TY - JOUR

T1 - THE SOVIET CRACKDOWN ON LITHUANIAN PARTISAN MOVEMENTS (1946–1956) – A GENOCIDE?

T2 - BACKGROUND DELIBERATIONS ON THE ECHR JUDGMENT IN DRĖLINGAS V. LITHUANIA

AU - Berster, Lars

N1 - Funding Information: 1 The author is an acting professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, and Privatdozent for German and international criminal law as well as legal philosophy. This paper from the project of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic Germany. Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and Mykolas Romeris University

PY - 2021/12/27

Y1 - 2021/12/27

N2 - The present contribution deals with the question of whether the sufferings inflicted upon the Lithuanian population during the Soviet anti-insurgency and Sovietization campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s amounted to genocide under international law. Proceeding from the factual findings of the ECHR’s much-noticed judgments in the cases of Vasiliauskas v. Lithuania (2015) and Drėlingas v. Lithuania (2019), it is argued that these historical incidents – although constituting a borderline case – did not pass the legal threshold of genocide, neither in terms of “physical genocide” nor under the contested concept of “social” or “cultural genocide”. As regards physical genocide, it cannot be sufficiently ascertained that the targeted fraction of the protected group of ethnic Lithuanians reached the numeric threshold of a substantial “part” of the group under the definition of genocide. In view of social/cultural genocide, this article purports that Soviet policy-makers might indeed have acted with the intent to culturally destroy a sufficient part of the group, but lacked the required genocidal motive.

AB - The present contribution deals with the question of whether the sufferings inflicted upon the Lithuanian population during the Soviet anti-insurgency and Sovietization campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s amounted to genocide under international law. Proceeding from the factual findings of the ECHR’s much-noticed judgments in the cases of Vasiliauskas v. Lithuania (2015) and Drėlingas v. Lithuania (2019), it is argued that these historical incidents – although constituting a borderline case – did not pass the legal threshold of genocide, neither in terms of “physical genocide” nor under the contested concept of “social” or “cultural genocide”. As regards physical genocide, it cannot be sufficiently ascertained that the targeted fraction of the protected group of ethnic Lithuanians reached the numeric threshold of a substantial “part” of the group under the definition of genocide. In view of social/cultural genocide, this article purports that Soviet policy-makers might indeed have acted with the intent to culturally destroy a sufficient part of the group, but lacked the required genocidal motive.

KW - Drėlingas v. Lithuania (2019) case

KW - genocide

KW - partisan movement

KW - Vasiliauskas v. Lithuania case

KW - Law

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85130165745&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.13165/j.icj.2021.12.002

DO - 10.13165/j.icj.2021.12.002

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85130165745

VL - 7

SP - 133

EP - 145

JO - International Comparative Jurisprudence

JF - International Comparative Jurisprudence

SN - 2351-6674

IS - 2

ER -