupshasov, Na trevozhnykh perekrestkakh (Moscow: Politizdat 1988); A.F. Fedorov, Podpol'nyi obkom deistvuet (Kyiv: Politizdat Ukrainy 1986); Petr Vershigora, Reid na San i Vislu (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel'stvo 1960); D.N. Medvedev, Sil'nye dukhom: eto bylo pod Rovno (Kyiv: Radians'kyi pysmennyk 1963); V.I. Klokov, Kovel'skii uzel (Kyiv: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury 1981); K.A. Morozov (ed.), Za rodnuiu Kareliiu (Petrozavodsk: Kareliia 1990).

¹⁰Figured copied from Uwe Gartensclager, ‘Living and Surviving in Occupied Minsk', in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch (eds.), The People's War: Popular Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union. Copyright 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the author and the University of Illinois Press.

¹¹For example, having analysed reports of regional partisan headquarters in 1948, Ukrainian historians calculated that 158,010 partisans and members of urban underground cells fought in occupied Ukraine in 1941–44, a number that had been most likely exaggerated by the authors of reports they had read. Yet in the late 1970s, historians arbitrarily ‘corrected’ this number, raising it to 501,750, and some argued, without presenting evidence, that it be further increased to ‘more than 1 million’. O.A. Zarubinsky, ‘The “Red” Partisan Movement in Ukraine during World War II: a Contemporary Assessment’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 9/2 (June 1996), 399–416.

¹²Taras Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy (Winnipeg: Volyn 1981); Mykola Lebed’, UPA: Ukrains'ka povastans'ka armiia (New York: Suchasnist’1987); Yuriy Tys-Krokhmaliuk, UPA Warfare in Ukraine (New York: Society of Veterans of Ukrainian Insurgent Army 1972).

¹³Zolotarev, Partizanskoe dvizhenie.

¹⁴Arvydas Anušauskas (ed.), The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States (Vilnius: Du Ka 1999); Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karal'na systema v Ukraini 1917–1953 (Kyiv: Lybid’1994); M.V. Koval’, Ukraïna u druhii svitovii viini (Kyiv: Institute of Ukrainian History 1995); Mart Laar, War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival (Washington DC: The Compass Press 1992); Anatolii Rusnachenko, Narod zburenyi (Kyiv: Pul'sary 2002).

¹⁵Reference to ‘guerrilla warfare' in this paragraph is taken as meaning general irregular warfare in the occupied Soviet Union. This is distinct from the separate, specific reference on p. 746 (this paper) to anti-Soviet irregulars as ‘guerrillas'.

¹⁶Cooper, Phantom War; Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and the Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford: Berg 1989); Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2004); Philip W. Blood, Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe (Dulles, VA: Potomac 2006); Erich Hesse, Der Sowietrusische Partisanenkrieg 1941–44 (Göttingen: Muster-Schmidt Verlag 1993).

¹⁷John Armstrong (ed.), Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1964); Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin's Guerrillas (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2006); Alexander Hill, The War behind the Eastern Front (London: Frank Cass 2005); Truman Anderson, ‘Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan Movement in Ukraine’, Journal of Modern History 71/3 (1999), 585–623; Bernd Bonwetsch, ‘Sowjetische Partisanen, 1941–1944: Legende und Wirklichkeit des “allgemeinen Volkskrieges”’, in Gerhard Schulz (ed.), Partisanen und Volkskrieg – zur Revolutionierung des Krieges im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Rupprecht 1985).

¹⁸David R. Marples, Stalinism in Ukraine in the 1940s (Edmonton: Univ. of Alberta Press 1992), 27; Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 2005), 91; Paul R. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press 1996), 588, 594.

¹⁹Yury Boshyk (ed.), Ukraine during World War II (Edmonton: Univ. of Alberta 1986), 186.

²⁰Leonas Sabaliunas, Lithuania in Crisis (Bloomington: Indiana UP 1972), 78, 80.

²¹Magocsi, History of Ukraine, 619; Orest Subtelny, ‘The Soviet Occupation of Western Ukraine, 1939–41’ in Boshyk, Ukraine during World War II, 8, 9.

