The Construction
of National Narratives
and Politics of Memory
in the Central and Eastern
European Region
after 1989
PROGRAMME FOR HUMAN RESOURCES
DEVELOPMENT FOR 2007–2013
“Support to Research Activities of Scientists and Other
Researchers (Global Grant)”
The Scientific Project “Central and Eastern European Region:
Research of the Construction of National Narratives and Politics of
Memory (1989–2011)” VP1-3.1-ŠMM-07-K-02-024
U n i vers i tas V y taut i M agn i
The Construction
of National Narratives
and Politics of Memory
in the Central and Eastern
European Region
after 1989
V y tauto D i d ž i o j o un i vers i tetas
2014
Redakcinės kolegijos pirmininkas
prof. habil. dr. Egidijus Aleksandravičius (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
Redakcinė kolegija
doc. dr. Kastytis Antanaitis (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
dr. Liudas Glemža (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
dr. Vitalija Kasperavičiūtė (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
dr. Marius Sirutavičius (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
Sudarytojas
prof. habil. dr. Egidijus Aleksandravičius (Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas)
Vertė:
dr. Mykolas Drunga
dr. Jurgita Vaičenonienė
Albina Strunga
ISBN 978-609-467-010-7
4
© Vytauto Didžiojo uni­ver­site­tas, 2014
C O N T E N TS
Egidijus Aleksandravičius
The past, heroes and politics . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Moreno Bonda THE UNITY OF NATIONAL HISTORY IN CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIAN
HISTORIOGRAPHY. A STUDY ON COGNITIVE PROCESSES
13
Valstybės istorijos vienybė šiuolaikinėje Lietuvos istoriografijoje:
studija apie kognityvinius procesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Marius Sirutavičius THE GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA AND THE HISTORICAL REGION:
THE SEARCH FOR NEW COORDINATES IN POST-SOVIET
LITHUANIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė ir istorinis regionas: naujų
koordinačių paieška posovietinės Lietuvos istoriografijoje . . . . . 54
Laima Venclauskienė COLLECTIVE MEMORY: THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS
OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989 . . . . . . 55
Kolektyvinė atmintis: praeities reprezentacijų pasirinktys ir pobūdis
Sąjūdžio žiniose 1988–1989 metais . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Rūstis Kamuntavičius HISTORY OF THE GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA: INTERPRETATIONS OF THE
YOUNG BELARUSIANS AND LITHUANIANS . . . . . . . 75
Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės istorija: Baltarusijos ir Lietuvos
jaunosios kartos interpretacijos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Liudas Glemža CONSTRUCTING THE NATIONAL PAST DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT:
THE CASES OF LITHUANIA, BELARUSSIA, UKRAINE
AND SLOVAKIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Apšvietos epochos nacionalinės praeities konstravimas: Lietuvos,
Baltarusijos, Ukrainos ir Slovakijos atvejai . . . . . . . . . . 117
5
Aliaksei Lastouski CREATING NATIONAL COMMUNITY & HISTORY: OFFICIAL SPEECHES ON
INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BELARUS (2001-2012) . . . . . . 119
Tautinės bendruomenės ir praeities kūrimas: oficialios Baltarusijos
Nepriklausomybės dienos kalbos (2001–2012) . . . . . . . . . 128
Gábor Lagzi MULTICULTURAL PAST AND PRESENT IN THE CITIES OF CENTRAL EUROPE:
THE CASES OF WROCŁAW/BRESLAU AND L’VIV/LEMBERG/
LWÓW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Daugiakultūrė Centrinės Europos miestų praeitis ir dabartis: Vroclavo /
Breslau ir Lvivo / Lembergo / Lvovo atvejai . . . . . . . . . . 142
Leonas Tolvaišis HISTORICAL MEMORIES OF KOSOVO SERBS IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD
AND CONFLICTING SERBIAN NATIONAL NARRATIVES
ABOUT KOSOVO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Kosovo serbų istorinė atmintis pokario laikotarpiu ir konfliktuojantys
Serbijos nacionaliniai naratyvai apie Kosovą . . . . . . . . . . 172
Andrea Griffante TRADITIONS IN MOTION: ON THE MYTH OF JOHN PAUL II IN
THE POLISH CATHOLIC DISCOURSE (2005-2013) . . . . 175
Besikeičiančios tradicijos: apie Jono Pauliaus II mitą lenkų
katalikiškame diskurse (2005–2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Adam Slabý THE DEMISE OF ANTI-COMMUNISM AND ITS EFFECTS ON COMING
TO TERMS WITH THE COMMUNIST PAST IN THE CZECH
REPUBLIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Antikomunizmo baigtis ir jo poveikis taikantis su komunistine
praeitimi Čekijos Respublikoje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Andrius Švarplys WHO IS TELLING IT TO WHOM? ECONOMICAL, POLITICAL, AND CULTURAL
CONDITIONS FOR NATIONAL NARRATIVE IN
AFTER-POST-COMMUNIST LITHUANIA . . . . . . . . 203
Kas pasakoja kam? Ekonominės, politinės ir kultūrinės
sąlygos nacionaliniam naratyvui Lietuvoje po pokomunistinių
transformacijų . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
6
Kastytis Antanaitis INVENTING NEW HISTORY FOR NEW PEOPLE: CREATING THE HISTORY OF
THE KALININGRAD DISTRICT AFTER 1992 . . . . . . . 219
Nauja istorija naujiems žmonėms: Kaliningrado srities istorijos
kūrimas po 1992-ųjų . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Tomasz Błaszczak CHANGES IN POLISH HISTORICAL MEMORY AFTER 1989 AND THE IMAGE
OF THE INTER-WAR PERIOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Lenkijos istorinės atminties pokyčiai po 1989 metų
ir tarpukario įvaizdis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Egidijus Aleksandravičius
LOST IN FREEDOM: COMPETING HISTORICAL GRAND NARRATIVES
IN POST‑SOVIET LITHUANIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Pasimetę laisvėje: konkuruojantys didieji naratyvai
posovietinėje Lietuvoje . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Katarzyna Kącka
New symbols. The role of power in the creation of the symbolic
space during transition: the example of Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Naujieji simboliai. Valdžios vaidmuo, kuriant simbolinę erdvę
pereinamuoju laikotarpiu: Lenkijos pavyzdys . . . . . . . . . 292
Halina Beresnevičiūtė Nosálová
Two Comparative Studies on the Formation of Civil Society
in Nineteenth-century East-Central
European Towns and Changes to the Historical
Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Dvi lyginamosios studijos apie pilietinės visuomenės formavimąsi XIX a.
rytų‑vidurio Europos miestuose ir istorinio naratyvo pokyčiai . . . . . 309
7
T he past, heroes and pol i t i cs
Up until quite recently, the destiny of Central Eastern Europe appeared to be
completely clear. Once Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union, the huge
space between the East and the West seemed to shift to a plain of placid development.
During the last century, the countries between the Baltic and Black seas have had
to endure all manner of trials, starting from acting as a World War One frontline,
riding the wave of national socialism, ending with Soviet occupation and its direct
influence for decades thereafter. The collapse of Communism and totalitarianism
diverted this dramatic period in history towards a hopeful, promising conclusion.
The first decade of freedom and democracy was marked by the belief that
conflicts of the past, processes of national maturity that had crystallized in various
ways, traumas and phobias would be left behind, and that politics would turn to the
future. However, the reality proved to be more treacherous than expected, and the
memory of Central Eastern Europe – harder to manage. Accounts of the past and
arguments over what was the one, single truth remain. The united Europe, most
likely, was not prepared to face the split memory phenomenon. General images of
liberal democracy and a free market economy did not suffice. It appears that the
eastern border of the EU is finding it hard to come to terms with its memory; those
in the west are incapable of understanding it, whilst those in the east did not have
enough collective empathy to understand why it is so.
The national great narratives of the new European Union members struggled
to secure a position in the mandatory secondary school textbooks, whilst the
most important heroes of the past often reminded the public of conflicts with
neighbouring countries. On the borders of the EU – in Belarus or Serbia – the
stories being told reflected incomplete processes of national consciousness, or
echoed the bloody events not so far gone. The great narratives and heroes, one
might say, were late in coming. Perhaps that is why, several decades after the historic
turning point – the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the global communist
9
T he past, heroes and pol i t i cs
system – new problems in history and memory have emerged. In some countries
this has brought a reaction of prohibition and criminalization of those who deny
the Holocaust or Soviet genocide, elsewhere (in Lithuania for example) there have
been discussions about political measures that would form the nation’s memory.
The memory field gradually started to turn into a battlefield, whilst the cannonry of
information wars has found itself on the doorstep of history institutions.
At the end of 2013 an international conference was organized at Vytautas
Magnus University dedicated to discussions on Central East European national
narratives and memory reflection policies post-1990. The conference primarily
reflected a research project several years underway that has been financed by
the Lithuanian Council of Research in which 11 Lithuanian, Italian, Polish and
Belarusian scientists have participated. Their spark of scientific intrigue, concerning
trying to explain the most important dynamics of national narratives and reasons
for their change, has drawn a sizeable crowd of like-minded historians, pedagogues
and social theorists.
The conference papers and the ensuing texts are considered a serious step in
bringing light to the problem’s concept. In seeking a wider distribution of their
results, the organizing committee, along with the editorial board of the half-yearly
Vytautas Magnus University journal Darbai ir Dienos, decided to compile the articles
into a monograph and then, in the classical tradition, to see that this monograph
was broadly published. As it happened, once the journal was released, articles by
several other authors reached the editorial board, thus it has been decided to release
a supplement edition with the additional, important texts.
National narrative and hero themes are mostly presented by historians in this
book, however, it also contains numerous social philosophy and political science
components as well. Andrius Švarplys takes an insightful look at the effect of social
expectations on historians’ workshops. He raises the fundamental question: who
is speaking to whom? The conflict between a social commission and historians’
emancipation is long-standing. History emerges from its audience and is dedicated
to a particular audience, whilst the author’s relationship with it is linked to
history sociologization problems that have already started to fade from scientific
historiographical memory, problems which had peaked during the era of Soviet
and communist totalitarianism. The author suggests that it is not the past that
dictates the narrative, but the hopes, values and visions of the future of the living
audience, represented in one way or another by the narrator.
This text first of all gives a fine reflection of the shifts in Lithuanian history
and memory politics. As it is precisely on this level that the efforts of Lithuanian
politicians and certain public figures operating in the shadows of the executive
10
T he past, heroes and pol i t i cs
government to strengthen the legal and political means of controlling national
memory that have been debated most, and continue to be discussed. By coincidence
or to seize the historical moment, it is a good opportunity to talk about great
narratives and their heroes. The material from the Kaunas conference printed in this
book allows us to notice that narratology and memory politics problems cannot be
likened to one another.
It is important to note that one common aspect arises from the scope of this
book. In all of Central Eastern Europe which escaped from the cage of communist
totalitarianism two decades ago, similar – not identical, but comparable –
phenomena have evolved. In those nations that have yet to complete their selfidentification tasks and whose visions of the future have yet to mature, or are
still hidden at least in the public space, the struggle over the ways and forms
of producing historical narratives, the fateful events and heroes, often becomes
oppositional and conflicting in nature.
Probably the idea we should all agree on is that neither different nations’
narratives, nor forms of wider Europe’s living memory will ever become alike. In
our united Europe, a split memory is unavoidable to a certain extent. Nevertheless,
academic insights and political wisdom hint that most important is to be able to
listen to different narratives, to try to understand their real motives, and then it
will become increasingly possible for those people to live together in peace whose
heroes of the past fought amongst each other. After all, free individuals and free
nations are not only passive hostages of the past.
E g i d i j us A leksandrav i č i us
11
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N
CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
M oreno B onda
S U M M A RY. This article investigates the relation between language and cognitive processes in the
contemporary Lithuanian historiography. An attempt is made to distinguish the prejudices (using
Gadamer’s terminology) or framing structures (Heidegger’s fore-structures) influencing the cognitive
processes involved in the translation of noetic acts and memories into communicative acts.
Basing on Bergson’s representation of the relation between conscience, memory and action (in
this case intended as history-writing) we investigate how the unity in the national history (the
continuity in the history of contemporary political entity) is construed. In the second part of the
article, a number of historiographical works are analysed in order to put to test and revise the
theoretical premises. Notably, while supposedly time and space are two of the most important
framing structures, in Lithuanian historiography dealing with national history space is rather a
concept selected and defined by that of time – not a fore-structure. In turn, historical time seems
not to be a metaphor of the experienced one – it usually refers to already linguistically formulated
concepts. This is evident when scholars renounce every ‘signifier’ directly connected to a ‘signified’
(terms directly referring to language, borders, geographical elements, administrative divisions)
preferring already linguistically construed ‘meanings’ (nation, identity, culture) when formulating
historical problems. The possibility to frame space in time and time in language permits to construe the unity of national history. The unity in the national history is attained by exploiting the
polysemy of certain expressions and figures of speech. Moreover, in order to construe the unity
in the national history, scholars tend to exclude the referents even from the definitions of framing
structures such as space and time. We conclude that language is informing and shaping historians’
perception much more than time and space. Therefore, language should be considered the main
and most evident prejudice operating and defining cognitive processes in historiography.
K E Y WO R D S : Lithuanian historiography, cognitive processes, memory, historical time, cognitive rhetoric, hermeneutic, national history.
I n t rodu c t ion
The cause of this study is a research project on national narratives. Considering the
debates during a conference related to this project,1 we had occasion to organize
1
We are referring to the research project “Central and Eastern European Region: Research of the Construction
of National Narratives and Politics of Memory (1989-2011)” – VP1-3.1- MM-07-K-02-024 – sponsored by
13
M oreno B onda
some previous reflections on Lithuanian historiography and compose this article.
Here, our understanding of the relation between language and knowledge is used
to investigate the cognitive processes involved in the narrative construction of the
unity in national history.
When technically speaking of narrative, one could safely assert that the reference is to the construction of the linguistic sign,2 which has been chosen to define,
formulate and transmit a signified (meaning) by the means of a signifier.3 Renouncing de Saussure’s terminology, we could define narrative as the linguistic expression of noetic acts previously formulated by the means of an intellectual activity.4
This construction is a natural act of the mind, which is essential, first of all, for the
process of memorization.5 Secondly, it is necessary when one decides to transmit
this formulated knowledge to others for a variety of reasons such as to inform,
convince, teach, educate, react, etc.6 The cognitive processes which translate perceptions into memory and, successively, into knowledge are particularly evident in
the construction of the national past in academic historiography (intended either
as a politic of memory, or as a policy of memory).7 As a matter of fact, the national
histories compiled by historians are the expression of conscious and intentional
intellectual acts aimed at the abstraction and formulation of knowledge for the
construction and dissemination of a durable memory.8 Contemporary Lithuanian
historiography, intended as the manifest sign of this cognitive process, is the field
our research is inquiring into.
Specifically, our study tries to define and investigate the relation between perception, memory, and history-writing as a linguistic event. We are building, firstly, upon
the notion that memory and history are two related but distinct representations of the
past being the latter a conscious selection of the former. Secondly, we are developing
the idea, in some respects borrowed from Hans G. Gadamer, that the language is not
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
14
the Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-2013. The conference (organized as part of
this project) “The Construction of National Narratives and Politics of Memory in the Central and Eastern
European Region after 1989” has been held at VMU on November 28th and 29th, 2013.
See Eugenio Coseriu, Lezioni di linguistica generale (Torino: Boringhieri, 1976).
See Ferdinand de Saussure, Corso di linguistica generale (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2009).
Michael Bamberg, ‘Considering counter narratives’, in Michael Bamberg, and Molly Andrews (eds.), Considering Counter Narratives: Narrating, Resisting, Making Sense (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004): 35171. Cf. Jerome S. Bruner, ‘Life as narrative’, Social Research 43 (1987): 11-32.
Henri Bergson, Materia e memoria (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2009).
Alison Ferguson, ‘Language, Meaning, Context, and Functional Communication’, Aphasiology 24 (4)
(2010): 480-96.
For a synthetic, but clear, definition of these expressions and especially for the distinction between “policy of
memory” and “politics of memory” see Jurga Jonutytė, Philosophy of history (Vilnius: Aktėja, 2013): 26-27.
Pierre Nora, Présent, nation, mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 2011).
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
just an instrument of the thought, but rather its supporting dimension.9 Precisely,
while attempting to understand how conscience – which is a continuous form of
knowledge – is translated into language (a discrete one), we will try to demonstrate
our thesis; cognitive processes are strongly influenced by the linguistic structures we
use to frame the noetic acts of the mind (one’s perceptions of reality), and therefore
the linguistic formulation of one’s memory is an event occurring during the translation of the conscience into language, it is not the result of the process. In turn, and
with specific reference to contemporary historiography, we suggest the idea of the
unity (or continuity) of the Lithuanian history is the result of a peculiar linguistic
framing of the thought and in certain cases even of a conscious exploitation – performed to formulate, investigate, and narrate the national history – of the language.
Concretely, this article illustrates the very frequent use of polysemic signs to create a
sort of diachronic continuity of space and time thanks to the linguistic expressions,
which encompass both in the composition of political histories.
In order to corroborate our thesis, we have defined several intermediate tasks in
our research. Firstly, we intend to retrace Bergson’s model of interaction between
perception, intellection and memory in order to use it when investigating historiography. Secondly, we will determine the role of language in the steps of those cognitive processes, which occur when trying to formulate a conscious memory, that is,
to form knowledge by the means of an activity of the mind.10 Thirdly, we aim at
understanding how these linguistically construed images are used to tell, inform, or
educate. Finally, we will verify these theoretical premises investigating the notion of
“unity of the Lithuanian history” in a number of contemporary academic researches
trying to unearth, in the rhetorical construction of the texts, remains of the cognitive
framing structures (Gadamer’s prejudices and Heidegger’s fore-structures).11
This twofold organization of our research is mirrored by the twofold partition
of the article. The first part is dedicated to a (re)formulation of the relation between
conscience, memory and history-writing from a cognitive perspective. This is a
necessary step to subsequently develop a method for the investigation of historical
narratives capable of exploiting other disciplines’ possibilities (especially cognitive
rhetoric’s) and, thus contribute to the ‘unity of human sciences in the discipline of
history’.12 The analysis of a number of texts, conducted in order to make evident
the influence of linguistic-cognitive processes in historians’ representation of the
past, is the object of the second and third part.
9
10
11
12
Gerdamer Hans-Georg, Truth and method (New York: Crossroad, 1982).
See Oscar Bettelli, Processi cognitivi (Bologna: CLUEB, 2000).
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 347.
Charles Morazé, ‘La storia e l’unità delle scienze dell’uomo’, in Fernand Braudel (ed.), Problemi di metodo
storico (Bari: Laterza, 1973): 512-22.
15
M oreno B onda
Referring specifically to this second part of our research, it is necessary to present
and give reason for both the object selected to be investigated, and for the chosen
method of analysis itself. It was necessary to choose linguistic signs in which the
cognitive processes, from which they were generated, are as much evident as possible.
It was, therefore, essential to select written texts composed by authors conscious (to a
certain extent) of these processes and interested in transmitting the reader something
more that the evident meaning. In other words, we were looking for texts communicating something that transcends the purpose of information, rather aiming at
educating the reader to perceive the reality in an ordered and organized manner. Such
are the prerogatives of all academic writings, which tell the readers how to set the
evident information in a broader cognitive frame providing them with the author’s
already developed framing structures (or fore-structures).13 This preliminary consideration, in conjunction with the chronological limits and research topic defined
by the conference and project organizers induced us to investigate specifically academic works dealing with the representation, construction and narration of memory:
contemporary Lithuanian historiography. Furthermore, it was necessary to limit the
study to historiographical works, which somehow (because of their topic) compel
their authors to linguistically formulate conceptions of time – usually considered the
most important cognitive structure – in order to investigate the intellectual processes
permitting to formulate the idea of time. It seemed natural to select narratives aimed
at construing the unity in the Lithuanian history.
Figure 1.
13
16
See Oscar Bettelli, Processi cognitivi (Bologna: CLUEB, 2000). Cf. Giovanna Zanlonghi, ‘La psicologia e il
teatro nella riflessione gesuitica europea del Cinque-Seicento’, Memorandum 4 (2003): 61-85, 66.
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
The research method has been defined basing on the postulate that all historical
works are, first of all, linguistic-literary compositions,14 and consequently they should
be considered and investigated as rhetorical works being rhetoric the method of text
generation.15 Rhetorical generation is intended, according to the cognitivist definition, as the act of translation between two systems of representation of the world –
conscience and language – rather than as the formal construction of a discourse.16
Accordingly, all the texts analysed in the second part of our article are investigated as
rhetorical works adopting the method of hermeneutical text analysis. Hermeneutical
text analysis is precisely the procedure inverse to the rhetorical construction of a text
and thus is the only procedure able to make evident the processes occurring during
the linguistic construction of memory and its transcription.
Understandably, we do not intend hermeneutic as an auxiliary technique for the
philology or other disciplines. However, we do not intend hermeneutic as the instrument to reconstruct the mens auctoris (as it was for Schleiermacher or Dilthey)
either. We will abide by Gerdamer’s negation of hermeneutic capability to retrieve
author’s original intention. Nevertheless, such an approach has certainly the advantage to make passible the most influent structures involved in cognitive processes.
Cognitive processes in general, and the relation between memory and conscience in the specific, have been extensively investigated. Similarly, the historicality
of the hermeneutic as the constitutive dimension of the human thought has been
the object of inquiry of a long tradition possibly founded by Heidegger. Particularly interesting for our research is Hans-Georg Gadamer’s development of
Heidegger’s hermeneutic; he demonstrated the primacy of the historical-linguistic dimension over every other form of knowledge. Remarkable, in Gadamer’s
speculations, is the critic of every attempt to adopt natural sciences’ study models
in human sciences and the attention for the intersubjective nature of the Meaning.17 Gadamer’s proposal for the adoption of a hermeneutical approach to the
study of human science has, however, rarely been put into practice. Referring
specifically to historiography, to enquire into national narrative construction has
often meant to conduct critical discourse analysis or philological investigations
of texts. Consequently, the dialogical dimension of the Thought, as part of an
14
15
16
17
See, as an example, Donald Rice and Peter Schofer, Rhetorical poetics: theory and practice of figural and
symbolic reading in modern French literature (Madison: the University of Wisconsin press, 1983).
Donald Rice and Peter Schofer, ‘Tropes and Figures: Symbolization and Figuration’, Semiotica 35 (1981):
93-124.
Ibid. 95.
Gadamer, Truth and Method. See especially the second part on ‘The extension of the question of truth to
understanding in the human sciences’ and the chapter on ‘Language as the medium of hermeneutical experience’, 345-65. Cf. Heidegger’s understanding of ‘the temporality of the comprehension’ as expounded in
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962).
17
M oreno B onda
individual hermeneutical circle, received little consideration. In other words,
national narratives are often investigated as historical, “cultural”, social, or even
political events, but rarely as intellectual ones.
This is the case of most studies about Lithuanian historiography or, more
precisely, on the historiography of Lithuanians’ history. It is precisely in the
expression “Lithuanians’ history” (lietuvių istorija) which is sometimes preferred
to “history of Lithuania” (Lietuvos istorija) that the socio-political perspective
of Lithuanian historians’ studies manifests itself.18 Even before Adolfas Šapoka
urged to ‘find the Lithuanians in the history of Lithuania’,19 the investigation
of Lithuanian historiography was shaped by both a strictly political framing,20
and the question of the national identity. Additionally, it should be noted that
defining the identity, in the Lithuanian historiography, has been often intended
as reacting to ‘all German, Russian, and Polish trash’ in order to develop a ‘really
Lithuanian history’.21
It was probably the will to react to the great success of this approach to
the study of the national past – a methodologically erroneous approach which
defines the aim before the formulation of the historical problem – that induced
Alfredas Bumblauskas to coin the term “baltophilia”, develop a new periodization of Lithuanian history and implement a new method to investigate
Lithuanian historiography.22 Nonetheless, his inquires, while based on a ‘polyparadigmatic’ approach,23 are still limited to two methods of investigation:
the philological text analysis and the socio-political contextualization of the
authors and their works. Little attention is given to texts as cognitive and communicative acts.
18
19
20
21
22
23
18
Cf. Valdas Selenis, ‘Adolfas Šapoka ir nepriklausomos Lietuvos istorijos mokslo programa «Raskim lietuvius
Lietuvos istorijoje»’, Istorija: Lietuvos Aukstuju Mokyklu Mokslo Darbai 71 (2008): 13-21.
Ibid. 15.
We have already dealt with the historical reasons for the Lithuanian historiography being mainly a
political historiography in our handbook, History of Lithuanian historiography (Vilnius: Aktėja, 2013).
However, the idea that every historical work defined by the image of a state is, precisely, a political
history had been more authoritatively uttered by Benedetto Croce referring to the history of Italy.
‘Before the 1860 [...] there is no history of Italy. [...] The reference is to the political history [...] since
“Italy” (as “France”, “England”, “Germany” and so on), when not intended as an extrinsic geographical
delimitation, is a political concept and nothing else can be.’ Benedetto Croce, ‘Recenti controversie
intorno all’unità della storia d’Italia’, in La storia come pensiero e come azione (Bari: Laterza, 1978):
303-14, 305.
Jonas Matusas, ‘Vytautas Didysis’, Židinys 9 (1930), 212. Cf. Selenis, ‘Adolfas Šapoka’, 13.
Alfredas Bumblauskas, ‘Lietuvos istorijos periodizacijos modeliai socialinės istorijos požiūriu’, Lietuvos istorijos studijos 17 (2006): 9-26. See also Alfredas Bumblauskas, et al. (eds.), Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos
tradicija ir tautiniai naratyvai (Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2009).
Bumblauskas, ‘Periodizacijos modeliai’, 26. Cf. Algimantas Bučys, Seniausioji lietuvių literatūra. Mindaugo
epocha: poliparadigminė viduramžių kultūrinių konfliktų studija (Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidyk­
la, 2009): 18-25.
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
On the contrary, evident in the works of Egidijus Aleksandravičius and Antanas
Kulakauskas is the interest for the historiography as a form of narrative.24 In their
works narrative is always a communicative act determined by the historical, epistemological, and political context. Accordingly, historians are always presented and
studied as beings-in-time or, more precisely, as identities-in-time. This is evident,
as an example, in the study about the identity of Adam Mickiewicz in the Lithuanians’ historiography,25 which, anyway, is still framed in a research on political
historiography.
Nonetheless, the cognitive-communicative act which constitutes the central element of history-writing is also, and firstly, a personal and individual hermeneutical
practice. The author and his in fieri oeuvre are always actively interconnected by a
communicative act occurring between conscience and memory. These processes of
the mind are influencing historians much more than the historical or social context; before being beings-in-time, historians are beings-in-thought. The cognitive
processes involved in the formulation of the memory deserve a detailed analysis.
However, as far as we know, the hermeneutical investigation of the Lithuanian historiography has never been carried out. However, in many cases, it might reveal the
elements that define the prejudice (intended as Vorverständnis) shaping historians’
representation of reality.26 Whoever is attempting an investigation into intellectual
practices should be aware of the impact of these fore-meanings and the history of
historiography makes no exception.
1 . Cogni t ive pro c esses and his tory - wri t ing
As we mentioned in this article’s introduction, we understand narrative in general
as a linguistic construction. This process of linguistic construction starts with a
noetic act, which is subsequently rationally formulated, memorized and, eventually, communicated. This is roughly the scheme defined by Bergson in order to
represent the movement of the mind from perception to action passing through
memory.
Even if it is not our intention to inquire into the relation between reality, its
perception by the human intellect, and memory as the French philosopher did
24
25
26
Egidijus Aleksandravičius, and Antanas Kulakauskas, Nuo amžių slenksčio: naujausia Lietuvos XIX amžiaus
istoriografija (Kaunas: VDU, 2001). Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Praeitis, istorija ir istorikai (Vilnius: Vaga,
2000).
Aleksandravičius, Praeitis, 184.
For the concept of prejudice see Gadamer, ‘The hermeneutic circle and the problem of prejudice’ in Truth
and Method, 235-44.
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M oreno B onda
in his notorious Matter and Memory, we certainly have to build on a representation of the translation process which transforms an act of the conscience into a
linguistic message such as a written historical work. In order to achieve this goal,
we will make use of Bergson’s representation of the relation between perception
and memory, readapting his cone (which has been reproduced in figure 1). The
most interesting aspects of Bergson’s investigation are the definition of the role
and functioning of memory, and the description of a continuous movement in our
conscience from perception to memory. Referring to memory he distinguishes pure
memory, memory-image, and perception, which are always in relation never being
the perception a mere contact of the mind with the object present; it is impregnated with memory-images which complete it as they interpret it.27 In other words,
these images are something we already consciously possess and use to “understand”
new perception comparing (or framing) the latter with (or in) the former.
For the purposes of our research, even more important is the understanding of
Bergson’s definition of ‘continuous movement’ and the concept of ‘selection’ – the
behaviours of the mind that mainly impact the metaphorical representation of the
past in written texts.28 With the expression ‘continuous movement’ Bergson refers
to the concept that the general idea is always in movement between the plane of
action (S in figure 1) and that of pure memory (AB in the same figure). The “general idea” oscillates continually between the summit S and the base AB. However,
it is only in S that it takes the clearly defined form of a bodily attitude or that of
an uttered word. Correspondingly, the word (a text) is the crystalized result of this
movement in a given moment.
Bergson definition of ‘selection’ is concise enough to be directly quoted here:
The body, always oriented toward the action, has the essential function to limit, for the
sake of action, the life of the spirit. It [the body] is a selection tool [...]. Shall we consider
memory? The function of the body is not to store recollections, but simply to choose
[…] the useful one. […] This […] selection […] is less rigorous since it is based on an
individual experience […]; fantasy is therefore granted a certain freedom.29
Clearly Bergson is referring to ‘fantasy’ in the very specific sense of the schemes
(like time, space, meanings, recollections) that the intellect uses, to a certain extent
arbitrarily, to frame and shape the perception. In this sense it tends to correspond
with the idea of Vorverständnis (prejudices) defined by Gadamer as natural and
unavoidable pre-comprehensions of the perceptions.
27
28
29
20
Bergson, Materia e memoria, 142.
Ibid. 148-51.
Ibid. 152.
