Soviet Lithuania Research Articles

Migration of German Children from East Prussia and of Russian-speaking Children to Post-War Lithuania


 
 
 The wave of famine-caused migration to Soviet Lithuania (1946–1948) has been a subject of historiographical analysis, focusing selectively on one of the migrant groups: either the East Prussian German children (widely recognised in the cultural memory as the wolf children) or those arriving from famine-affected republics of the Soviet Union. By employing the methodology of oral history, using the interviews collected alongside materials sourced from Lithuanian and German archives, research institutes, and memory institutions, this article aims to uncover the reasons behind the arrival of both groups of migrant children in Soviet Lithuania. It also investigates the attempts made by the bureaucratic apparatus to control and halt migration, as well as the efforts of the wolf children in seeking social justice in Germany after 1990. The study reveals that the Soviet system perceived migrants from East Prussia and other Soviet republics primarily as a potential threat due to the risk of a typhus outbreak in Lithuania.
 
 

Passing through the filter

This article presents the translations of Spanish and Latin American authors into Lithuanian during the 50 years of Soviet occupation (1940–1990). The purpose of this research is to explore the legacy of these translations within the context of preventive censorship practiced in the Soviet Union. Preventive censorship involves selectively filtering books and authors for inclusion or exclusion from publication due to ideological or political considerations (cf. Leonardi 2008). The article addresses three main questions: (1) What was the volume of Spanish-language literature in the overall corpus of translations in Soviet Lithuania? (2) Which Spanish-language authors were accessible to Lithuanian readers during the period under consideration? And (3) What factors might have influenced their selection for publication in Lithuanian translation? An attempt is made to describe the corpus of translations from Spanish into Lithuanian, with a particular focus on the selection criteria to be met for inclusion of these literary works in the Soviet canon of foreign literature.

Społeczne aspekty edukacji higienicznej w Litwie Sowieckiej w latach 1944–1989: choroby weneryczne

Social aspects of hygienic education in Soviet Lithuania in the years 1944–1989: venereal diseases In Soviet Lithuania many fields of daily life fell under heavy political influence. Medicine and health care was no exception. The health care system that existed at that time was presented in public discourse as the best possible and beyond any criticism. However, the society suffered from diseases, e.g. venereal diseases, just like at any other historical period or political system. Therefore, preventive actions in fighting the diseases had to be organized. The medical doctors and hygienists had to inform society about the possible health risks. And at the same time, they also had to keep with the “red line” by not criticising the faulty social system, which was partly responsible for the social origins of the diseases. Or, in a case there was a need to criticise someone/something, they needed to find someone/ something to criticise, e.g. gay people, hippies.

Architectural Criticism in the Soviet Lithuania 1958-1988: Vision of the New Architecture in the Specialized Periodicals

Architecture criticism of Soviet Lithuania has not been properly addressed in scientific research. The novelty of the work relates to the branch of architecture criticism as part of the history of arts, particularly in the context of the historiography of 20th- century modern architecture. This paper is to uncover the various forms of architectural criticism and its agents among the vocational and scientific publications aimed at other architects of the Lithuanian SSR. Using a systematic approach and qualitative research methods, a database of 100 critical articles is constructed. The phenomena of architecture criticism are explored using the theoretical framework of W. Attoe from his book “Architecture and Critical Imagination” (1978). The results of the research brought several understandings. Despite the common belief among professionals that architects should be predominantly the creators of architecture criticism, architects by profession make up only half or less of the total number of texts in the specialized press. The dominating types of architectural criticism are normative and descriptive (excluding the texts that would describe the context of an architectural idea or particular building). There are very few examples of interpretative criticism encountered (except in the thematic group of criticism around interior design). Further discussion of prevalent thematic groups led to the conclusion that architectural criticism in Soviet Lithuania alongside the official “politically allowed criticism” has been using disguised forms of texts. There has been an underlying narrative to promote modernist or simply, new architecture principles using photography with little to no text, indirect speech, and other forms of non-explicit communication. One of the wider goals of this paper is to initiate wider research into the subject of architectural criticism of Soviet Lithuania and also validate the existence of the neglected phenomena using the specific material of professional and academic architectural publications.

