Meaning Twist: National Images in Lithuanian Poetry of the Late Soviet Period
Meaning Twist: National Images in Lithuanian Poetry of the Late Soviet Period

Summary/Abstract: This article analyzes the changes in poetic meanings in the late Soviet period in Lithuania. The author is looking at the homeland (tėvynė) images which were created by poets and which had become a popular content of the so-called “mass culture” (radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, choral music, poetry readings). There is widespread agreement that, although nationalism and Marxism were ideologically incompatible, Soviet ideology used certain aspects of nationalism to assert Soviet era patriotism. This article considers the significance of poetic images in the context of the political and sociocultural changes in the last decades of the Soviet occupation in Lithuania, raising the question of how national poetic images responded to and opposed Soviet ideology. It is argued, through the application of Juri Lotman’s insights on culture, that poetry during the Soviet era was able to simultaneously address two audiences: one corresponding to the Soviet ideology, the other cherishing the memory of independent Lithuania and the hope of freedom.

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