How do ordinary people rebel against powerful and brutal regimes? The answer to this question has been sought by envisioning rebellion as a process involving a spectrum of roles. Explaining rebellion entails identifying the mechanisms and sequences of mechanisms that drive individuals across this spectrum. The introductory chapters specified ten mechanisms and how they create movement toward or from roles of resistance and rebellion. These ten mechanisms serve as a template for comparison. Thus far, this template has guided the analysis of rebellion in one nation across three successive occupations. The question becomes whether this approach can provide insight into other cases. The promise of a mechanism-based methodology lies in its generality. The sequences of mechanisms illustrated in the Lithuanian case should be operative in other cases as well. This chapter addresses four puzzles of resistance behavior, all in occupied Eastern Europe during the 1940s. For all four cases, the template of mechanisms suggests answers and testable hypotheses.

The analysis proceeds from cases most similar to Lithuania to cases with major differences in important factors such as regime strategy or nature of society. This gradual stretching of the theoretical framework acts to define and specify its conceptual limits.

Postwar Latvia and Estonia

All three of the Baltic states experienced similar Soviet policies in the post-war period. All three developed anti-Soviet resistance organizations in response. Despite these similarities, all commentators agree that the level of resistance was much more intense in Lithuania than in Latvia and Estonia.