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
Specifically, Gadamer understands prejudice as the natural tendency of the
Thought, which, trying to intentionally know something, tends to attribute to
the being known preconceived meanings. This personal attribution of meaning
(Weltansicht) constitutes a fundamental part of the cognitive processes since every
perception is knowingly acquired by our conscience only once it has been framed
in pre-existent knowledge.30 According to Gadamer (as it is for Bergson), to know
is a process of continuous interaction with already possessed framing structures
and memory. Clearly, both Bergson and Gadamer are stressing the fact that our
‘conscience is historically effected’.31
This idea is not new since it was encompassed in Heidegger’s formulation of
‘fore-project’ and ‘fore-meanings’. It was openly expounded by Gadamer reinterpreting Heidegger’s hermeneutical circle in order to make practical use of it.
In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. To
be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our interpretation, we
have understood that our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having,
fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures
in terms of the things themselves.32
As noted by Gadamer, ‘the point of Heidegger’s hermeneutical thinking is not
so much to prove that there is a circle as to show that this circle possesses an ontologically positive significance’.33 Every study on whatever manifestation of an activity of the mind should take into account the influence and manifestation of these
‘imperceptible habits of thought’,34 and consider them (in both the author and the
reader) an object of investigation as relevant as the subject matter itself.
What we can add to these consideration is that, from the perspective of historywriting, it is undeniable these habits or structures pass into the manifest sign, that
is in the written or uttered expressions of this hermeneutical circle. Readapting
Thomas S. Eliot’s words, one could state that the historians are often looking for
the impersonality of their studies and written works, but precisely because they
consider themselves as a medium rather than a personality, they produce signs
(texts) deformed according to the mechanisms of interpretation the medium itself
is using. Therefore, written historical texts are always the result of a translation
process executed by a medium (the historians’ mind) ‘in which impressions and
30
31
32
33
34
Gadamer, Thruth and Method, 235.
Ibid.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 153. Cf. Gadamer, Thruth and Method, 235-38.
Gadamer, Thruth and Method, 236.
Ibid.
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experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.’35 Hence, referring specifically to national narratives, not only this means that every attempt to formulate
or communicate an understanding of the past is effected by a series of prejudices,
which are both shaping (because included in) the texts and educating the readers
to adopt the same prejudices when trying to frame individual “perceptions of the
reality”.36 It also means that, trying to define the peculiarities of a certain historiographical tradition, these habits of the thought (framing structures) must be
investigated together with the subject matter because equally relevant.
Enquiring into historiography intended as a manifestation of the conscience,
we should make use of the awareness of these cognitive processes. Firstly, we can
provide a rough representation of the process of translation of the historians’
understanding into a text, and then we can investigate Lithuanian historiography
trying to individuate these schemes and describe how they influence and shape the
communicated information.
As proposed by Bergson, the construction of a (historical) thought is a process
starting with the perception of the reality and concluding with an intelligible symbol that could be the “action” or a text. Following the French philosopher, we could
explain and detail this representation like this: the human intellect is both intuitive
and not limited to its a priori forms. Therefore, it is capable to perceive all the
dynamic aspects of the reality. However, since the real is infinite and non-discrete,
the human conscience cannot reproduce the reality: it is merely able to represent
it. The result of this representation process is what we can define ‘non formulated
memory’,37 that is the image produced in our conscience which we cannot transmit
to other persons because it is still a continuous form of knowledge. If we want to
store or transfer this newly acquired knowledge, we should formulate it in a rational manner, that is, we have to translate it into language. It is only after we have
rationally formulated our perception that we can reproduce it in a text or speech.
Clearly memory itself is not a pure image of the reality: it is the result of a process
of interaction between new and old information. The latter, sometimes, is used as
framing structure to collocate and label the former.
A number of studies suggest that the most important pre-formed structures are
space and time. This concept is self-evident and has been given sufficient consideration by philosopher and historians alike.38 We can note that even in the void
35
36
37
38
22
Thomas S. Eliot, Selected Prose (London: Faber and Faber, 1987): 42.
Cf. Bergson, Materia e memoria, 65-66.
Ibid. 65.
We are referring to Heidegger’s Being and Time. Cf. Stephen Mulhall, ‘Heidegger’s (Re)visionary Moment:
Time as the Human Horizon’, in Heidegger and Being an Time (London and New York: Routledge, 2005):
152-80.
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
that surrounds Descartes’ cogito ergo sum the present tense of the verbs reveals the
subject self-collocation in time: I am now. Defining cognitive processes in relation
with history-writing it is necessary to be aware of scholars’ distinction between
experienced and historical time.39 Since the mind, as mentioned above, cannot
reproduce the experience, the historical time can be only a metaphor of the experienced time. And it is precisely this already formulated representation of time that
is supposedly used as a prejudice to construe historical narratives.40 The time of
the historians is an abstract, uniform, and invisible, but intellectually formulated,
structure necessary to “collocate” each new piece of information.41
It is evident that drawing this scheme we have traced the perspective of study
of cognitive rhetoric. According to specialists of this field, such as Peter Schofer and Donald Rice, the rhetorical construction of every text is nothing more
than a process of translation.42 Notably, it is a translation process that perfectly
matches the stages defined above in the reformulation of Bergson’s cone. According to Schofer and Rice, rhetoric is intended as the act of translation between
two systems of representation of the world that is, between conscience and
language. This translation is, for the nature of the systems themselves, indefinite and vague: the conscience is a continuous form of knowledge while the
language is a discrete one. By consequence, the language can give only a partial
representation of the conscience. Nevertheless, this irregular translation is the
essence of every creative thought. Therefore, rhetoric is intended as generation
precisely because it tries to create irregular semantic oppositions capable of
the expression of knowledge that transcends the limits of the language. Thus,
a trope is the essence of the creative though – the capability to reproduce the
system of the conscience by the means of a language which encompass an irrational (super-sensible) component too.
The coincidence between cognitive processes centred on memory (and language) and the practice of rhetorical construction is not surprising. We have opened
this article claiming every form of narrative is a linguistic construction. Now we
can safely add that every linguistic expression is a rhetorical construction. It is a
rhetorical construction at least according to this more precise understanding of
rhetoric – a means of translation.
We believe that a correct analysis of the rhetorical construction of every form
of narrative, intended as a communicative act, could make evident some of these
39
40
41
42
The debate is summarized in Jonutytė, Philosophy of history, 13-14.
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York: Random House, 1914).
Ibid. 332. Cf. Jonutytė, Philosophy of history, 14.
See Rice, Rhetorical poetics.
23
M oreno B onda
framing structures or prejudices and, referring specifically to historiography, explain
how they interact with memory in the historians’ practice. We can achieve this starting from the crystalized result of the whole cognitive process – moving from the
hermeneutical investigation of the texts.
The idea to understand the study of the symbols as a manifestation of the processes occurring in the conscience is not new. Possibly it is the general aim of the hermeneutic. It was Paul Ricoeur to convincingly demonstrate the possibility to determine
the historicality of the changing and subjective cognitive processes investigating the
sign.43 Referring to history-writing, we believe that if framing structures are necessary to formulate a representation of the reality (and from it a message, a “story”, or
a “narrative”), then it is possible that these personal understandings of the framing
structures are silently transmitted, reproduced, or included in the manifest linguistic
expression especially in order to educate the readers to use them.
Even if not openly, and in a certain way “silently”, scholars are narrating, silently,
but consciously, to educate to perceive the world or to frame memory in an oriented manner. This primarily means that scholars are usually transmitting (or teaching to use) specific categories and definitions of space and time.
Summing up the argument, we have established that:
a. Every perception of the reality is always translated into memory and successively into expression by the means of a selection and framing process aimed at
action and continuously interacting with memory.
b. Selection and framing result from the continuous movement of the intellect
between already acquired framing structures (in the form of memory, prejudices,
Vorverständnis, or fore-conceptions) and the present.
c. Historiography – the communicative performance, which linguistically formulates the translation of every noetic act into knowledge aiming at educating or
narrating – is one of the manifestations of the cognitive process and as such should
be investigated.
e. It is possible that the framing structures adopted by one’s mind are preserved,
in order to be divulged, illustrated and taught, in the linguistic structures which
encompass super-sensible elements, that is, in the “silences” that constitute the
essence of the rhetorical construction of a texts. These “silences” are particularly
meaningful in (rhetorical) tropes.
43
24
See in particular Paul Ricoeur, Du texte à l’action. Essais d’herméneutique II (Paris: Le Seuil, 1990).
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
2 . Time F raming S pa c e in P os t - S ovie t L i t huanian H is toriography
With respect to a silent manner of teaching, one should note that, sometimes, silence
is imposed by contingent circumstances. This is the case when a state censorship is in
place. However, it seems that this kind of censures, being evident, enhance authors’
awareness of the necessity to transmit the hidden meanings. This concept has been
clearly expressed by Raimonds Briedis when referring to the Baltic States:
The censor, who is expected to understand only the direct meaning of words, becomes
a third creative partner in the communicative relationship between the author and the
reader. The author thus creates a text for two target audiences – the reader and the
censor. The censor becomes an observer, while the text can often be metaphorically
regarded as a background noise that has to break through hidden meanings.44
Correspondingly, there is a relevant difference between what was transmitted
through silence when there was a censorship in place, and after the censorship had
been abolished. During the Soviet period, silence was used in communicative acts
mainly to pass meanings. As remarked by Anneli Mihkelev:
One of the important techniques in the poetic language of this period [Soviet] was the
use of multiple pauses. Poets spoke […] through silence. […] During Soviet times authors filled such pauses with social and political messages.45
We might add that not only poets were forced to communicate through silence,
possibly every intellectual was, more or less, adopting such a strategy.
On the contrary, since nowadays it is usually not necessary to hide or mask the
messages anymore, meaningful pauses and silence are used when one intends ‘to
reproduce the system of the conscience in a linguistic expression that encompass a
non-informative, but “educative” (super-sensible) component’– supposedly the above-mentioned framing structures and, referring specifically to historiography, conceptions of space and time.46 The debate about the understanding of time was topical
during the first half of the 20th century, but, apparently, is not so relevant anymore.
Nonetheless, scholars are still silently defining historical time, especially in connection to certain political concepts. This is evident in the implicit, and occasionally
unspoken, descriptions of the chronological limits of phenomena and researches.
44
45
46
Raimond Briedis, ‘Censorship and the Aesopic Language: An Analysis of Censorship Documents (19401980)’, in Elena Baliutytė, et al. (eds.), Baltic Memory (Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas,
2011): 15-24, 18.
Anneli Mihkelev, ‘Secret Innovations in Estonian Poetry after the 1960s’, in Baliutytė, Baltic Memory, 13544, 139.
Donald Rice, and Peter Schofer, ‘Tropes and Figures: Symbolization and Figuration’, Semiotica 35 (1981):
93-124.
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As an example, we could consider the title proposed for a conference to be organized by VMU researchers and titled ‘History and Present of the Female Monkhood in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’. The analysis of the rhetorical construction
of this title is utterly revealing. The figure of speech known as zeugma (where a
single word is used in relation to two other parts of a sentence although the word
grammatically or logically pertains to only one) has been used (quite probably
unconsciously). Connecting the terms “history” and “present” with a legal-political
entity which does not exist anymore (the GDL) is a zeugma in the sense that “the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania” is used in connection with two terms of which only
one – “history” – is logically connected with it, while “present” requires the reader
to actively fill in the missing connection. Forcing the reader to make this intellectual effort induces him/her (consciously or not) firstly to think of time as a continuous progress of related events and existences. Secondly, basing on this particular
conception of time,47 continuity and unity are conferred to legal-political entities
despite the fact that these entities, from political, territorial, “cultural”, or legislative
perspectives, are discontinuous. In other words, the reader is taught to adopt a preformulated definition of time when reflecting on the relation between the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania and the contemporary Republic of Lithuania. In turn, it seems
clear that the authors were themselves educated to adopt this attitude, which is
now operating as a prejudice when investigating or describing the relation between
the GDL and the contemporary Lithuanian Republic – two political entities.
The idea of unity and continuity in the history of an ‘imagined community’48
is a problem that, sooner or later, every historians’ body is forced to face.49 Unity
is intended by the backers of this idea as a sort of continuity in the history of contemporary political entity. It is a unity that connects the contemporary entity to a
variety of other political, ethnic, administrative, or cultural entities in the past, forming a sort of historical path which gives reason and justifies the present-day situation. In several countries (such as in France, Italy, or Spain), the supporters of the
idea of continuity justified (and in certain cases still defend) the unity of the national history by grounding their historical analyses on the geographical definition of
the political object.50 Italy, as an example, was a term always openly referring exclu47
48
49
50
26
This conception is neither the only one possible, nor is commonly accepted by scholars. Cf. Danutė
Bacevičiūtė, Laiko sampratos transformacija šiuolaikinėje filosofijoje: E. Husserlis ir E. Levinas. Doctoral thesis
defended at Vytautas Magnus University (Vilnius: VDU, 2005).
Anderson R. Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London:
Verso, 1986). Cf. Edward A. Tiryakian (ed.), Imagined Communities in the 21st Century, (Thousand Oaks:
Sage, 2011).
See note 19. Cf. Benedetto Croce, ‘Recenti controversie intorno all’unità della storia d’Italia’, in La storia
come pensiero e come azione (Bari: Laterza, 1978): 303-14.
See, as an example, Agostino Colpio, La storia d’Italia (Firenze: Adriano Saliani Editore, s. d.).
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
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sively to the Italian Peninsula in the prefaces of the works, which, consequently,
were allowed to trace the history back to the prehistoric times. However, in the
bodies of these histories of Italy, the term Italy was equated to the modern Italian
Kingdom or Italian Republic and, consequently, the ancient history of the Italian
Peninsula was arbitrarily transformed in the history or, rather, vorgeschichte of the
contemporary political entity.51 In other words, the perception of space as a geographical unitary frame permitted to create unity in historical time too.
On the contrary, in the historiography of most Eastern European countries, rarely
the geographical space (the territory) is used to frame political histories. Rather,
the continuity of time is adopted as a framing structure for the representation of a
cultural, historical, ethnic, or political space. Manifestly, in this region, the idea of
territory as a geographic concept can neither be easily applied to trace clear-cut borders for imagined communities, nor become a handy framing structure to formulate
continuity in political histories. Equally manifest, however, is that if it is possible
to individuate (in the greatly uniform traits of humanity) culturally, economically,
ethnically, and linguistically52 distinct communities it is primarily because of the influence of the morphological configuration of the territory (especially of mountains
or deserts),53 or because of the impact of climate.54 In the Lithuanian historiography,
there have been attempts to adopt rivers and, especially, forests to define the limits of
51
52
53
54
Croce, La storia, 305.
The theory that geographical isolation influences the development and differentiation of languages is commonly accepted. Cf. Guido Barbina, Geografia delle lingue: lingue, etnie e nazioni nel mondo contemporaneo,
(Roma: Carocci, 2005).
It was Massimo Firpo, Professor at Turin University who firstly made us aware of the influence of the morphological configuration of the territory in defining intellectual and material life similitudes and dissimilarities stating that there are many more common traits between the communities inhabiting the two opposite
slopes of a mountain than between those living on the summit and in the valley floor of the mountain even
if the two slopes belong to two different countries or historically distinct regions. Similarly, much more relevant seems to be the opposition city vs. non-city in defining cultural, economical, and intellectual borders:
there are many more similitudes between the life in two cities in different countries, than between city and
countryside in the same state. For the connection city = civilization see Lellia Cracco Ruggini, ‘La città imperiale’, in Storia di Roma, vol. 4 (Torino: UTET, 1989): 201-66. Cf. the consideration about the persistence
in time of the binomial city-civilization in Valerio Neri, I marginali nell’occidente tardoantico (Bari: Laterza,
1998): 143-51. Since antiquity, the morphological configuration of the territory and the consequent partition of the communities have been exploited to reinforce political partitions: ‘Rome […] had individuated
in the Alps the real taboo border […]. We are in front of a meaningful semantic transposition of the sacrality
[…] in a political sense.’ Silvia Giorcelli Bersani (ed.), Gli antichi e la montagna (Torino: CELID, 2001), 12.
Cf. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, G&R 37 (1986): 80-96. See
also Simon Shama, Landscape and Memory (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1995).
The interdependence between climate and civilization has been theorized in ancient times, but, in certain
respects, it is still considered a sound theory. See, as an example, the theoretical comments in Maria A. Giua,
Contesti ambientali e azione umana nella storiografia di Tacito, (Como: New press, 1988), 37. Illustrative and
fundamental comments on the relation between climate and history can be found in Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie, ‘Storia e clima’, in Fernand Braudel (ed.), Problemi di metodo storico (Bari: Laterza, 1973): 140-82.
See also Edmund Schulman, ‘Tree ring and History in the Western United States, Smithsonian Report for
1955 (1956): 459-73.
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“cultural-political” Lithuania,55 however, the danger to define an ‘incomplete community’ was immediately perceived and this perspective abandoned. The temporal
definition of space is certainly more effective in construing political identities where
natural elements are not significant.56
To illustrate, rhetorically, the label “the Baltic States” is a synecdoche: it refers to
three of the Baltic States by using an expression that should refer to all states located on the shores of the Baltic Sea. It identifies a part with the totality. Evidently,
this silent and almost commonly accepted synecdoche is disseminating a political
or, using a very fashionable modern terminology, a geo-political definition of space.
Moreover, this expression includes and transmits a perception of time. The term
“Baltic” has assumed a variety of meanings, but rarely had a purely geographical
one being usually a political-linguistic-ethnic expression.57 Notably, until World War
One, it did not include the area occupied by modern days Lithuania, or that of the
GDL or part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or the Lithuanian Governorates.58 For example, Edward C. Thaden uses the term “Baltic” to refer specifically
to Estonia, Livonia, Curonia (Courland), and Finland. Finland was a “Baltic State”
until 1918.59 Nonetheless, nowadays historians tend to use the labels “Baltic States”
or “Baltic Countries” even when referring to the history of Lithuania, but rarely in
connection to the history of Finland.60 Despite the fact that “Baltic States” is a label
introduced to refer to the four countries on the shores of the Baltic Sea which gained
independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I, the history of
the Baltic States is usually connected under this label even narrating about the remote
past of these countries, as if to say that the present-days common traits are the result
of a common path toward the formation of contemporary politically independent
countries. Time is silently presented as a continuous path not defined by its origins,
55
56
57
58
59
60
28
Algirdas Brukas et al. (eds.), Radviliškio krašto miškai: Aukštaitijos, Žemaitijos ir Žiemgalos sandūros miškų
istorija, ūkininkavimas, gamtinės ir socialinės vertybės, (Kaunas: Adaksita, 2007). Cf. Lina Snitkienė, Romualdas Barauskas (eds.), Lietuvos valstybiniai miškai. Gamtai ir žmonėms (Kaunas: Lututė, 2006).
‘The ancient sources institute automatic connections between the development level of a human community and the natural conditions in which they live’. Silvia Giorcelli Bersani, ‘Il sacro e il sacrilego nella
montagna antica: aspetti del divino nelle testimonianze letterarie e nelle fonti epigrafiche’, in Id. Gli antichi
e la montagna, 27-44, 37. In the article the cultural, linguistic, and economic characteristics of a group are
defined by the opposition between urban and non-urban. The climatic conditions are equally important in
the definition and self-definition of identity, Ibid. 37. Cf. Andrea Giardina, ‘Uomini e spazi aperti’, in Id.,
L’Italia romana. Storie di un’identità incompiuta (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1997): 193-232.
W. K. Matthews, ‘Nationality and Language in the East Baltic Area’, American Slavic and East European
Review 6 (2) (1947): 62–78.
See Edward C. Thaden, Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855-1914 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981).
See George Maude, Aspects of the Governing of the Finns (New-York: Peter Lang, 2010).
See, as an example, Endre Bojtár, Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People (Budapest and
New York: Central European University Press, 1999).
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
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but rather by the present situation. In contemporary Lithuanian historiography, as
will be shown, the concept of national history is clearly framed by this idea. This
cognitive process is especially visible in the formulation of national histories by such
metaphors as the “roots”, the “origins” or the “path” of a nation.
To illustrate this assumption, Tomas Baranauskas’ study on The Origins of the
Lithuanian State can be investigated.61 The title of this work would certainly strike
the attention of a scholar following Croce’s tradition,62 and, even more, a disciple of
Bloch and the École des Annales. Whether Baranauskas has ‘fallen pray of the demons
of the origins’ or not,63 it is interesting to compare this monographic work with a
series of contributes he wrote for the journal Voruta on The Origins of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania,64 and to relate them with his 1995 article When was Lithuania
Unified?65 The fluctuations from “the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”, to “the Lithuanian
State”, passing through “Lithuania” to label researches investigating the same subject
reveal hidden cognitive acts and encourage certain considerations.
Firstly, “Lithuania” is a remarkably polysemic term. In the mentioned works and
in the majority of other historical research, the term is used to refer to the prehistoric times,66 to the first Lithuanian state,67 to the period from 1795 to 1918,68 to
the first Lithuanian Republic, to the Soviet Lithuanian Republic, or to the Second
Lithuanian Republic. It is also polysemic because, nowadays, it is employed to
refer, at the same time, to a state (the Lithuanian State whatever it is or was), a
territory (belonging to Lithuania), and, interestingly, to the Lithuanians. Representative in this sense is the use of “land of Lithuanians”, “Lithuanians”, and “Lithuania” approximately as synonyms when rendering ancient texts.69 Demonstrative
are also the 20th century reprints of Simonas Daukantas’ The Habits of the Ancient
Lithuanians, Highlanders and Samogitians, which usually carry the cover title The
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
Tomas Baranauskas, Lietuvos valstybės ištakos (Vilnius: Vaga, 2000).
We are referring to “the theory of the water buckets” expressed by Croce: it is misleading to believe a certain
historical situation has a beginning and an end from which another historical time originates. Similarly, it
is dangerous to define distinct periods in history assuming one is the result and substitute for the previous
(stating, as an example, that at the end of the Middle Ages a Humanist period started). See, Benedetto
Croce, Teoria e storia della storiografia (Bari: Laterza, 1920): 183-204.
‘In the current vocabulary, the origins are an explicative beginning. Even worse: a beginning that is enough
to explain. There is the ambiguity. Here the danger.’ Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien
(Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1949): 6.
Tomas Baranauskas, ‘Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės ištakos’, Voruta 4 (142) (1994): 6. See also the
second and third parts of this study: Voruta 5 (143) (1994): 6;Voruta6 (144) (1994): 6.
Tomas Baranauskas, ‘Kada suvienijo Lietuva?’,Voruta 4 (142) (1994): 6.
Cf. Zigmantas Kiaupa, The History of Lithuania before 1795 (Vilnius: Arlila, 2000).
Cfr. Baranauskas, Lietuvos valstybės ištakos.
See, as an example, Adolfas Šapoka (ed.), Lietuvos istorija (Vilnius: Mokslas, 1990). Cf. ‘Vilniaus generalgubernatorija’, in Tarybų Lietuvos enciklopedija, vol. 4 (Vilnius, 1988).
Baranauskas, Lietuvos valstybės ištakos, 249.
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Habits of Lithuanians.70 The unity of three identities, which the author considered
in certain respects distinct, is construed on the polysemy of the linguistic expression used to refer to it. Ethnic, political, linguistic, and territorial meanings mingle
and fade under the label Lithuania(ns) in political histories.
Secondly, if one is searching for the origins of something, he is certainly “staring” at the past from the present. It is the present situation to shape and somehow
guide the intentions of our stare toward the past. In other words, it is the existence
of a modern Lithuanian state to invite scholars to search for the origins of a Lithuanian state. Evident is the incapability to perceive time as something separated
from the present and, even more unmistakeably, the continuity of time is defined
by the present, not by the past.
Finally, in the Lithuanian historiography, as soon as historians abandon local
(regional or urban) historical researches to focus on the national history, the framing structure of space assumes a non-geographical connotation. The question
“where?” is always evident in every study. Nevertheless, when writing the national
history, the answer is almost always a political concept. Geographical elements do
not influence the perception and representation of the national history; space is
always a diachronic construction of a political, ethnical, social, or “cultural” reality.71 There are no strict geographical definitions of Lithuania in the contemporary
historiography about the origins of the Lithuanian state.72 This kind of construction permits to reproduce linguistically the understanding of time as a continuous
flow and build on it a continuous representation of national history. The identification of constructed time and historical time induce to think of the “creation and
development” of a nation as a diachronic process that is necessarily continuous and
united as the structure that defines it.
After Daukantas, the geographical indications to refer to the country have been
rarely used in the Lithuanian historiography. Usually, cultural, linguistic, political,
and legal frames are adopted. Conversely, the concept of territory is often used
referring to regional or local entities. The idea that the territory is not a geographical space is transmitted to the reader especially in connection with national history
and without a linguistic translation of this concept. The formulation of the project
from which this article originates can be used as an example: ‘Central and Eastern
70
71
72
30
Simonas Daukantas, Būdas senovės lietuvių, kalnėnų ir žemaičių (Plymouth: SLA, 1892). Cf. Simonas Daukantas, Lietuvių būdas (Chicago: V. Saulius, 1954).
Cf. Algimantas Bučys, Seniausioji lietuvių literatūra. Mindaugo epocha: poliparadigminė viduramžių kultūrinių
konfliktų studija (Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2009).
The disputable search for the origins is not typical exclusively of Baranauskas’ researches, on the contrary it
is very common in contemporary Lithuanian historiography. As an example, see Algirdas Girininkas, Baltų
kultūros ištakos (Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos instituto leidykla, 1998). In these texts, territory is a cultural
rather than geographical space.
T H E U N I T Y O F N AT I O N A L H I S TO RY I N C O N T E M P O R A RY L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y.
A S T U D Y O N C O G N I T I V E P RO C E S S E S
European Region: Research of the Construction of National Narratives and Politics
of Memory (1989-2011)’. Central and Eastern Europe are the territories defined
by the chronological limits of the research and, thus, intended as the part of Europe
which was previously in (or influenced by) the Soviet-communist area. The notion
that Central and Eastern Europe is not a geographic territory but rather a historical
“spaces” is strongly affirmed with silence.
The possibility to transmit these concepts without even mentioning the term
territory is possible with the help of rhetorical ellipsis (and synecdoche as a sub-category of ellipsis). Ellipsis is used in history-writing as a figure of speech playing on
the mechanism of polyvalence of the linguistic symbol. Representative of this concept is Mintautas Čiurinskas’ research about the genre of biography in the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. In the introduction, the author openly recognizes that
It is not possible to take a rigid criterion to decide what to call the GDL’s texts, such as the
nationality or ethnicity of the authors. […] The collected materials […] are called Lithuanian in the broader sense – it is what is related with the cultural space of the GDL.73
The territorial definition of Lithuanian is not only refused, but even annulated
by the figure of speech of ellipsis; space has no cultural meaning or culture, therefore a ‘cultural space’ is a linguistic construction of an intellectual representation of
space. It is pure language in which, to use de Saussure’s terminology, the relation
between the signifier and the signified is very weak. In other words, the linguistic
expression is not referring to a signified through meaning, but rather is referring
to meaning through meaning. Apparently, what we have called framing structures,
in this case, are not used to translate perception, rather they are used to present a
concept already stored in the memory-image. The line representing the continuous
movement of the idea (as described in the first section) is reduced to a segment
connecting the words to the already linguistically formulated memory excluding
the reference to reality. The formulation of a historical problem is reduced to pure
language in which the polysemy of a political label is the decisive factor in the
formulation of the problem. We are in front of a linguistic rendition of a linguistic
concept. However, if
Everything is in language, then language itself is nothing, that is, it is separable from
reality. But if language was not different from what it talks about, it would not communicate, not even signify. The presentation of the text as a self-sufficient monadic entity
also contradicts the basic rule of communication theory: meaning is only achieved by
difference.74
73
74
Mintautas Čiurinskas, XVI–XVII amžiaus Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės biografistika (Vilnius: Lietuvių
literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2006), 13.
Emig Rainer, Modernism in Poetry: Motivation, Structures and Limits (London and New York: Longman,
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M oreno B onda
While this Emig Rainer’s consideration was formulated referring to modernist
poets, we could easily reinterpret it to express a concern about contemporary trends
in historiography. The comment of Izolda G. Geniušienė (from which this passage
has been quoted) could be applied to the Lithuanian historiography: the scholar
claims that modern authors exploit a very ambiguous relation between the signifier
and the signified making it even more ambiguous or reducing it to the relation
‘between several signifiers, with no reality left to refer to’.75
3. L anguage F raming S pa c e and Time : A bou t A lgiman tas B učys ’
“ O lder than the O ldest ” L ithuanian L iterature
In this article’s theoretical premise, we assumed that time and space are two most
important framing structures in history-writing cognitive process. In the second section, referring to the Lithuanian historiography about the national history, we had to
revise the assumption by noting that space is certainly not a framing structure. It is
rather a concept selected and defined by the conception of time. Finally, we observed
that the possibility to frame space in time (and thus construe the unity of national
history) is attained by exploiting the polysemy of certain expressions and figures of
speech. An emblematic illustration of this hierarchy in cognitive processes and its use
in historiography is offered by Algimantas Bučys’ book Seniausioji lietuvių literatūra.
Mindaugo epocha: poliparadigminė viduramžių kultūrinių konfliktų studija.76
This is a striking title especially because the subject matter of the book would have
been perfectly described by a heading such as ‘A Study about Three 13th Century
Sacral Texts’.77 Reading the chosen provocative title, several questions arise: why has
the author renounced the unambiguous “sacral” to opt for the polysemic and nontechnical term “Lithuanians”? Why has he decided to substitute the undisputable
“13th Century” with “the epoch of Mindaugas”? What is a “cultural” conflict?
Intentionally provocative is the author’s decision to opt for “the oldest” (seniausioji), intended as “older than the oldest”, rather than just “ancient” (senoji) referring to literature. Furthermore, this terminological choice is misleading since it
is not referring to newly discovered texts that would licitly allow moving back
“the origins” of the Lithuanian literature. In the book, the already known texts are
75
76
77
32
1995), 130. See Izolda G. Geniušienė, ‘Our Concern Was Speech’, Darbai ir dienos, 5 (14) (1997): 53-76.
Izolda G. Geniušienė, Our Concern, 63.
See note 71.
Bučys himself uses this expression to label the whole research, but in a place certainly much less visible than
the title. Bučys, Seniausioji lietuvių literatūra, 17.
