The Relationship between Soviet Partisans and the Civilian Population in Belorussia under German Occupation, 1941–4

Abstract

The Soviet partisan movement was easily the largest resistance movement in World War II, with possibly half a million active participants.¹ Yet it remained a marginal phenomenon compared to the 70 million people living in German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union.² Nevertheless, shortly after the war, Soviet officials began speaking of the partisan war as a nationwide mass movement (vsenardonoe partizanskoe dvizhenie). For example, the Deputy Chief of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, Lavrentii Tsanava, used this term as the title of his book on the Soviet underground movement, which was the first overall account on this topic published in the Soviet Union.³ This remained the official interpretation, used in Soviet historiography, of historians such as Pantaleimon Ponomarenko or the collective of historians that issued the largest account on the partisan movement in Belorussia.⁴ To bring the above figures in line with this interpretation, Soviet propaganda claimed that the partisan movement and the local population had possessed an inseparable unity: it was widely accepted in Soviet historiography that partisans had acted in support of the civilian population and vice versa.⁵ Conversely, German sources, such as the reports from the occupied eastern territories (Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten) present a completely different picture, accusing partisans of terrorising the local inhabitants.⁶ Although this might easily be viewed as an example of Nazi ideology demonising its opponents, this image is partly supported by the large quantity of partisan files deposited in post-Soviet archives, which were opened following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.