²²M.A. Rutkovskii, ‘Sovetskiie agrarnye reformy 1940–41 godov v baltiiskikh respublikakh’, Rossiiskii istoricheskii zhurnal 1 (1997), 23–32.

²³G.N. Kupriianov, Za liniei Karel'skogo fronta (Petrozavodsk: Kareliia 1975), 187.

²⁴RGASPI, f.17, op.122, d.67, l.6; Kupriianov, Za liniei Karel'skogo fronta, 188.

²⁵RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.725, l.3; RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.726, ll.3, 4.

²⁶Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 579–86; Morozov, Za rodnuiu Kareliiu, 249; Kupriianov, Za liniei Karel'skogo fronta, 70.

²⁷Morozov, Za rodnuiu Kareliiu, 246. In 1939, Karels, Vepses and Finns made correspondingly 23.2 per cent, 2.0 per cent and 1.8 per cent of the population of the Karelian Autonomous Republic. I.A. Poliakov et al. (eds.), Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia1939goda (Moscow: Nauka 1992), 66.

²⁸RGASPI, f.17, op.88, d.481, l. 37; Morozov, Za rodnuiu Kareliiu, 246, 271; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 167, 456; Kupriianov, Za liniei Karel'skogo fronta, 166.

²⁹Kupriianov, Za liniei Karel'skogo fronta, 122.

³⁰Elin, Partizany Moldavii, 34.

³¹Afteniuk, Moldavskaia SSR, vol. 2, 146, 147.

³²Elin, Partizany Moldavii, 17.

³³Alexander Werth, Russia at War (New York: E.P. Dutton 1964), 817, 818.

³⁴Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia (London: Macmillan 1981), 184, 201, 277.

³⁵Ibid., 219, 371, 372.

³⁶Zolotarev, Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 26–8.

³⁷Fedorov, Podpol'nyi obkom deistvuet, 17.

³⁸RGASPI, f.17, op.88, d.481, ll.184–6, 190; G.A. Shubin, Iz istorii vsenarodnoi bor'by protiv nemetsko-fashistskikh okkupantov v zapadnykh oblastiakh Belorussii (Volgograd: Nizhne-Volzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo 1972), 57.

³⁹V.A. Smolii et al. (eds.), Ukraina partyzans'ka (Kyiv: Parlaments'ke vidavnitstvo 2001), 273.

⁴⁰Shubin, Iz istorii vsenarodnoi bor'by, 63–5.

⁴¹Reference to ‘guerrilla warfare' in this paragraph is taken as meaning general irregular warfare in the occupied Soviet Union. This is distinct from the separate, specific reference on p. 746 (this paper) to anti-soviet irregulars as ‘guerrillas'.

⁴²RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.584, l.40. When the first five brigades crossed the Dnepr, they had between them 5,248 partisans. They suffered heavy casualties, yet by July 1943, these brigades had grown into 11 partisan formations with a total of 16,440 partisans. Smolii, Ukraina partyzans'ka, 274.

⁴³A.I. Barsukov et al. (eds.), Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina, 1941–1945, vol. 4 (Moscow: Nauka 1999), 267.

⁴⁴Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 167, 168.

⁴⁵RGASPI, f.17, op.122, d.66, l.17.

⁴⁶V.F. Shauro et al. (eds.), Vsenarodnoe partisanskoe dvizhenie v Belorussii v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, book 1, vol. 2 (Minsk: Belarus 1967), 468; Shubin, Iz istorii vsenarodnoi bor'by, 266.

⁴⁷Shubin, Iz istorii vsenarodnoi bor'by, 267, 274, 281.

⁴⁸Ibid., 307. Russians constituted 6.7 per cent of the Belorussian population in 1939. Poliakov, Vsesoiuznaia perepis’, 70. The incorporation of Western Belorussia slightly reduced the proportion of Belorussians in the republic's population because many Poles and Jews lived there.

⁴⁹Marples, Stalinism in Ukraine, 52.

⁵⁰Poliakov, Vsesoiuznaia perepis', 68.

⁵¹Zolotarev, Partizanskoe dvizhenie, 390, 391.

