Apie lietuviškumo galią ištverti ir keisti politines sistemas: pokalbis su istoriku Vladu Sirutavičiumi

ENA hymn to ethnic power - this is how the review of the monograph Politinė galia ir lietuviškas etniškumas: vėlyvasis stalinizmas ir ankstyvoji destalinizacija Lietuvoje 1944-1956 m. [Political Power and Lithuanian Ethnicity: Late Stalinism and Early Destalinisation in Lithuania 1944-1956] by Dr. Vladas SIRUTAVIČIUS, released in 2022, was named by his colleague from the Lithuanian Institute of History, Dr Česlovas Laurinavičius. According to his review, this book, which “blazes a new trail in Lithuanian historiography research,” challenges both contemporary propaganda cliches and traditional approaches to writing history. Without aiming for a systematic and detailed discussion of armed resistance, Soviet repression, and other defined period processes, it stands out with its focus on Lithuanian ethnic identity. Drawing on the concept of ethnic identity as a historically stable and perhaps determining phenomenon, as interpreted by Anthony D. Smith, the Lithuanian historian extended this idea, seeing political power inherent in ethnic identity. According to Dr Sirutavičius, “Lithuanian ethnic identity within the Soviet political structure unwittingly maintained the perspective of politicisation,” and the accumulated cultural and social capital turned into political capital in the 1990s when Lithuania regained independence. The interview with Dr Sirutavičius touches more broadly on the 1946 Song Festival — one of the cultural field narratives discussed in the book, the sum of which presents a new view of the Stalinist era.This year marks the centenary of the Lithuanian Song Festival - an occasion to once again ask we should understand and evaluate the half-century of this tradition under Soviet occupation; it has become fashionable to dismiss it as being ideologically corrupted, degraded, and transformed, as described by philosopher Dr Nerija Putinaitė, into a pillar of Soviet Lithuanian identity. The political regime has a much smaller impact on ethnic culture than it sometimes seems; political ideas change much faster than the ethnocultural foundation, says Dr Sirutavičius. [From the publication]