change of Polish and Ukrainian populations with Poland, which
ended the ability of Ukrainian partisans to escape inside Poland.
The clergy of the Greek-rite Catholic (Uniate) Church in the west-
ern Ukraine were arrested or forced to become Russian Orthodox.
In Lithuania, hundreds of Roman Catholic clergy were arrested, and
many were deported with their flocks to Siberia. There were posi-
tive steps as well: money went into the rebuilding of schools, and
some children were selected for secondary and higher education in
Kiev and Moscow.
Resistance to Soviet authority in these regions lasted until the early
1950s. Efforts by Western intelligence agencies to maintain contact
with anti-Soviet partisans failed. Deportationof villagers identified
as partisan supporters intensified: more than 8 percent of the popula-
tion of the western Ukraine was deported in 1946–1950. The hunt for
partisan leaders intensified. On 5 March 1950, the Soviets identified
the hiding place of the commander of the Ukraine Insurgent Army
(UKS) and killed him. Resistance in the western Ukraine and Lithua-
nia gradually ended in 1952–1955. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of
the deportees returned to their native villages, but thousands died in
exilein Siberia and Central Asia.PARTISAN WARFARE, SOVIET. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union
made preparations to conduct partisan warfare, but Joseph Stalin,
who had promised the Soviet people that war would be fought on the
enemy’s territory, cancelled plans in 1937–1938 and had a number of
experts shot for “defeatism.” Nevertheless, on 26 June 1941, four
days after the Nazi invasion, Lavrenty Beriagave orders for the
preparation of a nationwide partisan movement and assigned a num-
ber of senior security officers to build a partisan organization. The
NKVD’s Fourth Directorate had responsibility for partisan opera-
tions; its chief was Pavel Sudoplatov.
For Stalin and Beria, the partisan movement had several aims:
maintaining Soviet power behind German lines; the punishment of
collaborators; gathering intelligence about the enemy; and sabotag-
ing the enemy’s lines of communications. In 1941 and 1942, progress
of the movement was spasmodic, but German atrocities toward So-
viet prisoners and civilians drove thousands of Russian, Byeloruss-
ian, and Ukrainian peasants into the partisan movement. Many youngPARTISAN WARFARE, SOVIET • 18706-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 187