Juozas Urbsšys and the Case for Lithuanian Independence

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1990, after 50 years of Soviet occupation, Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union. The case for the restoration of Lithuanian independence was made by Juozas Urbšys, one of the last surviving ministers of the pre-war republic, whose testimony about the Soviet invasion of 1939 resembles the work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. These stories unite communities around transcendent goals that justify revolt and revolution. Placing Urbšys’s memoirs in the same bin as these detective stories, I demonstrate how Burke’s sociological criticism of literature uncovers strategies for naming the situation of Lithuania during perestroika and argue that Urbšys work served Lithuanians as functional equipment for living in 1988 paving the way for the restoration of independence in 1990.