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investigated. They were simply never included in the Lithuanian literature because
of the place and land where they were written, the language used, their manuscript
tradition, and the facts narrated.
Moreover, the author provocatively decided not to collocate these texts in the
history of Lithuanian (Lietuvos) literature, but rather in the history of the literature of the Lithuanians (Lietuvių). The reason for renouncing the unambiguous
“sacral” to opt for “the Lithuanians” could be easily explained reminding the reader
that Bučys’ book was printed in the occasion of the thousandth anniversary since
the first mentioning of the name “Lithuania”. There is, however, another reason
behind this choice: the term “the Lithuanians” can immediately – and silently – be
connected with “Lithuania” creating that linguistic ambiguity on which unity and
continuity are built in most national histories.78 It is obvious that Bučys does not
intend just to communicate a piece of information (provide the readers with some
new literary texts); he certainly aims at educating the readers to collocate these texts
in a preconceived “conceptual frame” (what is Lithuanian, and since when one can
speak of the Lithuanian culture).
The book is educating, first of all, to construe the national identity rethinking the
concept of historical time in connection with national history. Time and identity are
clearly the two focal points of Bučys’ educative programme. Speaking about time,
and answering the second of our questions, revealing is the substitution of “13th
Century” with “the epoch of Mindaugas”. Obviously, the first expression would have
been connected with “literature” referring to a partition of it. On the contrary, “the
epoch of Mindaugas” refers directly to “Lithuanians” and, consequently, to “Lithuania”. This terminological selection silently disseminates the idea that the ruler of
a multi-ethnic state was indeed the Lithuanians’ king. Moreover, in this contexts,
ambiguous is the term seniausioji that can now be connected to both “Lithuanians’
literature” and “Lithuanians’ history” (referring to the historical figure of Mindaugas
who has little relevance in the history of literature) telling that there is also a “not so
old” and consequently a modern period in Lithuania(ns)’history. The continuity of
history is construed, together with the identity, on a linguistic expression.
That the final aim of the book is the reinforcement and expansion of national
identity is self-evident in the correlation of the two unnecessary and non-informative
terms seniausioji and Lietuvių speaking about the meaningless lable “culture”. The
78
We could confront this linguistic ambiguity – and its exploitation to create “unity” – with the specular Estonian case. ‘Ethnic and civic conceptions of nations cannot be clearly separated from each other. […] In the
Estonian discourses, this connection is inscribed in the distinction between “rahvas” (ethnic group […]) and
“rahvus” (nation)’. However, this ‘distinction’ becomes often a handy identification in national history. Jörg
Hackmann, ‘Narrating the Building of a Small Nation: Divergence and Convergence in the Historiography of
Estonian “National Awakening”, 1868–2005’, in Stefan Berger, and Chris Lorenz (eds.), Nationalizing the Past
Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010): 170-191, 171.
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whole book is a study on a possible reformulation of the expression “Lithuanians’
culture”. This is manifest in the terminology used in the Age-of-Enlightenment-style
comment on the shrinking of the darkness of the unknown.79 Firstly, the author
tells he has not discovered (surasti) new texts, but rather he has included (įtraukti)
new texts in the literature of the Lithuanians.80 In other words, the author’s aim was
to define Lithuanian culture in a way that could allow him to include new texts in
Lithuanian culture. Secondly, to include these texts, the author categorically denies
the territorial framework used in the past by scholars as Albinas Jovaišas.81 Similarly,
and with good reasons, refused is the ethnical parameter (in the past so important
for Šapoka).82 Analogously, and rightfully, he claims unviable is the definition of an
administrative criterion to frame Lithuanians’ literature. However, very unusual, and
therefore illuminating, is Bučys’s decision to refuse the linguistic parameter too.83
This linguistic parameter is typically the main (and often the only) one adopted to
define other literatures (the terms French, Italian, English, Latin in literature always
refer to the language of the texts). It is precisely because this technical, concrete, and
almost everywhere accepted parameter does not allow including the selected texts in
the literature of the Lithuanians that it has been refused. Rather, a “cultural parameter” defined by the preconceived aim of the study is used. The cost to achieve this
result is the adoption of a poly-paradigmatic approach that is ‘difficult’, ‘requiring
many efforts’ and almost thirty pages of explanation.84 It is a linguistic construction
stating that “everything culturally Lithuanian should be included in the Lithuanians’
literature and that it was necessary to adopt a new study paradigm to define Lithuanians’ culture in a manner that permits these texts to be included in it”.85
The reason for such an effort is openly revealed by Bučys himself. The analysed
texts do not require a particular method of investigation because of their intrinsic
characteristics. Rather, it is because the author’s ambition is to include new texts
into the history of Lithuanians’ literature despite having been written not in the
Lithuanian language, by persons ‘not living in the territories ruled by the Lithuanian
dukes’,86 and occasionally being referred in the texts themselves as ‘Polish’.87 The ‘aim’
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
34
Ibid. 10.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Cf. Adolfas Šapoka, ‘Ar lietuviška buvo senoji Lietuvos valstybė?’, Šviesos keliai 4 (1932), 202.
Bučys, Seniausioji lietuvių literatūra, 10-11.
Ibid. 9-35.
Expressions as “kultūrinis požiūris” and “kultūros įvykis” are scattered across the whole book. Cf. Ibid. 12.
However, what does culture mean if not the arbitrary selection and decision of what is culture? Culture is not
an attribute, but a linguistic definition. See Francesco Remotti, Control’identità (Roma: Laterza, 1997).
Ibid.
Ibid. 18.
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of the research is Bučys’ will ‘to include in the history of the literature of the Lithuanians texts which were never included […] before’.88 In passing, it should be noted
how revealing is the choice of the term “Lithuanians” when juxtaposed to Adolfas
Šapoka’s call to ‘find the Lithuanians in the history of Lithuania’.89
Furthermore, the timeline on which the history of literature is construed is
expanded in this manner reaching the 13th century. Basing on this relation between
time and literature, the cultural history of the Lithuanians is construed as united
and continuous. Consequently, adopting a “cultural paradigm”, the author plays on
the redefinition of linguistic formulation of the problem by transforming Lithuania
into Lithuanians and connecting them with the historical figure of Mindaugas in
order to extend, at the same time, the chronology of the national history. Furthermore, the geographical limits of Lithuania’s cultural borders have been consistently
expanded thanks to this linguistic expedient.
This kind of logical expedient played on a terminology misleadingly construed on
similarity is known as fallacy; the logical formulation of the reasoning is correct, but
it results in an invalid outcome (which is not necessarily false) because the outcome
results from the definition of some elements external to the logical construction (in
this case, the chosen terminology). In this particular case, the fallacy is a specific one. It
is called equivocation – the illegitimate switching of the meaning of the term (“Lithuanian” and “Lithuanians” defining Lithuanian literature) during the reasoning.90
A more detailed analysis of the whole premise of Bučys’ work makes evident
that there are few concrete references to the texts investigated. Almost all the book
is focusing on the linguistic construction of space and time in Lithuanians’ cultural
history, making them united and continuous under the label “culture.” However,
culture itself is a linguistic metaphor of the selection process occurred when removing or including elements to formulate the idea of culture.
Furthermore, one should note that on the same paralogism construed on a linguistic expedient is based, as mentioned above, Mintautas Čiurinskas’ research on
Lithuanian biographistic.91 On a symilar exploitation of the linguistic polisemy are
based a number of contemporary studies on the cultural history of a nation.92
88
89
90
91
92
Ibid. 11.
See note 79.
‘Fallacy’ in Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. [http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#Equivocation]. Visited on
December 2nd 2013.
See note 73.
Vytautas Vanagas, Lietuvių rašytojų sąvadas (Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 1996).
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Con c lusions
Summing up, and with specific reference to Lithuanian historiography, the analysis
of a number of texts is showing that the theoretical representation of cognitive processes’ framing structures is a distorted image of the actual practice. Firstly, it is evident that space is not a framing structure itself when referring to nation or national
aspects. Rather, space is a concept selected and defined by that of historical time.
In turn, historical time seems not to be a metaphor of the experienced time,
but rather of the formulated memory’s diachronic elements. Sometimes, it is used
to frame linguistically construed concepts as national history, ethnic groups activities, cultural aspects, and culture tout court. In other words, it seems the movement
of the general idea (in the schematic representation provided above) should be
reduced in extent including just “word” and “framing structures” which are used
to express “formulated memory”. On the contrary, very weak is the contact with
the “perceptions of reality”. This is evident when scholars renounce every ‘signifier’
directly connected to a ‘signified’ (terms referring to language, borders, geographical elements, administrative divisions, etc.) preferring already linguistically construed ‘meanings’ (nation, identity, culture, etc.), which are “two steps below” the
perceptions in the cognitive cone. The relation with the referent is weakened.
The referent often even disappears making the linguistic constructions of the
though the object itself of historical researches. This is particularly evident in
national narratives and specifically in the narrative constructions of the unity in
the national history. In this field, scholars tend to exclude the referents even from
the definitions of framing structure such as space and time. The language of the
historians appears to actually be separable from reality as suggested by Rainer. Consequently, the language of historiography is indeed becoming not different from
what it talks about since, in it, the relation between signifier and signified is becoming the relation ‘between several signifiers, with no reality left to refer to.’
Language is informing and shaping historians’ perception. The language, therefore,
should be considered the main and most evident prejudice operating and defining cognitive processes in historiography. We can just suppose there are two reasons for this
revealing finding. Firstly, studies defined by such prejudices can exploit the polysemy
of certain expressions and rhetorical constructions to fulfil contemporary Lithuanian
historiography’s main task – to ‘search for Lithuanians in Lithuanians’ history’. This
should probably be intended an attempt to construe a national identity as a reaction
to other imposed identities. Consequently, Lithuanian national narrative should be
considered as an example of academic post-traumatic construction of memory.93 This
93
36
Cf. ‘Trauma as a source of past construction’, in Jonutytė, Philosophy of history, 19.
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would explain the necessity to expand the chronological and spatial borders of the
identity.94
Secondly, we suggest language is becoming the most influential prejudice and
framing structure because it is so flexible that can be used as a surrogate of the
territorial (geographical-morphological) prejudice. It seems the lack of relevant
morphological elements in a region could influence the cognitive processes of the
peoples leaving in those areas. It becomes extremely difficult to frame perceptions
and formulate memory outside space especially if the ‘action’ toward which the
thought is projected is the definitions of “borders” as in the decision of national
identities. The relation between national narrative, morphology of the territory,
and identity in Eastern Europe should be better investigated.
Moreno Bonda
Vals t yb ė s is torijos vienyb ė šiuolaikin ė je L ie t uvos
is toriografijoje : s t udija apie kogni t yvinius pro c esus
S A N T R AU K A . Šiame straipsnyje autorius tyrinėja sąsajas tarp kalbos ir kognityvinių procesų
šiuolaikinėje Lietuvos istoriografijoje. Straipsnyje bandoma išskirti prietarą (vok. Vorverstä­n­
dnis), remiantis Gadamerio terminologija, ar įrėminimo struktūras (Heideggerio įvardytos vok.
Vor-structure), veikiančias kognityvinius procesus, kurie vyksta, kai noetinius aktus ir atsiminimus norima „išversti“ į komunikacinius veiksmus.
Remdamiesi Bergsono nubraižyta schema, vaizduojančia ryšius tarp sąmonės, atminties
ir veiksmo (šiuo konkrečiu atveju – istorijos rašymo), mes nagrinėjame, kaip konstruojama
vienybė nacionalinėje istorijoje (kuri čia suprantama kaip tam tikras tęstinumas šiuolaikinio
politinio įvaizdžio istorijoje). Antroje straipsnio dalyje pristatoma įvairių istoriografinių darbų
analizė, suteikianti pagrindą pakoreguoti kai kurias teorines prielaidas. Nors daugelyje teorijų
svarbiausiomis įrėminimo struktūromis laikomos laikas ir erdvė, tyrimas parodė, kad Lietuvos
istoriografijoje erdvė nėra įrėminanti struktūra, o greičiau sąvoka, apibrėžta ir pasirinkta laiko.
Istorinis laikas savo ruožtu yra apibrėžtas ir pasirinktas jau įsisavintų ir lingvistiškai suformuluotų sąvokų. Tai aiškiai matoma, kai mokslininkai atmeta kiekvieną „žymiklį“, tiesiogiai susijusį su „žyminiu“ (žodžiais, apibūdinančiais kalbą, sienas, geografinius elementus, administracinį skirstymą) ir verčiau renkasi jau lingvistiškai sukonstruotas „reikšmes“ (tauta, tapatybė,
kultūra). Siekiant apibrėžti erdvę laike ir taip sukonstruoti nacionalinės istorijos vienybę, vartojami tam tikri kalbiniai reiškiniai ir retorinės figūros, kurie yra linkę pašalinti „žyminius“ net iš
erdvės ir laiko sąvokų. Pateikiama išvada, kad kalba formuoja istorikų suvokimą ir jį įprasmina.
Taigi kalba turėtų būti laikoma pagrindiniu prietaru, veikiančiu kognityvinius procesus istorio­
grafijoje.
R A K TA ŽO D I A I : Lietuvos istoriografija, kognityviniai procesai, atmintis, istorinis laikas,
retorinės figūros, hermeneutika, nacionalinė istorija.
94
An identity is always affirmed in opposition to others and thus has to conquere “spaces” that once belonged
to the other identities. Remotti, Contro l’identità, 72. Cf. with the expansion of the cultural borders of the
Lithuanians operated by Vytautas Vanagas, Lietuvių rašytojų sąvadas (Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos
leidykla, 1996).
37
M oreno B onda
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39
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H UA N I A
A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N:
T H E S E A RC H F O R N E W C O O R D I N AT E S I N
P O S T - S OV I E T L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y
M arius S irutavi č ius
S U M M A RY. This article focuses on the work of the researchers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who were among the first to join the regional discussions and attempt to find a place for
the historical Lithuania between the East and the West. The questions discussed are related to
the national interests of the researchers: to define the position of Lithuania in a specific historical region basing their judgements on the openly declared public, political and cultural motives.
In order to model the region and the place of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the work applies
the strategies of historical analysis such as interpretative models, argumentation, and theoretical
grounding.
K E Y WO R D S : East Central Europe, Central Europe, regional modelling, post-Soviet Lithua­
nian historiography.
The collapse of the Soviet system, the processes of the European integration and
the related political and societal expectations have led the researchers to reassess
the historical position of their countries by refusing the established division of
Eastern and Western Europe1. National history narratives renewed the discussions of the first half of the 20th century about the existence of an “intermediate
region” between the East and the West, most often referred to as Central or East
Central Europe. The possibilities of free cooperation in the post-Soviet space
have lead to the establishment of the network of East Central European institutes. Due to the organizational efforts of a Polish scholar Jerzy Kloczowski2, the
Lithuanian researchers have also joined the discussions of the historians of the
region.
1
2
The article is written according to the research project “Central and Eastern European Region: Research
of the Construction of National Narratives and Politics of Memory (1989-2011)” – VP1-3.1-ŠMM-07-K02-024 – sponsored by the Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-2013 “Support to
Research Activities of Scientists and Other Researchers (Global Grant)”.
On the beginning of the process: Kloczowski, Europa środkowo-wschodnia i jejhistoria, Z dziejów Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej: księga pamiątkowa ofiarowana prof. dr. hab. Władysławowi A. Serczykowi w 60
rocznicęjegourodzin, Białystok: DziałWydaw. Filii UniwersytetuWarszawskiego, 1995, s. 112.
41
M arius S irutavi č ius
Differently from the Lithuanian historians, the researchers of Poland, Hungary, Czechia or other countries of “the intermediary region” ground their discussions of regional models on the tradition of national historiography. The Lithuanian historians were not involved in the debates over the concept of the region
during the fourth and the fifth decades of the 20th century as the professional
academic Lithuanian historiography was only developing at that time. Thus it
was not possible to engage in the debates which required a deeper theoretical
substantiation. Cooperation of researchers was stopped by the Polish-Lithuanian
conflict over the Vilnius region. Further opportunities to join the discussion were
eliminated by the imposed control and restrictions of the Soviet regime. The
Lithuania’s position as a part of Eastern Europe became unquestionable. New
possibilities to contribute to the debates of regional modelling and present the
position of the national historiography in international events appeared only at
the end of the 20th century.
Researchers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were among the first to raise
a question of historical-spatial identity. Their analyses of the different political,
social and cultural processes of the old Lithuania revealed the existence of different
interpretations of the same issues. Typical schemes in the traditional historiography
which divide Europe into the East and the West were not applicable to the multicultural and multiconfessional reality of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Therefore,
the need for a different interpretational state model which could not be identified
neither with the East nor with the West appeared. The object of this work is the
research of the historians of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who attempt to find a
place for the historical Lithuania between the East and the West. The first question
to be discussed relates to the national interests of the researchers: to position Lithuania in a specific historical region, drawing on public, political and cultural evidence. Secondly, the strategies of historical analysis such as interpretative models,
argumentation, and theoretical grounding applied in order to model the region
and place of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are overviewed.
At the beginning of the discussed period, a significant amount of research passively followed the traditional division of Eastern and Western Europe. According to
this model, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was identified with the Eastern Europe.
At first, there was no clear consensus about the new regional coordinates of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Some researchers perceived the country as the Eastern
part of the Central Europe; others chose a modified direction of the East Central Europe. There were also models which included an ambiguous conception
of Central and Eastern Europe, the model of the North Eastern Europe which
set new geopolitical orientation of the country, or cases of positioning historical
42
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Lithuania according to the schemas of civilizational development. An especially
original conception of historical-spatial identity was developed by Edvardas Gudavičius. According to the conception, the historical development of Lithuania is
seen in the context of the neighbouring countries’, European or world history at
large. By presenting a peculiar approach to the development of the world history,
Gudavičius sees Europe as a civilizational region, based on the Latin West and
the Byzantine East civilizational foundations. Continental territories influenced by
the two civilizations are treated as peripheral civilizational zones. Central Europe
together with the Christian Lithuania and the Scandinavian countries are treated
as peripheral to the Latin West civilization and referred to as an infra-civilizational
region or New Europe3.
Spatial changes of the historical state can be best revealed by analysing the
work of the Lithuanian researchers throughout several decades. On the other
hand, the varying foci of the research on this problem significantly complicate
the task. A great number of historians writing on the issues of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania passively use the terms of historical regions without giving a concrete
substantiation for a choice of a specific term. The placing of the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania in one or another region is seen as self-evident. A clearer picture of
the conception of spatial identity is provided only in the works which choose
the model of historical region as the spatial orientation of the research. As an
example, a study by Rita Regina Trimonienė The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and
Central Europe During the Late 15th and Early 16th Centuries (Lietuvos Didžioji
Kunigaikštystė ir Vidurio Europa XV–XVI a. sandūroje) can be discussed. In this
publication, the issues of Lithuanian political development are viewed through
the relations of the Jagiellonian dynasty and related with the historical contexts
of Poland, Czechia and Hungary, that is the countries identified with the Central
Europe4. Rimvydas Petrauskas’ works on the development the social structures of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are also representative of the discussed direction
3
4
Gudavičius, E., Lietuvos europėjimo kelias, Eds. Bumblauskas A., Petrauskas, R., Vilnius: Aidai, 2002,
p. 17–59; Gudavičius E., Lithuania’s Road to Europe, Lithuanian Historical Studies, Vilnius: LII, 1997,
vol. 2, p. 15–27; Manusadžianas, P., E. Gudavičiaus pasaulio istorijos civilizacinė koncepcija, Tarp istorijos
ir būtovės. Studijos prof. Edvardo Gudavičiaus 70-mečiui. Eds. A. Bumblauskas, R. Petrauskas, Vilnius: Aidai,
1999, p. 433–458.
Trimonienė R. R., Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė ir Vidurio Europa XV–XVI a. sandūroje, Šiauliai: Šiaulių
pedagoginis institutas,1996. For the regional modelling, the author chose a traditional conception of Jagiellonian Europe developed by the Polish historiography in the first half of the 20th century. According to the
model, the regional space is constructed on the basis of the relations of the Jegiellonian dynasty who ruled
Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Czechia at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries.
However, the model does not suit for the analysis of the political development of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after 1524, when the Jagiellonian dynasty lost their thrones in Czechia and Hungary and the so called
Jagiellonian Europe diminished. In this way, the research was limited only to the analysis of the Lithuanian
relations with the Kingdom of Poland.
43
M arius S irutavi č ius
of research. To show a broader context of the discussed socio-political processes,
Petrauskas often provides examples of analogous events from other countries of
East Central Europe5. The overviewed works alongside other publications of a
similar kind witness the aspiration of the Lithuanian historians to identify the
history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a specific historical region. However, the motives of choosing a specific regional model are often not grounded. As
a rule, researchers tend to use the established regional models in historiography
without questioning their validity. Due to the lack of the theoretical and methodological background, only few Lithuanian historians undertake an in-depth
analysis of the problem of regional modelling. Apart from Edvardas Gudavičius,
whose work on the civilizational conception of European space has not received
sufficient attention from other researchers, several other historians focusing on
the issues of national and spatial identity can be singled out. Specifically, Alfredas
Bumblauskas and Jūratė Kiaupienė, who represent different schools of historiography, have been developing their perspectives of regional modelling in a number of publications for several decades.
Out of a number of other researchers who write about the position of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the region, the mentioned historians can be primarily distinguished as linking the search of the historical-spatial identity with
the public processes, and political and cultural needs of the people of those times.
Often, these processes and needs are identified as the central motives of the discussions. In one of the articles, which can be called a historiographic manifesto
(The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the East Central Europe: Problems of Region
Modelling), Kiaupienė identifies the problems of state image, the geopolitical
location of Lithuania and its role in Europe as the key motives in the search
of the historical and spatial identity. In the opinion of the researcher, for the
solution of these political problems, the conception of the historical image of
Lithuania should be used. Moreover, the conception should not be associated
only with the history of the Lithuanian Republic of the first half of the 20th century. As Kiaupienė claims, the historical image of Lithuania becomes particularly
important among the European states, which cherish their historical continuity
and politicians, who think in the categories of historical geopolitics6. The idea
of the historical image as a representational tool of statehood prevails in the later
5
6
44
Petrauskas R., LDK bajoriško seimo susiformavimas Vidurio Rytų Europos luominių susirinkimų raidos
kontekste, Parlamentarizmo genezė Europoje ir Lietuvos atvejis: tarptautinės mokslinės konferencijos medžiaga.
Eds. A. Lukošaitis, M. Urbonaitė, R. Budnikaitė. Vilnius, 2008, p. 5–15. In this and other publications of
the researcher, the social and political events in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are often discussed by comparing them to the parallel processes in East Central European countries.
Kiaupienė J., Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė Vidurio Rytų Europoje: diskusinės regiono modeliavimo
problemos, Lituanistika pasaulyje šiandien: darbai ir problemos, Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 9, 11.
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N :
T H E S E A RC H F O R N E W C O O R D I N AT E S I N P O S T - S OV I E T L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y
works of the researcher. In the article, East Central Europe and the Lost Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, it is emphasized that Lithuania has always strived for being
recognized, understood and accepted by Europe. Therefore, when discussing
the problem of regional dependence, the historiographic and political interests
become closely intertwined7.
The problem of the “lost” or “invisible” country as a key motive is also seen
in Bumblauskas’ research on the regional coordinates of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. In the introduction of the article Lithuania – the Geographical Center of
Europe, the researcher draws attention to the astonishment of the old Europe when
facing a different country than was expected after 1990: a Catholic country rather
than Orthodox, people talking in their own rather than the Slavic languages, etc.
Bumblauskas asserts that Lithuania not only lacks clear geographical coordinates,
but also rarely receives adequate positions in the mental historical maps of Europe.
For the historiography of the West, Lithuania remains “tabula rasa”8. In the conference report published several years ago, Actual and Historical Regions of Europe,
Bumblauskas further develops the societal-political argumentation by relating the
problem of regional positioning to the full range of current Lithuanian foreign
policy issues. The researcher criticizes the regions constructed by the Lithuanian
politicians by claiming that there is no clear understanding of Lithuania’s place in
the regional space. The positions of politicians do not meet with the opinions of the
historians who see Lithuania as a part of the East Central Europe. In the political
rhetoric, the region often becomes the Central and Eastern Europe. Bumblauskas
also observes a problem of an ambiguous geopolitical orientation of Lithuania, i.e.,
the flouncing between the region of the countries of the Baltic Sea and the region
of the East Central Europe. The politicians offer to refuse any identification with
the East Central Europe in the conception of the image of Lithuania and choose
the direction of the Baltic and the Nordic countries. However, at the same time,
the Eastern neighbourhood policy is realized which clearly contradicts the mentioned claims. Bumblauskas maintains that due to the historical dependence to
the East Central Europe, Lithuania is culturally and historically closer to Poland,
Czechia and Hungary rather than to Latvia, Estonia or Sweden9. Moreover, the
problem of Lithuania’s regional dependency is seen as especially topical, having in
7
8
9
Kiaupienė J., Europa Środkowowschodnia i „zagubione“ Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie, Pozostawionehistorii.
Litwini o Polsce i Polakach, Kraków: Znak, 1999, s. 16.
Bumblaukas A., Lithuania and Europe’s Historical Regions, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review. 2000, nr. 5.
Internet access:<http://www.lfpr.lt/uploads/File/2000-5/Bumblauskas.pdf>.
Bumblauskas A., Aktualieji ir istoriniai Europos regionai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštija, ULB, Vidurio
Rytų Europa, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos tradicija ir tautiniai naratyvai, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto
leidykla, 2009, p.18, 22.
45
M arius S irutavi č ius
mind the contemporary geopolitical aspirations of Russia. In the discussion of the
historical peripeteia between the countries in the 20th century, Bumblauskas draws
attention to the official statements of Moscow’s geopoliticians: Lithuania is seen as
the main Russia’s obstacle which hampers the implementation of the Eurasian strategy in the post-Soviet space and the revival of the Moscow-Berlin axis. Bumblauskas presupposes that in order to realize these aims, Russia may pursue a specific
historical politics, for example, the escalation of the Lithuanian-Polish relations10.
The relations of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine are also discussed in this
context. According to the scholar, strong partnership between the countries and
counterbalance to the Russian position can be achieved only if historical pretensions are rejected. Thus the development of relations between the mentioned countries is inseparable from the considerations of the problems of common cultural
and historical heritage11.
The overviewed historiographical manifestations of the two historians witness
the aspiration to ground the search for historical-spatial identity on the topical
societal-political issues. These ideas are visible in the chosen regional modelling
principles or reasoning used to position Lithuania in the regional area. Moreover,
the problems of Lithuania’s “disappearance” in history and the relations with the
neighbouring countries are highlighted.
***
Due to the lack of research in the national historiography, the Lithuanian historians start the search for the historical-spatial identity from the criticism of the
prevailing historiographic conceptions. This strategy was especially prompted by
the images of the Lithuanian past prevalent in the neighbouring countries which
confront with the positions of the contemporary national historiography. Bumblauskas was one of the first in the Lithuanian historiography to discuss the position of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Europe. A question was raised whether
the Grand Duchy should be seen as an independent civilizational unit or as a
part of such supra-civilizations as Byzantia and Rus before the Christening, and
the Latin West civilization after the Christening of the country. In the discussion of the conceptions of the historical development of Lithuania dominant in
the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Bumblauskas distinguished three
directions of interpretations: the Russian, the Polish and the Baltophylic. All three
directions constructed the historical development of Lithuania in the context of
the battle between the Russian and Polish civilizations. In the Lithuanian history
10
11
46
Ibidem, p. 20-21.
Ibidem, p. 22-23.
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N :
T H E S E A RC H F O R N E W C O O R D I N AT E S I N P O S T - S OV I E T L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y
of the 13th-14th centuries, the role of the Russian civilization was emphasized.
Such attitude reflected the interests of the imperial and Slavofilic historiography of
those times. The Polish historiography mostly focused on the history of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania after the acceptance of Christianity, stressing the importance
of Poland in bringing the Western culture to Lithuania. The image of the Lithuanian history was built around the idea of Poland as a “missionary of civilization”
in the context of Polish history12. The scholar observes that only in rare cases, especially in the Baltophylic or, later, the Lituanistic research, Lithuania was viewed not
as an object of fight of civilizations, but as a subject creating civilization13. From this
perspective, the country is seen as balancing between the mentioned civilizations
with greater Russian influence in the pre-Christian and Polish in the post-Christian
periods. Bumblauskas identified similar interpretations of the Lithuanian past in
the works of the Polish historians of the first half of the 20th century, for example,
Feliks Konieczny and Oskar Halecki, among others. Despite the facts that the idea
of Poland as cultural missionary was no longer emphasized and the peculiarities of
historical development and the statehood traditions of the GDL were observed, the
image of the Lithuanian history was still constructed in the context of the Polish
history14. In the discussions of regional positioning, the concept of civilization as
seen by Bumblauskas relates to a certain extent to the conception of the regions of
civilizational Europe developed by Gudavičius. On the other hand, apart from the
use of similar conceptual constructions and continuation of some ideas, Bumblauskas does not follow the interpretational model of the European history proposed
by Gudavičius.
In a similar way, Kiaupienė aims her critical remarks at the historiographical
images of the East Central Europe of the 20th century. The conception of the core
states of the region – Poland, Czechia and Hungary and their peripheral zones is
especially disapproved. According to this vision, Lithuania is in the periphery of
the region; the history of the country is interpreted through the prism of Poland
as a core state. Lithuania is first mentioned only after the dynastic union with the
Kingdom of Poland; its position is constructed only through the union relations
with the neighbouring country. Finally, at the end of the Early Modern Times,
Lithuania again disappears in the Polish history. Contrary to this position, another variant of regional modelling is proposed: the history of the GDL is seen
as inseparable from the history of the region and discussed in parallel with the
12
13
14
Bumblauskas A., Dėl Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės civilizacijos pobūdžio, Lietuvos istorijos studijos,
t. 3, 1996, p. 10–14.
Original quote: “ne kaip į civilizacijų kovos objektą, o kaip į civilizaciją kuriantį subjektą”.
Ibidem, p. 14–17.
