Critique of the Works in Lithuanian Studies from an Ideological-Political Aspect in Antanas Mažiulis’s Reviews

Abstract

The study examines the history of the evaluation of scholarly works through Antanas Mažiulis’s (1914–2007) extensive reviews of works in Lithuanian studies. His reviews were characterised not only by shared insights, but also by the ideological-political aspect of the criticism of the reviewed works, which was especially evident in the 1950s–1960s. It is the latter aspect of Mažiulis’s evaluation of the reviewed works that we aim to reveal in this article. For this purpose, 27 reviews by Antanas Mažiulis are analysed in the article using a qualitative content analysis method.
Reviewing the first works of the Lithuanian humanities during the Soviet period, Antanas Mažiulis described the position and conditions of ethnologists in their research: only few people were working in the field, the archives in foreign countries were inaccessible to them, a difficult situation of museums, dire opportunities for field research; limited availability of scientific literature, especially published in Western countries; the methodology of dialectical materialism, which was obligatory for researchers, narrowed the fields of research (mainly material culture) in Soviet Lithuania, ‘new traditions’ were ‘invented’, and the collection of ‘new’ folklore, local history material about communists, war veterans, etc. In his reviews, he discussed the quality of copyediting, the spelling of names, the citation of literature, and the translation of summaries into Russian. All of this showed the disparaging attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the works in the humanities and their authors.
Antanas Mažiulis considered the theoretical interpretations in the works, which highlighted East Slavic (Russian) prehistory and culture, to be biased and unfounded. He accepted neither the theories of common Baltic and East Slavic origins nor cultural influences of the East Slavs, which were artificially deduced in the works of Soviet scholars. On the contrary, he often identified Baltic influences on the East Slavs.
Mažiulis also spotted the impact of Soviet propaganda and the spread of biased attitudes in the works of foreign and Lithuanian émigré authors. In his reviews, he corrected the falsehoods he observed, added his own testimonies, and defended the efforts of the Christians in the struggle for Lithuania’s freedom.
His reviews of the Lithuanian encyclopaedias (Lietuvių enciklopedija [The Lithuanian Encyclopaedia] and Encyclopedia Lituanica) were exceptional not only because he had worked in the editorial office of Lietuvių enciklopedija and was familiar with the subtleties of the work, but also because he provided interesting details from the history of the publication of these encyclopaedias. According to Mažiulis’s reviews, perhaps the main motive for publishing Lietuvių enciklopedija was the importance of Lithuanian culture (especially by consolidating Lithuanian place names, telling the stories of places), maintaining Lithuanianness, and telling the truth as a counterbalance to the communist lies, despite the fact that Lietuvių enciklopedija and Encyclopedia Lituanica were not easily accessible in Soviet Lithuania.
Antanas Mažiulis’s reviews reveal both the ideological-political circumstances of the Lithuanian studies at that time and his desire to maintain the Lithuanian studies as part of Western European scholarship.