ANEKSINIO LIETUVOS LAIKOTARPIO TYRINĖJIMŲ PROBLEMOS
THE PERIOD OF LITHUANIA‘S ANNEXATION: PROBLEMS OF RESEARCH

Summary/Abstract: Investigating the period from 1940 to 1990 confronts us with complex problems. It is one thing to do research on a free society, and quite another to investigate a society in which it is dangerous to express one‘s opinion in public. An unanalytical application of criteria appropriate for evaluating democratic societies to totalitarian ones gives an inadequate picture of the latter. In analyzing Lithuania‘s condition during the occupation period and determining (a) the changes in the empire; (b) its ideological prescriptions; (c) who used them and how; i.e., the real possibilities for action; and (d) the distribution of sources (archives, memoirs, their interrelations and dependability), we elucidate the mechanism of the regime‘s functioning and its ideological justification. The inhabitants of Soviet-annexed Lithuania were forced to chose among (A) faithfully serving the regime and expecting to be rewarded; (B) accommodating the regime without particular zeal; (C) looking for legal ways of preserving the national identity; and (D) openly confronting the regime. Groups (A) and (D) made up an absolute minority of Lithuanian subjects. People in (A) and (B) were the safest; those in (D) were in the greatest danger (at any time they risked their freedom or even their life). Intellectuals and technocrats often chose (C). For this reason investigating works of literature, journalism, theater, visual art, and similar phenomena belongs not only to cultural studies, but to the history of political thought as well. In the absence of possibilities for legal political activity the authors of such works in Lithuania consciously (or unconsciously) fostered a national consciousness and an allegiance to Lithuanian statehood. Clandestine publications performed the function of an underground organization. They joined together publishers, authors, distributors, and readers. Since there are few direct sources on this, it is appropriate to devise and use a method of interviewing participants; to distinguish the Aesopian language used by some cultural workers in legally printed texts from ordinary witticisms; and accurately to decipher the former, as the readers and art consumers of those times understood that language perfectly.

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