Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II

Abstract

At the beginning of the Cold War, tens of thousands of Baltic people headed for the forests. It was the largest and longest such experience of human and forest interaction in the history of the three Baltic countries. The forest was turned into a political concept and had abruptly become a doubly sensitive zone: to the authorities it was a space of revolt subject to their control; to the locals, the forests were transformed into sites of both resistance and shelter when life was endangered. Based on recorded life story interviews, this article examines how women experienced the changes in their native landscapes after World War II in the occupied Baltic states, and what it meant for them to be labelled “forest outlaws”.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Inta Gale Carpenter for translation and valuable suggestions and Simo Laakkonen for his encouragement and advices. I am also thankful to historians Inese Dreimane and Zigmārs TurČinskis for their help.

Notes

¹ Breaching reciprocal peace agreements and international treaties, the Soviet Union occupied the three Baltic states in 1940–41. Reoccupation occurred in late 1944 and early 1945, and lasted until 1991, when the Baltic nations regained their independence.

² Alessandro Portelli, “What makes oral history different?” in The Oral History Reader, ed. R. Perks and A. Thomson (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 64.

³ Michael Frisch, Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 188.

⁴ See Vieda Skultans The Testimony of Lives. Narrative and Memory in post-Soviet Latvia (London, New York: Routledge, 1998), 79–97.

⁵ Interviewed by S. Reinsone in Bauska, 15 September 2011 and 17 December 2011.

⁶ Nowadays the term forest brothers (metsavennad in Estonian, miško broliai in Lithuanian, and mežabrāļi in Latvian) is used in all three Baltic states as a more or less poetic alternative for “national partisans”, which more typically appears in official usage, although the forest brothers themselves preferred the term “partisans” in their internal communication as well as in the organisational documents they produced. See Zigmārs TurČinskis, Ziemeļvidzemes mežabrāļi: Latvijas nacionālo partizānu cīņas Valkas apriņķī un Alūksnes apriņķa rietumu daļā: 1944.–1953. gads (Riga: LVI, 2011), 9.

⁷ Deportation to Siberia was one of the tactics of political repression. People were forcibly transported en masse to remote regions of the USSR where the able-bodied earned a subsistence wage working in collective farms (kolkhozy), gold mines, and lumber camp. See Pavel Polian, Не по своей воле: история и география принудительных миграций в СССР (Москва: О.Г.И., 2001).

⁸ See Elena Zubkova, Прибалтика и Кремль. (Москва: РОССПЕН, 2008), 196–197.

⁹ As mentioned by historian Elena Zubkova, the number of Baltic volunteers willing to join the German Legion was unexpectedly low, e.g. only 500 men volunteered in Estonia. Due to the low number of volunteers, compulsory mobilisation was announced in Latvia and Estonia. See Прибалтика и Кремль, 213.

¹⁰ Inesis Feldmanis, “Latvia under the Occupation of National Socialist Germany 1941–1945”, in The Hidden and Forbidden History of Latvia under Soviet and Nazi Occupations 1940–1991 (Riga: LVI, 2005), 78.

¹¹ Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 95.

¹² Ibid, 98.

¹³ See especially Zubkova, Прибалтика и Кремль, 199–201, but also Heinrihs Strods, “Nacionālie un padomju partizāni Baltijā 1941.–1956. gadā: kopējais un atšķirīgais,” Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti Vol. 17 (2006), 23; Stenley V. Vardys and Judith B. Sedaitis, Lithuania: The Rebel Nation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 82; Zigmārs TurČinskis, “Karš pēc kara: Latvijas nacionālo partizāņu cīņas 20. gadsimta 40. gadu beigās–50. gadu sākumā,” in Karš pēc kara, 1944–1956 (Riga: Latvijas Okupācijas muzeja biedrība, 2007), 91–92.

¹⁴ Dalia Kuodyte and Rokas Tracevskis, The Unknown War (Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2006), 17; Zubkova, Прибалтика и Кремль, 205–206.

