Ile tożsamości może reprezentować jeden obraz pamięci zbiorowej – analiza jednego przypadku w międzywojennej Polsce i Litwie
How Many Identities Can One Image of Collective Memory Represent – an Analysis of a Case from Interwar Poland and Lithuania

Author(s): Dangiras Mačiulis
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: collective identity; collective memory; nationalism; Samogitia; Kražiai massacre
Summary/Abstract: In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire held power in Lithuania and spread the Orthodox faith, building Orthodox Christian churches and closing down Catholic ones. The year 1893 had the greatest impact in the Diocese of Samogitia, where Catholics put up resistance to the tsarist government’s attempt to close the church in Kražiai. The protestors were extremely brutally suppressed, due to which the events came to be called the Kražiai massacre. This episode in the history of the interwar period became an important image in the collective memory of Lithuanians and Poles. The article analyses how the imagery of the Kražiai massacre was used to represent different identities. It is argued that in the Second Polish Republic, the Kražiai massacre was presented as a proof of the heroism demonstrated by the Polish people in defending their religious and national identity. The image painted in this way represented the ideology of the Krajowcy movement. In interwar Lithuania, the dominant view was that the Kražiai massacre was a story of Lithuanians defending their religious and national identity; in addition, it was emphasised that it was an element of collective memory that belonged exclusively to Lithuanians. At the same time, the massacre was also used by those who wanted to highlight the identity of one of the sub-ethnicities of the Lithuanian nation – Samogitia.

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