The Lithuanian phoenix : studies and essays, 1940-1990

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Sovietmetis; Sovietologija; Lietuvos istorija; Okupacija; Nepriklausomybės atkūrimas; Soviet period; Sovietology; Lithuanian history; Occupation; Re-establishment of independence.

ENThe focus of the studies and essays, written the 1960's and 1970's, is on the Lithuanian Communist Party, its social and political composition, the structure of power, the character of top leaders and their role not only in administering the republic, but also on the impact on the All-Union politics. This particular focus on the politics in a Soviet republic is in a way to redress the balance of Western scholarship, which heavily favored studies of politics in the Kremlin, missing to a significant degree the diversity of Soviet society, the diversity among the republics and their particular interests. Autonomist, nationalist and religious interests played increasingly an important political role.The rise of the dissident movement was a prelude to the negation of "Homo Sovieticus" and the Soviet announced inevitability of merger of nations and a birth of all-peoples state. Eventually it was not just economics or "Star Wars", or succession struggles in the Kremlin, but also republic interests that doomed the Soviet Union and led to the disintegration of the Communist empire and the emergence or re-emergence of the constituent republics as independent states.