post-Soviet Lithuania Research Articles

Shifting Paradigms: Semiotic Reading of the Built Environment Transformations in Lithuania 1986–2004

Summary The research delves into the complex and multi-layered transition of Lithuania from a Soviet to a post-Soviet society, focusing on the architectural landscape as a reflection of ideological shifts. It explores the period from Gorbachev’s initiation of perestroika in 1986 to the Baltic States’ entry into the EU and NATO in 2004, a time marked by significant transformations within the architectural, social, and political realms. First, using Greimasian Square, the study categorises and analyses the reactions toward Soviet Modernist architecture, observing the gradual shift from a representation of state ideology to a canvas reflecting a myriad of individual and collective experiences, also assuming the artistic value of the architects’ output. Second, utilising frameworks from Western architectural criticism figures such as Peter Blake, Robert Venturi and the Situationists, the study contextualises and collates with architectural trends in public interiors or private constructions in Lithuania. Additionally, presumptions are correlated with a crisis in the architectural profession, characterised by a rise in private constructions without architects. Through semiotic view architectural discourse becomes a vital element in understanding the broader cultural and political shifts in post-Soviet Lithuania.

Law, Crime and the Criminal Justice System’s Transformation in Post-Soviet Lithuania: Some Trends and Functioning

The aim of the research is to identify, what changes, trends and tendencies are visible in defining crime, and rethinking and reforming criminal law and the criminal justice system in post-Soviet Lithuania. The chronological limits are the first decade of Lithuania’s independence. Lithuania is contextualised in the post-Soviet region, thus mapping and tracking the transition of its post-Soviet criminal prosecution system. In this region, after the collapse of the USSR, the tension was constantly growing between: a) the declared dream of the democratic transition; and b) the growing rate and visibility of crime. Lithuania, as a part of these processes, used local law talents and Western legal aid to speed up the process of reestablishing the rule of law. But although successful in some respects ( for instance, in dealing with the most visible and threatening forms of organised crime), the country did not make enough progress in others ( for instance, the adoption of the new criminal and criminal prosecution code took a long time, as did the Western-oriented reform of the criminal prosecution process).

The 20-Year Trends in Caries and Associated Determinants among Adults in Post-Soviet Lithuania: Repeated Cross-Sectional Studies

Aim: The aim of the study was to examine the 20-year trend in dental caries and associated determinants among adults in Lithuania after the country restored its independence. Material and Methods: Data from two cross-sectional national surveys included samples of 35–44-year-olds (adults) and 65–74-year-olds (early elderly). The 1997/1998 survey (first survey) recruited a stratified random sample of 569 individuals from 10 selected areas in Lithuania (response rate 52%), and the 2017/2019 survey (second survey) recruited a stratified random sample of 723 individuals from 5 biggest Lithuanian cities and one randomly selected peri-urban/rural area from each of 10 Lithuanian counties (response rate 53%). The information about the social (sex, residence, education) and behavioral (toothbrushing frequency, use of fluoridated toothpaste, and last dental visit) determinants was collected via self-reports using the World Health Organization (WHO) Oral Health Questionnaire for Adults questions. Information about the fluoride level in the drinking water was retrieved from the water suppliers. Dental caries was recorded at the surface level following the WHO criteria by two calibrated examiners, one at each of the national surveys. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used. Results: According to multivariable negative binomial regression analysis, in adults, 67% lower DS scores (IRR 0.33, 95% CI 0.26–0.42) and in early elderly 47% lower DS scores (IRR 0.53, 95% CI 0.38–0.74) were observed in the second survey. Adults in the second survey (vs. first survey) had 62% lower MT scores (IRR 0.38, 95% CI 0.32–0.46), and the early elderly had 19% lower MT scores (IRR 0.81, 95% CI 0.72–0.92). Adults in the second survey had 21% lower DMFT scores (IRR 0.79, 95% CI 0.73–0.85). The changes in behavioral determinants were observed over the 20-year period. Conclusion: An improvement in dental health during the 20-year period, mainly related to reduction in untreated caries and missing teeth, was observed in adults and early elderly. However, early elderly still had high numbers of missing teeth. The decrease in total caries experience during the 20 years was significant only in adults. Our findings support an urgent need to design and implement national oral health promotion and prevention programs with increased focus on oral self-care and fluoridated toothpaste use.

