Historiography on the Soviet Era in Lithuania

Abstract

The article provides an overview of Lithuanian historiography on the years of dependence (1940–1941 and 1944–1990) in relation to the most important trends in Western Sovietology. The new narrative of the history of Lithuania takes the exposure of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its geopolitical implications as its starting point. This narrative highlighted the crimes committed against Lithuania by the two totalitarian regimes and the aspirations for liberation. This ‘occupation paradigm’, established at the time, is still dominant in Lithuania’s public discourse and is similar to the historical narratives of the other two Baltic countries. Lithuania’s peculiarity is that its cultural memory places emphasis not only on the victims of Stalinist repressions but also on the fighters against totalitarianism: the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet armed underground. Despite this, the de-Sovietisation that began in Lithuania in 1990 took on certain specific features: unlike in other Baltic countries, lustration has not been completed here. The most important external and internal factors that contributed to the change in Lithuanian historiography during the transition period were the following: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relatively peaceful end of the Cold War; the interest of the public and the new political-academic-cultural elite in filling in the so-called ‘white spots’ of history, which manifested itself in the establishment of ideologically unengaged centres of historical research and studies; the sudden rise of the traumatic memory of repressions that had been frozen by the regime for decades and the emergence of the ‘communities of memory’ based on this memory (exiles, political prisoners, dissidents), which eventually became involved in the creation of the new grand historical narrative. These fundamental changes also led to the rewriting of autobiographies, including the publication of memoirs of Soviet figures at various levels and scales, and other documentary production (films, historical broadcasts, ceremonies of the transportation of the remains of Stalin’s victims from the locations of their exile in Siberia and reburial in Lithuania, memorial laws, public debates, museum exhibitions, etc.).
Given this broader socio-political context, the development of Lithuanian historiography on the Soviet era can be conditionally divided into two phases. From 1989 to around 2005, a stronger focus was placed on the processes and circumstances of ‘hard’ Sovietisation, starting from the efforts to fill in the ‘white spots’ of history (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the first Soviet occupation, the June Uprising) to the scale and consequences of Soviet repression. Research on the occupation, the annexation, and the Sovietisation of society was broadened and studies into the networks
alternative to the Soviet regime (the underground, the peaceful resistance of the Catholic Church, etc.) were conducted. During that period, much attention was devoted to the depiction of the ‘collective portrait of the nomenklatura’. Although from around 2005 onwards, in the second phase of research on ‘soft Sovietisation’, studies into the themes of the first phase were continued, greater interest was shown in analysing what lies between resistance and collaboration, i.e., adaptation to the Soviet system. Studies carried out in this area made it possible to draw clearer contours of the ‘collective portrait of the intelligentsia’ and to reconstruct the informal networks of the members of society whose activities had a significant impact on the world outlook and values of Lithuanians at the time. Significant progress was also made in exploring the state of national culture during the Soviet period
(literature, architecture, heritage conservation, cinematography, photography, historical politics, subcultures, etc.). In the recent decade, with the aim at shedding more light on the specificities of the ‘boredom society’ of the late Soviet period, the field of research has been increasingly broadened to include Soviet economy and the analysis of informal socio-economic relations and everyday life. Gradually, historical scholarship is moving towards comparative studies of deeper layers of social history, such as collectivisation, industrialisation, and urbanisation, Lithuania as a part of the Soviet ‘Little West’, etc.
In their recent texts, the Lithuanian historians avoid looking at Soviet society and culture as a single entity strictly controlled by the regime and ideology and easily divided into binary oppositions. At the same time, however, there is a danger of straying to the other extreme, when, imperceptibly, the totalitarian regime seems to be normalised and, or of maintaining the view that Soviet authorities had no influence on culture or people’s everyday lives. Although the topic of ‘internal’ or ‘unarmed’ resistance in the post-Stalin period is still quite popular in Lithuania, it is important not to lose sight of the processes through which the authorities consolidated their influence in various spheres of life, as well as the extent to which it regulated society, culture, and everyday life at different periods.
The brief discussion of the Lithuanian historiography on the Soviet period in this paper in terms of the path it has covered so far and its main trends suggests that it only partially coincides with the paradigms that are distinguished in classical Sovietology (totalitarianism, revisionism, post-revisionism, transitology). The differences observed are due to the specificity of Lithuania: a late start of politically disengaged research (with the exception of the interwar period at Vilnius University), as it emerged at a time when this discipline was facing serious reputational difficulties in the West and when it had to reorganise and adapt itself to the newly-evolving post-Cold War situation.
After the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and especially following the outbreak of the full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, the growing geopolitical threat posed by Russia to Lithuania and the whole post-Soviet region has once again sharpened the question of the assessment of the Soviet era. This led to the adoption, in 2023, of the Law on the Prohibition of the Promotion of Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes and their Ideologies and the formation of an expert commission for its implementation. It undertook the erasing of the remaining Soviet-era memorial signs (monuments, street names, names of institutions, etc.) from public spaces, which caused quite a controversy as the most important Soviet ideological and propaganda signs were removed still in the 1990s, and the Commission focused its attention on the memorial signs of the cultural figures who lived under the regime and served it. Here we seem to be witnessing a shift from the paradigm of ‘occupation’ to that of ‘collaboration’, when it is no longer the perpetrators of crimes and ‘our’ victims or heroes who are put first, but local traitors and collaborators of the imposed regime. At the same time, perhaps following the expanded concept of the Holocaust, the very notion of ‘collaboration’ has been broadened enormously and extends even to the post-war works of Lithuanian writers and poets who paid tribute to the ideological demands of the time. Thus, the narrative of liberation of the Baltic Chain period is moving towards the hunt for ‘one’s own guilty’, which divides and annoys the public. Still, the decolonising discourse prevalent among the Ukrainian and Belarusian opposition in the context of war has practically bypassed Lithuania: except for some intellectuals, there is no willingness to talk about the internal colonisation of societies during the Soviet period, the totalitarian consciousness, and the consequences of the implementation of the homo sovieticus project. This is quite paradoxical, because we have a homo sovieticus museum in Vilnius, which, however, remains on the sidelines of the exciting public debate.
The images of the Soviet era, entrenched in society and often grossly simplified and even vulgarised, are increasingly exploited in political struggle. In this uncertain situation and in order to maintain objectivity and impartiality, historians tend to avoid political engagement. Thus, their academic discoveries and internal discussions, which could significantly enrich and broaden our understanding of the years of dependency, remain poorly integrated in the current public debate, which is dominated by simplistic evaluations of the Soviet period that are not conducive to a better understanding of the Soviet era. This leads to a paradoxical situation: the paradigm of totalitarianism still prevails in the public space and in the politics of history, while revisionism or even post-revisionism is already taking root in the academic sphere. Unfortunately, these significant qualitative changes in our historiography have only a weak impact on the field of the public debate and an even lesser effect on the rise in its quality. As a result, historical journalism, discussions in social networks, or para-historical literature are trying to fill this gap. In conclusion, there is still a vast expanse of untouched territory in the reflection on the history of the Soviet era.