47
M arius S irutavi č ius
Polish history; the exceptionality of the Lithuanian history and the distinction
of past events are emphasized. However, Kiaupienė claims that the presented
position, favourable to the historical portrayal of Lithuania, is overshadowed
by different modifications of the Lithuanian historical image which follow the
conception of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania “fused” together with the Kingdom
of Poland established in the Polish historiography of the first half of the 20th century. The interpretations of the Lithuanian past by the Polish historians Halecky
and Koneczny and their followers are especially criticised. This perspective proclaims the idea of the cultural missionary of Poland and ignores the position of
the Lithuanian historiography15. In the historiographic criticism, Kiaupienė sees
similar problems to the ones posed by Bumblauskas. It is emphasized that in the
national narratives of other countries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is not given
an independent historical role, whereas its past is viewed as a peripheral part of
the Polish history.
In bringing the problem of the “vanishing” of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
in the historiography of the neighbouring countries, the mentioned Lithuanian
historians draw new regional coordinates of the country in opposition to the Russian and Polish historiography. By rejecting the idea that the GDL is “found” in
Europe only after the Christianization and the dynastic union with Poland, both
researchers look for the evidence of the European influence in the earlier stages
of the Lithuanian statehood. Discussing the issue of the place of the pre-Christian Lithuania in Europe, Bumblauskas rejects the historiographic claim about the
crucial Russian cultural influence on the Pagan Lithuania. The researcher claims
that the Slavic lands were in the periphery of the state life, whereas the pagan core
of the Lithuanian state was influenced not only by the Russian civilization16. As
a support, the first signs of the West orientation are given: the Catholic Christianization of the country in 1387 after an unsuccessful first attempt in 1251.
Although the influence of the Slavic civilization such as the spread of Orthodoxy
and Slavic writing system on the former Pagan Lithuania cannot be ignored, the
overall cultural imprint is seen as marginal. It is noted that although at the state
level the Pagan religion prevailed, it was gradually replaced by Catholicism which
enhanced the spread of the Western culture in Lithuania17. This fact stands as a
basis of the declaration “Lithuania – not East Europe”. The declaration opposes the
Russian position which presents the historical development of the Grand Duchy
15
16
17
48
Kiaupienė J., Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė Vidurio Rytų Europoje.., p. 11–17; Kiaupienė J., The Grand
Duchy of Lithuania in East Central Europe or once again a boutthe Lithuanian-Polish Union, Lithuanian
Historical Studies, Vilnius: LII, 1997, vol. 2, p. 57–64.
Bumblauskas A., Dėl Lietuvos Didžiosios.., p. 21.
Bumblauskas A., Aktualieji ir istoriniai.., p. 33.
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N :
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of Lithuania in the light of the political structures, social hierarchy, ownership
regulations and cultural issues of the Eastern Europe. First, the argument, “Russia is an Eastern Christian land“, whereas Lithuania chose the Catholic baptism,
shows that Bumblauskas follows the traditional European regional division i.e. the
continent is divided into the Latin and the Byzantine Europe according to the
religion. Secondly, it is claimed that the acceptance of the Catholicism lead to the
spread of such cultural styles as Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Enlightenment
in Lithuania, whereas Russia joined the common cultural processes of Europe only
in the 18th century. The development of political structures also supports the idea
of Lithuania’s distancing from Russia (and the East). During the 15th-16th centuries, Lithuania became a monarchy with its own parliamentary system, whereas in
Russia, the Eastern despotism prevailed. On the basis of the given arguments, new
coordinates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are proposed: as Lithuania cannot be
related neither to the East nor to the West, it should be viewed as a part of Central
Europe18.
Kiaupienė identifies the pre-Christian Lithuania with the East Central region
of Europe. The justification for this claim is evident in the early tradition of the
statehood before the dynastic union with Poland which had a blend of traditions
of the Baltic tribes, Kievan Rus and the European West. Moreover, Kiaupienė sees
the West orientation of the country in the accepted Christianity and the rejected
Orthodox alternative19. Dismissing the over-evaluated role of Poland in bringing
Lithuania to Europe, Kiaupienė reminds that Lithuania acquired international
prestige and became an influential force in the region far before the dynastic union
or Christening. A more thorough analysis of the Pagan Lithuania and its society is
necessary in order to understand the mechanisms which allowed the Pagan country to survive in the Christian East Central Europe for over 100 years without
accepting Christianity; determined its territorial spread into the East; enhanced
the integration of Orthodox Christians into Lithuania, and their separation from
the North-East Slavs20.
As is seen, both researchers locate the Pagan Lithuania between the Eastern
and Western regions of Europe, grounding their argumentation on the geopolitical
orientations of the ruling dynasty. On the other hand, the pre-Christian period is
18
19
20
Bumblaukas A., Lithuania and Europe’s Historical Regions, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review. 2000, nr. 5.
Internet access: <http://www.lfpr.lt/uploads/File/2000-5/Bumblauskas.pdf>; A.Bumblauskas, Aktualieji ir
istoriniai.., p. 34.
Kiaupienė J., Europa Środkowowschodnia.., p. 23–24.
Kiaupienė J., Historyk Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego na marginesie Historii Europy ŚrodkowoWschodniej – kilka uwag dyskusyjnych, Rocznik Instytutu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, rok 8(2010), zeszyt
1: Europa – pytania o przyszłośći, Lublin: IEŚW, 2010, s. 139.
49
M arius S irutavi č ius
too distinctive to dare to draw specific marks of regional identity. Therefore, a more
objective representation of regional identity is searched for in the period of state
and society transformation in the 15th-16th centuries.
According to Bumblauskas, the localization of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
in Central Europe is not an easy task as the majority of the historical processes took
place later than in Czechia, Hungary and Poland. However, due to a rapid process of
Europeanization which started in the 15th century, Lithuania undoubtedly became
an equivalent part of the region in the 16th century. The arguments supporting this
proposition are the features of regional identity: the feudal law which formed in
property regulations; the serfdom and feudal relations; the nobility and monarchy
at the political and social structures; town guilds; the processes of Reformation and
Counterreformation in ideology; educational system with cathedral schools and
the trivium, colleges and university in education21. These facts, according to the
researcher, evidence that Lithuania chose a similar path of development to other
countries of the Central European region.
When discussing the coordinates between the East and the West, Bumblauskas identifies several terms used to refer to the same historical space: Central
Europe, East Central Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe, arguing that they
all define the same historical space which includes Hungary, Czechia, Poland and
Lithuania22. It might be assumed that such controversial position is used to solve
the terminological confusion which appeared due to the different generations
of historians and varying regional and spatial definitions by distinct schools of
historiography. On the other hand, an oversimplification of terminological variation should not be justified: the terminological differences are not only nominal. Quite often, these specific terms differentiate distinct regional models with
unique coordinates.
Meanwhile, Kiaupienė consistently keeps to the chosen definition of the
region, East Central Europe, and does not identify it with other definitions of
the space between Eastern and Western Europe. The scholar claims that the westernization of the country is evidenced by its further historical development. As
a major proof for the processes of Europeanization are the state reforms implemented by the grand duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great. The reforms not
only strengthened the tendencies of western development in Lithuanian ethnic
21
22
50
Original quote: “nuosavybės santykiuose susiformavusi leno teisė, ūkyje – feodas ir baudžiava, politinėje
socialinėje struktūroje – bajorų luomas ir luominė monarchija, miestų ūkyje – cechai, ideologijoje – reformacija
ir kontrreformacija, edukacijoje – švietimo sistema su katedrinėmis mokyklomis bei jų triviumu, kolegijomis ir
universitetu”. In Bumblauskas A., Aktualieji ir istoriniai.., p. 35.
Bumblaukas A., Lithuania and Europe’s historical regions, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review. 2000, nr. 5.
Internet access: <http://www.lfpr.lt/uploads/File/2000-5/Bumblauskas.pdf>.
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N :
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lands, but also in the Slavic territories of the GDL and separated them from
the Russian lands which were under the influence of the Moscow State23. The
scholar sees common regional tendencies of the historical development and the
specificity of the Lithuanian history in different cultural and sociopolitical phenomena. A particular attention is devoted to the questions of the political nation
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Kiaupienė sees the formation of the political
nation of the GDL as a socio-political phenomenon, which should be compared
to the similar processes in the East Central European space. The region is given
a status of space which did not follow Western or Eastern dictate of political regimes
and which avoided the formation of absolute monarchy24. The specificities of the
region, as Kiaupienė claims, are best evidenced in the peculiarities of the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania25. Further on, the scholar aims to
identify and distinguish on regional scale these specific peculiarities by relating
them to development of the national consciousness of the GDL. In contrast to
the claims of the Polish historians about the existence of a single political nation
structured around a mythological “Sarmatian” genealogy, Kiaupienė proposes
a variant of the legendary Roman genealogy developed in the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. Slogans “We are Lithuania” or “We are a Lithuanian nation” found in
the historical sources witness the identification of the political elite of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania with the nation and stand as a strong argument that the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an independent sociopolitical
phenomenon26.
At first sight, Kiaupienė’s position on the GDL place in the region may seem
to be based on contradictory arguments. On the one hand, the scholar emphasizes
the exceptionality and peculiarity of the Lithuanian history. On the other hand, the
importance of common European and regional phenomena for the historical development of Lithuania are stressed. However, the interrelation of the universal and
culture specific issues manifests the main purpose of Kiaupienė’s argumentation: to
reject the role of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a historical satellite of Poland
and to ground the position of Lithuania as an individual historical formation in the
East Central European region.
In the latest research, Kiaupienė relates the question of historical-spatial identification with the issue of the European identity, which in its own turn can
23
24
25
26
Kiaupienė J., Europa Środkowowschodnia.., p. 24.
Original quotes: “nei Vakarų nei Rytų politinių – valstybinių santvarkų diktatui”, “kurioje neįsigalėjo absoliutizmas ar net stipri monarcho valdžia”.
Kiaupienė J., Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos politinė tauta. Lietuviškoji perspektyva, Lietuvos Didžiosios
Kunigaikštijos tradicija ir tautiniai naratyvai, Vilnius, 2009, p. 50–52.
Kiaupienė J., Historyk Wielkiego Księstwa.., p. 142.
51
M arius S irutavi č ius
be encompassed into a broader discussion of the concept of Europe. The idea
of Europe began to be related with the system of specific European values at
the interface of the Medieval and the Early Modern times when the European
identity transformation process began27. Kiaupienė sees the first traces of the
European identity in the nobility of the GDL who finished their studies in West
Europe. Studies in foreign universities intensified the mental integration processes
of the political and social elite of the country with the European and Latin culture28.
Reformation also significantly influenced the cultural maturity of the dukes and
the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania29. Evidence of the European identity can also be found in the old writings of the GDL and in the acceptance of the
antique heritage. The specific way of literary and cultural communication and
the encoded meanings could be understood only by people who shared common
humanistic European culture. As Kiaupienė claims, a variety of the old writings
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania show the orientation of the Lithuanian elite
to the Latin tradition of the European culture30. Finally, Kiaupienė relates the
acceptance of the European culture in the 16th century with the formation of the
European identity in Lithuania.
Analysis of the European identity in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania based on
the search for the common cultural processes also testifies the independent development of Lithuania. The parallels with the common European processes serve as a
counter argument against the localization of the GDL in the Eastern Europe or in
the periphery of the Polish history. The collected evidence shows that the country
had an independent historical role in the East Central European space. However,
Kiaupienė notes that the problem of geo-cultural orientation of the GDL is especially complex because of the variety of the nations, languages and confessions
of the country. It is questioned whether the Europeanization which came from
the “Latin” Europe was understood and accepted by the inhabitants of the Slavic lands and the Orthodox Christians. Kiaupienė speculates that the European
27
28
29
30
52
Kiaupienė J., Lukšaitė I., Veržli Naujųjų laikų pradžia Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė 1529–1588 metais,
Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2013, p. 51.
Original quote: “mentalinės integracijos procesas, stiprėjo sąveika su lotyniškųjų tradicijų Europos kultūra”.
Kiaupienė J., Ar galima rasti europietiško identiteto pėdsakų XVI a. Lietuvoje?, Europos idėja Lietuvoje:
istorija ir dabartis, sud. D. Staliūnas, Vilnius, 2002, p. 52–54. Similari deas can be found in the early works
of Bumblauskas about the processes of Europeanization. According to theresearchers, the majority of the
acquired new cultural, political and social processes were the key European cultural values. Therefore, it
can be concluded that in the 16th century, the society of the GDL becomes European and integrates into
the Western civilization, – Bumblauskas A., Dėl Lietuvos Didžiosios.., p. 22. However, differently from
Kiaupienė, Bumblauskas did not further develop the idea of Europeanization based on the core cultural
values and did not elaborate it into the interpetational strategy used for the analysis of complex geoculutral
orientations.
Kiaupienė J., Ar galima rasti.., p. 54–58.
T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A A N D T H E H I S TO R I C A L R E G I O N :
T H E S E A RC H F O R N E W C O O R D I N AT E S I N P O S T - S OV I E T L I T H U A N I A N H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y
identity was not foreign to the Orthodox nobility of Lithuania who were related
to Europe through their national dependency to the GDL. At the same time, the
historian doubts whether all inhabitants of the GDL who depended to different
cultures and confessions or lived at the borders of the country equally felt being
Europeans31. At present, historiography does not provide a solution to the posed
questions. Research on the political-national loyalty of the Slavic lands of the GDL
or on the issues of religion also does not offer any specific interpretations. Most
often, the works are limited in their context and predominantly discuss the factor
of Moscow neighbourhood, whereas other possible directions of research are not
considered. As is seen, the questions about the exact geographical coordinates of
Central or East Central Europe or where the Eastern border of the region can be
drawn remain especially topical.
Summing up the discussion devoted to the regional positioning of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania which represents the position of the Lithuanian historians,
it can be claimed that in the post-Soviet historiography, the search of historicalspatial identity is closely intertwined with the region identified as Central or East
Central Europe. Although there is no unanimous opinion about the regional
localization of the GDL, the Central or East Central European region dominates
in the national historical narratives. From the Lithuanian perspective, the region
is identified with a narrower space in comparison to the majority of contemporary conceptions and encompasses Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Lithuania
of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. The Alpine-Carpathian and Balkan regions are not relevant for the Lithuanian historians. The tendency can be
explained by the fact that it is easier to identify similar or identical political,
social, and cultural processes in the history of the above mentioned countries
which allows the researchers to draw the regional coordinates of the GDL. The
popular perspective about the exceptionality and peculiarity of the historical
development of the GDL did not serve as a motive for a distinct regional model
and was rather used as an argument for distancing from the historical context of
the East Europe or Poland and the declaration about the independent historical
role of the country in relation to other countries of the region. The discussion of
the new topics of the European identity and the geo-cultural localization of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania symbolizes a new stage in the research of the historical-spatial identity.
31
Kiaupienė J., Lukšaitė I., Veržli Naujųjų laikų pradžia Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė.., p. 52–53.
53
M arius S irutavi č ius
Marius Sir utavičius
L ietuvos D id ž ioji K unigaikštyst ė ir istorinis regionas : nauj ų
koordina č i ų paieška posovietin ė s L ietuvos istoriografijoje
S A N T R AU K A . Sovietinės sistemos griūtis Lietuvos istorikus paskatino iš naujo permąstyti
savo valstybės istorinę vietą Europoje. Vieni iš pirmųjų istorinės erdvinės tapatybės problemas pradėjo svarstyti Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės tyrinėtojai. Jų darbai, kuriose ieškoma istorinės Lietuvos tarp Rytų ir Vakarų, tapo šio straipsnio objektu. Svarbiausi aptariami
klausimai, iš vienos pusės, susiję su nacionaliniais tyrinėtojų interesais – atvirai deklaruojamais
visuomeniniais, politiniais ar kultūriniais motyvais apibrėžti Lietuvos vietą konkrečiame istoriniame regione. Iš kitos pusės, su istorinės analizės strategijomis – interpretaciniais modeliais,
argumentacija, teorinėmis nuostatomis, kuriomis remiantis modeliuojamas regionas ir LDK
vieta jame.
R A K TA ŽO D Ž I A I : Vidurio Rytų Europa, Vidurio Europa, regiono modeliavimas, posovietinė Lietuvos istoriografija.
54
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
T H E C H O I C E S A N D T H E N AT U R E O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S
O F T H E PA S T I N S Ą J Ū D Ž I O Ž I N I O S 1 9 8 8 - 1989
L aima V enclauskien ė
S U M M A RY. The article deals with the manifestations of collective memory (representations
of the past, where past events are interpreted, conceptualised and used for today’s needs) in
Sąjūdžio žinios 1988-1989.
As the Soviet regime made ​​great efforts to reinterpret the past and create a programmed and
artificial memory by radically confronting the institutionalised and individual memories, Sąjūdis’ goals included filling the “blank spots” of history, primarily targeting the secret protocols of
the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. “The return of history” and “recovered (national) memory” also
meant voicing injustices and repressions suffered by the Lithuanians during the Soviet era, such
as mass deportations, which, in turn, led to victimhood and “competitive martyrology”, as well
as creating the image of the Soviet era as that of constant repressions, darkness and sham.
Allusions to the Soviet Union as the (evil) empire (the slaughterhouse of nations) featuring
colonial intent and slavery, compared with the Tsarist Empire (the prison of nations) and serfdom, are often used in Sąjūdžio žinios. The phenomenon of reverse-cultural colonisation is
observed in the opposition between the periphery (Lithuania) and the Soviet metropolis. The
opposition itself is drawn in the form of indifference to the existence of the Lithuanian nation,
its exploitation and humiliation.
In the reflections on environmental issues found within Sąjūdžio žinios, the damage to
Lithuania’s nature is viewed as yet another thread in the history of the nation’s oppression.
Concern for ecology is also concern over the nation’s fate and its future: mass deportations have
ended, yet those who survived are now poisoned in their own polluted land, under the menace
of the nuclear disaster – ecologic genocide. The Lithuanian nature was said to be in need of
purification, just as history and memory were to be recovered and renounced of lies.
History (historical truth) was “brought back” to the streets of the Lithuanian cities and towns
by public rallies, as those to mark the anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, attesting
to collective memory’s performative nature. Sąjūdžio žinios called on the readers to mark the
event, referred to as the offset of the tragic situation the nation has found itself in, while
the publication’s rhetoric employed a schematic narrative template of suffering-waiting-revival
cycle. The comments on the national calendar (the revision of memorable days) and national
attributes in the news bulletin relate to the need for the past that is commonly shared and
jointly remembered, as well as commemorative symbolism.
K E Y WO R D S : collective memory, representations of the past, “blank spots” of history, Sąjūdis,
Sąjūdžio žinios.
55
L aima V enclauskien ė
The changes brought by the revolutionary transformations in the late 1980s gave
an impetus to a frequent use of the notion of memory in the Lithuanian public
discourse: as the images of the past were framed by the Soviet ideology and propaganda, institutionalised memory had little in common with the individual memories and stories told in private; the notions of live, historical and national (“our
own”) memory confronted the official version of the past (alien, “imposed on us”).
The rejection of the official Soviet history prompted the creation of the new, “our”,
Lithuanian version, again, as in the interwar period. In “looking for the Lithuanians in the Lithuanian history”, memory offered seemingly more reliable alternative of personal experience. Later on, the growing distance from the Soviet period
and the topicality of the auto-documentary genre, along with the increasing polemics on publishing memoirs of the former nomenklatura members and the use of
“silent resistance” metaphor, prompted reflections on the relation of memory and
history: true and falsified, artificial memory and attempts to re-write history in the
independent Lithuania in journalism and collections of articles1.
The use of the concept of collective memory (in a wide array of variations – cultural, communicative, social, historical, national, culture of remembrance – and
yet united by defining it as a social and cultural construct, the ability to remember,
recollect and commemorate collectively) has been on the rise among the Lithuanian academia in recent years. Previously, sociologists pioneered in using the concept of social memory in the Lithuanian identity research (such phenomena as
collective remembering and the representations/symbols of the past) and collective
trauma analysis2, while the growing awareness of competing memories and grand
narratives gave impetus to, among others, the rivalling memory-focused articles3,
as well as conferences and issues of their materials4, articles on memory in urban
1
2
3
4
56
E.g. Rasa Čepaitienė. Sovietmetis Lietuvos kultūros šviesoje: projekto bandymas // Menotyra, 2003, nr. 2(31),
p. 74–80; Alfred Erich Senn. Naujausių laikų istorija ir kolektyvinė atmintis // Kultūros barai, 2005, nr. 1,
p. 18–22; Vytautas Rubavičius. Nomenklatūrinės atminties diskursas ir tapatumo politika, part I and II in:
Kultūros barai, 2007, nr. 9, p. 6–12, and nr. 10, p. 12–18; V. Rubavičius. Neišgyvendinamo sovietmečio
patirtis: socialinė atmintis ir tapatumo politika // Lietuvių tautos tapatybė: tarp realybės ir utopijos. Vilnius,
2007, p. 12–40; Almantas Samalavičius. Postkomunistinės visuomenės atmintis ir amnezija // Europos
kultūros profiliai : atmintis, tapatumas, religija. Kultūros barai, 2007, p. 51–68.
E.g. Vladas Gaidys, Danutė Tureikytė, Irena Šutinienė. Istorinė lietuvių atmintis (empirinės charakteristikos)
// Sociologija, Filosofija. 1991, p. 77–87; I. Šutinienė. Socialinė atmintis ir šiuolaikinė lietuvių tautinė tapatybė // Lietuvos etnologija, 2008, 8 (17), p. 31–55; Eugenija Krukauskienė, I. Šutinienė; Inija Trinkūnienė;
Anelė Vosyliūtė. Socialinė atmintis: minėjimai ir užmarštys. Vilnius: Eugrimas, 2003; I. Šutinienė. Trauma ir
kolektyvinė atmintis: sociokultūrinis aspektas // Filosofija, sociologija, 2002, nr. 1, p. 57–62.
E. g. Alfredas Bumblauskas. Vilniaus universiteto istorinės atminties modeliai ir praeities reprezentacijos
XIX–XX amžiuje // Lietuvos istorijos studijos, 2006, t. 16, p. 48–64.
E. g. Holokausto istorijos tyrimai ir tautų kolektyvinė atmintis Baltijos regione. Tarptautinės mokslinės konferencijos medžiaga. Kaunas, 2002; Kryžiaus karų epocha Baltijos regiono tautų istorinėje sąmonėje mokslinių
straipsnių rinkinys / ed. Rita Regina Trimonienė, Robertas Jurgaitis. Šiauliai: Saulės delta, 2007; Lietuvių–
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
spaces and memory places5. Whatever is the reason for the spur (the global trend of
memory studies –“memory boom” or “memory industry”6 – and its appropriation
for the local realities; the attractiveness of memory studies as a field of interdisciplinary intersections; the convenience of practising rather than theorising7, or, some
say, using the concept of collective memory that has no negative connotations as a
means to replace a variety of terms including myth, stereotype, legend8, or adding
the concept as a “trendy” substitute to “old school” concepts in various research
fields), recently there’s been a number of works with collective memory as a scholarly object9.
The widely used notion of memory denotes a variety of things that nonetheless
share a topical common denominator – the ways in which people construct a sense
of the past, connoting the representation of the past and making it into a shared
cultural knowledge in “vehicles of memory” such as books, films or commemorations10. Collective memory is understood and approached within this paper not as
a recollection of a past event, but its interpretation, conceptualisation and the use
for today’s needs, as all of us have access to the past via the categories and schemata, or “collective representations”, of our own culture11. It is used to preserve the
dignity of the group with which one identifies and for making straight and whole
collective story as in the case of the national memories (which may also mean that
the truths which we might find as dispassionate observers must yield to the Truth
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
lenkų santykiai amžių tėkmėje. Istorinė atmintis = Stosunki polsko-litewskie na przestrzeni wiekow. Pamięc
historyczna. Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2009.
E. g. R. Čepaitienė. Nuo monumento prie smūtkelio: atmintis ir kasdienybė paminkluose // Lietuvos etnologija: socialinės antropologijos ir etnologijos studijos; 2005, nr. 5(14), p. 171–188; Vasilijus Safronovas. Praeities panauda palaikant lietuvišką tapatumo orientaciją tarpukario Klaipėdoje // Nauji požiūriai į Klaipėdos
miesto ir krašto praeitį (Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis, t. XVII). Klaipėda, 2008, p. 79–99; Dangiras Mačiulis. Kolektyvinė atmintis ir miesto įvaizdis: Šiaulių atvejis // Acta Humanitarica Universitatis Saulensis. Mokslo darbai, 2009, t. 9: Kultūrinės atminties kaita ir lokalinė istorija, p. 218–234; Darius Staliūnas.
Savas ar svetimas paveldas?: 1863–1864 m. sukilimas kaip lietuvių atminties vieta. Vilnius, 2008.
Kerwin Lee Klein. On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse // Representations. Winter 2000,
vol. 69, p. 127.
Alon Confino. Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method // The American Historical
Review, vol. 102, No. 5 (Dec. 1997), p. 1386.
Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam. Collective Memory – What Is It? // History and Memory, studies in representing
the past. Tel Aviv University, vol. 8, No. 1, Spring / Summer 1996, p. 42.
E.g. Atminties daugiasluoksniškumas: miestas, valstybė, regionas / ed. Alvydas Nikžentaitis. Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos instituto leidykla, 2013; Maps of Memory: Trauma, Identity and Exile in Deportation Memoirs
from the Baltic States. Ed.Violeta Davoliūtė, Tomas Balkelis. Vilnius, 2012; Nuo Basanavičiaus, Vy­tauto
Didžiojo iki Molotovo ir Ribbentropo: atminties ir atminimo kultūrų transformacijos XX–XXI amžiuje / ed. Alvydas Nikžentaitis. Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos instituto leidykla, 2011; Naujasis Vilniaus perskaitymas: didieji
Lietuvos istoriniai pasakojimai ir daugiakultūris miesto paveldas. Vilnius, 2009.
A. Confino. Ibid.
Peter Burke. Varieties of Cultural History. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1997, p. 45–46.
57
L aima V enclauskien ė
we need to make this collective story12) and to construct patterns for self-interpretation legitimised by the past13.
The interest in memory in the public discourse is thought to have come from,
among other things, the so called “memory crisis” caused by the collapse of the
communist bloc: a huge interest in history, most often identified with the past
or “recovered memories”, desire and attempts to fill the “blank spots” of history,
externalise injustice and suffering, etc. The latter seems to be true about Sąjudis
(the Reform Movement of Lithuania) period, when one of the main tasks for the
intellectuals was to make the previously hidden, ignored and falsified historical
events public, as the Soviet regime made ​​great efforts to reinterpret the past by
creating its simple, consistent and unquestionable construct, totally supress and
modify memories and interpretations of past14, which was followed by the formation of programmed, artificial memory that was to guarantee the reproduction of
loyal citizens of the system15.
The revolutionary period of liberation and democratisation which started in
1988 was the onset of radical transformation of the old social fabric16. In the summer of 1988, the communist regime in Lithuania started losing ideological control
over the public discourse17, which resulted in a shift in narratives and meta-narratives. The memories on the individual level, the episodes of the past suppressed
before, political and social attitudes made visible in only semi-private environment
(or hidden transcripts, held by the oppressed, related to critique of power), have
become the subject of discussions and the axis of identity construction, challenging
the infallibility of political and social attitudes (or public transcripts, supported by
the dominators)18.
This article focuses on the choices and the nature of representations of the past
in Sąjūdžio žinios (Sąjudis News) from 1988 to 1989. Sąjūdžio žinios was the first
and the only, for some time, publication of the Reform Movement: the Sąjūdis
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
58
Timothy Snyder. Memory of sovereignty and sovereignty over memory: Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine,
1939-1999 // Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past. Cambridge University
Press, 2004, p. 55.
Dietrich Harth. The Invention of Cultural Memory // Media and Cultural Memory. Berlin, 2008, p. 91.
Rasa Čepaitienė. Sovietmečio atmintis – tarp atmetimo ir nostalgijos // Lituanistica. 2007, t. 53, nr. 4(72),
p. 39.
Gintautas Mažeikis. Propaganda ir simbolinis mąstymas. VDU, Kaunas, 2010, p. 68, 75.
Daiva Citvarienė. Ideologiniai viešojo diskurso konstruktai ir atminties politika posovietinėje Lietuvoje //
Darbai ir dienos, t. 49, 2008, p. 167.
Arūnas Streikus. Ideologinė cenzūra Lietuvoje 1956-1989 m. // Genocidas ir rezistencija, 2004, nr. 1(15),
p. 63–64.
See Rasa Baločkaitė’s use of James C. Scott’s theory in: Rasa Baločkaitė. Diskursyvinių galios santykių
struktūros, jų istorinis determinizmas bei diskurso ribų kaita Lietuvoje 1990–2002 m. // Filosofija. Sociologija. LMA, 2005, nr. 2, p. 7–8, 12.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
Initiative Group decided that it was necessary to publish a newsletter – “a forum
as a means of mass information” against “a wave of reactionary opposition” to
the movement19. The news bulletin was originally issued irregularly, supported by
donations, distributed free by sending out 1,000 copies throughout Lithuania; the
copies were also posted and read on bulletin boards (as it was common for Sąjudis
press overall)20. Readers were urged to pass the copies (handwritten copies were
also in circulation) of the publication when finished with them.
The manifestations of collective memory in the publication are analysed with
respect to several respects:
• The mobilising rhetoric of filling the “blank spots” of history used by Sąjūdis,
employing the terms of “recovered memory” and “returning history”, where
both of these relate to the image of nation victim endowed with a particular
historical experience.
• The schemata of drawing parallels between the Soviet occupation and colonisation, the USSR and the Russian Empire, kolkhoz system and serfdom
and, by using insights of post-colonialism, the metropolis and the periphery, the civilised us and the barbarian other.
• The way environmental issues intertwined with the national sentiments and
the vision of the nation’s fate as the landscape/the nature embodies shared
identity symbols and their emotional reading, continuity of traditions and
the memory a group wants to sustain.
• The rhetoric of memory concerning commemorative practices: national
calendar (marking the anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, the
intended revision of memorable days) and national attributes.
“ R eturning history ” and “ recovered memory ”:
mobilising rhetoric
The collapse of the old regime, which radically confronted institutionalised and
individual memory, was accompanied by zealous search for “authentic”, previously
suppressed memory21, aspirations to “recover” (true, one’s own, our) history, which
19
20
21
Alfred Erich Senn. Lithuania Awakening. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990 1990; <http://ark.
cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft3x0nb2m8/>, p. 72.
