History of Vilnius - Soviet Occupation

Soviet Occupation

The Germans were forced to leave Vilnius in July 1944 by the combined pressure from the Polish Home Army (Operation Ostra Brama) and the Red Army (Battle of Vilnius (1944)). In 1944–1947 the opponents of the regime, included were captured, interrogated in the NKVD Palace in Lukiškės Square, executed and buried in the Tuskulėnai Manor park.

The Soviets decided that it was to became again a part of the Lithuanian SSR and subsequently the Soviet government, backed by the Lithuanian communists, decided to repatriate the Polish population from Lithuania and Belarus after the end of World War II. This decision was soon implemented and most of the population were transferred during the repatriation, organized by Soviet and local communist authorities. The repatriation was voluntary, but not all willing people could leave "Soviet Paradise", because Poles living in rural areas, were forced to remain where they had lived.

Most of the surviving inhabitants left Vilnius, which had an obvious impact on the city's community and its traditions; what before a war was a Polish-Jewish city with a tiny Lithuanian minority was instantly Lithuanized, with Lithuanians becoming the new majority. Many of the remaining Poles were arrested, murdered or sent to gulags or to remote parts of Soviet empire. These events, coupled with the policy of Russification and immigration of Russians from other Soviet republics the during post-war years, giving rise the a significant Russian minority, and slow but steady repatriation of the surviving Jews to Israel, had a critical influence on the demographic situation of the city in the 1960s. Vilnius experienced a rapid population upsurge due to immigrations by Lithuanians after 1960.