The topics of the armed anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania in 1944-1953 were explored on repeated occasions. Much research was conducted, however, it was strongly oriented to the argumentative analysis of legal resistance, relations with foreign countries, repressive structures and centralization processes. As a result, some of these problems have not been completely solved yet. One of them is related to the armed guerillas warfare against the occupation army and residents who were blamed for the collaboration.

The subject of the research is guerilla warfare tactics of the Lokys unit in the Vytautas region against the occupation army and residents suspected of collaboration, which took place in the period of 1945–1953. The aim of research is to reveal the logic, tactics and the effectiveness of the guerilla warfare of the Lokys unit in the Vytautas region against the occupation army and the residents who were suspected of collaboration.

Three types of subdivisions were distinguished in the Lokys unit, and those which adopted the structural principles of the standing army subdivisions and considered the features of the locality and the residents functioned most effectively. They were formed from the people descended from the same locality. Such subdivisions often operated independently and were able to supply food directly. They also created the conditions of good hiding and information collection from civilians. The government aimed at forbidding the acts of violence during the fight against the collaborators.

More significant elements of collaborator liquidation tactics in the Lokys unit can be noticed only after 1946. Till then they operated forthwith. It determined that there was no need for the death penalty, and the guerillas themselves suffered from the losses. Unsuccessful liquidation operations of collaborators resulted in the losses both for the guerillas and local people. In the neighborhood, where the attempts were made against the local activists, repressive structural measures against guerillas grew stronger. Guerillas improved the collaborators implementation tactics in operation liquidation in order to avoid it. They became more planned and more attention was devoted to intelligence service, false actions and disguise.

Till the establishment of the Lokys unit, the movement was more intensive because during the period of 10 months, more people, in comparison with the resistance period that continued for about 71 month, suspected of collaborations were sentenced to death penalty. Till the establishment of the Lokys unit, more guerillas assigned to the local were perversely killed. Having established the Lokys unit, the death penalty for a number of people blamed for treason increased. Despite that, the collected material lets state that the posture of guerillas, considering activists and spies, was quiet flexible and death penalty was determined not by formal dependence of the punished person for the dependence on Soviet active assets or its secretive collaborative network, but its true value.

Raktažodžiai: Antisoviet resistance, guerrilla warfare tactics, occupation, collaboration