next few years, the Soviets and Polish communists would work to successfully eradicate the remains of the anti-Soviet Polish underground, known as the cursed soldiers. Relations with the civilian population Outside pre-1939 Soviet territories, Soviet partisans encountered little support and often significant hostility from local populations, and so unable to acquire supplies from otherwise, they engaged in plunder and terrorised the inhabitants. In some cases, Germans allowed peasants to form self-defense units against Soviet raids, which in extreme cases led to violent clashes between the Soviet partisans and local peasants, resulting in civilian casualties, as was the case with the Koniuchy massacre in Polish-Lithuanian borderland in 1944. Bogdan Musial argued that the Soviet partisans preferred to assault the less challenging Belarusian and Polish self-defense units rather than German military and police targets. By the end of 1943, the Soviets could claim a significant victory in what they called their war against the bourgeois Poles: most large landed estates owned by the Poles had been destroyed by the Soviet partisans. See also Bielski partisans Jewish partisans Koniuchy massacre Lithuanian partisans (1941) Naliboki massacre References Poland in World War II Military history of Poland during World War II Partisans Poland