Romas Batūra. Lietuvos sąjūdžio spauda kelyje į nepriklausomybę // Siekiant nepriklausomybės. Lietuvos
Sąjūdžio spauda 1988-1991 m. Valstybės žinios, 2005, p. 10.
Although one may question the search for “authentic” memory in scholarly research, as does, for instance Jeffrey K. Olick, claiming that “there’s no pristine memory. Nor is there a primal “event” against which memories
can be judged”: Jeffrey K. Olick. Introduction // States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations
in National Retrospection (Politics, History, and Culture). Duke University Press, 2003, p. 9. On the other hand,
59
L aima V enclauskien ė
primarily meant filling in the “blank spots” of history. The main features of Sąjūdis’
activities and rhetoric in its early stage included a new interpretation of history –
filing the “blank spots” of history – which was the most effective part of mobilising
rhetoric at the time22. One of Sąjūdis’ first goals announced in Sąjūdžio žinios was
to bring back “the Lithuanian nation its history, which has been ignored and falsified for decades; to require the disclosure of the most important historical documents concerning the nation”23. History in the publication is not viewed as only or
rather official, ideological, objective (as a goal) science, which one could contrast
as a lifeless product with the ever-lived, magical and affective memory24: we need
to recover our history “not only as research and publications about past events in
our lives, but as a feeling and understanding that we have always been here”25. The
call for changing the methods of analysing historical texts, as previously “the texts
served as an illustration of a preconceived predicament, and not as a source of
knowledge”, is yet paired with a reminder that history ensures true possibility for
the nation to exist in the future26.
The native land – Lithuania – has been given by “the fate, history or God”27,
hence after “recovering our national memory and bringing back history”, which
“used to be a servant of its master – politics”28, “we should restore the state that has
not been created by vandals”29. The return of history brings back the Lithuanians
the dimension of time30, means that the nation gets back its sacred past, national
martyrology, and also paves the way for the victimhood: “there are no great or
small nations, there are miserable ones only, just like us, one of the oldest IndoEuropean nations”31. The terms Stalinism, perestroika and stagnation are alien,
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
60
authentic memory in Lithuania’s case may be referred to, as “unique social memory, little affected by standard
models of socialist ideology and propaganda, the authenticity of memory should be seen as connected to
the historical memory of Lithuanian nation”: in Prijaukintos kasdienybės, 1945-1970: biografiniai Lietuvos
moterų interviu, ed. Dalia Marcinkevičienė, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2007.
Rytis Bulota. Sąjūdis: teorija ir praktikai // Politologija, t. 3(31), 2003, p. 9.
V. Čepaitis, A. Žebriūnas. Nacionaliniai klausimai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 05, p. 23; here and elsewehere
in the paper, page numbers for quotes from the periodical match the numbering in Sąjūdžio žinios 19881989. Vilnius, Standartų spaustuvė, 2008.
More on the opposition of history and memory in: Pierre Nora. Between Memory and History. Les Lieux de
Memoire // Representations 26. Spring 1989, p. 7-8; see alson in: Dominick LaCapra. History and Memory
after Auschwitz. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Brigita Balikienė. Pergalė // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 16, p. 35.
Vytautas Berenis. Istorijos šaltinio šviesa // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 22, p. 10.
V. Landsbergio žodis Lietuvai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 03, p. 17.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Netektis – 1939, Atgimimas – 1988 // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 29, p. 119.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Dvi dienos, kurios pakeitė Lietuvą // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 10 29, p. 195-196.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Sukasi melo smagračiai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 11 23, p. 216.
Kabelių persitvarkymo Sąjūdžio iniciatyvinės grupės kreipimasis // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 26, p. 117.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
while “our ones” include the tragedy and rebirth of the nation32: after all, “we are
the nation, which had been oppressed for 230 years and has again found itself in
the situation of manifold crisis after 20 years of freedom”33. It seems that Sąjūdisperiod transformations determined rather one-sided general view of the post-war
period: constant fight with the regime, repressions and terror, connoting Orwellian
paradigms of totalitarianism, when little space is left for individual and collective
memories that do not support the image34. “To the Lithuanians, the second world
war did not end in the spring of 1945. First deportations, repressions, then – melioration, forced industrialisation, falsification of history, destruction of cultural
monuments, depreciation of the language, and finally alcoholism, poisoned food,
water and radiation – and the war still goes on”35. During the years of regaining
independence, the Soviet times were given the name of the lost and void (futile)
time, something that should be rejected in the creation of the new society, while
the collective memory concentrated on the events of loss and recovery of independence36. There‘s so much “fear, darkness and failures of getting even in our outworn,
grey, silicate and kolkhoz Lithuania“37, that the ugliness of “squalid Soviet reality”
is only rescued by rare public appearances of the national flag and its colours38,
while the lost generations‘ (the one that grew in the stagnation period) mirror of
the soul used to be the words of a rock band: “we‘re the children of concrete / born
among walls, raised among walls / walls is what we believe in“39.
Victimhood leaves no room for guilt and the corresponding moral imperative:
“all of us-those who survived and who perished, “enemies” and “defenders” – were
victims. The victims of destroying men and nations”40. This paved way for the so
called “competitive martyrology”, also known as the theory of “double genocide”
or the symmetry between the Nazi and the Communist crimes. The pain and the
horrors of the Jewish nation were weighed against the adversities and misery suffered by the Lithuanians: “aren’t the Lithuanians too often called baltaraištis (whitearmbander) (or fascist, Jew-killer, nationalist)? This has been internationalised
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Juozas Glinskis. Vienybės klausimu // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 11 23, p. 211.
Smailio pareiškimas LPS Seimo antroje sesijoje // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 12 07, p. 233.
Michal Kopeček. In search of „National Memory“: the Politics of History, Nostalgia and the Historiogaphy
of Communism in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe // Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism
in Central Europe after 1989. Central Europen University Press, 2008, p. 77–78.
Brigita Balikienė. Nepasakyta kalba Santakos parke // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 08, p. 73.
Rasa Čepaitienė. Min. veik., p. 39.
Sigito Gedos žodis Lietuvai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 19, p. 39.
Arvydas Juozaitis. Vėl vėliava // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 22, p. 43.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Mūsų dvasios žygis: roko maršas Vilniuje // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 18, p. 97.
Aidas Vabuolas. Pokalbis su Ferdinandu Kupšiu: Smurto ir mirties imperija // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 08,
p. 141.
61
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through the history of the USSR (…) and nobody has counted or let count how
many Lithuanians saved the Jews, prisoners of war or the Russian children (…).
Jew-killers should not even be called nationalists – trash does not belong to any
nation, they would have been condemned by the nation itself ”41. Comparisons go
as to death on the Laptev Sea and death in a gas chamber, or Hitler’s racial ideology
and plans of expelling the Baltic peoples to another side of the Ural Mountains and
mass deportations and murders by Stalin – “all of the ways led to the death of the
nation. (…) Both Himmler and Molotov agreed: small nations have no historical
perspective. (…) When two predators fight for prey, the bloody feast of the winner
becomes fatally decisive to the victim”42. The reference to the Laptev Sea alludes
to the memoirs of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė on exile to Siberia, published in the spring
and summer of 1988: the account on the horrors suffered by the deportees – via
both the documentation of the events and the emotional impact the down-toearth narration had – opened wider the doors for discussing the topic of exile, and
the nation’s fate (tragedy, sufferings, humiliation) along. Although not given the
title by Grinkevičiūtė herself, the memoirs published posthumously were entitled
“Lithuanians by the Laptev Sea”, and the publishers’ choice to include “Lithuanians”
in the title might be viewed as an encouragement to view the text as a statement of
a shared national experience of oppression, elicited a particular kind of reading and
contributed to the larger narrative of independence of the time43.
In parallel to this rhetoric, Sąjūdžio žinios were also publishing passages from
The Lithuanian Archive. The Years of Bolshevism on the elections in 1940. The
excerpts echo the Jew-Bolshevik-communist motives: “The number of true Bolshevik agent-communist party members was (...) very small (...). Moreover, 75 percent of the Communist party members constituted the Jews”44, marginalised in the
following passage: “representatives were among the audience in the parterre of the
State Theatre. Just look at the audience: political prisoners, “enkavedists” [NKVD
officials], Jews, several workers…”45
41
42
43
44
45
62
Marcelijus Martinaitis. Šovinizmas ar demagogija? // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 20, p. 103–104.
Kęstutis Masiulis. Vėl senutėlė giesmė // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 13, p. 148.
Jerilyn Sambrooke. Narratives of Identity: A Postcolonial Rereading of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė’s Lithuanians by
the Laptev Sea // Maps of Memory: Trauma, Identity and Exile in Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States.
Ed.Violeta Davoliūtė, Tomas Balkelis. Vilnius, 2012, p. 94.
Ruošiamės rinkimams: P. Mickaus, A. Garmaus ir L. Dovydėno prisiminimai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 01 06,
p. 245.
Ar stosim į SSSR...: A. Garmaus ir L. Dovydėno prisiminimai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 01 31, p. 263–264.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
T he idea of S oviet colonialism and allusions to T sarist Russia
Allusions to the USSR as the empire (the evil empire) featuring colonial intent
and slavery, compared with the Tsarist Empire and serfdom, are often used in
Sąjūdžio žinios. 19th century Lithuanian National Revival “took off with recovery
of history” as it had become clear that “the nation without memory has no future”,
and yet now the “disadvantaged nation” realised that it had been “deprived of history” again and somebody “finds it convenient to treat it as a child”46. “Awakening
consciousness” and “recovered history” prompted drawing parallels between the
situation in the 19th and the 20th centuries: as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
pact, the Baltic states had become colonial plunder47, the kolkhoz [collective farm]
serfdom was introduced into the Lithuanian villages48, while Russia – prison of
nations under the tsarist regime – had become slaughterhouse of nations under
Stalin49. Lithuania is thus referred to as /compared with a colonial periphery, a
region, and the Northwest Territory.
Traditionally, in post-colonialism, the opposition between the periphery and
the metropolis means supremacy of the latter, however, in the post-Soviet context,
the Baltic States perceive themselves as European and the Soviet metropolis as
uncivilized, barbarian (as in the earlier mentioned quote: “we need to establish a
state that has not been created by vandals”) and “Oriental”50. Here, orientalisation
means that the colonised are seen as passive, ahistorical, feminine, or barbaric, and
in the case of the Baltic and Central European states – “reverse-cultural colonisation” – the colonising Soviets were often seen as Asiatics51. Hence, the events of
August 23, 1939, are seen as “Asiatic sadism and cold European madness” holding hands52. The opposition itself between the metropolis and the periphery (me/
the other), as well as the feeling of difference and exploitation in the relations, is
kept: here, Moscow is “indifferent to the existence of the Lithuanian nation, which
has been suffering so much” and hence its anti-ecological behaviour and “colonial
policies” may lead to a situation where “the nation has no place to live”53. “The
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
B. Balikienė. Ibid, p. 71.
Laisvę pavergtoms tautoms // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 08 21, p. 356.
R. Bistrickas, R. Kočiūnas. Homo sovieticus ir persitvarkymas // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 26, p. 115.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Netektis – 1939, Atgimimas – 1988 // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 29, p. 119.
Violeta Kelertas. Perceptions of the Self and the Other in Lithuanian Postcolonial Fiction // Baltic Postcolonialism (On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, & Moral Imagination in the Baltics). Amsterdam
/ New York, NY, 2006, p. 252.
David Chioni Moore. Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial
Critique // PMLA, vol. 116, no. 1, 2001, p. 121.
Arvydas Juozaitis. Tautos ir Europos vardan // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 23, p. 111–112.
Lietuvos žmonės! (LPS Vilniaus tarybos kreipimasis) // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 03 22, p. 307.
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monsters of the Centre have created the Northwester Territory” with Lithuania
included, as if it was not a sovereign republic, expressing their will and power to
command and turning the “beautiful land (“Lithuania’s all over resort”, Russians
claim) into a desert”54.
The coloniser looks down on the local people, expecting to make them feel
inferior, backward in all respects and holding on to erroneous worldview55: “the
Muscovites often see Lithuania as a Russian province, like Ryazan area, and this
kind of imperial attitude (…) is morally humiliating”56. Lithuania is like a farmhand building, where serfs no longer know how to work and are under the supervision of oprichniks, blamed by the Kremlin for being “impudent dependents in the
great manor of Oblomov”. Granted “aborigines, waiving their hoes, were able to
free themselves from the colonial yoke”, the Lithuanians should remind the world
of how much it sacrificed for independence in silence57. Once the nation was able
to revive after 100 years of slavery, even though Empress Yekaterina, “prompted by
Voltaire to undermine the morale of the local people”, initiated a massive drinking
bout among the Lithuanians and their traditions were trampled down58. Now, the
Lithuanians want their “children and grandchildren never again be slaves and serfs”,
and would instead feel free Lithuanians in free Lithuania59. After an unsuccessful
visit to the Great-Russian imperialists “asking Moscow for independence armed
with 1.8 million signatures in favour”, restoring independence remains Lithuania’s
main goal, although the national minorities, which would not like the separation
from the metropolis, need to be explained that “in independent Lithuania, there
will be no national genocide (…) nor will there be pogroms and deportations”60.
Furthermore, the government’s decision to require halting the construction of the
Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant’s (INPP) 3rd block is another milestone in combating
the colonial politics of Soviet monopolies“61.
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
64
R. Tamošiūnienė. Baltijos nafta – Ne! Ne! Ne!// Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 29, p. 164.
Danas Lapkus. Poteksčių ribos (Uždraustos tapatybės devintojo dešimtmečio lietuvių prozoje). Chicago:
Algimanto Mackaus knygų leidimo fondas, 2003, p. 23.
Saulius Pečiulis. Ir toks savarankiškumas // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 13, p. 148.
Kazys Saja. Pasisakymas mitinge 1989 02 16 Katedros aikštėje, Vilniuje // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 02 23,
p. 280.
Vidmantas Valiušaitis. Pagalvokime // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 08, p. 73.
Janinos Žilionienės laiškas. Mintys iš laiškų // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 02 21, p. 278.
R. Bartusevičius. LPS sesijoje Kaune 1989 02 15 // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 02 21, p. 275.
Zigmas Vaišvila. Nauja pergalė Ignalinos fronte // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 07, p. 135.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
N ational sentiments and ecology: under the threat
of “ ecologic genocide ” after “ surviving S iberia ”
During its early stage of activities, the Lithuanian Green Movement voiced concern
over the side effects and consequences of the rapid Soviet industrialisation, and did
not express any open political confrontation. Later, the image of the Lithuanian
nature devastated by the Soviet industrialisation was related to reviving national
sentiments, and the greens started working together with the Lithuanian Reform
Movement62. In the Sajudis period, environmental issues were related with the
national questions by opposing the USSR (industrialisation, and destruction of
Lithuanian landscape) and Lithuania (the nature)63, in the case of some nationalists getting close to something like a “blood and soil” ideology which identified the
Baltic nations with the land64.
Ecological bicycle trip around Lithuania “is not simply the society’s environmental education, it’s also (…) Sajudis “war march” across Lithuania” that has
started “with great injustice that we have all suffered and still are (…:) losing our
national symbols, continuity of traditions, economic and political sovereignty, surviving exile to Siberia, living under the burden of losses every day”65, as posted
by Sąjūdžio žinios on the ecological bicycle trip entitled “Lithuania – My Home”
in the summer of 1988. The trip’s tasks and undertakings included explaining
the importance of environmental issues, conveying information on Sąjūdis’ goals,
gathering signatures on a petition to halt the construction of the nuclear power
plant’s 3d block and a letter to Andrei Gromyko explaining the reasons of Arturas
Sakalauskas tragedy, spotlighting the moral decline in the Soviet army. As befits a
“war march”, national attributes were on display (for instance, the previously banned
tricolour flag and the Pillars of Gediminas), and in the quote above, the damage to
Lithuania’s nature is just another thread in the history of the country’s oppression,
whereas concern for ecology is also concern over the nation’s fate and its future: it
is not enough to “exist in the sense of physiologic vegetation. Every viable, strong
and spiritually healthy nation should survive. (...) “To survive, or to self-destruct?”
This is not vain rhetoric. The current development of the country‘s industry (...) is
close to turning Lithuania into a camp of slow death“66. Although surviving the
62
63
64
65
66
Rasa Baločkaitė, Leonardas Rinkevičius. Sovietinės modernybės virsmas: nuo Černobylio bei Ignalinos iki
Žaliųjų judėjimo ir Sąjūdžio // Sociologija. Mintis ir veiksmas, 2008/2 (22), p. 22.
Ten pat, p. 32.
Anatol Lieven. The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence. New Haven
(Conn.); London: Yale University Press, 1994, p. 220.
Liudvikas Žemaitis. Sąjūdžio dviratininkai apjuosia Lietuvą // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 14, p. 151–153.
Algimantas Patašius. Žalieji toli (!) eis // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 02, p. 130.
65
L aima V enclauskien ė
Siberian camps, the Lithuanians are now on the verge of living on their own native
land, “given by history”67, that is a camp of its own – here, the nation may die slow
death on the “suffocating, poisoned and dingy” land68. It is now not the people, the
nation, but also the land itself that is under the threat of annihilation, as if surviving through deportations and exile was not enough – Lithuania may completely
disappear off the map. The abbreviation meaning nuclear plant (AE in Lithuanian)
was often written with a cross symbol (AE), read as an allusion to the abbreviation for “rest in peace” (AA in Lithuanian)69, with almost apocalyptical menace of
death – the planned 3rd bloc was referred to as “the kindling for the nuclear hell
designed to exterminate the Baltic nations”70.
As in the social pathology analogy, also used by, for instance, Antanas Maceina, a
prominent independent interwar Lithuania’s and post-war (in emigration) thinker,
whose metaphor of pathological state of the body included highlighting economic
problems (when an organism has “a wound made by invisible bacteria”)71, the horrors of the Lithuanian industry and ravaged nature are compared to “tetanus convulsions” that will end in “our body suffocating along with our soul”72. The organismic model of the society – appealing especially in the ages marked by tumultuous
change and harsh conflicts – implies that “foreign” influences entering the system
from outside are alien to its nature and threaten its integrity, are contaminating
and dangerous73. Thus, “while looking at our devastated and still havocked land,
we know what it is like, when the other is the host here”, the nation is unable to
exercise influence over the processes in the country74. The image of the nation – it
is suffering, yet this is exactly why it has been blessed, made exceptional: “we were
and still are one of the nations with the most tragic fate in the history of Europe”,
evidenced by “ecologic genocide” and “constant threat of Lithuanian Chernobyl”75.
“One would hardly find a nation in the world that is forced to consider the question
of its death or total evacuation if the nuclear power plant’s reactor explodes. It is no
wonder that the people – with painful irony or without it – call the nuclear power
plant a new form of genocide. If not genocide, than it is at least colonial politics
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
66
D. Kuolys. Lietuva bunda dabar // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 29, p. 59.
Vytautas Landsbergis. Neteršk Lietuvos // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 23, p. 47.
As in, for instance, Sąjūdžio Žinios, 1988 09 13, 1988 09 14, 1988 09 20.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Netektis – 1939, Atgimimas – 1988 // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 29, p. 119.
Antanas Maceina. Raštai, t. 2. Vilnius, 1992, p. 11, 16.
Gintaras Songaila. Sąjūdis prieš stabligę // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 08 02, p. 63.
Daniel Rigney. The Metaphorical Society – An Invitation to Social Theory. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001,
p. 21.
Irena Ignatavičienė. Į dienos šviesą // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 10 06, p. 173.
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Dvi dienos, kurios pakeitė Lietuvą // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 10 29, p. 196.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
one’s reminded of when listening to soviet officials, leaders and speaking about the
facility in Ignalina“76.
The readers were urged to ponder the issue of “the man’s spiritual ecology”77,
“add moral tone to environmental issues“78, as it was not only pollutants and waste
to clean out: in a sick body (the nature), the spirit (the nation) cannot thrive, it
needs to purify. Lies needed to be renounced, freedom and historical truth (as in
one of the slogans used during the bicycle trip: “No black spots in ecology and no
blank spots in history”79) had to be recovered, the landscape was to get back its
spiritual-symbolic meaning (instead of being a sovietised concept of soulless “landshaft”) as the nature was to be confirmed as the locus of the Lithuanian identity80.
T he past embedded in commemorative calendar
and embodied in national attributes
Both collective and individual memories pertain to the practices of institutions
that preserve images of the past, such as museums, archives, schools, etc. Yet there
exists an unconscious relation with architecture, nature, images remembered and
language, which, along with controversial interpretations and historical monuments that are not subject to explanation, make every state’s efforts to supervise the
imagined past and maintain political regime of its repeatability not entirely successful81. According to Sąjūdžio žinios, history should be invited back to where it
used to be: city streets and squares, museums and cemeteries, schools and churches,
“as the Lithuanians have the right and the duty to recover the pages torn away from
the history, (…) make deleted names return”82. History (truth, historical truth)
was brought back to the streets by way of, among others, public rallies, as those to
mark the anniversary of the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov pact83. Collective memory
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
Jurga Ivanauskaitė. Lietuva be AE ar AE be Lietuvos // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 20, p. 155.
Susitikimas su L. Šepečiu // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 06 28, p.13.
Sąjūdžio veiklos programa: Kauno iniciatyvinėje grupėje paruoštas projektas // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 13,
p. 31.
Liudvikas Giedraitis. Sąjūdžio pakylėti. Ekologinio žygio dviračiais „Lietuva – mano namai“ metraštis. Vilnius:
Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, 2009, p. 56.
Jūratė Kavaliauskaitė. Tarp prigimties ir tautos: žaliųjų pirmeiviai sovietmečio Lietuvoje // Sąjūdžio ištakų
beieškant: nepaklusniųjų tinklaveikos galia. Kavaliauskaitė, Jūratė ir Ainė Ramonaitė (red.), Vilnius: Baltos
lankos, 2011, p. 236–237, 244.
Gintautas Mažeikis. Įsivaizduojamų bendruomenių mikroistorijos: heterogeninis paveldas // Acta humanitarica universitatis Saulensis. 2009, t. 9, p. 26.
Dar daug ką galima išgelbėti // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 29, p. 165.
There are claims that the secret pact is „the central axis of Lithuanian cultural memory“, the foundation
of the grand narrative about the Republic of Lithuania restituted on March 11, 1990, in: A. Nikžentaitis,
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is of performative nature, and is in coherence with aspirations to once again relive
and repeat a past event: commemorations give particular events a sacred or exemplary quality, making them “historic” as well as historical, they tell a story, present
a “grand narrative”, they also reconstruct history or “re-collect” or “re-member”
it assembling fragments of the past into new patterns84. Sąjūdis urged not to be
“indifferent to this highly important date in the history of Central-Eastern Europe
and the whole world” by marching on the streets of Vilnius with symbols marked
for grieving on August 23 – the “day of our despair”85. It was also announced that
a memorial service was to be held in Vilnius, and, throughout Lithuania, there
should be no entertainments in the evening: it can be spent discussing historical
events and human destinies, sharing thoughts and feelings86. As a result of the pact,
the nation is on the verge of dying87, and the way of life imposed on the Lithuanians leads to spiritual, ecologic and economic death88. The rhetoric seems to be
once again using a certain schematic narrative template (structures that emerge out
of the repeated use of a standard set of specific narratives in history instruction, the
popular media, etc. 89) – the one that portrays the nation suffering, trampled for
many years by foreign powers and yet at last reviving.
Such a template of suffering-waiting-revival cycle was employed in an excerpt
of a text dating 49 years back, when Vilnius returned to Lithuania, used when
discussing the need to bring back the national flag90. The national flag, along with
the old heraldry symbols, “which we had to forget during both tsarist Russia and
Stalin era“, should be returned to the Lithuanian nation as “the true symbols of its
historical development and statehood“91. Collective memory represents the past
embodied in commemorative symbolism and historical evidence: history makes
the past an object of analysis and is a system of “referential symbols” representing
known facts about past events and their sequence, while commemoration makes
it an object of commitment and is a system of “condensation symbols” expressing
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
68
I. Šutinienė. Baltijos kelio dvidešimtmetis: eilinis jubiliejus ar kultūrinės atminties transformacijos pradžia?
// Lietuvos istorijos metraštis 2010/1, Vilnius, 2011, p. 71–84.
Peter Burke. Co-Memorations: Performing the Past // Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in
Modern Europe, Edited by Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, and Jay M. Winter. Amsterdam University Press,
Amsterdam, 2010, p. 106.
Rugpjūčio 23 – mūsų nevilties... // 1988 08 11, p. 79–80.
Vytautas Landsbergis. Lietuvos žmonės! // 1988 08 23, p. 111.
Juodoji sukaktis // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1989 08 21, p. 355.
Rezoliucija apie Sąjūdžio veiklą // 1988 12 06, p. 228.
For more on schematic narrative templates and collective memory see in: James V. Wertsch. Blank Spots in
Collective Memory: A Case Study of Russia // The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 01/2008; 617(1), p. 58–71.
Prieš 49 metus // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 10 14, p. 179.
V. Martinkus. Keistas reportažas: atviras laiškas redakcijai // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 07 23, p. 48.
C O L L E C T I V E M E M O RY:
THE CHOICES AND THE NATURE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PAST IN SĄJŪDŽIO ŽINIOS 1988-1989
the moral sentiments these events inspire92. Thus “Silver Vytis93 froze in a historical stride; the national flag is referred to as “sacred”, born “out of mossy peasant’s
hut and national ribbons woven with the tears of old mother”, while the signs of
the “unfading Žalgiris victory have engraved in our consciousness as great as duke
Gediminas was”94. Images of Lithuanian nature, landscape as said above, in Sąjudis
rhetoric were related to the national feelings; similarly, this was reflected in the
relation of these images to national attributes. “There’s so little green colour of our
unique nature left during the times, when environmental problems were only a
matter of the people’s representatives hunting in our reservations. Sunny yellow has
not only diminished, it faded away…Yet look at the abundance of red colour...”95
The notion of collective memory implies a past that is both commonly shared
and jointly remembered: society affects not only what and who we remember, but
also when we remember it – by creating its calendar of holidays and memorial
days96. National calendar, which would “include nationally significant moments
and would give their brief description”, such as February 1697 and June 1498, it
is said in Sąjūdžio žinios, would allow to “puzzle out the historiographical chaos,
revive and establish historical truths and facts in our consciousness, bring light
to our people’s noble deeds, ideas and lives”99. June 14, “the day of sorrow and
anguish, should be listed among the memorable days. With this day, all of the
greatest injustices started”, and the Lithuanians would thus follow in the footsteps of the Latvians, “who have recently announced their Lyguo holidays a day off.
Why don’t we do the same? We would celebrate Rasos100 highly enthusiastically and
elated”101.
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
Barry Schwartz. Collective Memory and History: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality // The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3 (Summer, 1997), p. 470–471.
Vytis – Lithuanian coat of arms. Depicts a mounted soldier with raised sword on a red field and dates back
to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Artūras Andriušaitis. Tautos vėliavą – į mokyklą // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 02, p. 127.
Antanas Buračas. Suverenumo tarybų Lietuvai! // Sąjūdžio žinios, 1988 09 02, p. 128.
Eviatar Zerubavel. Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past // Qualitative Sociology, 1996, vol. 19,
no. 3, p. 294.
The Day of Re-establishment of the State of Lithuania: Lithuania’s Act of Independence was signed on 16
February 1918.
The Day of Mourning and Hope: 14 June 1941 marked the beginning of the first mass deportations to
remote regions of the Soviet Union.
Danguolė Droblytė. Civilizuotos pasaulio tautos švenčia savo nacionalines šventes // Sąjūdžio žinios,
1988 08 26, p. 116.
Dew Holiday or Joninės, St. John’s Day.
Sąjūdžio iniciatyvinės grupės narių susitikimas su LKP CK sekretoriumi L. Šepečiu // Sąjūdžio žinios,
1988 06 28, p. 13.
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I n conclusion
Summing up what has been said in this case study of Sąjūdžio žinios 1988-1989, the
offset of liberation and collapse of the old regime in Lithuania was accompanied by
the aspirations of filling the “blank spots” of history or “returning history”, as well as
“recovering memory”. Here, both history and memory served the purpose of historical justice and to prove the nation’s right to exist, history is also an equivalent of fate
or evidence of the nation’s unique past. It is not history and memory that were opposed, yet “true”, “our own”, Lithuanian history and memory confronted the “falsified”,
imposed, and alien Soviet memory. The Soviet times (fear, darkness, and dismalness)
were repudiated, portrayed as a period of constant suffering and repression. The concept paved way for the image of nation-victim and the theory of “double genocide”.
The awakening of the nation prompted drawing parallels between the 19th century Lithuanian National Revival and the situation of those days – both were said
to begin with “recovering history” and understanding the importance of (national)
memory. Comparisons included the oppression in the USSR and the Tsarist Russia, the Soviet kolkhoz system and serfdom, the division of Central and Eastern
Europe into the Soviet and the German spheres of interest in 1939 and the 18th
century partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Traditional supremacy
of the coloniser over the colonised was constructed reversely: the Soviets seen as
barbarians and the Asiatics, while the Lithuanians as the European. The opposition
of the metropolis and the periphery was based on postulating exploitive relation:
humiliating imperial attitude towards Lithuania as a Russian province and Moscow’s will to turn the land into a desert (environmental issues).
In the rhetoric of the publication, employing such terms as “ecologic genocide”,
“the camp of slow death”, the images of the Lithuanian nature devastated by the
Soviet industrialisation were related to the images of the nation’s suffering, the damage to the environment seen as just another thread in the history of oppression (loss
of sovereignty – deportations – discontinuity of traditions – the threat of annihilation as a result of nuclear explosion). Metaphors of organismic pathology (an ill
body, attacked by “foreign” influences, hence endangered) supported the opposition
between mindful us/insensate them. The landscape was seen as deprived of its spiritual-symbolic meaning, functioning more as a memory of destruction. The calls for
“the man’s spiritual ecology” linked the need to clean out pollutants and waste with
the nation’s need for purification: renouncing lies and establishing historical truth.
