Anti-fascist underground in Riga

The first anti-fascist underground groups in Riga were created in early July 1941 by Janis Anton (1905-1941), who organized the Komsomol resistance cell to fascist aggressors. Later, at the turn of 1941 and 1942, the Central Committee of the CP (b) of Latvia organized the transfer across the border of several active participants in the anti-fascist underground, including Arvid Rendnieks (1919-1943), who was one of the defenders of Riga during the battles for this city at the end of June 1941 . Rendnieks for some time led the Riga Komsomol company, at the very beginning of hostilities entered the First Latvian Rifle Company , and later participated in the defense of Tallinn . He was sent to Latvia to participate in the organization of the anti-fascist underground movement in late August 1941. Later, after being wounded and arrested by the Shutzmanns, he managed to achieve release on May 1, 1942, after which Rendnieks continued his active underground activities, taking the post of secretary of the Riga City illegal Komsomol committee. On November 21, 1942, when crossing the front line, Rendnieks was captured for the second time by the Nazis and later shot in the Bikernieki Forest .

In September 1941, the underground organization "Young Guard" was created, led by Komsomol members J. Krop and K. Meishan, it brought together about 100 people. The group members collected weapons and ammunition, organized the escape of the arrested and Soviet prisoners of war, engaged in sabotage, issued newspapers and leaflets. In 1942, the organization established contacts with other groups of Soviet underground activists, in 1943 it became part of the joint underground center ^[1] .

In May 1942, an underground group began to operate in Riga, which included August Leinesar, August Yumikis and G. Goldberg. The group operated for a year and a half before it was discovered and destroyed by the enemy ^[2] .

Other activists of the underground anti-fascist movement in the occupied territory include Boris Akimovich Vashchonok (1918 -?), Ernest Saulitis (1910-1943), as well as the creator of the Communist International of Youth in 1942, Vitold Jountiran , the head of the fighting detachment of this organization, who was killed in battle with police formations near Yumgrava .

Many anti-fascist underground groups distributed leaflets of anti-fascist content that voiced calls for sabotage, distributed illegal literature (like the Comintern of Yauntiran), provided assistance to Soviet prisoners of war, and, whenever possible, organized escape from prisoners and activists of the anti-fascist movement. Also, anti-fascist organizations participated in the provision of weapons to parts of the Red Army .

The second half of the summer was difficult for the representatives of the anti-fascist underground. In total, over 100 participants were arrested in July-August 1941, including the head of the first underground armed group, Janis Anton. The period of October-November 1941 and April-May 1942 entailed the arrest of another 400 participants in the anti-fascist underground. However, the situation gradually leveled off in 1942 when the Riga underground center began to function. The center arose in July-August 1942, when the Saulitis intelligence group merged with several anti-fascist organizations and formed the Riga illegal party organization (Secretary Arvid Rendnieks) on the basis of the Riga City illegal Komsomol Committee.

The Riga Underground Center led the Latvian anti-fascist organization, which, in turn, coordinated the activities of underground activists in the territories of the Salaspils Stalag , the Riga Ghetto , the Riga POW camp , as well as anti-fascist groups in Ligatne , Cesvain , Valka , Kuprava , Ogre , in the vicinity of the railway station etc. Of the acts of sabotage carried out by the Riga Underground Center, the following should be mentioned:

• On July 7, 1942, a German military depot in Tsekul was blown up, containing 9 thousand tons of ammunition ^[3] ;
• On September 16, 1942, fighters of the Riga Underground Center detonated a trainload of ammunition on the railway station. Shkirotava station ^[4] ;
• On September 5, 1942, a military warehouse was set on fire in Riga on Citadeles Street (north of the Old Town , the territory of the pre-revolutionary customs warehouse);
• On October 3, 1942, fighters of the Riga Underground Center burned down the Todt organization’s military warehouse in иiekurkalns ^[4] ;
• the last days of October 1942 - the destruction of aircraft depots in Suji (the vicinity of Riga, the northern shore of Kish Lake );
• November 5, 1942 - the bombing of a makeshift bomb in the editorial office of the Tevia newspaper, published by the occupation authorities ^[4] .

Participants in the underground center of Riga also took part in many other acts of subversive activity, and also tried to establish contact with the French poppies . The Russian Orthodox Church suffered heavy damage on November 21, 1942, when Rendnieks, Saulitis, and other participants were arrested when crossing the front line near Staraya Russa , who were taken to Matisi prison and then shot in Bikernieki Forest.

The first city illegal committee was created by Rendnieks and Victoria Misa (1921-1943) as a result of the unification of several underground groups of the Riga Komsomol in the summer of 1942. The first committee, which distributed leaflets and carried out sabotage, lasted until November-December 1942, when it was defeated by the Nazis, and on May 6, 1943, more than 100 of its participants were executed.

