Tarp „Šviesos“ ir „Santaros“: Greimo ryšiai su jaunąja liberaliosios srovės karta
Between Šviesa and Santara: Greimas’s Ties to the Younger Generation of Liberals

Summary/Abstract: Algirdas Julius Greimas was one of the more influential leaders of the Lithuanian liberal movement broadly conceived. The first postwar years saw him actively engaged in the activities of diaspora resistance organizations, the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Alliance, and the United Democratic Resistance Movement. From 1950 onwards he was no longer active in politics but remained close to his intellectual soulmates and continued to be one of the liberal movement’s leaders in the diaspora. This article analyzes Greimas’s relations with the organizations Šviesa and Santara in particular and young Lithuanian liberals in general. Both of these organizations (Šviesa, created in 1946 in Germany, and Santara, founded in 1954 in the U.S.) came into being as independent associations of liberally-minded Lithuanian academic youth disclaiming any ties with older organizations that existed earlier. Nevertheless the experience of such elder generation liberals as Greimas, their ways of thinking, ideology, and moral support were important signposts for young people as they developed their own organizations. Greimas put a lot of hope in Šviesa and showed much interest in, and concern for, its activities. His closest ties were with members of resistance groups, but he was directly involved with Šviesa, too: he initiated and founded its Paris chapter. Although he was not active in, nor a member of, Santara (and later Santara-Šviesa), in 1965 he participated in Santara-Šviesa’s annual conference and read a paper there which, along with his other essays and ideas, provoked vigorous responses not only among members of Santara but the wider Lithuanian-American community as well.

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