Concept and Self-Consciousness of the žemininkai Generation

The article analyses the origins of the concept of the žemininkai generation (the so-called Earth generation of Lithuanian literary modernism), in order to assess the validity and suitability of this traditional concept for the research of Lithuanian literature and culture. The notion that the group that published the literary anthology Žemė (Earth, 1951) represents a much wider literary and cultural generation born in the 1920s has been established in Lithuanian literary studies since the 1950s, but it has not been sufficiently critically examined. From a socio-cultural point of view, the question arises as to whether this actually corresponds to an authentic collective phenomenon of generational consciousness of these authors. For this purpose, the development of the concept of the žemininkai generation in the post-war Lithuanian diaspora and post-soviet Lithuania is investigated, the concept of generation formulated in the cultural sociology works of Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias is discussed, and cases of generational identification in the early texts of the žemininkai, written during the Second World War, and in their later ego-documentary texts are analysed. Aspects of critical period experience, generational solidarity, socio-cultural location, intergenerational relations, and literary impact are considered. It is concluded that the expression of a complex generational self-consciousness indeed appears in the texts of the žemininkai group.

Death of a Poet. Epitaphs and Dedications to Vytautas Mačernis

The author of the article examines the corpus of dedications to the poet Vytautas Mačernis, written by poets who lived in Soviet and post-Soviet Lithuania after 1966. The group of epitexts (epitaphs, dedications, and literary letters), scattered in collections of poems and periodicals and united by genre, is analyzed as a series of artefacts confirming the status of Mačernis as a literary classic and revealing the reception of the poet in the community of writers and in the cultural memory of the nation. The formation of Mačernis’s image and the legend about him was influenced by his early death. In turn, it led to a mystification of the poet’s figure and to the attribution to him of almost supernatural powers of a prophet and guardian of the nation. The most significant texts dedicated to Mačernis highlight the gradual stages of poet’s establishment as the youngest poet in the canon of Lithuanian literature and the prevailing, almost fixed trend of romanticizing him and presenting his destiny in an exotic way. The poetic forms of the dedications and the intertextual connections testify to the fact that Mačernis’s works have been recognized as an essential part of the canon.

Sovereignty and political belonging in post-Soviet Lithuania: ethnicity, migration, and historical justice

ABSTRACT In this article, we review the history of building a post-Soviet sovereign state in Lithuania by institutionalizing social and political difference of some groups in laws, policy, and public discourse. We argue that an exclusive inclusion of national (ethnic) minorities and migrants have played an important role in defining political belonging to a post-Soviet sovereign state. Language and citizenship laws and policies have been the major sites through which national minorities and migrants have been categorized and integrated in a post-1991 society. We conclude with the analysis of the politics of historical justice, central in defining political belonging to a post-2014 sovereign state.

The GULAG experience in cultural narratives and collective identity of post-Soviet Lithuania

In this paper, the tendencies of rethinking the GULAG in the cultural memory of post-Soviet Lithuania (after 1990) are analyzed. The sources for the analysis were represented by ego-documents, literary works, and visual arts (movies and comics). The author draws attention to the specifics of female and, in part, children’s experience of the deportation, to the ways of perceiving, rethinking, and reproducing collective trauma in an ethno-historical context, to the role of post-memory in the formation and support of the national identity in the modern Lithuanian society. In recent years, in the field of perpetuating the memory of the Stalinist period in Lithuania, the public at-tention is increasingly shifted from the direct and authentic evidence to heterogeneous visually striking artistic representations. This shift in the focus of interest can be explained by the generational change, which warrants the search for a new stylistic language and message forms. As a result, works are created that belong to the field of post-memory, which are characterized by a higher degree of adaptability of the traumatic experience of previ-ous generations to the knowledge and mentality of modern viewers / readers, as well as by attempt to increase their attractiveness through vivid and memorable characters and stories. The main difference between the most literarily valuable texts of the ‘first’ and the ‘second’ generation of the Lithuanian authors can basically be de-scribed as a different degree of ontological intensity. If the former authors seek to comprehend the experienced repressions within the framework of existentialism (Grinkevičiūtė and Kalvaitis) or Christian metaphysics (Dirsyte and Miškinis), then the latter authors, for obvious reasons, no longer achieve this level of reflection on the ex-tremely traumatic experience, focusing on embedding their personal biographies into the great historical narrative about the “struggle and sorrows” of the nation, which has already become canonical.

