Resistance of the faithful to the restrictions of Church activities in Lithuania in 1944-1953

In its pursuit of the anti-church policy the Soviet regime which was gaining strength in Lithuania faced obvious resistance from Church hierarchs and the congregation. In the period from around 1944 to 1948 the opposition was mostly initiated by the clergymen and Church hierarchs who reacted to the attempts of the regime to eliminate the Church from public life, expropriate church property, etc. In 1948 following the registration of churches and servants of the cult accompanied by repressions and arrests of the priests, resistance of the clergy withered away, however, the congregation got involved into more active defence of their rights - in 1948-1953 parishioners of almost every church in Lithuania protested against the discriminatory decisions of the authorities that had direct impact on them. Representative of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults B. Pušinis' plans to drastically decrease the number of churches of various confessions and strip them of permanently serving priests evoke effective opposition. Congregations of small villages and towns manifested more solidarity and activeness. Petitions to institutions of the government were signed by hundreds of people including lowranked Soviet activists such as kolkhoz chairmen and district deputies who obviously still had illusions about the religious policy of the Soviet regime. Opposition to the ant-religious policy was organized in an exceptionally legal manner and even included modern rhetoric about the rights guaranteed in Stalin's constitution, i.e. the defence of church interests did not imply critique of the regime. The Soviet regime was successful in its attempts to suppress the scope of the opposition as the discontent was channelled off to fruitless correspondence with high-ranked institutions and due to the blockade of information all manifestations of dissatisfaction remained on the local level and could not have any social consequences