Lytis, karas ir atmintis: "atminties taškai" Lietuvos partizaniniame kare (1944-1953) dalyvavusių moterų pasakojimuose

LTŠiame straipsnyje siekiama pristatyti atminties konstravimo modelį taikant lyties prieigą (angl. gendered memory entrepreneurship). Analizė paremta atminties taškais – koncepcija, kurią pasiūlė Marianne Hirsch, apibrėžusi juos kaip „taškus, kuriuose susikerta praeitis ir dabartis, atmintis ir poatmintis, asmeninė ir kultūrinė atmintis“. Teorinį tyrimą papildo dviejų buvusių partizanų ryšininkių – Aldonos Sabaitytės-Vilutienės (1931–2020), įkūrusios pirmąjį muziejų, įamžinusį antisovietinį pasipriešinimą ir Stalino vykdytus trėmimus, ir Elenos Aleliūnaitės-Žilvytienės (1925–2020), kurios istoriją (daugiausia dėmesio skiriant jos tėvui) žiniasklaida nušvietė 2019 m., – pasakojimai. Raktiniai žodžiai: moterys ir karas, atminties antrepreneriai, atminties taškai, liudijimai, trauminė atmintis. [Iš leidinio]

ENBuilding on the case studies of two women memory activists in Lithuania, this article sets out to build a model of gendered memory entrepreneurship. The article focuses on the oral testimonies and narratives of two former partisan messengers, Aldona Vilutienė (née Sabaitytė, 1931–2020), who created the first museum about the anti-Soviet resistance and the deportations carried out under Stalin in post-Soviet Lithuania, and Elena Žilvytienė (née Aleliūnaitė, 1925–2020), whose story (focusing on her father) was covered by the mass media in Lithuania in 2019. To better understand the processes of memory production, I chose to focus on women memory activists whose stories became known regionally and even nationally. In my view, a memory entrepreneur is a political actor who, as theorised by Elizabeth Jelin, has actively sought ‘social recognition and political legitimacy of one [her own] interpretation or narrative of the past’ (Jelin 2003: 33–34). To understand the processes of memory production, it becomes essential to study the ways in which memory entrepreneurs tell their stories and relate them to the dominant narratives about war and suffering. Marianne Hirsch’s approach, called ‘points of memory’ (Hirsch 2012), can empower the researcher to conduct gender-sensitive memory work, and analyse the stories told by women memory entrepreneurs. These points include photographs, artwork and personal items from places of suffering, and are ‘points of intersection between past and present, memory and post-memory, personal remembrance and cultural recall’ (Hirsch 2012: 61). This concept is useful for the study of how memory transcends the individual level and enters the collective (or public) realm, because it embraces both the geographical (spatial) dimension and the temporal dimension.Thus, the intersection of two important variables in the workings of memory (space and time) is captured, and this helps to understand the power with which these objects penetrate ‘the levels of oblivion’ (Hirsch 2012: 61). Points of memory are also ‘arguments about memory, objects or images that have remained from the past,’ and they emerge in encounters between people (Hirsch 2012: 62). They help us to pay attention to everyday details and small material objects that are featured in women’s stories but are often absent from national or regional meta-narratives. Aldona’s oral testimony was loosely structured on the two main themes of armed resistance and deportation, in addition to her activities as a memory entrepreneur. It included sections on imprisonment. In her story, I could detect two relevant points of memory: buttons worn by resistance fighters on their uniforms, and vizitėlės, prison art (pieces of embroidery) made by Lithuanian deportees in prison camps and places of deportation. These points of memory (especially pieces of embroidery) can currently be found in personal collections and deportation and resistance museums in Lithuania (including the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights). They are capable of arousing strong emotions and an immediate connection with the traumatic past among those who are familiar with everyday life in prisons and forced exile. It was extremely difficult to obtain appropriate buttons for partisan uniforms. Even dangerous tasks, such as obtaining and delivering weapons to the resistance fighters, pale in comparison to Aldona’s memories of the buttons.Therefore, for Aldona (and perhaps for other messengers who were engaged in similar tasks), the buttons, simple, small objects, often retrieved during reburials of resistance fighters, have enormous potential to pierce time and space, and elicit feelings of insecurity and fear associated with their memories about the war. Furthermore, Aldona’s oral testimony depicts the communicative function of vizitėlės. These artefacts were made to tell a story to relatives and friends about the fate of the women who made them. In the story of Elena Žilvytienė (née Aleliūnaitė), images from nature, a yellow flower and wilted grass (she showed a photograph with a landscape at the site of her father’s death), can be treated as points of memory, transcending time and triggering strong emotions every time she saw them or thought about them. Her father Kazimieras Aleliūnas was brutally murdered in 1944. Grim details about her father’s death (which she associated with a yellow flower, symbolising separation, and wilted grass, symbolising death) featured prominently in Elena’s oral testimony. Her decision to become a messenger was also linked to her father’s death: she was expected to follow in his footsteps. Death, danger and betrayal featured prominently in her testimony about the partisan war. [...] Key words: women and war, memory entrepreneurs, points of memory, testimonies, traumatic memory. [From the publication]

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