Just as I thought I was moving on to a new page in literary subject matter, the postwar partisan story has taken another turn with the launch of a fresh polemic against these underground resisters of Soviet occupation in Lithuania.

A contentious new book has appeared in Lithuania, called A Memorial Book of the Victims of Partisan Terror (Partizanu Teroro Auku Atminimo Knyga).

The book has a trilingual introduction by Povilas Masilionis in which he attacks the partisans as murderers and terrorists. Most of the book consists of a list of civilians killed by partisans.

This book comes on the heels of an article by Jurgis Jurgelis comparing civilian killings carried out by pro-Soviet collaborators and anti-Soviet partisans (even my choice of words is fraught here – unavoidably so). Jurgelis suggests a sort of moral equivalency between the two.

On the other hand, Arvydas Anusauskas, member of the Seimas and former head of the Genocide Museum, says that the book is old propaganda reheated by Masiulionis, who, in the Soviet period, worked for the Central Committee of the Communist Party as a propaganda instructor and assistant director of the journal “The Comunist”.

Does pedigree matter? I think it must.

The introduction does reek of a polemic of the lowest sort, but even so, I have to sympathize with the numerous dead listed in the pages. For example, Donatas Glodenis is a thoughtful blogger in Lithuania, a man whose grandfather was killed by partisans (perhaps for agreeing to work in a position of responsibility in a state farm.) To see one’s grandfather memorialized must be moving and important (see his comments on the book launch).

Twenty years after Lithuania’s independence, the battle over history is not going away – it is heating up.