Between heritage and (identity) politics: dealing with the signs of communism in post-Soviet Lithuania

ABSTRACT The article deals with the symbolic political negotiations in Lithuania. Dealing with soviet cultural heritage like museums and monuments, the article discusses the development of identity politics in independent Lithuania. There are two topics, which became referential points for the politics of remembrance and education in Lithuania: Memory of the victims of Stalinism and memory of the Holocaust victims. The article will argue how the transformation of the museum and memorial landscape is connected with the identity politics of the transformation time.

Unapologetic Absurdity

Unapologetic Absurdity Keith Kopka (bio) Sun-Tzu’s Life in the Holy City of Vilnius Ričardas Gavelis Elizabeth Novickas, trans. Pica Pica Press www.picapica.press/books 271 Pages; Print, $13.99 Lithuanian born writer and theoretical physicist Ričardas Gavelis is perhaps most known to western audiences for his book Vilnius Poker (1989), a scathing indictment of post-soviet Lithuania that finds Gavelis characterizing his country as a headless and ignorant nation. First published in 1989, this politically charged mix of fantasy, eroticism, and philosophy rocked Eastern Europe in the middle of the USSR’s slow descent toward disintegration. Although Sun-Tzu’s Life in the Holy City of Vilnius was initially published more than a decade later, the themes within this work remain similar to the challenging and incendiary content of Vilnius Poker, its sister novel. Sun-Tzu’s Life in the Holy City of Vilnius, translated by Elizabeth Novickas and published in the United States by Pica Pica Press, follows the life of a narrator who calls himself the Sun-Tzu of Vilnius, a typically direct Gavelis style persona that allows the author to characterize his narrator through external means. As we all learned in history class, Sun-Tzu was the Chinese general and strategist most famous for his book The Art of War, a collection of strategic, instructional, and often even philosophical writings on the ways in which war should be waged. Gavelis’s narrator takes on this persona in the context of post-Soviet Lithuania. However, unlike the original Sun-Tzu, Gavelis’s character is far from the refined voice of reason that permeates the narrative structure in The Art of War. Instead, Gavelis frames his Sun-Tzu as an anti-hero, a criminal and sex addict who is the product of his time and of his upbringing in the Soviet era. Stylistically, Sun-Tzu’s Life in the Holy City of Vilnius is an aggressive book. The information comes at the reader at an incredible pace, and the lyricism and detail that is required in translation is a testament to Novickas’s talent, not just as a translator of Gavelis’s words but also as the steward of the fraught and extremely detailed universe that Gavelis has painstakingly crafted. Throughout the text, the descriptions of sexuality and violence are sometimes startlingly direct. However, Gavelis avoids crossing over any lines that might alienate a reader by stylizing his disturbing descriptions in a way that resembles the magical realism of authors like Gabriel García Márquez or Miguel Ángel Asturias, and because of these stylistic choices, Gavelis finds ways to make his often-overwrought descriptions feel necessary. Gavelis wields his penchant for the absurd and fantastic as a chisel to sculpt images that are reflective of the ways in which he sees that Lithuania and its people have been exploited and, in turn, forced to work within a system of corruption. This critical perspective is a lot for readers to take in, especially those readers [End Page 21] who might not be familiar with the historical and socio-political context of Gevalis’s evaluation. However, the stylistic choices that fortify his post-modern adaptation of magical realism disarms readers and allow them to receive his harsh social commentary. For example, Sun Tzu’s formative years provide Gavelis an opportunity to use the strengths of stylistic literalism to his advantage as he describes Sun-Tzu’s “first father” as an “interim coffin designer,” and a “deconstructionist” who “didn’t deconstruct someone’s despicable written texts, but rather all the Lord’s creation.” This unique metaphorical persona sucks readers into the character of the first father. However, all of this description ultimately still culminates in poignant tragedy when the KGB catches on to the first father’s work and has him arrested and killed for supposedly organizing a nationalist group. These moments of spectacular metaphor and absurdity challenge and confront the reader throughout the novel. However, some of these moments bare the historical weight and narrative direction of the novel better than others. Sometimes there is a feeling that the reader is being forced to confront absurdity simply for the...