The Equal and the More Equal: Pupils' Experiences of School in Lithuania in the late Soviet Era

Aim. The aim of the article is to reveal the experiences and attitudes of pupils who attended schools in the late Soviet era (1960s-1980s) towards the implementation of egalitarianism policies in the schools of the Lithuanian SSR. The analysis of the qualitative research material focuses on the word "felt" in the phrase "We all felt equal then", i.e., not so much on the fixation of social (in)equality by analysing the indicators of social class or economic status, but on the subjective experience of equality as a manifestation of human dignity. Methods. Following the methodology of oral history, material was collected during 32 in-depth interviews with people who had attended schools in the Lithuanian SSR in the late Soviet era. Results. Several themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews relating to the expression of egalitarianism in the Soviet school: the social class of the pupils; the economic situation of the parents; and the ability of the parents to have the so-called "blat". Conclusions. The study revealed that the implementation of the policy of egalitarianism officially declared by the Communist Party in the education system was subject to several reservations. In Soviet Lithuania, just as in the whole society, there were a lot of manifestations of blat, corruption, and favouritism. These were influenced by the positions held by pupils' parents, belonging to the nomenklatura and/or the ability to establish informal contacts. Pupils from rural schools had fewer opportunities to pursue higher education.

A Cold War Crusader: Andrew Eiva’s Ethnic Anti-Communist Dream

Abstract Andrew Eiva, an ardently anti-Soviet, right-wing lobbyist in Washington DC during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s and the final stages of Soviet Lithuania in the early 1990s, was a true believer, a pro-US Cold War crusader. A clear example of an ethnic anti-communist, Eiva’s goal was to free Lithuania from Russian-imposed communist control, and he saw the Soviet-Afghan War as a means to that end. Andrew Eiva represents a strand of thinking (and acting) within US foreign policy circles at odds with (to the right of) official policy, presaging the tensions between the political right in the US and the CIA (especially) and other governmental organizations in recent years. Based on material Eiva wrote as a lobbyist, Western media accounts, and clandestine reports about him in the files of the Lithuanian KGB, this article shows that his ideologically driven lobbying efforts affected foreign policymaking in the US in the last decade of the Cold War as well as how his actions were reported and perceived in the USSR (within the KGB machinery).

Ponar and the will to remember: Holocaust commemorations in Soviet Lithuania

This article explores the post-war history of the largest mass murder site in Lithuania, Ponar, and attempts by Jewish survivors to commemorate Holocaust victims during the period of Soviet occupation (1944–1990). The research shows that in spite of the ruling authorities creating significant obstacles for the small Jewish population to hold commemorations and over the course of the various physical transformations of Ponar, the site remained one of the most significant and most symbolic for Jewish identity and Jewish resistance to state policies.

Ponar and the will to remember: Holocaust commemorations in Soviet Lithuania

This article explores the post-war history of the largest mass murder site in Lithuania, Ponar, and attempts by Jewish survivors to commemorate Holocaust victims during the period of Soviet occupation (1944–1990). The research shows that in spite of the ruling authorities creating significant obstacles for the small Jewish population to hold commemorations and over the course of the various physical transformations of Ponar, the site remained one of the most significant and most symbolic for Jewish identity and Jewish resistance to state policies.

The rustic turn during late socialism and the popular movement against Soviet rule

ABSTRACT The success of mass mobilization in Lithuania against Soviet rule in the late 1980s can be attributed in part to the spread of the ethnocultural movement in the post-Stalin era. Characterized in this paper as the “rustic turn,” it began in the late 1950s with the Soviet-wide rehabilitation of kraevedenie (local area studies), part of Khrushchev’s effort to rejuvenate grassroots political participation across the USSR. In Soviet Lithuania, the rehabilitation of kraštotyra had the unintended consequence of restoring nation-building practices from the interwar period and reintegrating individuals repressed under Stalin into public life. Rather than shaping Soviet subjects, the ethnocultural movement developed rituals of transformation that imbued the rustic ethnic past, not the Soviet future, with the aura of sacrality. Ostensibly apolitical, the movement nevertheless cultivated strong associative ties among citizens from various walks of life. With the outbreak of free discussion under glasnost, mass gatherings built upon the rituals of the ethnocultural movement to generate a community of affect grounded in nostalgia for a lost, mythical past and the trauma of displacement under the Soviet regime.

Sexual Revolution, Mobilization or Civil War: How to Understand the Soviet Transformation of Sexuality (The Case of Soviet Lithuania)

The article raises a question whether the concept of sexual revolution could be applied to the changes of sexuality in the Soviet Union. The case of one of the republics of the USSR, Soviet Lithuania is analysed. The dynamics of sexual policy, norms and behaviour that took place in 1944–1990 are examined to demonstrate what problems arise when applying the concept of the sexual revolution and a new solution is offered – the concept of sexual civil war. It is argued that this new concept points to implications that contradict the sexual revolution: the changes of sexuality are elongated and viscous, the conflicting traditional and modern norms and behaviour can overlap or entrench in separate social and cultural groups to create a kind of stalemate. Therefore the concept of sexual civil war does not stress on the changes themselves but a particular conflict in the process of a transformation of sexuality.

