Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (abbreviated LSSR or LiSSR) was a union republic of the Soviet Union from the short twentieth century. It was succeeded by the modern state of Lithuania.

History

Lithuania had briefly formed a pro-Bolshevik republic during the Russian Civil War. While the Bolsheviki were popular among both the Estonian and Latvian lower classes during the 1910s, the Lithuanian opinion on them is less clear given that they were under severe imperialist reoccupation at that time, but the landless peasants were dissatisfied with the ill-conceived land reforms. The Soviets later won back their support, however. During the short twentieth century Jerome Davis visited the Baltics and found that most, if not all of the workers and peasants there preferred being part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (whereas the middle and upper classes freely voiced their objections to him), and everybody that he met, even the upper classes, still preferred the Soviet Republics over the anticommunist reoccupation. Nevertheless, a gang of antisocialist guerrillas known as the Forest Brothers fought against the Soviets from 1940 to 1956. They caused 18,562 fatalities throughout the Baltics. The Lithuanian SSR also had the most anti-Russian sentiment out of all of the other Soviet republics, but antisocialism itself was rare.

Culture

In the 1970s the percentage of books published in the titular language was 64%, and of newspapers 81%.