Which resources matter for what impacts? Resource mobilization and impacts of local SMOs in rural Lithuania, 2004–2006

Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT) posits that the key to social movement organizations’ (SMOs’) success is their ability to mobilize resources. Yet there has been little research verifying this claim. This study uses the case of post-Soviet rural Lithuania to test the link between human, social, material, and organizational resources of SMOs and three types of organizational impacts: issue awareness, local support, and media coverage. Using original data from 165 rural advocacy organizations that spans the period of 2004 to 2006, we demonstrate that the effects of different resources vary in significance and strength for differentoutcomes. Furthermore, no single resource type consistently predicts all impacts. This research contributes to RMT by (1) identifying which resource types predict specific organizational impacts, (2) extending RMT to the unique context of post-Soviet Lithuania, and (3) illuminating the relationship between resources and impacts for an understudied unit of analysis (small, newly founded nonprofessionalized organizations).

State, Nation, and the National Flag in Post-Soviet Lithuania: Legitimating Identities of the State in Institutional and Social Discourses

AbstractThis article explores discursive construction of legitimating identity(-ies) of the state within official institutional and semipublic social discourses on the national flag in post-1990 Lithuania. By doing so, it contributes to the continuous discussion regarding the puzzling coexistence of a relatively stable democratic regime and a limited degree of social and ethnic unrest with signs of political alienation in Lithuania. It argues that an empirical approach to legitimacy studies paired with research on national symbols and discourse analysis can contribute to a better understanding of this problem. The article concludes that the most prominent legitimating identity of the state coming forth in the official discourse is that of the state as an object of love and respect. This view is both shared and challenged within the semipublic discourse—especially regarding issues of instrumental performance of the state as well as the ability to accommodate both the initiative and autonomy of its people within political affairs.

„Vidinės kolonizacijos“ teorija ir jos taikymas (post)sovietinių visuomenių lyginamiesiems tyrimams

This article discusses a direction of sociocultural studies – the cultural history of natural resources – and the possibilities of its application in examining the causes of inequality and social exclusion in post-Soviet Lithuania. This theoretical-methodological approach assumes a strong interdependence shared between the extraction of natural resources, a state’s political system and institutions as well as certain sociocultural provisions. In exploring the concept of “internal colonization,” developed by historian of culture Alexander Etkind and other authors, this article sets guidelines for a comparative analysis of the sociopolitical structure of post-Soviet countries (especially Russia and Lithuania). Some initial hypotheses regarding the trends, differences, and similarities of post-Soviet societies in the long historical perspective, from the 16th century up to our time, are presented for further analysis. This article concludes that this methodological approach could be sufficiently promising in explaining the specifics of the socioeconomic development of independent Lithuania, in particular by applying the hypothesis of a “secondary internal colonization,” which has been raised during the course of the investigation.

Editorial

Historical events and cultural practices, along with policymakers’ embrace of economic principles, all play formative roles in policy development, implementation, and success in addressing health outcomes in populations globally. In this issue of World Medical & Health Policy, our authors consider this complex interplay of factors from various angles. Petros, Abay, Desta, and O'Brien note the role of cultural factors in women's disempowerment, even in the face of intentional governmental and financial institution policy interventions. Women, particularly those living in poverty, are more likely than men to be exposed to adverse agricultural working conditions and consume compromised grains, burdening them with increased health risks on both counts. In order to reduce post-harvest loss in Ethiopia and improve population health broadly, the authors argue that impediments to women's empowerment must be meaningfully addressed. Despite the popularity of the adage “women and children first” it is more often the case that these groups suffer disproportionately in many categories of health and well-being. This is demonstrated in Petros et al.'s study of women and men farmers in Ethiopia, and in Mazecaite-Vaitilaviciene and Owens's service evaluation of the oral health of children with disabilities in post-Soviet Lithuania. Large-scale economic and political trends, even those that might be seen as politically positive, such as the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania, or the move toward a more market-based economy, can lead to disruptions that can compromise populations, particularly those with overlapping identities of marginalized groups. This study of oral health inequalities among children with disabilities in Lithuania points to what the authors convincingly characterize as an urgent need for policy reform. Even when it can be demonstrated that economic efficiencies are likely to accrue from certain categories of policy interventions, such as the provision of family planning in developing countries, historical and cultural factors hold sway in shaping such policies to a great extent. Harris examines how consideration of economic concepts such as efficiency, externalities, access to information and equity are also evident in policies providing for family planning in Uganda, Haiti, and the Philippines. She concludes that explicit consideration of economic policy concepts can complement rights-based policy rationales, to the benefit of nations applying such analysis. With regard to access to information, Patanavanich, Suriyawongpaisal, and Aekplakorn, note that the lack of a national database for malpractice claims in Thailand has hampered the ability of policymakers there to develop policy related to malpractice. Their findings with regard to the timing and location of wrongful death claims suggest the importance of such information in crafting meaningful policy. In addition to the policy importance of collecting pertinent information, Wiist points out that tax collection is critical to the provision of public health services and the funding of research to protect the public health. He identifies corporate income tax avoidance as one important cause of unrealized federal tax revenue that contributes to chronic fiscal and public health deficits. By defining the issue as a social determinant of health, he seeks to impel research and political interest in the issue to address its role in perpetuating inequality. Finally the review of Nora Kenworthy's Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho by a physician with personal experience in the field, makes note of how closely intertwined political, social, and medical structures influence the design and implementation of HIV programs. Kaddis relates the book's coverage of factors ranging from disease stigma to misappropriation of funds from international aid organizations as being implicated in the country's flawed policy response to the public health crisis in its midst. These themes comport with World Medical & Health Policy's ongoing interest in advancing understanding of social determinants of health, most recently highlighted in an open access virtual issue available through June 2019 at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1948-4682.social-determinants-of-health