¹⁵ Heinrihs Strods, “Resistance in Latvia 1944–1991”, in The Hidden and Forbidden History of Latvia under Soviet and Nazi Occupations 1940–1991 (Riga: LVI, 2005), 290; Zubkova, Прибалтика и Кремль, 198. For other citations see Mart Laar, War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival (Washington: The Compass Press, 1992), 24; Vylius M. Leskys, “‘Forest Brothers’ 1945: The Culmination of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement,” Baltic Security & Defence Review 11 (2009): 58–86; Rodger D. Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 207; Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 115; TurČinskis, “Karš pēc kara”, 112.

¹⁶ Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 115.

¹⁷ Strods, “Nacionālie un padomju partizāni”, 27; see also Geoffrey Swain, “Divided We Fall: Division within the National Partisans of Vidzeme and Latgale”, Journal of Baltic Studies 38, no. 2 (2007).

¹⁸ In the Soviet Union, the abolition of the death penalty existed for three years from May 1947 to May 1950, which apparently allowed the lives of a large number of those Baltic insurgents who were tried within this period to be saved.

¹⁹ TurČinskis, “Karš pēc kara”, 112–113.

²⁰ Women constituted the majority of civilians in post-war Latvia, besides they constituted also the majority of those who were able to work, as mentions Vita ZelČe, “Latvian Women after World War II”, in Women and Men at War. A Gender Perspective on World War II and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Maren Röger and Ruth Leiserowitz (Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag, 2012), 294.

²¹ For an analysis of the anti-Soviet insurgency's activities against local populations see Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 123–138.

²² Statiev mentions that “police files show that most of those amnestied in 1944–1945 were not guerrillas but draft evaders who otherwise might have joined the resistance or peasants who had fled to the forests from fear. The Soviets sought to detach them from the hardcore guerrillas and bring them back”, see The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 202–203. The promise of amnesty, however, in many cases proved to be a trick of the government. Most of those who obtained legal status were later arrested and tried or sent to Siberia “as former bandits”. Heinrihs Strods, Latvijas nacionālo partizānu karš 1944–1956 (Riga: LU, 2012), 128–131.

²³ See Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 345; Strods, Latvijas nacionālo partizānu karš, 6.

²⁴ This delicate usage of “the bandits' room-mates” points to the efforts of the authorities in official documents to put forward a “cultural” face, i.e., to avoid coarse language. Even so, the Latvian word ‘piedzīvotāja’ has a negative connotation and could well be translated as ‘the bandits’ whores’. What is more, the women interviewed reported that in the process of being arrested and questioned, they were addressed as ‘whores’. The representation of Ukrainian partisan women in the Soviet media has been studied by Olena Petrenko, ‘Anatomy of the Unsaid: Along the Taboo Lines of Female Participation in the Ukrainian Nationalistic Underground’, in A Gender Perspective, 241–262.

²⁵ See Women and Men at War: A Gender Perspective on World War II and its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Maren Röger and Ruth Leiserowitz (Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag, 2012), Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, ed. Nancy M. Wingfield; Maria Bucur-Deckard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Elisabeth A. Woods, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

²⁶ See Žaneta Smolskutė, “Moterų dalyvavimo ginkluotame pasipriešinime 1944–1953 m. ypatumai,” Genocidos i Rezistencija 20 (2006): 53–62; Ruth Leiserowitz, “In the Lithuanian Woods. Jewish and Lithuanian Female Partisans,” In Women and Men at War, 199–218; Inese Dreimane “Latvijas sievietes — nacionālās partizānes un nelegālistes 20. gs. 40.–50. gados.” In Meža meitas, ed. S. Reinsone (Riga: Diena, forthcoming).

²⁷ There were some women who were active in the economic and cultural fields but a traditional gender model was customary in interwar Latvia. See ZelČe, “Latvian women”, 289. The situation of women's role in combat was different in the Red Army. See Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

²⁸ Dreimane, “Latvijas sievietes”.

²⁹ In Latvia, girls actively participated in secret groups of high school students that promoted anti-Soviet agitation, opposed the Sovietisation of school programmes, and provided practical and informational support to the partisan organisations. Heinrihs Strods, “Latvijas skolu jaunatnes nacionālā pretošanās kustība (1994. gads–50. gadu vidus),” Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti Vol. 3 (2001).

³⁰ Most of the children had entered the woods together with their parents. Historians are reluctant to specify a precise number but they estimate that as many as 50 children, under the age of 15, could have been living in the Latvian forests. Several were killed during attacks. At least six children were born in the illegal circumstances of the forest. Dreimane, “Latvijas sievietes”.

