Entangled history, history education, and affective communities in Lithuania

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Pereinamasis laikotarpis; Sovietinė okupacija; Sovietinis režimas; Nacių režimas; Holokaustas; Stalinizmas; Tremtis; Antisovietinis pasipriešinimas; Istorinė atmintis; Istorinė trauma; Emocinė bendruomenė; Atminties režimas; Istorijos mokymas; Transitional justice; Soviet regime; Soviet occupation; Nazi regime; Holocaust; Stalinism; Exile; Anti-Soviet resistance; Historical memory; Historical trauma; Affective community; Memory regime; History education.

ENSince Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, national efforts to address the abuses of past occupational regimes have centered largely on the Soviet period, with comparatively little attention given to the short, but brutal Gcnnan occupation, and the murder of over 90 percent of Lithuania's Jewish population during the Holocaust. Transitional justice measures in post-Soviet Lithuania had to focus first on the crimes of the outgoing and long-lasting Soviet regime (the lustration of former members of repressive state agencies, restorative justice for victims, and criminal prosecution of former perpetrators), but the Gcnnan occupation of Lithuania in 1941-4 makes it difficult to disentangle the legacy of Soviet and Nazi rule. In particular, the rapid alternation of totalitarian regimes - Soviet and Nazi - aggravated social and ethnic divisions, generating polarized patterns of collaboration and resistance among the local population that pitted one community against the other, vastly compounding the social devastation of war.5 After the first year of Soviet occupation (1940-1), many Lithuanians came to see the arrival of German troops in June 1941 as an opportunity to restore Lithuanian sovereignty, although the Nazi genocide drove Jews to perceive the Soviets as the "lesser of two evils". Nazi war propaganda reinforced the perceived identification of the Jews with the communist regime, while Soviet propaganda falsely labeled all Lithuanian nationalists as fascists and Nazi collaborators. The result was what Saulius Sužiedėlis called the "geopolitics of hatred", a legacy that complicates state-building and historical reconciliation in Lithuania to this day.Transitional and retrospective justice efforts in post-Soviet Lithuania have struggled to shape historical consciousness and public awareness of this layered past. In keeping with international trends, the "right to history" has become integral to the transitional justice discourse: "historical knowledge, responsibly rendered, has now come to be seen as a critical step toward justice, and the suppression of such knowledge (or its absence) is now understood as the continuation and/or renewal of earlier injustices". Yet, as noted by Elizabeth A. Cole, the connections between transitional justice and history education must be investigated in their own right. This chapter explains changes in historical consciousness in Lithuania by asking how historical trauma is framed, when a past event is brought to the forefront of public memory, by whom, and why. In essence, this chapter looks at history framing and education as forms of transitional justice. Historical commissions have often played an important role in these processes. Broadly defined as "investigative bodies charged with providing new understanding(s) of past events on the basis of fresh archival research", such commissions may acquire enough power to develop their own narratives, become a forum for testimonies, legitimize or delcgitimize certain narratives, and facilitate reconciliation. State-supported memory institutions (museums, universities, and research centers) and nonstate actors interested in promoting their own historical narratives play similar roles. This chapter focuses on "pivotal traumatic events" that play major political roles in making and breaking communities. World War II, the Holocaust, the anti-Soviet resistance, and Soviet repression, especially Stalin's mass deportations, can be seen as “pivotal traumatic events” with a long-lasting impact on political and cultural identities in Lithuania.The impact of various "agents of memory" on changes in historical consciousness related to pivotal traumatic events is not often documented. Therefore, in addition to analyzing the strategics of various "agents of memory", this chapter draws on interviews with prominent actors who engaged in history education and the construction of historical narratives, to bring out their subjective understanding of their mission and environment. The chapter is structured as follows. First, it outlines the emergence of a "memory regime" in Lithuania during the late 1980s, focused primarily on the Stalin-era mass deportations, the formation of an "affective community" around the trauma, and a corresponding "externalization" of the Soviet regime. Second, it reviews the engagement of these memories in Lithuanian history textbooks. Tire third section looks closely into the roles of two state-sponsored agents of memory: the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania and the International Commission for the Evaluation of Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. The fourth section turns to the role of nonstate actors, describes the more recent recognition of Lithuanian collaboration with both the Soviet and Nazi regimes, and concludes by noting the emergence of an affective community based less on a sense of victimhood and more on a sense of responsibility to atone for and leam from the past. [Extract, p. 323-325]