Transformations in Prison Subculture and Adjustment to Imprisonment in Post-Soviet Lithuanian Penitentiary Institutions

As in other post-Soviet countries, carceral collectivism characterizes penal institutions in Lithuania. In these institutions, prisoners’ interactions are minimally controlled and convicts are responsible for the maintenance of order; hence, the informal rules of the criminal subculture prevail in Lithuanian correctional facilities. In this article, we examine the prison subculture and adaptation to imprisonment as a significant part of inmates’ social world in post-Soviet Lithuania. By using semi-structured interviews with male prisoners, semi-structured interviews with prison staff, and data from the inmates’ criminal records, we conceptualize both men’s adaptation to imprisonment and current transformations in the Lithuanian prison subculture. As our research shows, the importance of this subculture has decreased in recent years. This process has been influenced by structural changes such as stronger administrative control of convicts, their differentiation and division into smaller groups that limit their mutual contacts, and convicts’ motivation to obtain parole and participate in various rehabilitation programs. The prison subculture has also experienced transformations because of the increasing impact of financial resources on social life, subcultural rules, and interprisoner relationships. Despite these processes, the subculture still plays an important role in inmates’ attempts to choose different daily coping styles and types of adaptation to imprisonment. In this article, we argue that in reforming post-Soviet correctional institutions, a gradual transition to the system of individual cell–type confinement with some remaining elements of collective imprisonment would be desirable.

Van Voren, Robert Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania Woolfson, Shivaun Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects (review)

REVIEWS 381 van Voren, Robert. Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania. On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics, 31. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2011. 195 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. €20.00 (paperback). Woolfson, Shivaun. Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016. xiii + 250 pp. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £24.99 (paperback). Robert van Voren has written an unusual, compact study of probably the worst period of twentieth-century European history. The title (Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania) alludes to the fact that the country in question has had a hard time accommodating these difficult years into its national narrative — and the struggle goes on today. Nonetheless, the most unusual aspect of the book is its attempt to put Lithuanian difficulties into a comparative context. To do this, the author displays comparatively how very hard it was for the population of The Netherlands to ‘digest’ the full story of its own reactions to Nazi occupation and genocide. So if the Lithuanian population has to face criticism for only slow progress in coming to terms with ‘the skeletons in its closet’, then it should not be singled out as the only group found wanting. This text might only be 182 pages long, but it has big ambitions. It provides a discussion of the historical background to the place of Jews on Lithuanian soil, the origins of antisemitism among the Lithuanian population, Jewish life during the interwar period, the perpetration of the Holocaust, popular collaboration, motives for participation in genocide and, finally, two chapters examining why the dreadful events happened and the difficulties encountered in their finding adequate recognition. Without doubt Undigested Past is a thoughtful piece of work, but potential readers should probably be made aware that it is founded on secondary literature. As such it provides a useful guide to a large amount of work, but at times the study can seem quite familiar. Historically, about 5 million Jews lived in the Russian Empire, mostly in the Pale of Settlement where they carried out their existence quite separately from the Gentile population. They experienced pogroms in the 1880s, then again in 1905 before some 200,000 of them were deported to the Russian interior during the First World War, a time when that community was stigmatized as unreliable and potentially pro-German (pp. 15–16). Regarding the origins of race-hatred, van Voren deploys some depressing information against the Catholic Church. A catechism from 1908, for instance, read, ‘priests and elderly Jews hated Christ the Lord. His enemies agreed to destroy him’ (p. 36). The interwar period started out promisingly for the Jews living in the newly independent Lithuanian state. The Paris Peace Treaty created the preconditions for extensive Jewish autonomy and the terms were incorporated SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 382 into the Lithuanian constitution of 6 August 1919. Initial good fortune, however, soon began to wane and from the mid 1920s on the state experienced a growing policy of Lithuanianization (p. 42). By 1923 about 7.6 per cent of the population of Lithuania was Jewish. Most of the Jews were urban and many were proletarian. It was, perhaps, more or less predictable that by 1 January 1941, at which point the Soviet Union had occupied Lithuania, Jews were overrepresented in the Communist Party, comprising 16.6 per cent of members (p. 53). Van Voren notes, however, that the Communist authorities didn’t just persecute Lithuanians, they persecuted Jews too (p. 59). Across his text van Voren deploys some truly unforgettable statements. One of the more eccentric comes from Lithuanian émigré author, Tomas Venclova: ‘What happened during the first days of the war was a catastrophe for the Jews, but was a far worse catastrophe for the Lithuanians’ (p. 67). Really? Thereafter follows a predictably depressing cataloguing of atrocity. That said, van Voren is to be commended for noting that some 800 Lithuanians have been honoured by Yad Vashem as belonging to the ‘Righteous Among Nations’ and the author makes clear that at least some Lithuanians paid with their lives for assisting Jews (p. 106). Nevertheless, he concludes that...