⁵²In total, 46 such teams, composed of 293 men, were dropped into Lithuania in 1941–43, most of whom vanished without trace, as did all 48 partisan organisers sent in 1942 to Estonia, and 11 Latvian teams. RGASPI, f.17, op.122, d.36, ll. 18–20; RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.726, l.109; RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.726, l.141.

⁵³RGASPI, f.69 op.1 d.754, l.140; RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.725, l.14; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 194. In fact, one unit comprising 18 men armed with only five sub-machine guns and one machine gun broke through to Latvia from Belorussia in August 1942 and stayed there. Nobody joined it until March 1943. Raškevics, Zapiski partizana, 105.

⁵⁴Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States (London: Hurst 1993), 70.

⁵⁵Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 480, 485, 501; V.P. Iampol'skii, ‘Vmesto bavarskogo piva pulia i golod’, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal 1/15 (1997), 13–18.

⁵⁶P.N. Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol. 4 (Moscow: Institut Marksizma-Leninizma, 1961–65), 471.

⁵⁷Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 501.

⁵⁸RGASPI, f.17, op.88, d.135, l.119.

⁵⁹Raškevics et al. (eds.), Na pravyi boi, vol. 2, 354.

⁶⁰Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 415, 480, 485.

⁶¹RGASPI, f.625, op.1, d.44, l.633.

⁶²John A. Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism (Englewood, CO: Ukrainian Academic Press 1963), 71.

⁶³Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, 13, 212. In 1940 OUN split into two factions: the larger and more radical OUN-B headed by Stepan Bandera and the opportunistic OUN-M led by Andrii Mel'nyk.

⁶⁴In order to avoid confusion, I refer to Borovets's militia as Sich.

⁶⁵ Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads'kykh ob'iednan’ Ukraïny[Central State Archive of Public Organisations of Ukraine, hereafter cited as TsDAHOU], f.57, op.4, d.338, l.479.

⁶⁶TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.338, l.454; TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.338, l.474; TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.347, l.22.

⁶⁷P. Sokhan’et al. (eds.), Litopys UPA, Nova Seriia, vol. 2 (Kyiv/Toronto: Natsional'na Akademiia Nauk Ukrainy 1995–2003), 303; TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.338, l.474.

⁶⁸M.I. Naumov, Zapadnyi reid (Kyiv: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury 1985), 272.

⁶⁹Smolii, Ukraina partyzans'ka, 290.

⁷⁰Kuras and Kentii, Shtab nepokorennykh, 104; Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy, 273.

⁷¹Boshyk, Ukraine during World War II, 186, 190, 191.

⁷²RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.753, l.206.

⁷³Volodymyr Serhiichuk (ed.), OUN-UPA v roky viiny (Kyiv: Dnipro 1996), 79, 80.

⁷⁴Naumov, Zapadnyi reid, 124; Vasyl’ Behma and Luka Kizia, Shliakhy neskorenykh (Kyiv: Dnipro 1965), 356; Kuras and Kentii, Shtab nepokorennykh, 120.

⁷⁵RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.747, l.165; Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy, 218–21; Peter Potichnyj Collection on Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Ukraine[hereafter cited as PC], Univ. of Toronto, Reel 171, pp.95, 96; Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA, 222; Sokhan’, Litopys UPA, Nova Seriia, vol. 4, 102–6, 131.

⁷⁶Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy, 218–21; Medvedev, Sil'nye dukhom, 84–6; Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA, 103–8, 110, 229; PC, reel 171, p. 90.

⁷⁷Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy, 243.

⁷⁸TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.342, l.100.

⁷⁹TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.339, l. 221–3; TsDAHOU, f. 57, op.4, d.339, l. 219; GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.135, l. 185.

⁸⁰Kuras and Kentii, Shtab nepokorennykh, 121.

⁸¹TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.377, l.27; GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.133, l.6; GARF, f.9478, op.1, d. 133, l.102.

⁸²GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.279, ll.4–6; GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.133, ll.85–9.

⁸³Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 495; Volodymyr Serhiichuk (ed.), Desiat’ buremnykh lit (Kyiv: Dnipro 1998), 54–6, 105, 144.

