Pokaris Lietuvoje belaukiant išlaisvinimo

LTKnygoje nagrinėjama istoriografijoje nauja tema – 1944–1956 m. Lietuvos gyventojų politiniai lūkesčiai greit sulaukti Lietuvos valstybingumo atkūrimo ir jų paskatintas slapstymasis nuo gresiančių sovietų režimo represijų. Analizuojamos visuomenės nuotaikos ir Šaltojo karo ideologijos paveiktų propagandos priemonių – lietuvių pogrindžio spaudos, užsienio radijo stočių transliacijų ir sovietinės žiniasklaidos – įtaka gyventojų lūkesčiams. Aptariama pažeidžiamiausių gyventojų grupių savigyna nuo režimo represijų pasitraukiant į pasyvųjį pogrindį. Tiriama šio pogrindžio (kuriame gyventa slapstantis, keičiant tapatybę ir laukiant geresnių laikų) mastas, būdingos pavienių asmenų bei šeimų išgyvenimo slapstantis strategijos ir režimo pasitelktos paieškos priemonės. Atskirai analizuojamos aplinkybės, kuriomis išsisklaidė išlaisvinimo lūkesčiai ir 1955–1956 m. nunyko pasyvusis pogrindis. [Anotacija knygoje]

ENThe Lithuanians, who had created and nurtured their national state between 1918 and 1940, did not find it easy to come to terms with its loss under a new Soviet occupation in 1944. The first post-war years were marked by partisan warfare, the scale of which was largely determined by the conviction that the political situation would soon change and that the countries captured by the Soviet Union would be liberated. For at least a decade after the war, the part of Lithuanian society that did not accept the occupation had been waiting for the news from the world’s great powers that were capable of opposing the Soviet Union. This news inspired hope both for the political commentators from the anti-Soviet underground and for ordinary observers of the events: the confrontation between the democratic West and the communist camp was growing, and the occupation of Lithuania was not recognised in the West. It was only decades later that the expectations of a speedy liberation turned out to be naive and based just on persuasive rhetoric and rumours. After the war, they seemed almost within reach; they were vital not only for Lithuania, but also for the part of Europe that was cut off by the Iron Curtain - for all the Soviet-enslaved nations of Central Eastern Europe. This study addresses new questions in historiography about the political expectations of the Lithuanian population to see the restoration of the country’s statehood in the near future, between 1944 and 1956, and the phenomenon of self- defence against the repression of the Soviet regime, which threatened whole groups of society.The study focuses on the situation of the people not directly involved in the anti-Soviet underground, but who, because of their social origin or political views and because of the positions they had held between 1918 and 1944, had a well-founded fear of being caught up in the whirlpool of mass repression. The object of this research is the efforts of the unorganised part of society - individuals and families raising children - to find their way in the political situation of 1944-1956 and to circumvent the dangers of this situation on their own. Thousands of Lithuanians who never had or could have held a gun in their hands, many women and children among them, went into hiding in the post-war years. This phenomenon can be seen as a form of the passive underground. Admittedly, it was not the underground that accumulated active resistance. The people who found themselves in it were not underground activists in the usual sense of the word. They chose to live in the underground not because of their illegal activities but for reasons of selfpreservation. Often such a situation was not premeditated: having gone into hiding spontaneously (having left their homes at the time of deportations, during a hunt for conscripts, or having been warned of arrest), the next day people were unable or did not dare not return to their homes. They were forced to continue hiding and to look for ways of survival. At the beginning of the Soviet occupation, it seemed that hiding would not last long, and it was not difficult to hide because of the post-war turmoil and the weakness of the local authorities. A society living under totalitarianism resembles the archaeological layers in which unexpected finds are being constantly discovered. A simulacrum based on official ideology and fear of repression for a long time, it eventually reveals an incredible diversity of behaviour and deviations from the image sanctioned and standardised by the regime.The contexts of the expectations of the liberation from the Soviet occupation and self-defence against repression are analysed in the book through four main themes: 1) by analysing the political expectations typical of a part of the society between 1944 and 1956 regarding the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania and the most important sources of information supporting them; 2) by ‘taking inventory’ of the groups of people directly threatened by repression of the Soviet regime, which led some of them to go into hiding (in the terms of the Soviet authorities at the time, to become ‘illegals’ or ‘to go into an illegal status’); by an investigation of the ways in which they survived in hiding; 3) by analysing the efforts and possibilities of the internal affairs and security organs (NKVD-MVD/NKGB-MGB-KGB) to unmask people hiding from repression; 4) finally, by answering the questions of when and why the hopes for the restoration of the statehood of Lithuania finally dissipated and how the ‘illegals’, i. e., the individuals and families who had been in hiding for a long time and had changed their identities in a variety of ways, resolved their conflict with the Soviet authorities. [...]. [From the publication]