The manifested need to create a national calendar marks collective memory’s
performative nature, the aim to once again relive a past event by canonising it
and establishing it as today’s moral sentiment as well as imperative. The rhetoric
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of commemorating the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (symbolising the beginning of
injustices as a result of which the Lithuanians languished spiritually, ecologically
and economically) used the schematic narrative template that portrayed the nation
protractedly suffering, trampled by foreign powers and yet reviving. The aim to
bring the national attributes (the national flag) to public spaces reflects collective
memory’s ability to represent past embodied in historical facts and the symbolism
of commemoration, repeating the urge to “recover history” – unique nation’s experience pointing to the aspirations and tradition of sovereignty.
Laima Venclauskienė
Kolektyvin ė atmintis : praeities reprezentaci j ų pasirinktys
ir pob ū dis S ąjūdžio žiniose 1 9 8 8 – 1 9 89 metais
S A N T R AU K A . Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos kolektyvinės atminties apraiškos – praeities repre-
zentacijos, arba praeities įvykio interpretavimas, konceptualizavimas ir vartojimas nūdienos
poreikiams, – „Sąjūdžio žiniose“ 1988–1989 m.
Sovietinis režimas labai stengėsi iš naujo interpretuoti praeitį ir suformuoti dirbtinę atmintį,
kad radikaliai supriešintų institucionalizuotą ir individualiąją atmintis. Todėl vienas iš Sąjūdžio
tikslų buvo užpildyti baltąsias istorijos dėmes, pirmiausia paviešinant slaptuosius MolotovoRibbentropo pakto protokolus. „Istorijos susigrąžinimas“ ir „atgauta (tautinė) atmintis“ reiškė
tautos patirtų kančių (kaip antai, tremties prisiminimų) eksponavimą ir pabrėžimą, kas, savo
ruožtu, lėmė viktimizaciją ir „konkuruojančią martirologiją“, taip pat sovietmečio, kaip nuolatinio teroro, priespaudos ir melo, įvaizdžio formavimą.
„Sąjūdžio žiniose“ gausu Sovietų Sąjungos kaip (blogio) imperijos (tautų skerdyklos), kuriai būdingi
kolonijiniai kėslai ir vergystė, gretinimo su carine imperija (tautų kalėjimu) ir baudžiavine santvarka. Galime pastebėti atvirkštinės kultūrinės kolonizacijos išraiškas kolonijos (Lietuva) ir sovietinės metropolijos opozicijoje. Supriešinimas kaip toks išlaikomas ir nusakomas per svetimumo ir(ar)
išnaudotojiškumo santykį, žeminantį imperinį požiūrį ir abejingumą tautos likimui.
Gvildenant gamtosaugos klausimus „Sąjūdžio žiniose“ žala Lietuvos gamtai suvokiama kaip
dar vienas tautos priespaudos istorijos puslapis, o ekologinės problemos glaudžiai siejamos su
tautos lemtimi ir ateitimi: nors trėmimai baigėsi, išgyvenusieji yra nuodijami nuniokotoje jų
pačių žemėje, virš kurios pakibusi atominės katastrofos – ekologinio genocido – grėsmė. Lietuvos gamta, teigta, turi būti išvalyta nuo teršalų, kaip kad „susigrąžinama“ istorija ir atmintis
privalėjo būti apvalytos nuo melo.
Istorija (istorinis teisingumas) buvo sugrąžinta į Lietuvos miestų gatves per masinius renginius,
kaip antai: Molotovo-Ribbentropo pakto minėjimas, tai liudija performatyvią kolektyvinės
atminties prigimtį. „Sąjūdžio žinios“ kvietė skaitytojus paminėti datą, nulėmusią tragišką tautos likimą, o leidinio retorikoje naudotas kančios–išlaukimo–atgimimo schemiškas pasakojimo
modelis. Svarstymai apie tautinį kalendorių (atmintinų dienų revizija) ir tautinę atributiką sieti
su bendros ir bendrai prisimenamos praeities poreikiu, minėjimo simbolizmu.
R A K TA ŽO D Ž I A I : kolektyvinė atmintis, praeities reprezentacijos, baltosios istorijos dėmės,
Sąjūdis, „Sąjūdžio žinios“.
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I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S O F T H E YO U N G
B E L A RU S I A N S A N D L I T H U A N I A N S
Rū stis K amuntavi č ius
In memory of Eduard Maźko (1971-2011),
who worked on the initial stage of preparation of this article.
S U M M A RY. A hypothesis was raised that the knowledge of the young Belarusians and Lithuanians would be different on the most important facts and topics of the history of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, such as the foundation of the state, the first ruler and the first capital, the
Vilnius issue, as well as the cultural and religious nature of the country. Drawing on the answers
of the first and the second year students of Humanities and Social Sciences from J. Kupala University, Grodno (105 respondents) and Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas (184 respondents)
the hypothesis was confirmed. The article analyzes the causes of this phenomenon, discussing
the most important historiographical works of the 20th century which formed the national narratives of both countries. The Belarusian as well as the Lithuanian national narratives acknowledge the whole history of the Grand Duchy but are ethnographically and territorially limited,
and focus only on the modern frontiers and on the modern nations. As a result, it s not surprising that people feel and understand the common past in different ways.
K E Y WO R D S : Lithuania, Belarus, national narratives, 20th century, the youth.
After the destruction of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the end of the 18th century, its history has always been an integral part of the history of Lithuania and of
the Lithuanian Republic. This principle has never been questioned in the country
during the 19th and 20th centuries.1 In the 19th century, the Grand Duchy was treated
as a source of inspiration for the romantic writers and as an object to be restored by
the Lithuanian politicians and intellectuals. The Lithuanian Republic (1918-1940),
created after the First World War, declared itself as a restorer and continuator of the
1
The article is written according to the research project “Central and Eastern European Region: Research
of the Construction of National Narratives and Politics of Memory (1989-2011)” – VP1-3.1- MM-07-K02-024 – sponsored by the Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-2013 “Support to
Research Activities of Scientists and Other Researchers (Global Grant)”.
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Rū stis K amuntavi č ius
tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Coat of arms, symbols and historical figures became the core elements of the newborn Republic. All past history of the Grand
Duchy was claimed but not everything was taken. The Republic was a very homogenous, Lithuanian speaking country, whereas the Grand Duchy was multicultural and
dominated by the Slavonic people. As a result, from the geographical point of view,
its history was mostly reduced to the ethnographical Lithuanian speaking territories,
ignoring the Belarusian and the Ukrainian lands. From the temporal perspective,
the most admired historical periods became those when the Lithuanian speaking
elite dominated the country i.e. the Middle Ages. The Early Modern period was not
of great interest, because at that time the dominant cultural and political elites were
strongly Polonised, and the descendants from the Belarusian lands were becoming
more and more active in all the fields of the state life. Such attitudes survived the
Soviet occupation (1945-1990) and are still visible in contemporary Lithuania.
The Belarusian lands, as well as the Lithuanian ones, constituted an integral part
of the Grand Duchy since its establishment, i.e. from the 13th century. Moreover,
during the 14th-18th centuries, the territories of the Grand Duchy inhabited by
the Slavonic people (the forefathers of the contemporary Belarusians) were several times bigger than those of the Lithuanians. Paradoxically, the Belarusians did
not develop such an intensive relation to the history of the Grand Duchy as the
Lithuanians did. This was mostly caused by the Tsarist Russian influences in the
19th century. The Belarusians were forced to think about themselves not as about a
part of a common Lithuanian – Belarusian state, but as a part of the greater Russian nation. For the first time in history, in the 19th century, the Belarusians were
detached from the Lithuanians and the history of the Grand Duchy was made alien
to them. This process intensified even more after the First World War, when the
Belarusians, contrary to the Lithuanians, did not succeed in establishing their own
state. For the most part of the 20th century, the Belarusians remained in the Soviet
empire, which was further weakening their memories about the Grand Duchy and
strengthening the pro-Russian historical narratives. Literary speaking, the history
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was bestowed to the Lithuanians. The situation
started to change only at the end of the 20th century, when the Soviet Union started to collapse. Though the idea that the Grand Duchy was mostly a Belarusian
state had never been fully extinguished, from the end of the 80’s, more and more
texts on this topic began to appear. The establishment of an independent Republic
of Belarus (1991) intensified the process. Despite the fact that at the beginning
of his presidency, Lukashenko (who came to power in 1994) was trying to revive
the idea that only the Soviet period was the true history of Belarus, today we can
feel that the idea of the Grand Duchy as of a Belarusian state is much stronger
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than ever in the last hundred years. Claiming the legacy of the Grand Duchy, the
contemporary Belarusians, similarly to the Lithuanians, focus their attention on
the issues that are of the national interest to them: geographically, it is the territory
of contemporary Belarus and thematically, these are the topics about the famous
Belarusian speaking individuals or cultural, political and economic developments
of the Belarusian lands.
As it has been shown, the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, common
to the Belarusians and the Lithuanians, is narrated differently in these two countries today. National narratives, born at the turnover of the 19th and 20th centuries,
aimed at writing the national histories rather than the histories of a state. The
problem lies with the fact that Belarus and Lithuania of today are more or less
homogeneous national states, whereas the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had always
been a multicultural country. It is suggested that when writing a Belarusian or a
Lithuanian history, facts which best fit the concept of national history are more
likely to be pointed out and taken from the history of the Grand Duchy.
Since 1990, the differences of the Lithuanian and the Belarusian national historical narratives have been noticed, which provoked scientific discussions on the
phenomena. Through the last two decades, many conferences on the topical questions were organized and books published.2 In spite of a vivid interest in the problem, no research has been carried out on how the young Lithuanians and Belarusians without any special education only that of the secondary school and family
see their common history.
This article aims at discussing and comparing how and why the history of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania is differently perceived in Belarus and in Lithuania by the young
generation, as well as how it correlates with both national historical narratives. It is not a
sociological research by its strictest definition. The paper attempts to reveal the contrast
between the Lithuanian and the Belarusian views on their common past.
National (or traditional) historical narratives are perceived in this article broadly
as representing the main trends in historical narration. No special analysis has been
carried out to identify these trends (it is doubtful whether an objective investigation on this topic would be possible); they are ascertained intuitively on the basis of
experience. It is necessary to mention that national narratives perceived like this differ from the scholarly articles which discuss narrower or wider historical problems
(the works of professional historians can be considered as comprising a certain part
2
One of the most recent and exhaustive collections of articles on the problem: Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos tradicija ir paveldo „dalybos“, Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2008. In the same year, another set of articles
representing discussions on different national narratives of the region was published: A Book of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Towards the Traditions of European Community. A Joint Publication of Scientists and Writers from Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, Sejny: Fundacja Pogranicze, 2008.
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Rū stis K amuntavi č ius
of the national narrative); they also differ from the narrations created by individual
authors (for example, ‘History of Belarus’ written by Kraŭcevičor Sahanovičare is
not regarded as a national narrative in this article). As a result, national narrative is
a national history of a country that has never been written by any author. From a
scientific point of view, national narrative is a set of misunderstandings and misinterpretations that have a shade of patriotism. The content of the national narrative
can be defined only by inquiring people and letting them talk about their past. The
article is a contribution to the problem on how national narratives affect young
people. The problem, noticed by academic society, has received an increasing attention over the last few decades.3 Finally, it should be stressed that the article does not
aim at analyzing which narrative is more adequate and true. This could be a task of
another type of research.
First and second year students of Humanities and Social Sciences were inquired
in J. Kupala University, Grodno (105 respondents) and in Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas (184 respondents). First and second year students were selected, because
they illustrate very well the knowledge young people bring with themselves from
schools. Moreover, they are still not influenced too much by the history lectures at
university which are more sophisticated and problematic. Grodno and Kaunas were
chosen consciously. Both have been large but non–capital cities; therefore, less mixed
from the national and other points of view. In addition, both have been important
strongholds of national identity through the second part of the 20th century.
With respect to the questionnaire, the same set of questions in Russian and
Lithuanian languages was given to the students together with a choice of 4, 5 or
more (depending on the question) answers. One answer had to be chosen by a respondent (in some cases several answers could have been chosen). A hypothesis was
raised that the answers of the Belarusians would be different from the answers of
their colleagues in Lithuania, because the questions were formulated on some of the
most important facts and topics of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania;
therefore, of the highest importance for both national narratives. They touched on
fundamental themes: foundation of the state, the first ruler and the first capital, the
Vilnius issue as well as cultural and religious nature of the country.
1. Where were the core lands of historical Lithuania located?
Original question:
Kur buvo Lietuva siaurąja prasme (LDK branduolys)?
Летописная Литва находилась на территории:
3
78
History Education and the Construction of National Identities, ed. by M. Carretero, M. Asensio and
M. Rodríguez-Moneo, IAP, 2012.
H I S TO RY O F T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A :
I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S O F T H E YO U N G B E L A RU S I A N S A N D L I T H U A N I A N S
Answers (choose one):
1. In the highlands of the river Nemunas (contemporary Belarus) / Nemuno aukštupyje
(šiandieninė Baltarusija) / Белорусского Понеманья.
2. In the eastern part of Lithuania / Rytų Lietuvoje / Восточной Литвы.
3. Between Navahrudak and Minsk / Tarp Naugarduko ir Minsko / Между
Новогрудком и Минском.
4. Between Kaunas and Vilnius / Tarp Kauno ir Vilniaus / между Каунасом и
Вильнюсом.
5. The exact locality is not known / Tiksli vieta nežinoma / точное место
неизвестно.
“The Core lands of historical Lithuania” refer to the origination territory of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Sometimes, in historical literature, this territory is also
called “true Lithuania”, “Lithuania in the narrow sense” or “Lithuanian territory
described in the earliest chronicles”. It is important to stress that there are no sources of the 12th or 13th century with the exact descriptions of the lands the country
occupied. However, the Lithuanian and the Belarusian historians cannot avoid this
issue in their narratives because none of the national histories can start without
discussions “where everything began”. In the Lithuanian tradition, the core of the
Lithuanian lands has always been located more westwards (mostly in the territory
of the Republic of Lithuania), whereas in the Belarusian tradition, it has tended to
be more eastwards (mostly in Western Belarus). One of the greatest historians of
the 20th century, Marc Bloch (1886-1944), has very accurately noticed that such
search of the nation’s roots and the establishment of “historical truths” when the
lack of sources is obvious, is one of the greatest sins and evils of historical science
as it is the primal cause of conflicts between nations.4 We can contribute to this
adding that exactly this issue of the “core lands” prompted the most crucial divisions and conflicts between the Lithuanian and Belarusian histories in the 20th and
the beginning of the 21st centuries.
Most of the Lithuanian respondents chose “Between Kaunas and Vilnius” (#4,
54 answers); this was followed by “In the eastern part of Lithuania” (#2, 43). A
minority chose localities in Belarus: “In the highlands of the river Nemunas (contemporary Belarus)” (#1, 39) and “Between Navahrudak and Minsk” (#3, 27).
Only 12 replied that the exact place is not known, whereas 9 respondents did not
write anything.
The idea that the cradle of Lithuania was between Kaunas and Vilnius was rooted
in the Lithuanian historical narrative in the interwar period. During this period, the
4
M. Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, Vintage Books, 1962.
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Rū stis K amuntavi č ius
most important books that shaped the way the Lithuanian history was written in the
20th century were published. One of such books was “Lithuanian History” edited
by Adolfas apoka and published in 1936.5 It became the most read and the most
influential history book in Lithuania of the whole 20th century and had been used as
a textbook for secondary schools in the 1930’s and in the 1990’s (reprinted edition).
To add to this, Lithuania “between Kaunas and Vilnius” was repeated in many other
interwar history books, Soviet and post-Soviet times as well as in most of the textbooks for secondary schools. It can be stated, that such approach was dominant in the
historical literature of the 20th century published in the country.
The idea to locate the core of the country in the eastern part of Lithuania started
to acquire its strength in the last decades of the 20th century. Strongly promoted by
famous medievalists, such as Prof. Edvardas Gudavičius, it spread in many publications, the most influential being “Historical Atlas of Lithuania”, published in 2001.6
The atlas is still viewed as an especially authoritative publication by the Lithuanian
historians. According to this perspective, the core Lithuania is more eastwards in the
comparison to the “traditional” point of view, established in the interwar period.
Thus it is less nationalistic and more pro-Belarusian; nevertheless, the main centers –
Vilnius, Trakai, and Kernavė – remain in the territory of Lithuania.
The two remaining answers to the question on where were the core lands of
Lithuania refer to the lands in contemporary Belarus. Of course, only a smaller part
of Lithuanian students indicated these as the true answers. Still, the numbers are
surprisingly high, because in the Lithuanian historiography or school textbooks,
these ideas are not widespread.
The majority of the Belarusian respondents chose the Belarusian territory,
“In the highlands of the river Nemunas (contemporary Belarus)”(#1, 60 answers),
as the location of the core Lithuania. The remaining minority of the answers was
divided almost in equal parts: “In the eastern part of Lithuania” (#2, 13), “Between Navahrudak and Minsk” (#3, 7), “Between Kaunas and Vilnius” (#4, 12),
“The exact locality is not known” (#5, 10), and blank (6).
During the 20th century, one of the most important tasks of the national Belarusian historiography (this term is used as an antonym to the dominant Soviet
Belarusian historiography) was to prove that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a
Belarusian country. Following this task, the first step was to show that the cradle of
the Grand Duchy was in the Belarusian or at least in the mixed Belarusian-Lithuanian lands. This trend especially intensified after 1990, prompted by the works of
Mikola Jermalovič. His ideas, mostly treated as non-academic, have been modified
5
6
80
Lietuvos istorija, red. A. Šapoka, Kaunas, 1936.
Lietuvos istorijos atlasas, Vilnius: Vaga, 2001.
H I S TO RY O F T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A :
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and made more scientific by other Belarusian historians, especially Aliaksandr
Kraŭcevič7 since late 1990’s. Though Jermalovič was a supporter of an idea that the
core Lithuania was to the north-east of Navahrudek i.e. in the middle of contemporary Belarus, inhabited only by the Slavonic people and far away from the border
of the Lithuanian Republic, most of other historians (including Kraŭcevič) promoted and supported the region in the highlands of the river Nemunas. Though this
was a mixed Lithuanian-Belarusian territory, most of it was located in the lands of
contemporary Belarus. Exactly this interpretation has been gradually established in
the contemporary Belarusian historiography through the last decade and became
dominant in the secondary school textbooks and atlases.
2. Where was the first capital of the Grand Duchy?
Original question:
Kur buvo pirmoji LDK sostinė?
Первая столица ВКЛ находилась:
Answers (choose one):
1. In Navahrudak / Naugarduke / в Новогрудке.
2. In Vilnius / Vilniuje / в Вильне.
3. In Kernavė / Kernavėje / в Кернаве.
4. In Trakai / Trakuose / в Троках.
5. In Voruta / Vorutoje / в Воруте.
6. The exact place is not known / Tiksli vieta nežinoma / точное место неизвестно.
The problem of the first capital of the Grand Duchy is closely related to
the problem of the core Lithuania, discussed in the previous section. From the
perspective of the national narratives, if the first capital is found in the territory
inhabited by the Belarusians, the country becomes more Belarusian, whereas if
it is located in the territory of Lithuania, the story turns out to be more pro-Lithuanian.
An absolute majority of Lithuanians indicated Kernavė as the first capital of the
Grand Duchy (#3, 101 answers). The second choice was Trakai (#4, 32). The rest
of the answers were divided among Navahrudak (#1, 19), Vilnius (#2, 13), Voruta
(#5, 8) and ‘unknown place’ (#6, 5). Only 6 students did not provide any answer
to the question.
7
Maybe the most important of his books was A. Krawcewicz, Powstanie Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego, Białystok 2003 (originally in the Belarusian language, 1998). The latest of his books is А. Краўцэвіч, Гісторыя
Вялікага Княства Літоўскага 1248-1341 г., Гародня-Увроцлаў, 2013.
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Since the interwar period an opinion that the first capital of Lithuania (the end
of the 13th century) was in Kernavė was intensively promoted in Lithuania. Later,
the capital was moved to Trakai, and finally, to Vilnius (1323). Though the period
before Vilnius has been generally treated as obscure and Kernavė together with
Trakai as hypothetical capitals, up till now almost no one in Lithuania doubts that
the first capitals of the Grand Duchy were somewhere in the territories inhabited
by the Lithuanians. In other words, they must have been somewhere in the region
of Vilnius-Trakai-Kernavė. This notion has always been supported by a conviction
that the founders of the Grand Duchy were Lithuanian speaking people; therefore,
the first capitals had to be in their lands.
Almost all Belarusians indicated Navahrudak (#1, 90 answers) as the first capital
of the Grand Duchy. Vilnius was chosen in the second place (#2, 14). All other
answers collected no points, whereas one answer was left blank.
Although there are no clear indications about where the first capital of the Grand
Duchy was before Vilnius, some sources point out Navahrudek as a very important
center of Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy (approximately 1240-1263).8
Since the interwar period, the Lithuanian historians have treated these sources as late,
incorrect and unreliable. However, the Belarusians continue quoting them as one of
the most important proof of the first capital being in the lands of Belarus. Supported by indirect evidence from contemporary sources, this fact became a very solid
rock in the Belarusian national narrative. In the historical atlases and textbooks for
secondary schools published in Belarus in the last decade, the first capital is located in
Navahrudek and nowhere else. In contrast, in Lithuania, young children are taught
that the capital could not be in Navahrudek, and that it is an erroneous interpretation
of the Belarusians.9 In rare cases, when Navahrudek is not marked as a capital, the
Belarusian authors do not indicate any other possible place suggesting that the exact
location is not known. This is done, for example, in an academic and solid atlas on
the history of Belarus which has been recently published.10
3. When was the first King of Lithuania, Mindaugas, crowned?
Original question:
Kada buvo karūnuotas Mindaugas?
Когда был коронован Миндовг?
8
9
10
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First of all it, is the chronicle of Gustyn (16th) and Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia and all of
Ruthenia (1582) by M. Stryjkowski.
This idea can also be found in a book approved by Lithuanian Ministry of Education for teaching at secondary schools: E. Bakonis, Vaikams apie senąsias Lietuvos sostines, Kaunas: Šviesa, 2009.
Вялікі гістарычны атлас Беларусі, т. 1, Мінск, 2009.
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Answers (chose one):
1. 6 July 1253 / 1253 m. liepos 6 d. / 6-огоиюля 1253 г.
2. In 1253 (the exact month and day are not known) / 1253 m. (tikslus mėnuo ir
diena nežinomi) / В1253 г. (месяц и день неизвестны).
3. 8 September 1253 / 1253 m. rugsėjo 8 d. / 8-ого сентября 1253 г.
4. The date is not known / Data nežinoma / дата неизвестна.
The exact date when Mindaugas was crowned was not indicated precisely in the
available sources. The only reliable fact is that the coronation took place in 1253.
For everyone this has been a well-known truth for centuries, which has not been
questioned by the Polish or by the Lithuanian and the Belarusian historians. Since
1990, the Lithuanian historians added a month and a day to the year of the coronation. This is visibly illustrated by the results of enquiry.
Nearly all Lithuanian students responded that Mindaugas was crowned on
6 July 1253 (#1, 171 answers). Only a minority chose other two answers: “In
1253 (the exact month and day are not known)” (#2, 6) and “8 September 1253”
(#3, 5). No one selected the answer “The date is not known” (#4); 2 answers
were left blank.
Among the Belarusians, the answer “In 1253 (the exact month and day are not
known)” (#2, 68 answers) dominated as the date of Mindaugas’ coronation. The
exact dates were chosen by almost the same number of respondents: 6 July 1253
(#1, 19) and 8 September 1253 (#3, 14). Only two students marked that the day
was not known, whereas two students did not mark their answers at all.
The exact date of Mindaugas’ coronation was “found” by the Lithuanians in
approximately 1990. The greatest merit goes to Gudavičius. On the basis of only
several indirect documents, the researcher deduced when the coronation could
have taken place.11 The discovery of this day coincided with the reestablishment of
the Republic of Lithuania. The coming of the new state required fixing a specific
day for the state holiday, thus the Lithuanian Seimas accepted a decision to celebrate the coronation of Mindaugas. From this time on, the day has become a state
holiday of the Republic of Lithuania, during which each year flags are flown and
people are given a day off from work.
The period between the discovery of the exact date of the coronation and the
declaration of the 6th of July as a national holiday was very short – just a few years.
Therefore, the Lithuanian community of historians did not manage to fully discuss
and offer their own opinions about the reliability of the date. Criticism and doubts
11
E. Gudavičius has been writing in many places about how he “found” the 6th of July, e. g.: E. Gudavičius,
Lietuvos europėjimo keliais, Aidai, 2002, p. 336.
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put forth during the following decades, especially intensively and proof–based by
a young historian Tomas Baranauskas, have changed nothing.12 A question may be
asked why colleagues in Belarus did not put this date into circulation: is it because
they do not know what Lithuanians are writing about, or because Gudavičius’
deduction seems insufficiently well-grounded?
4. Where was Mindaugas crowned?
Original question:
Kur buvo karūnuotas Mindaugas?
Где был коронован Миндовг?
Answers (chose one):
1. In Navahrudak / Naugarduke / в Новогрудке.
2. In Vilnius / Vilniuje / в Вильне.
3. In Trakai / Trakuose / в Троках.
4. The exact place is not known / Tiksli vieta nežinoma / точное место неизвестное.
The place of Mindaugas’ coronation is as important as the place of the first capital
and of the core Lithuania. It can be presupposed that the Lithuanian narrative tends
to locate the event in the Lithuanian lands, whereas the Belarusian – in the Belarusian
ones. This hypothesis is very well illustrated by the answers to the question.
Most of the Lithuanians indicated Trakai (#3, 71 answers) as the place of Mindaugas’ coronation. The answers are almost equally distributed between Navahrudak (#1, 47) and Vilnius (#2, 41). Only 19 replied that the place is not known, and
in 6 cases, the answer was left blank.
Among the Belarusian answers, Navahrudek (#1, 78 answers) as the place of
Mindaugas’ coronation dominated. A smaller part chose Vilnius (#2, 27). No other
options were chosen as other possibilities.
For the Belarusians, it is obvious that Mindaugas’ coronation took place in Navahrudak. It was one of the most important cities in Lithuania at the time. It is doubtful
whether Vilnius, Kernavė, or Trakai, located in ethnographic Lithuania, could have
been comparable to Navahrudak in size. In addition, the city began to figure in the
written sources much earlier, as it was an important cultural and political centre. Thus
a question may be raised why could Mindaugas not have been crowned there?
It is important to note that in the annals called the Gustyn Chronicle, it is
clearly written that “Grand Duke Mindaugas of Lithuania was crowned in
12
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Voruta, 2004 m. sausio 31 d.
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Navahrudak in the Kingdom of Lithuania, blessed by Pope Innocent IV and
the Bishop of Chełm, who was the pope’s cardinal in Prussia”. Today, in Belarus,
this excerpt of the annals is published in the collections of sources prepared for
those studying in secondary schools and schools of higher education13. This is
an important detail, supporting the affirmation of Navahrudak as the place of
the coronation. However, in the 20th century, the Gustyn Chronicle was strongly
criticised and recognised as unreliable. In Lithuania, this is a clear truth to everyone, which is why many Lithuanian historians question why excerpts from an
unreliable source are provided to secondary and higher education students in the
neighbouring country without criticism.
Though the opinion that Navahrudak was the place of the coronation has almost
become entrenched in the common opinion of Belarus, there are hints of doubt
in the works of professional historians. For example, H. Sahanovič writes that the
coronation most probably took place in Navahrudak.14 However, in the context of
the whole historiography of the Belarusians, such doubt seems like an exception
to the rule.
In the Lithuanian historiography of the 20th century, Navahrudak almost did
not figure as a possible location of the coronation. During the interwar and later
periods, for example, in the works of Zenonas Ivinskis, the city was occasionally
mentioned. However, there is no confirmation that the event could have taken
place precisely in Navahrudak. In the last half and especially at the end of the 20th
century, not a single book by a Lithuanian author mentioning Navahrudak as one
of the possible locations for the coronation can be found.
The given facts do not imply that the Lithuanians did not search for the location
of the coronation. During the entire century, a number of articles were written,
and a number of discussions and researches conducted. It is thought that the coronation could have taken place in Voruta, because it was a very important castle of
Mindaugas. On the other hand, it is still not clear where the castle was situated.
Overall, the Lithuanian historians are more apt to support the opinion that the
coronation had to take place somewhere in the lands of Mindaugas’ patrimony, for
example, Kernavė. This idea is essentially based on the fact that such a significant
event had to be centred in the important lands of Mindaugas. In the book of the
Lithuanian history published in 1999, Edvardas Gudavičius confidently puts forth
an idea that the coronation took place in Vilnius, and that the king even had a
cathedral built for this reason.15
13
14
15
История Беларуси в документах и материалах, Минск, 2000.
H. Sahanowicz, Historia Białorusi do końca XVIII wieku, Lublin, 2002.
E. Gudavičius, Lietuvos istorija, t. 1, Vilnius, 1999.
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Thus, burdened with a host of interpretations, the Lithuanians today say that
they do not know where the coronation took place. It is precisely this opinion that
is held by the school textbooks and many authoritative historians.
5. Which nation dominated in Vilnius in the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania?
Original question:
Kuri tautybė dominavo Vilniuje LDK laikais?
Какой народ преобладал в Вильне во временя ВКЛ?
Answers (chose one):
1. The Lithuanians / lietuviai / литовцы.
2. The Belarusians / baltarusiai / белорусы.
3. The Poles / lenkai / поляки.
4. The Jews / žydai / евреи.
5. The city was multicultural and it is difficult to distinguish one nation / miestas
buvo daugiakultūris, sunku išskirti vyraujančią tautą / город был многонациональный, сложно выделить доминирующий народ.
During the 20th century, Vilnius was claimed to be the most important city and
historical capital by the Lithuanians. These pretensions caused conflict with the Poles
in the interwar period (in 1920-1939, Vilnius was in the Polish Republic). On the
other hand, Vilnius has always been treated as the most important Belarusian town,
especially from the point of view of cultural and political history. No Belarusian history or a textbook for secondary schools can avoid mentioning this fact.
Most of the Lithuanian students chose multiculturalism (#5, 68 answers) as the
main feature of Vilnius in the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Poles
were marked as a second choice (#3, 58). The Lithuanians were indicated in the
third place (#1, 35), whereas the Belarusians (#2, 8) and the Jews (#4, 11) were
rarely chosen. 4 answers were left blank.