From the Soviet cuisine of the Northern Borderlands. The unifi cation influence of Russian on the Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian culinary phrasematics

This article concerns the culinary vocabulary of the Northern Borderlands. The subject matter of the discussions is phrasemes limited to the ones that are common to the language communities mixing in the territory of Lithuania for a long time: Lithuanians, Belarusians, Poles, and Russians. The language material comes from the Vilnius press of the period 1960–1979 and book publications printed in Soviet Lithuania in 1949–1985. It was selected from among around 120 multi-word culinary units of the Northern Borderlands according to one formula: namely, a phraseme used in the same meaning and form in Lithuanian Polish, in Russian, Belarusian, and Lithuanian.

The Efforts of the KGB to Use the Emigree Organisation Santara– Šviesa to Maintain Contact with Occupied Lithuania

Legitimacy at the international level was important for the Soviet occupation regime in Lithuania and they also wanted to achieve it with the help of the emigrants. Cultural relations were dilemma question for soviets and emigration. Culture had to attract emigrants to their side, to distract from resistance activities, to set emigrants against each other and thus to undermine all Lithuanian liberation activities. However, emigrants were seen as a danger due to the possible influence on the locals, but at the same time they were considered an opportunity to achieve political and propaganda goals. Also it influenced negatively relationship with other emigree organizations, but KGB could not make damage to their relationship remarkably. This publication reveals how and by what means Soviet security sought to use the plans of the liberal emigrants to establish personal and cultural relations with Soviet Lithuania for propaganda, agency, and political purposes of the Soviet regime. It is also important to evaluate whether the KGB has achieved its goals. Official cultural contacts were under full control of the soviet side. They were a cover for the KGB agency and propaganda activities. Despite huge efforts soviet security only partially managed to take advantage of closer contacts between emigrants and Lithuania. It can be said that emigrants only partially knew and evaluated the capabilities and methods of the KGB. They did not know how widely the KGB sought to use these connections to harm emigrants. It is believed that personal contacts were safer for emigrants’ organizations. Perhaps the KGB was most fortunate to use these contacts while performing discreditation and promoting the achievements of the soviet regime.

Gained in Translation. Postmodern Architecture in Late Soviet Lithuania

After being widely explored in the historiography of Western architecture, postmodernism has only recently started receiving adequate attention in Eastern and Central Europe. The phenomenon of postmodernism developed beyond the borders of the Soviet world, so the so-called “cultural logic of late capitalism” crossing the boundaries of the Iron Curtain has to be considered a consequence of globalization. On the other hand, this global trend was synchronized with the local expression of architecture: the pursuit of identity, attention to context and continuation of architectural traditions. Soviet publications presented postmodernism as a foreign phenomenon, but simultaneously noted that it could be useful to local architects as well. This did not imply an invitation to imitate Western colleagues, but rather signalled that certain architectural values had become globally significant to both, the capitalist and socialist industrial world. The text aims to uncover the local translations of (post)modernity in Lithuania in the context of the tendency’s peak period: the final decades of Soviet rule.

Lithuanian Memory Culture: Imaginary Communities and Memory Wars

The article offers a brief introduction to memory studies and the concept of collective memory with emphasis on the significance of this phenomenon, which coincided with discoveries in the humanities and deepened and expanded the spectrum of national cultures. The radical ideas of the Age of Enlightenment sparked self-reflection of nations and creation of imagined communities that eventually turned people into nations. New concepts of political coexistence, equality, freedom, and the distinctiveness and historical value of the national language and literature were published and made known to Lithuanians. The article dwells on the tsarist and Soviet Russian occupation policies on memory and national identity, modes of rewriting memory, the consequences of nearly two centuries of memory wars, the emigration situation, and the coexistence of the imagined communities. These imagined communities played a crucial role in constructing the nations and preparing them for independence. There were two imagined communities in the nineteenth century – the Lithuanian-speaking Lithuanians and the Polish-speaking Lithuanians who considered themselves Lithuanians, and two such communities in the twentieth century – the Lithuanians living in exile and the imaginary community remaining in Soviet Lithuania. It is such recurring patterns of society and recurring plots of events in memory preservation and memory wars that are discussed in the article. Upon the return of freedom of the press and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lithuanians discovered numerous unknown lands in the form of their culture that had been banned before. However, memory studies show that long-standing propaganda, press bans, and the rewriting of memory have not gone without consequences. The Great War and the struggles for independence that resulted in independence in 1918 remained in the margins of remembrance, although those events enabled the surge of national culture during the interwar period. The historical context of Central and Eastern Europe helps to see a broader panorama of common and relevant processes and to highlight the specifics of the Lithuanian situation, concluding that memory wars continue and deliberating whether memory culture can influence future prospects.