Points of memory in the narrative of a ‘Mnemonic Warrior’: gender, displacement, and the anti-Soviet war of resistance in Lithuania

ABSTRACTDrawing on feminist theories on memory and memory work, this article analyzes the biographical narrative of Aldona Vilutienė (neé Sabaitytė), a former partisan messenger and deportee, who created the first museum commemorating the anti-Soviet resistance and the deportations carried out under Stalin in post-Soviet Lithuania. The analysis is focused on points of memory, a theoretical concept developed by Marianne Hirsch who defined them as ‘points of intersection between past and present, memory and post-memory, personal remembrance and cultural recall.’ This approach helps us to better understand the complex processes of memory production and reconstruct the lived experiences associated with remembering war and displacement. In addition, it challenges the portrayal of partisan war and deportations as monumental national traumas.

The Process of Creating Integrated Home Care in Lithuania: from Idea to Reality.

Background:The article presents an analysis of the formulation and implementation of a social innovation: integrated home care (IHC) in post-soviet Lithuania. From 1998 a series of top-down orders to implement IHC were issued, however, home nursing did not start. In 2011 the Ministry of Social Security and Labour began a process to develop integrated home care using new, collaborative processes. The result was 21 pilot projects with well-conceptualized IHC services.Method:Using data from focus groups, interviews, and recorded observations, the research team systematically documented the innovation process, including themes and deviations, employing Smale’s Innovation Trinity framework to organize the larger picture.Results:In the Lithuanian post-totalitarian context, top-down communication was found to be prevalent. Not only IHC, but also openness to change and dialogue at high levels were innovations. Patient-centered practice at local levels could only occur when a new attitude of mind was reached through dialogue with officials at higher levels and between peers.Conclusions:The enactment, rather than the mask of dialogue, participatory program development were critical in the success of IHC innovation. This is difficult to achieve in the light of antiquated public bureaucracies, but in this case, the Ministry team, rather than avoiding the expectation of top-down communication, made it into an asset through promotion of collaboration.

Shivaun Woolfson, Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects

Shivaun Woolfson, <i>Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects</i>

Russian as a commodity: medical tourism and the healthcare industry in post-Soviet Lithuania

ABSTRACTThe focus of this paper is on Lithuania, where government policies continue to limit the use of Russian in education, the public space and the media, while the local economy has recognized proficiency in Russian as a commodity. This is particularly salient in the healthcare industry that grew significantly in the past years with patients from post-Soviet countries seeking treatment at local hospitals and private clinics. Marketed for their ‘European’ standards and competitive prices, promotional discourses refer to proficiency in Russian and familiarity with Russian culture and customs among medical staff. This commodification of Russian challenges perceptions on the value of language in the formation of political and cultural identities, pointing towards a paradigmatic shift and renegotiation of language attitudes in countries of the former USSR.

Book Review: Shivaun Woolfson: Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects

Book Review: Shivaun Woolfson: <i>Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects</i>