Despite the fact that Vilnius had been the capital of the Grand Duchy, the
young Lithuanians have never been taught that it was a Lithuanian populated
city, because of the lack of statistical evidence. The city was inhabited by the
Poles, the Belarusians (Ruthenians), the Jews, the Germans and other nations.
None of them composed a majority, though the Polish language dominated the
public life since the 16th century. These facts have been written in the Lithuanian
history books since the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the respondents chose multiculturalism. It is also natural that
a high number of students “voted” for the Polish Vilnius. The Polish cultural
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domination in Vilnius has been explicitly described in the Lithuanian history
books of the 20th century.
Less than a half of the Belarusians indicated the Lithuanians (#1, 41 answers) as
the dominant nation in Vilnius of the times. Almost similar numbers were counted
for multiculturalism (#5, 29) and the Belarusians (#2, 25). The Poles (#3, 5) and
the Jews (#4, 4) were rarely chosen. 2 answers were left blank.
Though Vilnius is mentioned in every Belarusian history, it is quite foreign for
the young Belarusians. It seems that Vilnius is more known from everyday life than
from the historical perspective. This may be the reason why the young Belarusians
erroneously indicated that most of the city’s inhabitants were Lithuanians. Multiculturalism of the city, emphasized in most of the Belarusian histories, is only in
the second place, whereas the city’s Polish aspect is almost completely ignored. It
is also curious that only a small number of respondents chose the Belarusians as a
dominant nation, despite the fact that Vilnius has always been described in literature as an important cultural center of Belarus.
6. What type of country (from the national point of view) was the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania?
Original question:
Kokia valstybė buvo LDK?
Каким государством было ВКЛ?
Answers (chose one):
1. Lithuanian / lietuviška / литовским.
2. Belarusian / baltarusiška / белорусским.
3. Lithuanian-Belarusian / lietuviška-baltarusiška / литовско-белорусским.
4. Belarusian-Lithuanian / baltarusiška-lietuviška / белорусско-литовским.
5. Multinational state of the Middle Ages, where national aspect did not play an
important role / Daugiatautė viduramžių valstybė, kurioje nacionalinis aspektas
neturėjo jokios reikšmės / полиэтническим средневековым государством, в котором национальный апсект неимел значения.
Both national narratives discussed in the article tend to nationalize the Grand
Duchy i.e.to make it a Lithuanian or, respectively, a Belarusian country. The main
obstacle for both sides in pursuing this task is the multicultural composition of the
country and, different perceptions of the nation in the past and modern times.
Half of the Lithuanian respondents indicated multinationality as the main
feature of the Grand Duchy (#5, 92 answers). Approximately one fourth of all
respondents indicated the GDL as a Lithuanian country (#1, 47). The answer
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“Lithuanian-Belarusian” was selected by less respondents(#3, 36). Few respondents
marked the GDL as a “Belarusian-Lithuanian”(#4, 4) and “Belarusian”(#2, 1)
country. Four answers were left blank.
Though the Grand Duchy is treated as an integral part of the Lithuanian history, the academic works or textbooks for secondary schools do not mention that
the Duchy was inhabited mostly by the Lithuanians. Traditionally, in the 20th century, the Grand Duchy had been perceived as a multicultural country dominated
by the Lithuanians who (“unfortunately“) composed a minority of the population.
The multicultural side of the country has always been stressed along with the statement that the perception of the nation in the times of the Grand Duchy was related more to the political issues rather than ethnicity and language as is in modern
times. Therefore, the choice of most Lithuanian respondents is logical. Having in
mind the perspective of the national historiography, it is also clear why almost half
of respondents marked the GDL as the Lithuanian state, whereas the Belarusian
factor was almost totally ignored.
Similarly to the Lithuanian respondents, almost half of the Belarusians indicated multinationality of the state (#5, 39 answers). An equal number of answers
were given to “Lithuanian-Belarusian” (#3, 27) and “Belarusian-Lithuanian” (#4,
27) choices. Eight respondents chose “Lithuanian” (#1) and only one respondent
“Belarusian” (#2) as their answers. Two respondents did not mark anything.
Differently from the Lithuanians, the Belarusian national historiography of the
last two decades does not promote an idea of the domination of one nation. As a
rule, the two ruling nations of the multicultural country, the Lithuanians and the
Belarusians, are acknowledged. In 1992, the joint debates of historians were summoned from both countries. A decision (never followed by the Lithuanians) was
made to treat the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a Belarusian-Lithuanian or Lithuanian-Belarusian country.16 Though a number of books on the Belarusian Grand
Duchy were published in the 20th century, it seems that the young Belarusians did
not read them. These books are, of course, not included into the secondary school
curricula (all of them mostly non-academic). This explains the fact that only 2 students marked the Grand Duchy as a Belarusian country.
7. How did the inhabitants of the contemporary Belarusian lands call themselves in the times
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania?
Original question:
Kaip LDK laikais save vadino dabartinės Baltarusijos gyventojai?
16
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Г. Саганович, Великое Княжество Литовское в современной Белорусской историографии, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos tradicija ir paveldo „dalybos“, Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2008, 73–92.
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Как во времена ВКЛ себя называли жители сегодняшней Беларуси?
Answers (multiple choice):
1. The Belarusians / baltarusiais (gudais) / белорусами.
2. The Litvins / litvinais / литвинами.
3. The Lithuanians / lietuviais / литовцами.
4. The Ruthenians / rusinais / русинами.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a multinational country. A Lithuanian speaking population inhabited only a smaller west-northern part of the country. The
rest was dominated by the Slavonic people, the ancestors of the Belarusians and,
on a smaller geographical and chronological extent, the Ukrainians. If the country
was called “Lithuania”, how were its people called? If the people were called Lithuanians, most of them spoke the Slavonic languages and were the fathers of contemporary Belarus. Such logic is pursued in a number of significant publications by the
Belarusian authors, especially since the 1990’s.
Approximately half of all Lithuanian respondents chose “the Belarusians” (#1,
117 answers) as the name inhabitants of the contemporary Belarusian lands called
themselves in the times of Grand Duchy. The second choice was “the Ruthenians”
(#4, 66) and “the Litvins” (#2, 42). Only 22 respondents indicated “the Lithuanians” (#3).
In the traditional Lithuanian historiography, all inhabitants of the Grand Duchy
were called Lithuanians. However, depending on the circumstances, Lithuanians may
be divided into the Lithuanians and the Belarusians / Ruthenians: the first spoke
Lithuanian, the second spoke Belarusian. It can be seen that in one case, the term
Lithuanians is used in a much broader sense than in the other. The answers of the
Lithuanian respondents show that they do not know anything about the discussions
on the subject in Belarus. This situation may be explained in the following way: in
Lithuania, nobody translates the Belarusian history books, to add to this, only a
small number of the Lithuanian scholars discuss problematic topics with their Belarusian colleagues and these discussions usually are not being exposed for non-scholar
public. In this way, the ignorance of the different interpretations of certain historical
questions becomes evident. It is important to mention that since the interwar period,
when the Lithuanian national narrative was established, the Belarusians as a nation
have mostly been ignored. Although the Belarusians composed a huge part of the
Grand Duchy, they were not described: no images of the Belarusian cities (except,
maybe, Grodno), culture and past can be found. The Belarusians were simply not
seen. Especially it is true when talking about the popular histories or textbooks for
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schools. Even until the present times, only few Lithuanian scholars discuss how these
“invisible people” could be called: the Ruthenians (a general term for the Slavonic
people who inhabited the Grand Duchy), the gudai (a synonym for the Belarusians
with a bit broader meaning including the Ukrainians) or somehow else.
Most of the Belarusians marked “the Litvins” (#2, 87 answers) as the name they
were calling themselves during the times of the Grand Duchy. This was followed
by “the Ruthenians” (#4, 41) and “the Belarusians” (#1, 31). Only a small number
indicated “the Lithuanians” (#3, 6).
Recent research by Oleg Łatyszonek17 has shown that most of the inhabitants of
the contemporary Belarus, especially in its western and central parts, in the times of
the Grand Duchy, called themselves the Lithuanians. In the Belarusian language, the
word Lithuanians is translated as Litvins. Łatyszonek was not the first to suggest such
perspective. Since the 19th century, and especially since the first decades of the 20th
century, an idea to refer to the Belarusians as the Lithuanians, and the Lithuanian
speaking population as the Samogitians or Lietuvis was promoted. This trend intensified in the last decades of the 20th century. The juxtaposition of Litva and Lietuva has
been broadly discussed by the Lithuanian18 and the Belarusian19 authors; however,
this issue is not in the scope of the current research. It could be noted that the Belarusian respondents tend to treat the Grand Duchy as the country of their ancestors. The
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in this case, is equaled to the Grand Duchy of Belarus. It
is important to mention, though, that neither contemporary nor ancient Belarusians
are called the Litvins in the official histories and school textbooks of contemporary
Belarus. Thus the Belarusian respondents are strongly influenced by the non-official
historiography with respect to this question.
8. Which of these rulers converted to the Orthodox Christian faith at least for a short period
of time?
Original question:
Kuris iš šių LDK valdovų bent trumpam laikui buvo priėmęs stačiatikybę?
Кто из этих великих князей хотя бы на короткое время принял провославие?
Answers (multiple choice):
1. Vaišvilkas / Vaišvilkas / Войшалк.
2. Mindaugas / Mindaugas / Миндовг.
17
18
19
90
O. Łatyszonek, Od Rusinów Białych do Białorusinów, Białystok, 2006.
A. Bumblauskas, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos paveldo „dalybos“ ir „Litva/Letuva“ distinkcijos konceptas, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos tradicija ir paveldo „dalybos“, Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2008,
15–66.
А. Ліцкевич, Да пытання пра рутэнізацыю Балтаў у XIV – пачатку XV стст., ARCHE, т. 11-12, 2009, 24-80.
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3. Gediminas / Gediminas / Гедимин.
4. Algirdas / Algirdas / Ольгерд.
5. Jogaila / Jogaila / Ягайло.
6. Vytautas / Vytautas / Витовт.
The main difference between the Lithuanians and the Belarusians in the times of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was religion. The Lithuanians were Pagan and only in
1387, became Catholic. The Belarusian population has followed the Orthodox tradition since the 10th century. What was the religion of the rulers of the Grand Duchy
in the 13th and the 14th centuries, i.e. in the times of the foundation of the state and
its greatest expanse? If the inhabitants were Pagan, the country itself could be treated
as Lithuanian; if they were Orthodox, the country should be seen as Belarusian. This
distinction is of crucial importance for both national narratives.
Most of the Lithuanian respondents chose Jogaila (#5, 58 answers) and Algirdas
(#4, 56) as the rulers who were baptized according to the Orthodox rite. The next
choice was Vaišvilkas (#1, 49). Vytautas (#6, 31), Gediminas (#3, 20) and Mindaugas (#2, 17) received the smallest number of points.
Mindaugas and Jogaila (the Grand Duke 1377-1392; the King of Poland 13851432) were the rulers who baptized Lithuania according to the Catholic rite. The
difference between the two events is that the first attempt to convert Lithuania to
Christianity failed whereas the second was successful. In the collective memory,
Jogaila is treated as the “true” Baptist of Lithuania. It is thus clear why the respondents chose Jogaila in the first place in spite of the fact that he was Catholic, not
Orthodox. Algirdas (1345-1377) ruled the Grand Duchy together with his brother
Kęstutis. They divided the territories so that the eastern part (the Belarusian and
Ukrainian lands) were under Algirdas supervision. To add to this, according to
some hypotheses, Algirdas’ mother was Orthodox and he grew up in an Orthodox
environment. Though Lithuanian historians do not talk about his baptization, the
activities and facts of the ruler’s life can suggest that he was an Orthodox. This also
could have been the reason why Algirdas was chosen by so many respondents.
According to the Lithuanian historiography of the 20th century, all rulers of the
Grand Duchy until Jogaila were Pagan. However, differently for other rulers, Vaišvilkas (1264-1267) converted to Orthodoxy. Although this fact is not widespread
in popular literature or textbooks for secondary schools, it is still known by the
Lithuanians.
An absolute majority of the Belarusian respondents believed that Mindaugas
(#2, 76 answers) and Vytautas (#6, 60) were Orthodox at least for a short time. All
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other personalities collected an almost equal number of answers: Vaišvilkas (#1,
24), Gediminas (#3, 19), Algirdas (#4, 21) and Jogaila (#5, 20).
Though no calculations have been made, it seems that Mindaugas and Vytautas
are the most discussed rulers of the Grand Duchy in the Belarusian historical narrative of the 20th century. The first one was the founder of the Grand Duchy as well as
the first and the only king. The second one has been treated as the greatest ruler of
the country. During the times of Vytautas’ rule, the Grand Duchy became the largest
and the most powerful country in its history. Such evaluations are common for both
national narratives of the 20th century. Logically, as the answers of respondents show,
the Lithuanians tend to treat both rulers as Pagan, whereas the Belarusians see them
as Orthodox. It is very typical for some Belarusian historians to argue that both of
these rulers were close to the Belarusian people and at least for a short time were converted to the Orthodox Christianity, whereas later their changed their religion only
because of political calculations. We can find such opinions in popular literature and
publications for secondary schools issued over the last 20 years,20 and, with much
more reservation and criticism, even in serious academic works.21
9. Which religion in the times of Vytautas the Great had the largest number of adherers in
the lands of the Grand Duchy?
Original question:
Ko Vytauto Didžiojo laikais LDK gyveno daugiausia?
Когов ВКЛ было больше всего во времена Витовта Великого?
Answers (chose one):
1. Orthodox / stačiatikių / провославных.
2. Catholic / katalikų / католиков.
3. Pagan / pagonių / язычников.
4. Muslim / musulmonų / мусульман.
5. Jewish / judėjų / иудеев.
As it has been shown in the previous discussion (on the religion of the rulers of
the Grand Duchy), confession occupied a very important place in the narratives of
both countries. Which religion dominated among the inhabitants in the times of
the greatest ruler of the Grand Duchy, Vytautas, the only person who has the title
“the great” in the Belarusian and the Lithuanian histories? It is presumed that if
20
21
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Materials for schools: 100 пытанняў і адказаў з гісторыі Беларусі, Мінск: Звязда 1993; A textbook on
history for schools published in Poland: E. Mironowicz, Historia Białorusi, Białystok 2001.
Вялікае Княства Літоўскае, Энціклапедыя, т. 2, Мінск 2007, 312.
H I S TO RY O F T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A :
I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S O F T H E YO U N G B E L A RU S I A N S A N D L I T H U A N I A N S
the inhabitants were Pagans or Catholics (Lithuanians were Christianized on the
eve of Vytautas’ rule), then the country should be Lithuanian; if Orthodox, then
Belarusians had to dominate.
Almost half of the Lithuanian students thought that the majority of the population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the times of Vytautas the Great was Pagan
(#3, 83 answers). Catholic (#1, 42) and Orthodox (#2, 41) were chosen almost at
the same rate. Muslim (#4, 1) and Jewish (#5, 7) were rarely marked. 11 answers
were left blank.
The Grand Duchy of Vytautas’ times was a huge country, composed of many
nationalities. The Lithuanian speaking people occupied only a small part of the
territory and there is no publication written by Lithuanian historians where it is
argued otherwise. Thus, no textbook for secondary schools or popular historical
literature state that the Pagans or the Catholics comprised the largest part of the
country. On the other hand, it has always been stressed in the Lithuanian national
narrative that the Pagans and the Catholics dominated in the political elites which
could have mislead the respondents. It can be said that the answers illustrate the
main idea of the Lithuanian national narrative which states that the Grand Duchy
was a Lithuanian country.
Almost half of the Belarusian students indicated Orthodox people (#1, 53
answers) as dominant in the times of Vytautas the Great. Catholics (#2, 27) and
Pagans (#3, 21) received a similar number of points. Muslims (#4) received only
one point, whereas Jews (#5) were not chosen at all. 5 answers were left blank.
In sum, the Belarusian respondents were much closer to the real situation of
the Grand Duchy. It is very hard to negate that the majority of the population in
the times of Vytautas was Orthodox. On the other hand, this truth corresponds to
the core statement of the Belarusian national narrative about the Belarusian dominance in the country.
10. Which state can use the Knight (Vytis / Пагоня) as its coat of arms?
Original question:
Kurios valstybės herbu turėtų būti Vytis?
Гербом какой страны должна быть Погоня?
Answers (chose one):
1. Only Lithuania / tik Lietuvos / только Литвы.
2. Only Belarus / tik Baltarusijos / только Беларуси.
3. Both Lithuania and Belarus / gali būti ir Lietuvos, ir Baltarusijos / и Литвы, и
Беларуси.
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4. Neither Lithuania nor Belarus: it was the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy, whereas
Belarus and Lithuania of today do not have anything in common with the Grand
Duchy / nei Lietuvos, nei Baltarusijos: tai buvo LDK herbas, o šiandieninė Lietuva
ir Baltarusija neturi nieko bendro su LDK / ни Литвы, ни Беларуси: Погоня была
гербом ВКЛ, а сеодняшние Литва и Беларусь ничего общего с Великим Княжеством неимеют.
In 1990-1991, when the independent Lithuanian and Belarusian Republics
were established, both countries chose the Knight as their coat of arms. It has
always been the main symbol of the Grand Duchy, and such a choice was an eloquent claim to the legacy of this country. After Lukashenko came to power (1995),
the coat of arms was replaced by the Soviet one in Belarus. Since then, the Belarusian opposition is using the Knight as the proper coat of arms of the country.
An absolute majority of the Lithuanian respondents chose the Knight to be
exclusively Lithuanian (#1, 115 answers) coat of arms. The opinions whether the
Knight may belong to both (#3, 28) or to none (#4, 29) of the countries distributed nearly equally. Only 6 Lithuanian students believed that the coat of arms
belongs solely to Belarus (#2). 6 answers were left blank.
The answers of the Lithuanian respondents clearly show that the main symbol
of the Grand Duchy should not be shared with anybody else. This feeling is very
strong among the Lithuanians as illustrated by the debates in the Lithuanian Seimas
in 2012-2013 when the importance of the national flag (a red flag with the Knight
in the middle) was disputed. The key argument was growing nationalism and claims
to the legacy of the Grand Duchy in Belarus. As a result of these discussions, the flag
with the Knight can be seen at public, official and private buildings.
A majority of the Belarusian respondents believe that the Knight should not be
exceptionally Lithuanian or Belarusian (#4, 40). An almost equal number of students agreed that the coat of arms “Can be both Lithuanian and Belarusian” (#3,
28) or “Only Belarusian” (#2, 23). Only 11 respondents declared that it should be
“Only Lithuanian” (#1). Two answers were not marked.
The answers suggest that the period of the first half of the 1990’s was too short
to root the Knight into the Belarusian tradition. The replacement of the Knight by
the Soviet symbols seems to be acceptable for the respondents.
11. Which of these cities was the most important residence of the Radvila family?
Original question:
Kuriame i šių miestų buvo svarbiausia Radvilų rezidencija?
В которм из этих городов была главная резиденция Радзивилов?
Answers (chose one):
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H I S TO RY O F T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A :
I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S O F T H E YO U N G B E L A RU S I A N S A N D L I T H U A N I A N S
1. Niasviž/ Nesvyžiuje / в Несвиже.
2. Biržai / Biržuose / в Биржах.
3. Kėdainiai / Kėdainiuose / в Кейданах.
4. Mir / Mire / в Мире.
5. Sluck / Slucke / в Слуцке.
The Radvila (Radziwiłł) family was one of the several most important families
of the Grand Duchy during the 16th and the 18 th centuries. Their contribution
to the cultural and political history of the country is especially noteworthy. Since
the beginning of the 20th century, both narratives tend to nationalize the Radvila
family. The family had many residences all over Lithuania, Poland and some foreign countries (all residences indicated in the answers were the true residences of
the family). However, it is especially complicated and controversial to identify the
most important residence or residences, because different branches of the family in
different periods made different impact on the history. It has been suggested that
one of the typical features of the national narratives is to focus on their contemporary territories. As a result, the Lithuanian students should know more about
the Radvila residences in the territory of contemporary Lithuania, whereas the
Belarusians should highlight their local places. This assumption was verified by the
answers of respondents.
Most of the Lithuanian respondents believed that the most important residences of the Radvila family were located in Biržai (#2, 71 answers) and Kėdainiai (#3,
62). Niasviž (#1, 16), Mir (#4, 4) and Sluck (#5, 19) were chosen less frequently.
12 answers were left blank.
From the perspective of the Lithuanian history, the most important Radvilas’
residences in the territory of modern Lithuania were in Biržai and Kėdainiai. Pupils
are taught about this from the early grades, many popular books mention these
facts, events and shows in the former Radvila residences are organized. There is
almost no information on the Radvila residences in Belarus, or this information is
not emphasized, and no excursions or public events take place in the palaces.
An absolute majority of the Belarusians indicated Niasviž (#1, 95) as the most
important residence of the Radvila family. All other localities were nearly neglected: Biržai (#2, 0), Kėdainiai (#3, 1), Mir (#4, 2), Sluck (#5, 7). 2 answers were
left blank.
Similarly to the Lithuanians, the Belarusians know only about the places in
their country. Without any doubt, Niasvižis is the most known Radvilas’ residence in the Belarusian historical narrative, national as well as official. Moreover,
the Radvila palace in Niasviž became an especially popular tourist attraction in
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Rū stis K amuntavi č ius
contemporary Belarus, whereas only a very small number of the Belarusians visit
Biržai and Kėdainiai.
12. Which cities, at least for a short time, were in the territory of the Grand Duchy?
Original question:
Žemiau išvardyti Vidurio-Rytų Europos miestai. Pažymėkite tuos, kurie bent trumpam
buvo LDK teritorijoje.
Из приеденного ниже списка городов центрально-восточной Европы обозначьтете,
которые хотя бы на короткое время входили в состав ВКЛ.
Answers (multiple choice):
1. Riga / Ryga / Рига.
2. Klaipėda / Klaipėda / Клайпеда.
3. Kaunas / Kaunas / Каунас.
4. Kėdainiai / Kėdainiai / Кейданы.
5. Hrodna / Gardinas / Гродно.
6. Viciebsk / Vitebskas / Витебск.
7. Polack / Polockas / Полоцк.
8. Minsk / Minskas / Минск.
9. Brest / Brestas / Брест.
10. Mahiliaŭ / Mogiliovas / Могилев.
11. Smolensk / Smolenskas / Смоленск.
12. Navahrudak / Naugardukas / Новогрудэк.
13. Kiev / Kijevas / Киев.
14. Lviv / Lvovas / Лвов.
As it has been suggested, the national Belarusian and Lithuanian narratives concentrate on the territories of modern countries, but ignore the parts of the Grand
Duchy which today belong to the neighboring states. The current question was
given to verify this particular hypothesis. It was expected that the Belarusian respondents would choose the Belarusian cities, whereas the Lithuanians would mark
the cities located in contemporary Lithuania. The analysis of the answers verified
the initial presupposition.
In the questionnaires filled by the Lithuanian students, more than a half of all
respondents marked the following six cities: Kaunas (#3, 137 answers), Hrodna
(#5, 132), Kėdainiai (#4, 119), Navahrudak (#12, 111), Klaipėda (#2, 100) and
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H I S TO RY O F T H E G R A N D D U C H Y O F L I T H U A N I A :
I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S O F T H E YO U N G B E L A RU S I A N S A N D L I T H U A N I A N S
Smolensk (#11, 92). A considerable number indicated Viciebsk (#6, 71), Minsk
(#8, 71), Polack (#7, 70) and Kiev (#13, 63). Less attention was given to Lviv (#14,
46), Brest (#9, 37), Riga (#1, 33) and Mahiliaŭ (#10, 31).
Some results of the questionnaire need to be discussed in greater detail. Hrodna,
Navahrudak and Smolensk are frequently mentioned in the Lithuanian history
books, although they are outside the territory of contemporary Lithuania. All other
non-Lithuanian cities are more marginal in the national narrative, which explains
why only 3 Belarusian cities were marked by so many respondents. It is interesting
that although Klaipėda, the third largest city, had never belonged to the Grand
Duchy, it was marked by the majority of respondents only because it is included in
the territory of contemporary Lithuania.
More than half of the Belarusian students indicated the following 8 cities:
Navahrudak (#12, 94 answers), Hrodna (#5, 94), Polack (#7, 81), Brest (#9, 77),
Minsk (#8, 73), Viciebsk (#6, 66), Kaunas (#3, 59) and Smolensk (#11, 53). The rest
6 cities collected the following number of answers: Mahiliaŭ (#10, 51), Riga (#1, 35),
Kėdainiai (#4, 35), Kiev (#13, 32), Klaipėda (#2, 28) and Lviv (#14, 23).
C onclusions
On the eve of the creation of the Grand Duchy, the territory of core Lithuania
and the first capitals were in the Lithuanian speaking lands, according to most
Lithuanian students, and in the Belarusian lands, according to most Belarusian
respondents. These answers fully correspond to the main ideas of the 20th century’s
national narratives of both countries which aim at showing that “everything began”
in their lands and justifying their claims to the Grand Duchy.
The Lithuanian respondents know when (6 July) the first ruler of the Grand Duchy
Mindaugas was crowned but they do not know where. The Belarusians, vice-versa:
they know the exact place (Navahrudek) but do not know the date. This confusion is
not accidental. The Belarusian academic and non-academic historiography strongly
supports the idea that Mindaugas was crowned in the Belarusian city Navahrudek.
The Lithuanians denied this idea during the whole 20th century, arguing that the
event took place somewhere in the territory inhabited by the Lithuanian speaking
population. In their own turn, the Lithuanian historians set the date of Mindaugas’
coronation in the need of a new state holiday and to commemorate the restoration of
the independence of the Lithuanian Republic in 1990.
Both groups of respondents agree on the multinational nature of the Grand
Duchy. The differences appear in the discussions about the dominant nation.
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The Lithuanians stress the dominance of the Pagan religion among the rulers and
inhabitants, as well as the prevalence of the Lithuanian territories over the Belarusian ones. As a contrast, the Belarusians mark all the possible influences of the
Orthodox religion on the rulers and population and claim its dominance in the
country. Finally, the Belarusians believe that true Lithuanians (Litvins) were their
ancestors, who spoke the Belarusian language.
Both national narratives acknowledge the whole history of the Grand Duchy
but are territorially limited and focus only on modern frontiers. Thus many important historical details are neglected. This position is evidenced in the answers of the
respondents: the Belarusian students feel no attachment to the Knight as a symbol
of modern Belarus and treat Vilnius as historically more Lithuanian than Belarusian. Both, the Lithuanians and the Belarusians, “forget” cities that belonged to the
Grand Duchy, but today are outside the borders of their countries.
Summing up, the answers of both the Belarusians and the Lithuanians were
neither accidental nor unexpected. In general, they almost fully correspond to the
dominant trends of the contemporary national narratives of both countries which
reach young people through the secondary school textbooks, as well as mass media
and other social means.
Rūstis Kamuntavičius
L ietuvos D idžiosios K unigaikštyst ė s istorija : B altarusijos
ir L ietuvos jaunosios kartos interpretacijos
S antrauka . Iškeliama hipotezė, kad lietuvių ir baltarusių jaunuomenės žinios apie LDK
turi būti skirtingos pačiais svarbiausiais jos istorijos klausimais, tokiais kaip LDK susikūrimo
aplinkybės, pirmosios sostinės lokalizacija, Vilniaus problema, vyraujanti Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės tauta ir religija. Apklausus 105 Gardino J. Kupalos universiteto ir 184 VDU studentus
iš esmės ši hipotezė pasitvirtino. Straipsnyje diskutuojama, kas galėjo nulemti tokius studentų
atsakymus, pirmiausia kreipiant dėmesį į svarbiausius XX a. istoriografinius darbus, formavusius nacionalinius naratyvus. Tiek baltarusiai, tiek lietuviai savinasi LDK praeitį, tačiau abiejų
istoriniai pasakojimai yra apriboti teritoriniu ir tautiniu požiūriu. Abu iš esmės koncentruojasi
į dabartines valstybių ribas ir, atitinkamai, į baltarusių ir lietuvių tautas. Dėl šios priežasties
natūraliai atsiranda iš esmės skirtingi bendros praeities traktavimai.
R A K TA ŽO D Ž I A I : Lietuva, Baltarusija, nacionaliniai naratyvai, XX amžius, jaunimas.
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C O N S T RU C T I N G T H E N AT I O N A L PA S T D U R I N G
T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T:
THE CASES OF LITHUANIA, BELARUSSIA, UKRAINE AND SLOVAKIA
L iudas G lem ž a
S U M M A RY. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment opened the way to the centralization and
unification of the state territories in the 18th century. These trends became a great challenge in
the construction of historical past for the national states established in the 20th century which
saw the continuity of their national history since the Middle Ages till the national movements
of the 19th century. For this reason, the Age of Enlightenment is most often seen as a transitional period. The article focuses on the events of the 18th century portrayed in the national
history syntheses of the four states. It is observed that in the national historiographies of the
analysed countries, selected historical events are attributed a greater significance than they really
had and tend to be identified with the later processes.
K E Y WO R D S : Age of Enlightenment, national historiography, national awakening, PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, Kingdom of Hungary.
The Age of Enlightenment opened the way to the state expansion in the 18th century, followed by the processes of centralization and unification, which included the
regions with different traditions, language, social and educational spheres1. Although
the processes in Western and East Central Europe were not absolutely identical, some
tendencies were common to all Europe. Commonly, the Enlightenment is perceived
as the age of spread of cosmopolitan ideas2. However, Johann Gotfried Herder’s conception of those times which “emphasized the uniqueness of every nation culture and
the equal right of each nation to preserve and develop its own traditions in its own
distinctive way”3 is perceived as an exception rather than a typical phenomenon of
1
2
3
The article is written according to the research project “Central and Eastern European Region: Research
of the Construction of National Narratives and Politics of Memory (1989-2011)” – VP1-3.1-ŠMM07-K-02-024 – sponsored by the Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-2013 “Support
to Research Activities of Scientists and Other Researchers (Global Grant)”.
Plg. K. O‘Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon, Cambridge,
2004, p. 1-4.
H. B. Nisbet, Herder: the Nation in History, National history and Identity: Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. M. Branch, Helsinki,
1999, p. 78.