Economic Strategies and Immigration in the Soviet Union’s Western Borderlands: Lithuania, Latvia and Belorussia in the 1950s and 1960s

The article looks at Soviet territorial planning from the perspective of Lithuania, Latvia and Belorussia, the western frontier republics of the USSR. It explores why the impact of Soviet long-term territorial planning on economic and social development and ethnic composition was more significant in Soviet Lithuania than in neighbouring Latvia and suggests two reasons for this. First, the purge of Latvian leaders in 1959 stopped the preparation of strategies oriented to the republic’s interests. Second, the ‘bourgeois’ intellectual legacy developed back in the 1930s was brought into play at the end of the 1950s and used in support of national communist ideas in Soviet Lithuania.

From home to work to shop to home: the planned retail chain in Soviet Lithuania, 1960s–1980s

ABSTRACT A radical vision for city planning in Soviet Lithuania, starting in the 1960s, was controlled by Soviet authorities, legislation, and plans. The concept was to divide cities into mikrorayons (microdistricts) to be serviced by shopping centres with different purposes. This article reveals the significant hurdles Soviet Lithuania experienced in implementing these Soviet urban and retail models. Because of long-term planning issues and delays, the construction of shopping centres and even entire residential areas failed to meet the rapidly changing needs of society. How did the principles of Soviet urban planning influence or hinder the development of retail centres in Soviet Lithuania? Archival sources identify how these centres were reflected in urban planning documents and which rules governing the centres and their structure were applicable. This article details how a Soviet shopping centre compared ‘on paper’ to reality.

Family and the State in Soviet Lithuania: Gender, Law and Society

Dahlia Lenairte's Family and the State in Soviet Lithuania: Gender, Law and Society (2021) offers an account of the changing role and position of women in the family and in society under the Communist reign in Lithuania. Beginning with the first Soviet occupation before the Second World War, Lenairte details the massive changes from Catholicism to Communism with respect to gender policy, family, divorce, childcare, maternity leave, and finally housing, up until the 1980s. Importantly, she shows that, contrary to common belief about Communist policy, gender equality was in fact never achieved in Soviet Lithuania. Dahlia Lenairtes bog Familie og stat i Sovjet Litauen: Køn, lov og samfund (2021) er en gennemgang af kvinders ændrede roller og position i samfundet og familien under det kommunistisk styre i Litauen. Med et afsæt fra den første sovjetiske besættelse før 2. Verdenskrig viser Lenairte de enorme ændringer der skete fra katolicisme til kommunisme med hensyn til ligestilling, familie, skilsmisse, børnepasning og barselsorlov, og endelig boligsituationen op til begyndelsen af 1980'erne. I modsætning til den almindelige forståelse af kommunistisk ligestillingspolitik bliver det tydeligt, at kvinder aldrig opnåede at blive ligestillet med mænd.

Marija Gimbutienė’s relations with Soviet Lithuania and their reflection in the American-Lithuanian press

Marija Gimbutienė’s relations with Soviet Lithuania and their reflection in the American-Lithuanian press

Family and the State in Soviet Lithuania. By Dalia Leinarte. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. x, 213 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $115.00, hard bound.

Family and the State in Soviet Lithuania. By Dalia Leinarte. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. x, 213 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $115.00, hard bound.

Moderniojo lietuvių parlamentarizmo istorija Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių bibliotekos dokumentuose

The object of the research presented in this article is the history (development) of modern Lithuanian parliamentarism in 1920–2020, i. e. a century from its emergence to this time. The sources for the research are documents and iconography related to modern Lithuanian parliamentarism kept in the Manuscripts and the Rare Books Departments of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences as well as on publications of relevant documents and scholarly research. The article aims to draw attention to less-researched issues of modern Lithuanian parliamentarism based on the documents kept in the Wroblewski Library. Documents on parliamentarism in 1920–1940 reveal the key stages of this period: initial efficacy, later problems, and eventual crisis. The interwar Lithuanian “sejmocracies” and the period of the voiceless Seimas is represented by various documents from the holdings of the Library: three photographs of the Founding Seimas, election proclamations and posters, socio-political texts by Kazys Grinius, invitations, certificates, etc. The iconography of Soviet “imitational” parliamentarism (election materials, photographs) is still awaiting researchers. Documents of various convocations of the Supreme Council of Soviet Lithuania can be found in the collection of one of the most prominent Soviet ideologists, Juozas Žiugžda (F275). The documentary heritage for the post-1990 period is more fragmentary and is just beginning to be collected. The documents on the modern parliamentarism in the three latest decades (1990–2020) can at present be found only in the Ona Voverienė collection (F397), while the election publications are kept in the ephemera collection of the Rare Books Department. Keywords: Founding Seimas; “sejmocracy”; voiceless Seimas; “period of the non-existent parliament”; the second stage of the modern parliamentarism.