³¹ It is claimed that 94,779 persons were deported from the Baltic. Women constituted 44%, 29% were children and 27% were men. Polian, Не по своей воле, 139; Strods, Latvijas nacionālo partizānu karš, 130–134.

³² A quote from the wife of the partisan chief Broņislavs Sluckis. See Inese Dreimane, “Ziemeļlatgales iedzīvotāju atmiņas”, Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti Vol. 17 (2006): 207. See also Leiserowitz, “In the Lithuanian Woods”, 211–213.

³³ Petrenko, “Anatomy of the Unsaid”, 254–255.

³⁴ In Latvia alone, 14 illegal newspapers were produced, of which more than half were issued monthly from 1945 until 1947, with a circulation of 10 to 100. TurČinskis, “Karš pēc kara”, 95; Heinrihs Strods, “Non-Violent Resistance in Latvia (1945–1985)”, in Regaining Independence: Non-Violent Resistance in Latvia 1945–1991, ed. V. Blūzma et al. (Riga: Latvian Academy of Sciences, 2009), 69.

³⁵ Valērija Mundure (Marta Skuja, 1915–1946) served as a board member of one the larger partisan organisations, was editor of the newspaper “Tēvijas sargs” (The Homeland Guardian), and a published author. In 1946, Mundure was sentenced to death and executed. Dreimane, “Latvijas sievietes”.

³⁶ Strods, Latvijas nacionālo partizānu karš, 44–45; Dreimane, ‘Latvijas sievietes.’ Smolskutė mentions 250 active female fighters in Lithuania, see “Moterų dalyvavimo,” 53. However, women's participation in partisan combat was comparatively rare also in other national resistance movements. See Paula Schwartz, “Partisans and Gender Politics in Vichy France”, French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1989): 128; Oksana Kis, “Жіночий досвід участі в національно-визвольних змаганнях на західноукраїнських землях у 1940–1950-х рр.,” Схід / Захід. Історико-культурологічний збірник 13–14 (2009): 101–25. Cf., whereas in the Greek civil war after WWII, women's participation was comparatively high; they constituted 20–25% of combatants. See Margaret Poulus, “Gender, Civil War and National Identity: Women Partisans during the Greek Civil War 1946–1949”, Australian Journal of Politics and History 46, no. 3: 418–427.

³⁷ Dreimane, “Latvijas sievietes.”

³⁸ Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 61.

³⁹ David Lowenthal, “Nostalgia Tells It Like It Wasn't”, in The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, ed. Ch. Shaw and M. Chase (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 21.

⁴⁰ Regīna Tīliba (1931), interviewed by S. Reinsone in Padure, 15 June 2012.

⁴¹ Skultans, The Testimony of Lives, 82.

⁴²Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976), 53–55.

⁴³ Marģeris Skujenieks, Latvijas statistikas atlass (Riga: Valsts Statistiskā pārvalde, 1938), 4.

⁴⁴ Katrina Schwartz, “‘The Occupation of Beauty’” Imagining Nature and Nation in Latvia’, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 21, no. 2 (2007): 261; Nature and National Identity after Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 49–53; see also Edmunds V. Bunkše, “God, Thine Earth Is Burning: Nature Attitudes and the Latvian Drive for Independence”, GeoJournal 26, no. 2 (1992): 203–209.

⁴⁵ Skujenieks, Latvijas statistikas atlass, 19, 36. After World War II, the area covered by forests gradually increased. In the 1970s, it constituted 40% of the land, but in 2010, 52%. Pauls Beķeris, ed., Meža nozare Latvijas 20 neatkarības gados (Riga: Meža attīstības fonds, 2012), 12. Latvia is located in a mixed forest zone that consists of northern coniferous and southern deciduous trees, primarily pine, spruce, birch, and aspen. Mires comprise 4–5% of the forested land, though one third of Latvia's forests grow on wetlands (Latvijas meža resursu statistiskās inventarizācijas I cikla rezultāti, http://www.silava.lv/23/section.aspx/View/119 (LVMI Silava, 2010). Regionally forest coverage and size differs: the large forest tracts are to be found in the Kurzeme region (in the Western part of Latvia), while smaller forests are characteristic of the landscape of the Latgale region (Eastern Latvia).

