LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS VALSTYBINĖ SIMBOLIKA: PAVELDĖTOS AR „IŠRASTOS“ TRADICIJOS?
THE NATIONAL SYMBOLS OF LITHUANIA: THE INHERITED OR “INVENTED” TRADITIONS?

Summary/Abstract: The main question of this article is: does the national symbols of the Republic of Lithuania retain the seman¬tic content of community’s consolidation today which express the ties of nation, who had re-established the independence and sovereignty since 11th of March in 1990, with traditions of statehood created by the generations in the past, or not, these traditions are created artificially at current time by the experts of the past giving them a new shade of content? Four blocks of sources are used in the analysis with the purpose to supply validate answers into that problematical question: the documentary of Sąjūdis movement, the legislation of national symbolism, historiography and journalism. The theory of “the invention of tra¬ditions” created by Eric Hobsbawm (1983) is chosen as the theoretical background, where the moment of reconstruction of traditions is emphasized during the transitional periods of societies. The present analysis reveals that the concern of legislation of national sym¬bolism belongs to the narrow group of experts of the past institutionalized in the commission of Lithuanian heraldry in the Republic of Lithuania today, whose de¬cisions often are in confrontation with the elements of meanings of national symbolism, which “really” exist in the collective memory of Lithuanian society. The society is prepared to defend the symbols of statehood inherited from the interwar period of the Republic of Lithuania, such as the national flag – tricolour and the national anthem – “The National Hymn” created by Vincas Kudirka. While the persons who have the po¬litical power of legislation making process are trying to invent the traditions with the illusion to renovate the symbolic meanings from the period of statehood of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In this context the renovation of the statehood’s traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania becomes artificial and is similar not into the inheritance of traditions, but into the reconstruction or “invention” of tradition.

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