The Lithuanian Cultural Elite and the End of the Soviet Union

Abstract

Violeta Davoliute, The Making and Breaking of Lithuania: Memory and Modernity Wake of War. 211 pp. New York: Routledge, 2013. ISBN-13 978-0415714495. $155.00. To date, we know a good deal about making (Sovietization) and breaking (Singing Revolution) of Baltic socialist republics (SSRs), but socialist 1960s and 1970s are far less studied. (1) It was those decades that population of pacified Baltic republics began to adapt to conditions of new regime, and it is perhaps for this very reason that Baltic scholars so far have focused almost exclusively on topics like anti-Soviet resistance and reestablishment of independence. (2) Rein Taagepera and Romuald Misiunas have called years from 1954 to 1968 a period of re-emergence of national cultures, albeit with ideological genuflections. (3) More generally, it was also a time of economic stabilization, growing consumption, and more or less peaceful negotiations between citizens and Party on socialist values. (4) But this period also saw coming of age of a new generational cohort whose members had been raised authoritarian interwar republics, with their strong emphasis on patriotism. This is precisely group of people that Davoliute's book investigates. Despite tide, then, Davoliute's study focuses primarily on time when Lithuanian SSR (LSSR) was in process 1960s and 1970s. Her main objects of inquiry are die culturally active Lithuanians who responded to call of modernity, absorbed patterns of Thaw, and blended them successfully with renaissance of interwar national traditions (88). Her book focuses on inner Lidiuanian processes and this way alone breaks new ground history of Baltic republics, hitherto told most often a narrative of us vs. them. In contrast to earlier works on period, her book does not focus on suffering and resistance. Her focal point is instead rustic turn, a powerful undercurrent cultural of LSSR that began late 1960s and undermined discourse of progress and modernity, eventually leading to rustic revolution of late 1980s. Most notably, she presents the story of Lithuanian cultural mainstream (xvi) a way to challenge popular reference to collective suffering under foreign (Soviet) rule. For this purpose, author conducted in-depdi interviews with many leading intellectuals of time (their biographies are collected appendix). In many ways, Lithuania was different from its northern neighbors Baltic region. Lithuanian postwar armed resistance against Sovietization can be compared scale only to western Ukraine. (5) Lidiuania was distinct from Estonia and Latvia also terms of its political leadership. The career of Antanas Snieckus (1903-1974) was exceptionally long and robust: he became a member of Central Committee of Lithuanian Communist Party 1927 and first secretary 1936. With exception of his arrest 1939-40, he held this position until his death 1974. In contrast, leading Estonian and Latvian comrades sooner or later faced dramatic purges. (6) Moreover, whereas Estonia and Latvia experienced a mass influx of migrants from other republics that eventually threatened demographic majority of titular nationality, Lithuania left Union 1991 with a Slavic minority of only 20 percent, including 8 percent Poles, republic's traditional national minority. At same time, all three Baltic republics represented a Soviet West for many citizens (105), based on particular European outlook of Baltic cities, better standard of life on coast of Baltic Sea, and for some even a somewhat more relaxed ideological atmosphere. (7) In this respect, Davoliute supports Elena Zubkova's view that Baltic republics were used by Kremlin as showcases for achievements of science, culture, and industry (108) for a non-Soviet audience, but she refers also to phenomenal success of a number of Lithuanian actors cinema (108) who contributed to die positive image of their republic rest of USSR. …