In the Traps of the Soviets

Abstract

The myth of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) lost its power and significance in Lithuania shortly after the restoration of the country’s independence in 1990. The concept of the Great Patriotic War was hastily abandoned, with part of the Soviet monuments meant to promote this myth being dismantled and Victory Day (May 9) no longer being celebrated. However, the Soviet military cemeteries remained. Being behind the horizons of the great Lithuanian narratives, they did not attract much attention until the 21st century, when the neighbouring state began taking an interest in them and using them for their benefit. They started getting suspicious looks from Lithuanians after the beginning of the Russian invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Then, the cemeteries began to be seen as relics of the Soviet occupation regime and exposed as instruments of Russia’s current soft power. So they are not the past. These are places that have not lost their ideological charge and potential, spreading stories that are inconsistent with national Lithuanian narratives, masking the occupation, and suggesting that we remember the liberation.
 The publication looks back at the origins of the Soviet Great Patriotic War military cemeteries and the main moments of their formation, first and foremost perceiving them from the perspectives of politics of memory and using appropriate research instruments. These sites have little in common with the original burial sites and were essentially created as propaganda tools in keeping with best practices in memorial design. In addition to being burial sites, they were constructed to spread the myth of the Great Patriotic War and other great Soviet narratives. The work examines what makes these places so special and convenient, and what meanings and narratives they were created to convey.