Kovos dėl Lietuvos Nepriklausomybės, III Tomas: Kovos su Lenkais 1920–1923

Rukša's three-volume series on the Lithuanian Wars of Independence stands as one of the most ambitious works of Lithuanian military historiography produced in the diaspora. Volume III, focused on the Lithuanian–Polish conflicts of 1920–1923, addresses a chapter of Lithuanian history that was effectively suppressed in Soviet-occupied Lithuania: the border wars, the Żeligowski mutiny and seizure of Vilnius, the Suvalkija battles, and the drawn-out neutral-zone engagements that shaped Lithuania's interwar territorial situation. Published in 1982, nearly four decades into Soviet occupation, this work was an act of cultural and historical defiance — preserving primary-source-based military scholarship that could not be published honestly in Vilnius or Kaunas at the time.

The volume also exemplifies the institutional infrastructure of the Lithuanian diaspora: the Ramovė veterans' organization, the journal Karys, and the Franciscan Fathers' printing press in Brooklyn together constituted a shadow publishing ecosystem that kept Lithuanian scholarship alive in the West. The inclusion of an English summary signals a deliberate outreach to non-Lithuanian audiences — scholars, policymakers, and the broader public — at a moment when Lithuanian independence remained a distant aspiration. For heritage communities and for researchers of Baltic history, this volume is both a primary scholarly source and a document of diaspora resilience.

Diaspora scholarly publishing; Lithuanian military veterans' organization preserving and transmitting national military history while homeland was under Soviet occupation; English summary extending reach beyond Lithuanian readership.