Elimination of the National Separatist Movement "Forest Brothers" in Post-war Estonia

The relevance of the work is to determine, on the basis of the source base, the factual side of the activities of the "Forest Brothers" in post-war Estonia. The purpose of the article is to determine the general picture of state measures that made it possible to liquidate the nationalist underground in the post-war Estonian Soviet Republic in 1944-1949. The objectives of the article are to study the activities of the Soviet NKVD bodies in suppressing nationalism in the republic, to consider the organizational work of the party leadership of the republic in this matter. In the course of the study, general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction and the historical and political approach were used. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is based on the analysis of surviving materials and resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Estonia, the NKVD-MVD and the MGB of the republic. The article examines the historiography of the issue of the activities of the "Forest Brothers" in the postwar Estonian Republic. It was determined that the main types of activity of the nationalists were attacks on small military units, on activists and supporters of the Soviet power, criminal raids on shops and savings banks, on rural residents with the purpose of robbing them. Based on the materials of the meetings of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the NKVD of Estonia, the role of the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Estonia in the fight against nationalism was established. The features of the operational activities of the NKVD bodies of the republic were revealed. The sociopolitical composition of the "Forest Brothers" was revealed taking into account their activities during the Patriotic War.