⁴⁶ Paramilitary groups were raised from local civilians and intended as a supplement to regular security agencies. The relevant military actions against insurgents were taken mainly by internal ministry forces, while paramilitaries were put on guard. For more about the Baltic paramilitary groups see Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 209–229.

⁴⁷ Hilda Miezīte (b.1928), interviewed by S. Reinsone in Ērberģe, 30 January 2013.

⁴⁸ Lidija Kalcenava (1919–2012), interviewed by S. Reinsone in Naukšēni, 10 September 2011.

⁴⁹ Pskov region NKVD deputy head, three NKVD officers from Pskov and NKVD head of Viļaka town. “Supes Mikalīnas apsūdzības lieta”, State Archives of Latvia 1986/1/25488, 214, 338.

⁵⁰ 50.

⁵¹ Mihalīna's family was a desirable target for the NKVD as her brother Pēteris Supe (1920–1946), former senior agronomist of the Abrene district, actively participated in the anti-Soviet revolt. He was the founder and leader of National Partisan Association of Latvia, the first and one of the largest armed national resistance organisations after WWII in Latvia. TurČinskis, “Karš pēc kara”, 95–97.

⁵² Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson, “Migration, Exile and Landscapes of the Imagination”, in Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, ed. B. Bender and M. Winer (Oxford, UK; New York: Berg, 2001), 319.

⁵³ Strods, “Nacionālie un padomju partizāni”, 28.

⁵⁴ The statistics come from the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre, http://www.meteo.lv (accessed July 20, 2013).

⁵⁵ The term “chekists” was commonly used to refer to mainly regular security services' forces, as local paramilitaries had a different designation (“istribiteli”, “strebuki” and similar), however, the term can be used to refer to all actors that took active part in counterinsurgency.

⁵⁶ Brunhilda Fogele (b.1926), interviewed by S. Reinsone in Degole, 29 December 2012.

⁵⁷ Leontīne Augustāne (b.1922), interviewed by S. Reinsone in Jaunjelgava (Latvia), 06 July 2012.

⁵⁸ For the famine aspect of the forest see especially Skultans, The Testimony of Lives, 93–97.

⁵⁹ Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 6.

⁶⁰ In 1954, only a few partisans continued to hide in the forests and communication among them was non-existent.

⁶¹ Dawson and Johnson. Migration, Exile and Landscapes, 319.

⁶² The MGB report of the attack: State Archives of Latvia 1986/2/10433, 251–259.

⁶³ Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, 251.

⁶⁴ See Lidia Doronina, Chronicle of the Women's Camp in Mordovia, USSR (Amsterdam: Publishers Second World Press, 1985).

⁶⁵ For details of the Gulag camps, see Viktor Zemskov, “ ГУЛАГ (историко-социологический аспект),” in Социологические исследования, no. 6 (1991): 10–27, no. 7 (1991): 3–16.

⁶⁶ Her refusal to go to the forest would be unusual, since berry picking and mushroom hunting in Soviet Latvia was not only a popular leisure activity, but also a necessity in times of scarcity.

⁶⁷ Relph, Place and Placelessness, 51.

⁶⁸ Edmunds V. Bunkše, “God, Thine Earth Is Burning: Nature Attitudes and the Latvian Drive for Independence”, GeoJournal 26, no. 2 (1992): 203.

⁶⁹ Sanita Bērziņa-Reinsone, “Apmaldīšanās stāsti: priekšstati interpretācija, stāstījumu poētika” (PhD diss., University of Latvia, 2012).

⁷⁰ A popular Latvian song Forests, forests, dark forests is devoted to a legendary Latvian criminal Kaupēns who carried out robberies and murders in 1920s.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by the European Social Fund within the project ‘Cultures within a culture: Politics and poetics of border narratives’ [grant number 1DP/1.1.1.2.0/13/APIA/VIAA/042].

Notes on contributors

Sanita Reinsone

Sanita Reinsone, PhD, is a researcher at Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia). Her research interests primarily concern narratives of humans' relationship with nature. Currently she is carrying out research on life stories and forest experiences during the Cold War. Email: [email protected].