The paper focuses on evaluations of the June 1941 uprising in historiography, and analyses aspects of its social preconditions, genesis, aims, and the composition of its participants. Particular attention is paid to an analysis of the relationship between the uprising and previous and concurrent processes in the development of Lithuanian society, and with other Second World War phenomena (collaboration with the Germans, and the Holocaust). The author argues that the uprising was the result not merely of geopolitical or ideological choices, but also of complex social processes. The preconditions for it were created by the character of the socio-political development of society in the period of the independent republic, and a direct reason was the changes in social and economic life implemented during the Soviet occupation and the repressions by the regime. Interrelationships of the membership in different professional groups and political and social organisations were factors that mobilised the insurgents.