Spooked by Russia , Tiny Estonia
Excerpt: “We just have to stay alive,” Ms. Barnabas said of
the main idea behind the Jarva District Patrol Competition, a 24-hour test of
the skills useful for partisans, or insurgents, to fight an occupying army, and
an improbably popular form of what is called “military sport” in Estonia. The competitions,
held nearly every weekend, are called war games, but are not intended as fun.
The Estonian Defense League, which organizes the events, requires its 25,400
volunteers to turn out occasionally for weekend training sessions that have
taken on a serious hue since Russia’s incursions
in Ukraine two years ago raised fears of a similar thrust by Moscow
into the Baltic States.
Interesting: Forest Brothers
Excerpt: The Forest Brothers (also Brothers of the
Forest; Forest Brethren; Forest Brotherhood; Estonian: metsavennad, Latvian: meža
brāļi, Lithuanian: miško broliai) were Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian partisans who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet rule
during the Soviet invasion and occupation of
the three Baltic states during, and after, World
War II. Similar anti-Soviet Eastern European
resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule
in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and
western Ukraine.
The Red
Army occupied the independent Baltic
states in 1940–1941 and, after a period of German occupation, again in 1944–1945.
As Stalinist repression intensified over the following
years, 50,000 residents of these countries used the heavily forested
countryside as a natural refuge and base for armed anti-Soviet resistance.
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