In search of a native realm : the making of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, 1883-1914 : disertacija

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Inteligentija; Nacionalinis judėjimas; Patriotinis elitas; Intelligentsia; Lithuanian national movement; Patriotic elite.

ENThis dissertation seeks to examine the formation and development of the Lithuanian national intelligentsia from 1883 to the outbreak of World War One. Structurally, it focuses on three major historical developments: the birth of the first press communities of the Lithuanian patriotic elite throughout the 1880’s -1890’s, the 1905 revolution, and the period of “national cultural work” from 1906 to 1914. These were the critical moments that shaped and determined the social, political, and cultural condition and character of the Lithuanian intelligentsia as well as Lithuanian nationalism in general. This dissertation provides a social and cultural history of how in different ways a small group of the educated Lithuanian youth, having returned from their educational pilgrimages at metropolitan universities of the Russian empire, came to define and articulate themselves as a national elite. The work examines the social and institutional origins of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, its demographic, generational and occupational features, its transformation into a semi-urban elite, political mobilization, and nationbuilding strategies and practices. Thematically, it concentrates on the exploration of the private lives of leading members of the patriotic elite. Not only the patriotic press, but also private diaries, letters and literary works are scrutinized in order to understand how nationalism shaped their individual lifes, identities, and values.Special emphasis is placed on gender issues within the Lithuanian national movement, on the marital strategies and patterns of the intelligentsia, and on the relationship between male and female patriots. One of the central aims is to examine those features of the Lithuanian national movement, which point to its modem, constitutive, and socially constructed character. The Lithuanian intelligentsia is presented as a new and dynamic sociocultural group, with rapidly shifting identity, often in conflict with its own native peasant milieu, other ethnic groups, and also in need of new codes and practices of social behaviour that would strengthen its newly acquired status as a national elite. This work offers exploration of some of these practices in the context of the development of self-consciousness of the Lithuanian patriotic elite. [From the publication]