Mechys Laurinkus. About Soviet Lithuania and adaptation
Three generations of Lithuania lived in a land occupied by the Soviets, in a society that the occupying power was labeled as socialist, but in reality it was resisted with arms, later underground, and collaborated, and reconciled with the situation, and adapted, and finally massively participated in the Baltic Way.
I lived in socialist Lithuania for 39 years and to this day I cannot say what kind of society I was in at that time. Early on, I met A. Patacks, a signatory of the Act of March 11, who was a dissident and later went to the dungeons of the KGB, with a large group of like-minded people, but it was difficult to understand what was going on more widely, under the “socialist” cover.
Tractors and combine harvesters rumbled in the fields, there was a socialist race between workers bent over machine tools in factories, there were queues to get an apartment, stamped newspaper articles that even the writers themselves did not read, lectures about the unstoppable decay of capitalist countries, meeting letters on the bulletin board about a writer coming to town. described: “Well, he is brave, directly on power, and the speech ends with a belief in socialism, so it is necessary.”
Sometimes there were murmurs from “the depths of the people”, by the way, more often from Russia than Lithuania, but suddenly they were heard quickly and were muffled.
For some time I had to work in Vilnius, at the Electric Meter Factory, in the chemical coatings workshop.
The conditions are ugly, dangerous, the authorities even distributed milk for free. During the break (“refueling”), the worker says: we here, in this workshop, will soon “break down”, something needs to be done, after all, workers in other countries are on strike. Strike, strike, answered another worker, but first find out what happened in Novocherkassk. After these words, the pipers dispersed faster than smoke.
Information about the shooting of the strikers right on the street in Novocherkassk had already leaked out, even though the residents of the town were forced to sign that what they saw and heard was a state secret.
It was clear to everyone – if you resist the system, you will be destroyed physically.
I write those already banal things not for my contemporaries, but for the youngest generation, that part of it, which suddenly starts and asks: why did so few people in Lithuania resist the Soviet rule?
Or maybe a considerable part did not resist and even believed in the ideas of socialism, asks the student, showing the number of LKP members in 1986 on “Wikipedia”. – 197,274. Three million is a big number. And where are the other party structures?
After all, not only Russians sat in them. There was such a Vilnius higher party school, which operated from 1945 to 1990. Sąjūdis is outside the window, and you get tired of reading the list of those who want to improve at school.
It is difficult for the student to answer the question, what was the pre-Soviet society of Lithuania like and how did thousands of crowds with the words “Lithuania, Lithuania” suddenly appear in the mowed meadow of the Soviet era in Vingios Park.
We know the names and surnames of the dissidents who resisted the occupation of Lithuania in the post-war years and later, they are constantly remembered and honored.
But how to evaluate those who resisted in their thoughts, and adapted in real life, but at the same time fought for the preservation of the Lithuanian language, resisted Russification, the destruction of national culture? How did the Lithuanian intelligentsia, if it existed at all, perceive its role during the Soviet era?
I read the book “Standing under a tree?” by the historian V. Klumbis (born in 1979). Behavioral strategies of the Lithuanian intelligentsia in the Soviet era”.
Solid, interesting and very scientific study. The main theme of the book, according to the author, is adaptation, which dominated the behavior of the intelligentsia, like all other groups in society.
There are many shades of adaptation, but this is not a study of psychology. V. Klumbi is concerned with how adaptation is compatible with the intellectual’s sense of responsibility in the face of the fate of his nation.
“During the period of national revival or between the wars, the intelligentsia was the layer that had to awaken and educate the nation, lead it, express its best features in its activities and creativity. In the Soviet era, it is difficult, if possible, to see the image of such an intelligentsia – the leader of the nation – for many people,” writes the historian.
The author of the book is trying to do exactly what it can be – to justify adaptation to the system with the noble goal of educating society, introducing the growing generation to the undistorted history of Lithuania in various forms, protecting and defending the language, studies on the development of Lithuanian culture, its revival in the 19th century. at the end, to develop, albeit indirectly, national self-awareness.
My point of view, one of the conclusions of the book is correct: “The fight for the survival of the nation, compatible and almost mandatory for the intelligentsia, as well as the awareness of its own adaptability, encouraged the common opinion among the intelligentsia (also in the Soviet era) that their activity in the Soviet era was one form or another of resistance – cultural, passive , moral, cultural, internal, etc.”
I can confirm my experience about such existing forms of resistance. Joining the communist side sometimes even made it easier to do noble work.
Of course, all these forms of resistance pale in comparison to all resistance.
however, it is not bleaching coffins either. Soviet Lithuanian society was much more complicated than it might seem at first. V. Klumbi was lucky to show it.