Kaunas – exhibition in memory of R. Kalanta: 50 years ago, his drastic protest shook Lithuania and the world
The free exhibition in memory of R. Kalanta and other Soviet resistance will run until May 29, the organizers said.
The exhibition, organized by the Andrei Sakharov Center for Democracy Research at Vytautas Magnus University (Vytautas Magnus University), tells about the activities of opposition movements and the means they have had in the fight for freedom, and their belief that communist rule is not eternal.
“One of the most important things in defending the human rights movement was the provision of information about the arrests of Soviet political prisoners and the struggle for freedom to both the local population and Western society through independent publications, newspapers, documents, various attributes, photographs and tapes,” the report said. . Robert van Warren, director of the Andrei Sakharov Center.
Exhibition dedicated to the memory of Roma Kalanta in Kaunas / photo by Erik Ovcharenko
He himself transported an independent press from Russian dissidents to Westerners during the Soviet era.
The exhibition “Kaleidoscope of the Opposition to the Communist Government” provides an opportunity for the public to get acquainted with a copy of the self-published (“samizdat” in Russian) and to see unprecedented models of the independent Soviet press. Visitors will also be able to see the opposition symbols of Lithuania, Poland, then Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.
Exhibition dedicated to the memory of Roma Kalanta in Kaunas / photo by Erik Ovcharenko
Part of the material exhibited at the exhibition was collected by a physicist and diplomat, Petras Vaitiekūnas, a signatory of the Act of Independence of Lithuania on March 11, and actively participated in the activities of the Sąjūdis. In the late eighth century, he organized the printing of independent publications from all over the USSR, even from South Sakhalin. P.Vaitiekūnas was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and served as the Ambassador of Lithuania to Ukraine when the Maidan protests took place in 2013–2014.
According to the head of the Sakharov Center, the exhibition will remember not only R. Kalanta, but also other young people who sacrificed their lives: Jan Palach, a student who burned down in Prague in 1968 to protest against the Soviet invasion, was inspired to sell his model Eliyahu Rips in Latvia. He survived, was imprisoned.
Exhibition dedicated to the memory of Roma Kalanta in Kaunas / photo by Erik Ovcharenko
Exhibition dedicated to the memory of Roma Kalanta in Kaunas / photo by Erik Ovcharenko
“There will be a special section in the exhibition to commemorate all of them, and we will also discuss their resistance at the annual Andrei Sakharov Conference, which will take place in Kaunas on May 13-14 and will be attended by Eliyahu Rips himself,” van Warren said.
Visitors will also be able to see the equipment used to produce independent publications in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, including a typewriter similar to that used by the dissident writer and later Czech President Vaclav Havel. There will also be a section dedicated to the free trade union Solidarity in Poland, which threatened the Communist Party’s dominance.
The exhibition features artifacts from the Libri Prohibiti Library in Prague, as well as the archives of the European Solidarity Center in Gdansk and the University of Bremen.
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