1893 metų Kražių skerdynės. Senelių prisiminimai

• Rimkus-Šlinskis, Antanas, sudarymas [com]
• Mačiulis, Dangiras, parengė [com]
• Staliūnas, Darius, parengė [com]

LTPublikuojami Antano Rimkaus-Šlinskio 1938–1940 m. užrašyti vadinamųjų „Kražių skerdynių“ dalyvių ir amžininkų prisiminimai apie Kražių bažnyčios gynimą 1893 m. 1938–1940 m. Antano Rimkaus-Šlinskio užrašyti kražiškių prisiminimai atskleidžia, kas vyko „Kražių skerdynių“ metu. Net iš pirmo žvilgsnio nereikšmingos pasakojimų detalės padeda rekonstruoti įvykio aplinkybes ir eigą, dalyvių motyvus ir lūkesčius. Be to, šie pasakojimai supažindina su XIX a. visuomenės pasipriešinimų anatomija bei valstiečių pasaulėžiūra. Tai vienintelis mums žinomas Tarpukario Lietuvoje įgyvendintas sumanymas surinkti konkretaus istorinio įvykio dalyvių ir amžininkų liudijimus. Šiuo požiūriu kražiškių prisiminimai yra unikalus komunikacinės atminties šaltinis. [Anotacija knygoje]

ENThis is a collection of the stories about ‘the Kražiai massacre’ (1893) told by forty-six people and compiled by Antanas Šlinskis (Rimkus) between 1938 and 1940. The introduction presents the biography of Antanas Rimkus (1910-1979), the history of collecting the reminiscences of the defenders of the church, the twists and turns in the publishing of individual excerpts, and a comparison of these reminiscences with other similar projects carried out during the interwar period. In the nineteenth century, the Russian imperial authorities sought to undermine the influence of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. In the diocese of Samogitia (Telšiai), it closed almost fifty Catholic monasteries and convents and often the churches that belonged to them. Occasionally, when the authorities tried to close churches, the Catholics resisted. The most resonant event occurred in 1893, when the Catholics opposed the attempt of the tsarist government to close the church of the Benedictine convent in Kražiai (Krože in Polish). The civil authorities used force against the church defenders. The extremely brutal suppression of the grassroots resistance led to ‘the Kražiai massacre’, a story of the defence of the church that was widely covered by the international press. Already on the eve of the First World War, ‘the Kražiai massacre’ had become a proof of the brutality of the Russian imperial power and a symbol of the Catholics’ attachment to their religion and their sacrifice. In 1933, the fortieth anniversary of this event was marked in Lithuania and Poland. ‘The Kražiai massacre’ stirred interest of many a Polish and Lithuanian historian.The events of 1893 stayed alive in the communicative memory of the people of Kražiai as well. The history of the defence of the church turned into a major historical episode that imparted an exceptional aspect to the town and became a source of pride for the local community. In the late 1930s, Antanas Rimkus started to collect the reminiscences of the participants in ‘the Kražiai massacre’. In 1937, Antanas’s brother Stanislovas Rimkus, a priest, invited him to Kražiai, where Antanas found employment in Catholic organisations. Acting in unison, the brothers founded the museum of ‘the Kražiai massacre’ and Antanas started collecting reminiscences about the 1893 incident. Here he started a family: on 2 October 1938, his brother priest married him to Aleksandra Eidukaitė from Kražiai. However, all the plans for his personal life and public activity were shattered by the Soviet occupation in 1940. On 6 August, Soviet repressive organs arrested Stanislovas Rimkus accusing him of anti-Soviet agitation. The parishioners spared no effort to rescue the clergyman, but to no avail. Initially he was sentenced to prison, but in 1942 he was handed out capital punishment and executed. To escape repression, Antanas left Kražiai. Later, he worked in education in various places in Lithuania, but it is likely that he could not keep such jobs for long because of his religious views. He then started working as an accountant. Upon retirement, he wrote a manuscript on the history of Kražiai, which was essentially a history of Catholicism in this town. This historical overview of Kražiai appeared posthumously in a collective monograph on Kražiai published in the USA in 1983. Antanas Rimkus maintained contacts with dissidents, publishers, and distributors of the illegal press.Together with his relative Steponas Girčys, who worked as a printer in Tauragė district, Rimkus helped Paulius Petronis, who secretly printed Catholic publications during the Soviet period, to set up an illegal linotype print shop. Between 1938 and 1940, while interviewing the participants in the events, Rimkus did not attempt to meticulously write down each word of each witness he heard. He listened attentively to the narrator, recorded what he thought was important to know in order to reconstruct the events and circumstances as accurately as possible, and omitted information and repetitions that appeared to be of little value. There are episodes in the reminiscences where it is difficult to distinguish whether the recorded words came from the narrator of the story or from Rimkus, who was writing them down. Nonetheless, we have no reason to suspect that Rimkus deliberately sought to conceal something in the stories he had heard. It seems that only when he started to write down these reminiscences did he realise that the idea of revealing the events ‘as they really were’ with the help of his contemporaries was going to be much more difficult to implement, because some of the important participants, such as clergymen, were no longer be available to be interviewed, and some of the participants, such as the women who had the traumatic experience of abuse, would be reluctant to talk about the sexual violence they had suffered, and he himself would not be prepared to ask them about it. [...]. [From the publication]