The second committee was created in the fall of 1943 by Imant Sudmalis . Its secretaries were Riga underground members James Bankovich and Mulds Skreya . Bankovich participated in the creation of such important institutions as an illegal printing house and a workshop for the production of explosives. They organized the disruption of the pro-fascist rally on Dome Square on November 13, 1943.

In February 1944, the Nazis defeated the second illegal committee; on February 18, James Bankovich, Mulds Skreya and Imant Sudmalis were arrested, who were later executed.

After the victories of the Red Army in the battles near Stalingrad and on the Kursk Bulge , in 1943 the second stage of the activity of Riga underground anti-fascist organizations began. The front-line intelligence officers August Leinesar and August Yumikis organized a new resistance organization in the autumn of 1943, the Youth Comintern was created, the People’s Avengers organization appeared under the leadership of the actor of the Leningrad Youth Theater I.K. Mashirov (1908-1944) who had fled from captivity in the first half of 1943 and many other resistance organizations (Young Communards, Olga Grinenberg’s women's underground organization).

In the early autumn of 1941, a member of the Leningrad militia, actor of the Leningrad Youth Theater, Ivan Mashirov, made his way to Riga. This group of militias was cut off by the Germans from Leningrad in the Siverskaya district and, secretly moving west, reached Riga. Being an architect by education, Mashirov was able to go to work in an architectural bureau. Surrounding himself with like-minded people, he created an underground group, People’s Avengers. The main activity of his group was the formation of resistance fighting units among the workers of urban enterprises, which in one form or another served the military machine of the occupation regime. Also, the composition of the working battle groups included Soviet prisoners of war sent to the enterprises, to whom weapons were delivered on time.

By the middle of summer 1943, the Popular Avengers organization officially included more than 170 partially armed participants who opposed the occupation regime. Of particular importance was the production of forged documents delivered to the assembly line by specialists in the relevant field for new members of the anti-fascist organization who secretly arrived on the territory of the Ostland Reich Commissariat. In addition, the People’s Avengers distributed campaign leaflets calling for sabotage and resistance.

At the beginning of July 1943, Ivan Mashirov managed to secure a secret border crossing by a group of Soviet pilots who escaped from captivity, in which he was given significant assistance by the reconnaissance and sabotage units of the Belarusian partisans. Shortly after this operation, on July 14, 1943, the People’s Avengers were exposed and neutralized by police forces due to a lack of conspiracy. Ivan Mashirov and many members of the group were executed in Riga Central Prison in late 1943 or early 1944.

At a new stage in the functioning of the anti-fascist underground in the direction of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, which, by the middle of summer 1944, had assumed responsibility for coordinating the activities of the local anti-fascist underground center, a veteran of the partisan movement Imant Sudmalis arrived in Riga. In the spring and summer of 1944, acts of widespread sabotage at industrial enterprises subordinated to the needs of the occupation administration sharply increased, the number of local clashes increased, and sabotage planned by the Riga underground groups began to take place more intensively. The most active organizations include anti-fascist resistance organizations such as Death to Death, Qinya (Fighting), Vetrasputn (Burevestnik), Young Communards, as well as an underground fighting group under the command of Hado Lapsa (? - 1944) and Eduard Indulence (? - 1944).

Also in July 1944, a partisan detachment of the Riga region was created in the forest near Baldon, under the command of Professor Paul Matisovich Galenieks (1891-1962) and worker Oleg Voldemarovich Tikhonovsky (born in 1920). September 24, 1944 Galenieks, Tikhonovsky and their associates organized an ambush on the road Baldone - Kekava , as a result of the operation 30 officials of the occupation administration were destroyed. In the summer and autumn of 1944, the Baldonensky partisan detachment managed to prevent the export from Latvia to the Third Reich of a large number of objects of material and cultural value, which were planned in the Directorate of Culture of Local Government. To preserve values, underground storage facilities were created at several Riga enterprises. In the summer period of 1944, representatives of the combat units of the Red Army, mainly professional intelligence officers and partisans (for example, Arvid Roze (1909-1944) and Eric Stepins (1921-1942), began to work extensively. ^{[ specify ]} .

It should be noted that participants in the Riga anti-fascist underground suffered significant losses. Nazi occupiers and local collaborators arrested more than 12,000 members of the Latvian Resistance movement.

In addition to the Riga underground organizations, which were active during the different periods of the Nazi occupation, partisan detachments and resistance groups functioned throughout Latvia.

Riga: Encyclopedia = Enciklopēdija "Riga" / Ch. ed. P.P. Eran. - 1st ed .. - Riga: Main Edition of Encyclopedias, 1989. - S. 166-167. - 880 s. - 60,000 copies. - ISBN 5-89960-002-0 .

• Qin (anti-fascist organization)
• Partisan movement in Latvia during World War II