⁸⁴GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.354, l.22; A.F. Makarevich, ‘Novyi vzgliad na dokumenty Natsional'nogo arkhiva Respubliki Belarus’ o bor'be s fashistskoi agressiei’, Otechestvennye arkhivy 3/33 (1994), 32–39.

⁸⁵Wladyslaw Anders, a Polish general, commanded an army raised from Polish POWs in the Soviet Union in late 1941. The army was equipped by the Soviets but refused to fight on the Eastern Front and evacuated to Iran in Sept. 1942. The Katyn scandal occurred in April 1943 after Germans discovered the bodies of 21,857 Polish citizens executed by the Soviets in spring 1940 in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk and other locations. The Polish Committee of National Liberation founded in July 1944 was a provisional pro-Soviet alternative to the Polish government-in-exile residing in London.

⁸⁶RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.747, ll.58–60.

⁸⁷Jan Ciechanowski, The Warsaw Rising of 1944 (Cambridge: CUP 1974), 168.

⁸⁸Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA, 68; TsDAHOU, f.1, op.23, d.585, l.35; Shubin, Iz istorii vsenarodnoi bor'by, 255.

⁸⁹V.S. Parsadanova, ‘Dvizhenie soprotivleniia nakanune osvobozhdeniia Pol'shi’ in V.V. Mar'ina (ed.), Dvizhenie soprotivleniia v stranakh Tsentral'noi i Iugo-Vostochnoi Evropy (Moscow: RADIKS 1995), 375, 383, 398; Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv, vol. 9, 600; Petr Braiko and Oksana Kalinenko, Vnimanie, Kovpak! (Moscow: DOSAAF 1971), 234, 235, 243, 245.

⁹⁰Timothy Snyder, ‘The Causes of Ukrainian–Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943’, Past and Present 179 (May 2003), 202.

⁹¹TsDAHOU, f.57, op.4, d.339, l. 422; Rusnachenko, Narod zbyrenyi, 156–60.

⁹²Snyder, ‘The Causes of Ukrainian–Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943’, 202; Rusnachenko, Narod zbyrenyi, 176.

⁹³Sokhan’et al., Litopys UPA, Nova Seriia, vol. 2, 340.

⁹⁴Ibid., 308–10.

⁹⁵Bul'ba-Borovets, Armiia bez derzhavy, 246, 249.

⁹⁶Serhiichuk, OUN-UPA, 75; Klokov, Kovel'skii uzel, 192.

⁹⁷ Pravda, 15 Dec. 1941.

⁹⁸RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.445, ll.39–44; RGASPI, f.69, op.1, d.445, 36–8; Alfreds Raškevics, Zapiski partizana (Riga: Latviiskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo 1963), 74–86; A. Raškevics et al. (eds.), Na pravyi boi, na smertnyi boi, vol. 1 (Riga: Liesma 1968), 283, 287, 288.

⁹⁹Raškevics et al., Na pravyi boi, vol. 1, 371.

¹⁰⁰GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.452, l.80; GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.452, l.31.

¹⁰¹GARF, f.9478, op.1, d.452, l.87.

¹⁰²Visvaldis Mangulis, Latvia in the Wars of the 20th Century (Princeton Junction: Cognition Books 1983), xiii, 116; G.G. Alov, ‘Palachi’Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal 6/32 (1990), 23–33.

¹⁰³RGASPI, f.17, op.88, d.135, l.115.

¹⁰⁴S. B. Stepashin (ed.), Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, book 2, vol. 2 (Moscow: Kniga i biznes 1995), 528, 561; George Reklaitis, ‘A Common Hatred: Lithuanian Nationalism during the Triple Occupation, 1939–1953’ (PhD, Boston: Northeastern Univ. 2003), 103.

¹⁰⁵RGASPI, f.17, op.88, d.135, l.118; Shauro, Vsenarodnoe partisanskoe dvizhenie, book 1, vol. 2, 172; Raškevics et al., Na pravyi boi, vol. 2, 379.

¹⁰⁶Memoirs of Latvian partisans clearly show this, Raškevics, Zapiski partizana; Raškevics et al., Na pravyi boi.