Der "Rustic turn" in der Litauischen SSR: nationaler Konservatismus, ländlicher Raum und die Volkstümlichkeit der litauischen Kultur im Spätsozialismus 1956-1990

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos komunistų partija; Kaimo kultūra; Kraštotyra; Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP); Village culture; Regional studies.

ENThe developments shaping the Alltagskultur of the Lithuanian SSR between the late 1950s and the 1970s were linked to a fascination for village culture, which are referred to in current research as a “rustic turn” (Violeta Davoliūtė). This article seeks to define this phenomenon closer, its background as well as its expressions in the field of culture. My research shows that the Communist Party underwrote this current in different ways. It was in the first place connected to the consequences of Khrushchev’s “thaw,” which brought about an extensive Lithuanization of the cadres of the Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) but also strengthening of conservative attitudes among party members and cultural elites in the immediate period after Stalin’s death. The LCP allowed an unprecedented pace of urbanization in the LSSR and played an important role in the melioration campaign of 1965, which increased the intellectual interest in rural areas. In a process which mirrors the rise of village prose in Russian literature, with its undercurrent criticism of Soviet modernity, the rapid urbanization led to a reaction in the form of nostalgia for rural life. Th is study traces the manifestations of this nostalgia in various cultural phenomena of that time. In the late 1950s the party introduced the so-called “new traditions,” which included the promotion of pre-Christian customs and rites in order to diminish the infl uence of the Catholic Church and to bridge the divide between the village and the city. Even though the socialist components were supposed to eclipse the pre-Christian customs in the long run, the Party’s openness to local traditions in combination with the relative freedom allowed with regard to the implementation of new rituals contributed to the strengthening of Lithuanian identity.At the same time, the introduction of Soviet domestic tourism and kraevedenie (regional studies) from 1953 onwards facilitated the re-discovery of the village, since rural areas counted as the most important destinations of the tourist routes and excursions. By the late 1960s, the Party’s promotion of mass tourism had facilitated an anti-modernistic national movement, over which they did not have full control. The members of this movement expressed their nostalgia for the village and “genuine Lithuania,” not only through excursions to the countryside, but also through the internalization of peasant culture, placing particular emphasis on rural folk music. This fascination for all things rural reached a culmination when the members of the tourist movement inspired a parallel movement moving “authentic” folk music to the stage in competition with, and in contrast to the offi cial folklore promoted by the government. Ironically, the emergence of this musical counter-movement was indirectly facilitated by the regime. A reaction to the unfamiliar sounds and aesthetics of offi cial, government-sanctioned folklore, the mobilization of elderly rural singers, dancers and instrumentalists into artistic laymen had, by the mid-1960s, created a semi-offi cial counterculture, idealizing the preindustrial, pre-Soviet village life.