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the period. Ulrich im Hof said that the states of the 18th century were not national,
but their “sleeping” nationality was felt everywhere and erupted later4. A British historian Thom Munck explains that “the ‘nationalist’ approach to the Enlightenment is
bound to have its limitations. Nonetheless, it has been established beyond reasonable
doubt that the Enlightenment was European-wide, and that its main strands at least
after mid-century were not all French-inspired”.5 Thus in the general context of the
period, the national historiographies of the “new nations” face the problem of relating
the shared European and international (typical to ethnically diverse states) achievements of the period with the national history. Differently from Western Europe, in
East Central Europe, the state territory was not inhabited by ethnically homogenous
communities in the 18th century.
Although the construction of the national histories, especially the Central and
East European visions of the past before the formation of the modern nations in
the 19th century, is often criticized, the existence of the national narratives cannot
be neglected. Miroslav Hroch argued that the attitude of the 19th century French
peasant to France of the Middle Ages did not differ from the attitude of the Slovak
peasant to the history of the Hungarian Kingdom6. To paraphrase, it can be said
that the relation of the Polish and the Lithuanian peasants with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ruled by the nobility matched, but differed from the position
of the Lithuanian or the Belarusian nobleman who joined the national revival of
the Lithuanians and the Belarusians. The meaning of the 18th century concepts of
“Poland” and “Lithuania” were completely different from their 20th century usage7.
The states were not yet national, but ruled by the nobility and the monarchs. Therefore, not only “small”, but also “big” nations create the visions of the past, adapting
the historical events to their needs.
In the descriptions of the national visions of the past, a particular attention is paid
to the threats of the ethno-centric model. Raymond Pearson states that “all nations
of Central and Eastern Europe undergo a three-phase career: an initial cultural flowering or “Golden Age”; suppression of identity and promise at foreign hands; and
an “Awakening“ to ultimate fulfilment as a modern nation-state. The more tardy the
awakening nation, the more desperate was its campaign for respectability, expressed
in an unblinking regard for nationalist precedent and a slavish adherence to the inter-
4
5
6
7
100
U. im Hof, Švietimo epochos Europa, Vilnius, 1996, p. 86.
T. Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History 1721-1794, London, 2000, p. 3.
M. Hroch, Historical Belles-Lettres as a Vehicle of the Image of National History, National History and
Identity.., p. 98.
Richard Butterwick, The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788-1792: a Political History, N. Y.,
Oxford University press, 2012, p. xvi-xvii.
C O N S T RU C T I N G T H E N AT I O N A L PA S T D U R I N G T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T:
T H E C A S E S O F L I T H U A N I A , B E L O RU S S I A , U K R A I N E A N D S L OVA K I A
nationally – established template of nation-building”8. According to this view, the
Enlightenment is an intermediary age between the Golden Age and the national
revival, or chronologically, a period on the brink of the national revival.
The article focuses on the four national states which formed in the 20th century.
The nations have their distinctive historical path, heritage and different interpretations of the continuity of the national history. However, in the consciousness of the
majority of their citizens, the second half of the 18th century seems of secondary
importance in comparison to earlier or later times. In Lithuania, which declared
the restoration of independence in 1918 and the continuity of traditions of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the events of the second half of the 18th century are
still viewed as foreign even among some historians.
Professional historiographies of Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia and Lithuania
formed only after the WWI, thus are among the youngest in Europe. With the
help of the history science, the mentioned nations had to form and ground their
identity and find place in the European history. Another common feature connecting Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia is the lack of the cultural and political
metropolis in the second half of the 18th century which could have disseminated
new ideas9. The functions of metropolis were partly performed by the universities
situated in the territories of the present day Lithuania and (temporarily) Slovakia.
For example, the Vilnius University was the centre of the ideas of Enlightenment in
the area of the present day Lithuania and Belarus. It should be noted that the validity of pretensions of Belarus and Lithuania to the cultural and territorial heritage of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is not relevant for the current research. There are far
more disputes over the heritage of the historical period starting with the formation
of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the GDL) and lasting until the Union of Lublin
in 1569, in comparison to the discussed epoch10. In any case, the Lithuanian and
the Belarusian historians cooperate in their research and discussions. As Gintautas
Sliesoriūnas states, the historians of contemporary Lithuania, Belarus and Poland,
who focus on the heritage and times of the GDL, most often agree without greater
disputes on what is common to Lithuania or Belarus or belongs to each country11.
Leaving aside all the disputes, we focus on the interpretation of the past in the
8
9
10
11
R. Pearson, History and Historians in the Service of Nation Building, National History and Identity..,
p. 69.
In the case of the GDL, the central government institutions moved to Warsaw where the ruler resided. The
joint Diet gathered in the GDL territory only twice (in 1784 and 1793). In the end of the 18th century, the
most prestigious schools (Collegium Nobilium), cultural life and most important state periodicals were in
Warsaw.
For example: А. Кравцевич, А. Соленчук, С. Токть, Белорусы: нация пограничья, Вильнюс, 2011, с. 83-84.
G. Sliesoriūnas‘ review for the study of N. Davies (N. Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States
and Nations, New York, 2011), Lietuvos istorijos metraštis. 2011, no. 2, Vilnius, 2012, p. 142.
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historiographies of the national states12. Drawing on the specific examples, the
research aims at finding the regularities typical to the young historiographies of
Central and Eastern Europe.
The article discusses the works of professional historians of national states,
which reflect broader visions of the national history and discuss the events of the
18th century. The ideas of Enlightenment reached Central and Eastern Europe later
than other European countries. Their dissemination in the Lithuanian, Belarusian,
Ukrainian and Slovakian national historiographies began in the middle of the 18th
century, or more specifically, with the reforms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Hungarian Kingdom.
In Lithuania, as well as in Belarus, the Age of Enlightenment is associated with
the history and territory of the GDL by dividing it into the owned or alien spaces.
As a historian of philosophy Steponas Tunaitis claims, the Lithuanian and the Polish heritage in the Age of Enlightenment was common. However, the research
of the Polish historians mostly focuses on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
from a general perspective, thus the cultural and historical traditions of the GDL
“disappear” in the general context with Poland13. A Belarusian historian Oleg Latyszonek attempted to distinguish the features of the Age of Enlightenment specific
to the Belarusian heritage; however, the historian agreed that Herder’s conception
could not be accepted at that time and shifted attention to the 19th century14. Most
of the attention of the Ukrainian historiography is devoted to the spread of ideas
of Humanism, Renaissance, and Baroque, whereas the Enlightenment is barely
mentioned. Political issues overshadow the spread of the European ideas of the
18th century which influenced religious and social changes and affected all ethnic
groups in East Central Europe. In the Ukrainian case, the lack of research and the
repetition of pervasive stereotypes are especially problematic. Meanwhile, the Slovaks relate the Enlightenment to the national revival which greatly influenced the
further course of events in the 19th century.
12
13
14
102
The focus is on the following interpretations of the national history: H. Sahanowicz, Historia Białorusi: od
czasów najdawniejszych do końca XVIII wieku, Lublin, 2001; N. Jakowenko, Historia Ukrainy: od czasów
najdawniejszych do końca XVIII wieku, Lublin, 2000; W. A. Serczyk, Historia Ukrainy, Wrocław – Warszawa - Kraków, 2001; J. Hrycak, Historia Ukrainy 1772-1999: narodziny nowoczesnego narodu, Lublin, 2000;
Slovakia In history, Ed. M. Teich, D. Kovać, M. D. Brown, Cambridge, 2011; Z. Kiaupa, J. Kiaupienė,
A. Kuncevičius, Lietuvos istorija iki 1795 m., Vilnius, 1995; M. Jučas, Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė: istorijos bruožai, Vilnius, 2010; Z. Kiaupa, Lietuvos istorija: trumpasis XVIII amžius (1733-1795), Vilnius, 2013;
A.Eidintas, A. Bumblauskas, A. Kulakauskas, M. Tamošaitis, Lietuvos istorija, Vilnius, 2012; Гiсторыя
Беларусi, t. 3: Беларусь у часы Речипоспалитай (XVII-XVIII ст. ст.), ред. Ю. Бохан, П. Лойка, Мiнск,
2004; Гiсторыя Беларусi, ч. 1: Ад старажитных часоу – па люты 1917 г., ред. Я. К. Новiка и Г. Ц. Марцуля,
Мiнск, 1998.
S. Tunaitis, Apšvietos epochos socialinės ir politinės filosofijos metmenys, Vilnius, 2004, p. 6.
O. Latyszonek, Białoruskie oświecenie, Białoruskie zeszyty historyczne, nr. 2, 1994, s. 35-45.
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During the Soviet and the first years of the post-Soviet periods, the area of the
national states was most often presented as homogeneous and dominated by a
single nation. Unfavourable facts were concealed and their importance diminished.
Apart from the discussed countries, similar attitudes were typical in the historiographies of other Central and Eastern European states15. The tendency, however, is
gradually changing in Belarus and Lithuania which identify their past with the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. An exceptional attention of the Ukrainian and Slovakian historiographies to the ethnic history in the 18th century complicates the task.
Still, the existence of other ethnic and religious communities in the Ukrainian and
Slovakian territories can also be traced to a certain extent. As is seen, the national
historiographies are influenced by the attitudes and trends of the European historiography, especially when publishing the visions of the national past in foreign
languages.
The former Soviet space countries were heavily influenced by the historiography
of the Soviet Russia. Even the concept of Enlightenment (Apšvieta) was associated
with the Russian translation of the word (Просвещение, Švietimo epocha). The term
was understood in a narrower sense as encompassing only changes in the sphere of
education in the 18th century16. As Kristina Mačiulytė observes, although religious
texts were carefully recorded in the Soviet bibliographical publications, researchers
were interested only in their language specificities or some educational and social
aspects. However, there were no attempts to write about the texts themselves17.
On the other hand, specifically during the Soviet period, the interest in the events
brought by the Age of Enlightenment in the education system and their impact
on the development of society intensified in Lithuania (as well as in Belarus and
Ukraine). During the interwar period, the educational reforms of the second half of
the 18th century were viewed as disturbing in the independent Republic of Lithuania because of the strengthening positions of the Polish language and Polonization.
The discourse changed in the second half of the 20th century when professional
historiography transferred the cultural threats of the Polish in the Age of Enlightenment to the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. Similarly, in the discussion
of the development of the Lithuanian writing and language in the 18th century, it
was maintained that despite the lost contact with the ethnic language and values,
15
16
17
M. Janowski, C. Iordachi, B. Trencsenyi, Why Bother About Historical Regions? Debates over Central Europe in Hungary, Poland and Romania, East Central Europe/ L‘Europe du Centre-Est, vol. 32, no. 1-2 (2005),
California, p. 52-53.
E. Raila, Apšvieta, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos kultūra, Vilnius, 2001, p. 44.
K. Mačiulytė, Viešo ir privataus gyvenimo akcentai Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės Apšvietos pamoksluose, Viešos ir privačios erdvės XVIII a. Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje, editor R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė,
Vilnius, 2007, p. 86.
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the Lithuanian nobility relied on the civil tradition of the GDL and thus, of Lithuania18. As research shows, in the 19th century, the national identity and ethnic culture of Lithuanian peasants was influenced by the nobility culture, which remained
a significant part of the national identity in the 20th century19. The research of the
last two decades of the 20th century stopped to identify the Lithuanian ethnic origins with the Lithuanian speaking peasants or small town dwellers. New research
emphasized the role of nobility, stressing its importance for the national and societal development. A negative image of nobility which prevailed in the works of the
Soviet historians was replaced by the examples of educated and patriotic noblemen.
Although the romantic myth of the exceptional role of peasants and small town
dwellers as preservers of ethnic culture was gradually retreating from historiography,
it remained strong in the national consciousness. Finally, in response to the expectations of society and alerts about the common misconceptions20, the important
components of the national history, such as the Lithuanian language, were arranged
with greater caution. For example, the issues of Polonization or denationalization
retreated from the key part of the narrative, finding their own niche and giving
way to the political ideology of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Although there are
certain exceptions, they depend on the interpretation and addressee. Apart from
the nobility culture, Alfredas Bumblauskas distinguishes the appearance of the first
Lithuanian primer21 and the Lithuanian translation of the Constitution of the 3rd of
May22 (although the date of document translation remains the object of discussions)
as the key components of the Age of Enlightenment.
In the generalizing research of the vision of the Lithuanian national past, the
influence of Enlightenment is seen in the educational reform; the activities and
programs of schools and the Vilnius University in the second half of the 18th century; the printing-houses and printing in Polish and Lithuanian. Although the program of the French language teaching introduced by the Piarists is mentioned as a
significant event, publications in other languages are not discussed. The programs
of centralization of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the second half of
the 18th century are considered to be extremely dangerous; however, the rights to
the common heritage with the Kingdom of Poland are not relinquished. In 2007,
some historians and politicians attempted to emphasize the importance of the 3rd
18
19
20
21
22
104
E. Aleksandravičius, A. Kulakauskas, Carų valdžioje: Lietuva XIX amžiuje, Vilnius, 1996, p. 237.
S. Pivoras, Lietuvių ir latvių pilietinės savimonės raida: XVIII a. pabaiga – XIX a. pirmoji pusė, Kaunas, 2000,
p. 131.
A. Nikžentaitis, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės politinės tautos specifika ir santykis su moderniąja
tauta, Praeities pėdsakais, Vilnius, 2007, p. 139.
A. Eidintas, A. Bumblauskas, A. Kulakauskas, M. Tamošaitis, Lietuvos istorija.., p. 88.
Op. cit., p. 93.
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of May to the constitutional legacy of Lithuania and offered to give the date a symbolic political significance. However, such attempts provoked strong resistance not
only in part of society, but also among the historians. Within a year, the dispute
grew into discussion in which the historians of the 18th century had to prove that
the Constitution of the 3rd of May was a significant document worth exceptional
place in the Lithuanian history in any case.
The Belarusian historiography is not homogenous, and can be divided into
four23 or, more generally, two branches: the post-Soviet writing supported by the
government and the national historiography, which visibly revived at the end of
the 20th century and is lead by the GDL historians. In Belarus, like in Lithuania,
the narration of the second half of the 18th century is constructed around the
axis of a common history of the GDL and the Kingdom of Poland. Similarly, the
opposition to the plans of centralization and unification of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth is emphasized. Drawing on recent research, the Belarusian historians describe the economic reforms and the cultural spaces of the towns in the
territory of the present day Belarus in greater detail. On the basis of the Soviet
research, printings and printing houses (mostly focusing on the Polish, and the
Ruthenian-Belarusian languages), and the positions of the Uniate and Orthodox
churches are discussed. In addition to the university and schools, the Belarusian
scholars distinguish the residences of nobility as the centres of Enlightenment culture, which contributed significantly to the spread of innovations in theatre, music,
architecture, and art. The specificity of the Belarusian historiography is probably
dictated by the territorial principle as the largest lands and residencies of the GDL
nobility were situated in the centre of the present day Belarus. It should also be
noted that the heritage of the Soviet tradition is especially important. In the Soviet
Union, historians were forbidden to go beyond the borders of the Soviet Republic
in their writings. These Soviet period clichés can still be felt in the work of the
Belarusian historians. On the other hand, the heritage of the national Soviet historiography and the available data sources also contribute to the current situation. As
a result, during the two decades, relatively few works devoted to the history of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and encompassing the whole territory of the old state
were published. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new tendency appeared:
if the borders of the present day state are crossed, the research stops at the quasi
ethnical borders at Trakai, beyond which, according to some Belarusian historians,
starts foreign Samogitia24. Although the mentioned perspective is not the only one,
it clearly dominates the Belarusian research. In any case, the multicultural heritage
23
24
A. Hryckiewicz, Przedmowa, in: H. Sahanowicz, Historia Białorusi.., s. 8-11.
Op. cit., s. 12.
105
L iudas G lem ž a
of Vilnius and its importance for the political and cultural life of the whole Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, explains and grounds the expansion of the historical space
beyond the borders of the contemporary Belarus in the works of the Belarusian
historians.
Although in Lithuania the territorial principle in the discussions of the GDL
heritage has long been observed, the question of Grodno was often brought up in
the Soviet period works as in the research of the 18th century. Grodno was often
referred to as the city on the borders of the ethnic lands of the Lithuanians and
the Belarusians and mentioned in the context of the reforms of Antoni Tyzenhauz
(for example, the establishment of manufactures), which were largely implemented
in the territory of the present day Belarus. Moreover, the Assembly of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth gathered in Grodno, in the 18th century. Attitudes
about the significance of Grodno which prevailed in the Soviet times date back to
the national historiography of the interwar period and the established historical
consciousness of those times. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the principle
of breaking down the old state on the ethnical or confessional basis was sooner
abandoned in Lithuania. Professional historiography divided the state territory
according to the historical boundaries, set by the administration of those times.
Finally, the division of the territory of historical state on the ethnic principle was
recognized as unacademic. Despite this, in the syntheses of national history, the
borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with Russia remained as insignificant
examples of common state development or were mentioned only in the context
of military operations (most often by foreign countries). As in the Belarusian case,
the presented situation in the Lithuanian historiography was determined by the
prevailing attitudes to the national space, not related to the territory of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. The effect of the research of the interwar or Soviet periods
is of secondary importance in this situation. Over the last twenty years, historical research has increased significantly in Lithuania. The attitudes of the interwar
period and Soviet terminology withdrew. Still, works which take the historical state
as their research objects to construct the narrative of the national history encounter
certain problems. Following the old traditions, the borders of the historical state
are crossed and the relations with Lithuania Minor are distinguished. In this way,
ethnicity as a key element in the national vision of the past is singled out.
Certain propositions in the Belarusian historiography remain unchanged from
the Soviet era. For example, quite often, the Age of Enlightenment is characterized as a transitional period between feudalism and capitalism. It is often emphasized that the ideas of Enlightenment spread in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
only when education system was secularized and Church domination in the state
106
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stopped25. On the contrary, as research suggests, the role of the Church in the
Age of Enlightenment was undeniably significant. Even when the influence of the
Church hierarchy was regulated by secular government, the Church remained an
important instrument of government not only in Austria and Hungary, but also
in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The claim is supported by Richard Butterwick’s study devoted to the analysis of the relation of the Four-Year Diet and the
Church. According to the British historian, before the modern nations formed, the
Catholic faith strengthened the foundations of civil society and unity among the
nobility of the 18th century. Therefore, the creators of the reforms deliberately supported the positions of Catholicism at the expense of other confessions. According
to Butterwick, the fact that the Catholic faith was declared as the supreme state
religion in the Constitution of the 3rd of May, corresponds with the ideals and values of the Enlightenment26. In the post-Soviet Belarus, where the Uniats prevailed,
and the Catholic Lithuania, this historical event was negatively evaluated and seen
as evidence that the reforms of the Four- Years Diet were behind the times and
ineffective27. The strengthening of the Catholic Church is often related with the
processes of Polonization and Latinization in the Belarusian territory. In the same
context, the Belarusian researchers stress the role of the Uniat clergy for the education in the Belarusian (or Ruthenian) language28. However, the claim that the
ethnic consolidation of the Belarusians and the dependency for the Uniat confederation were going hand in hand since the second half of the 18th century has been
criticized even in the Belarusian historiography29. Also, the attempts of the Soviet
historians to transfer the fight against the Polonization in the arena of the political
confrontation between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland
have been rejected as completely unfounded.
The Ukrainian case is much more complicated as during the discussed period,
the territory of the country was divided among the three countries: the Russian
and Austrian Empires and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the country appeared in the hands
of the mentioned empires. The Ukrainian historiography mostly concentrates on
the Cossack history. Thus, as the Zaporizhia was eliminated by the Russian Empire,
the 18th century and the Enlightenment are most often seen as another downfall by
the Ukrainian historians. This attitude has received criticism from the Ukrainian
25
26
27
28
29
В. Шалькевiч, Асветнiцтва, Вялiкае Княства Лiтоускае: энцыклапедыя, т. 1, Мiнск, 2005, с. 256-257.
Richard Butterwick, Polska rewolucja a kościół katolicki (1788-1792), przekł. M. Ugniewski, Kraków, 2012.
A. Kasperavičius, 1791 m. Lenkijos ir Lietuvos valstybės ir Prancūzijos konstitucijų lyginamoji analizė,
Mūsų praeitis, nr. 4, 1994, p. 19-31.
O. Latyszonek, Białoruskie oświecenie.., s. 40, 44-45.
A. Mironowicz, Wyznanie a świadomość Białorusinów, Białostockie teki historyczne, t. 9, 2011, s. 90-91.
107
L iudas G lem ž a
historians themselves. In a summary of the latest trends of the Ukrainian historiography, Jelena Rusina notes that unlike the Belarusians, who based their revival
of the end of the 20th century on the heritage of the GDL, the Ukrainians see
their golden age in the Cossack times and Cossackia as a cornerstone of the Ukrainian national identity30. Natalia Jakowenko draws attention to the existence of the
anti-Polish stereotypes in the Ukrainian historiography, the prevalent heritage of
the Soviet-Marxist historiography, clichés and theories of outdated historiography.
On the other hand, the scholar views positively certain works which consider the
old writings in Latin and Polish and propose that ideas of the ‘real’ West reached
Ukraine through Poland31. Thus, the researchers of the Ukrainian history do not
give sufficient attention to the complicated Ukrainian history of the second half
of the 18th century. The Kingdom of Poland, which included a part of the present
day Ukraine, receives even less attention. The period of Enlightenment is associated with the activities of the Basilions and the changes after the reform of the
Educational Commission. However, parallel events after the first partition when a
part of the territory was taken by the Austrian Empire are viewed more favourably.
According to Jakowenko, the beneficial policy for ethnic and religious minorities
strengthened the role of the Greek Catholic clergy in the national revival of the
West Ukraine32. Other researchers, however, continue to emphasize the threat of
Germanization as in the tradition of the Soviet times.
The Slovakian historiography is relevant when the issues Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth are mentioned. Moreover, it is interesting to see how the vision
of national development is constructed in the neighbouring country of Ukraine.
According to a firmly established approach since the Soviet times33, the reforms of
the Age of Enlightenment in the Hungarian Kingdom enlarged the numbers of
literate people and created favourable conditions for the consolidation of the Slovakian ethnos. The development of the events is chronologically divided into two
stages. Joseph’s II policy of religious minorities, which increased press in the native
language of the congregation, is also acknowledged. These processes are referred
to as the “starting point of the national movement” or even the “beginnings of
modern Slovak nation”34. Similar claims of the Slovak researchers have attracted
30
31
32
33
34
108
J. Rusina, Liublino unija Ukrainos istoriografijoje, Liublino unija: idėja ir tęstinumas/ Unia lubelska: idea i
jej kontynuacja, sudarė L. Glemža, R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, Vilnius, 2011, p. 385.
N. Jakowenko, Druga strona lustra: z historii wyobrażeń i idei na Ukrainie XVI-XVII wieku, przekł. K. Kotyńska, Warszawa, 2010, s. 426-427.
N. Jakowenko, Historia Ukrainy, s. 331-332.
Dejiny Slovenska: od najstarshych čias do roku 1848, red. L. Holotik, J. Tibensky, Bratislava, 1961, s. 387392.
E. Kowalska, Enlightenment and Beginnings of Modern Slovak Nation, Slovakia in history.., p. 88.
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criticism of the historians from other countries. It was noted that the standard
Slovakian language and grammar were only starting to develop at that time. The
language was influenced by Czech and the general processes of the religious policy
of the state. Moreover, the Slovak symbols which were created at the end of the
18th century and had to distinguish the ethnic Slovak community from Hungary
and other nations, were still related to the common symbols of the history with
the Hungarian Kingdom35. While it is acknowledged that the reforms of Joseph II
influenced the development of the Slovak and other nations ruled by the Habsburg
dynasty, the processes are transferred to the future36. In any case, the national historiography of Slovakia associates the reforms of Enlightenment with the beginning
of the modern Slovak nation and puts emphasis on language, writing and creation
or succession of the first narratives of the past.
A common desire met in historiography is to enhance the national processes
or concretize the transitional events as is in the case of the Age of Enlightenment.
Natalia Jakovenko critically observes that some Ukrainian historians often transfer
the concept of modern Ukrainian nation back to the 17th century37. Although
aware of the differences between the old and the modern nations, Jaroslav Hrycak
still writes about the dangers brought by the Age of Enlightenment to the Ukrainians. According to Hrycak, the conception of the old nation, which dominated in
Europe until the end of the 18th century, related the nation with the ruling classes.
Ordinary people did not fit the formula. If this conception would have survived for
several decades in the collective consciousness, the Ukrainian nation would have
been at a risk of disappearance from the face of the earth38. In the latest Belarusian
historiography, it is still possible to find concerns about the dangers of assimilation
(related to the spread of the Polish language and the Catholic faith) which were
relevant in the second half of the 18th century.
Meanwhile, in Lithuania, it is claimed that the Catholic faith, despite some
exceptions, was a unifying force for the Lithuanians in the territory of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. The Polish language was not seen as increasing the gap
between the different estates (i.e., nobility and townspeople) 39. To summarize the
significance of the Age of Enlightenment in the European and the Lithuanian history, such aspects are distinguished: economic, political and cultural innovations;
35
36
37
38
39
B. A. Szlenyi, Enlightenment from Below: German-Hungarian Patriots In Eighteenth-Century Hungary,
Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 34, 2003, p. 11-112; L. Kościelak, Historia Słowacji, Wrocław, 2010, s. 229233; M. Hroch, Mažosios Europos tautos, Vilnius, 2012, p. 21.
D. Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth Century Europe, London-New York, 2005, p. 1, 3.
N. Jakowienko, Druga strona lustra.., s. 419.
J. Hrycak, Historia Ukrainy.., s. 39.
Z. Kiaupa, Lietuvos istorija.., p. 285.
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L iudas G lem ž a
the rise of the modern nations; attention to the ethnic foundation of the nation, its
language and verbal creation40; the growth of the Lithuanian national and cultural
consciousness and the appearance of the idea of a peasant as state citizen41; different conception of the nation which encompasses all estates of the country. The
listed claims are supported by the ideas of physiocrats, extracts from the Constitution of the 3rd of May, and especially the proclamations of the uprising of 1794
written in Lithuanian, which address the Lithuanian nation regardless estate differences. The addressee of the first proclamations in Lithuanian was referred to as a
backbone of the forming nation of peasants and small town dwellers who retained
their native language42. Later, in an attempt not to overestimate the significance
of the document, it was presented as an opportunity to strengthen the Lithuanian
language. As Zigmantas Kiaupa claims, the document was written under special
and dangerous conditions for the fate of the state; therefore, certain extremities
were possible. On the other hand, the union of all estates in one nation was prepared throughout the whole 18th century. It is also evident that the preparation of
this conception was not finished and its implementation was postponed after the
defeat of the rebellion43.
The attitude that in the end of the 18th century the “subordinates” who were
beyond the threshold of the political nation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were becoming increasingly visible in the state life is also observed by the
Polish historians44. As Kiaupa claims, the Four-Year Diet reforms made the foundations of civil society in towns as the estate property became territorial. Moreover,
in 1794, the rebels invited in their proclamations members of all estates to form
one political nation which could be seen as the beginning of the formation of the
“multi-estate” nations45. In Lithuania, a particular attention was given to the socialpolitical movement of the small town dwellers during the period of the Four-Year
Diet. Most towns which received the King’s privileges of self-government are in the
contemporary Lithuanian and not Belarusian territories. Historians see the king’s
privileges as the most obvious result of the reforms which reached contemporary
times. Although the implementation of the reforms was stopped by the historical events, the network of the self-governed towns would have expanded across
40
41
42
43
44
45
110
M. Jučas, Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė.., p. 320.
Op. cit., p. 308.
Z. Kiaupa, J. Kiaupienė, A. Kuncevičius, Lietuvos istorija iki 1795 m., p. 411.
Z. Kiaupa, Lietuvos istorija.., p. 287.
A. S. Kaminski, Imponderabilia społeczeństwa obywatelskiego Rzeczypospolitej wielu narodów, Rzeczypospolita wielu narodów i jej tradycje, ed. A. K. Link-Lenczowski, M. Markiewicz, Kraków, 1999, s. 35.
Z. Kiaupa, Sužlugdytos pertvarkos metas Lietuvoje XVIII a. pabaigoje, Acta academiae artium vilnensis,
nr. 32, Vilnius, 2004, p. 12-14.
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the whole territory of the GDL46. The reforms were stopped due to the policy of
Catherine II, direct military support of the Russian Empire to the opposition of
the reforms, and invasion. In the generalising works of the Belarusian history, little
attention is given to the social reforms of the second half of the 18th century. The
discussion is limited to the general events, short overview of the law of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, Jakub Jasinski’s attempts to abolish serfdom, and folk
songs which evidence the participation of the Ukrainian peasants in the rebellion of 179447. Although the GDL territory greatly diminished after the partitions,
especially with respect to the territories of the contemporary Belarus, the GDL
history still remains in the centre of the Belarusian national narrative. Without
diminishing the contribution of the Belarusian historians, it should be noted that
the research of the Lithuanian historians on some questions is more solid, but less
known due to the language barrier.
Successful and unsuccessful efforts to relate the continuity of the national
history with the “sleeping nation” of peasants and small town dwellers have their
own reasons explained by the historical tradition. Alvydas Nikžentaitis claims
that because of the treatment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from
the positions of modern state, such features of modern state as ethnicity and
language are imposed to the people of the 16th-18th centuries. From the perspective of the modern nationalism and contemporary position, it seems that the
Polish situation is more favourable. First, the dominant language was Polish in
the Commonwealth. This fact alone could be a crucial starting point for a young
Polish nationalist of the end of the 19th century to wonder about the Polish
origin of the old Republic. Further on, Nikžentaitis states that the same reasons,
determined by the modern conception of nationalism, caused more problems
for a Lithuanian of the end of the 19th and the 20th centuries. The language factor showed Lithuanians, representatives of a political nation, close to the Polish
people. At the same time, it did not allow to see the GDL citizens as belonging
to the same nation throughout the history48. The processes lasted throughout
46
47
48
Glemža L., Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės miestų sąjūdis 1789–1792 metais, Kaunas, 2010.
H. Sahanowicz, Historia Białorusi.., s. 331.
A. Nikžentaitis, Užmirštas antrasis: Abiejų Tautų Respublikos lietuvis, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės
istorijos kraštovaizdis, ed. R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, Vilnius, 2012, p. 664–665. Original quote: “Lietuvos
ir Lenkijos valstybės traktavimas iš modernios valstybės pozicijų lėmė, kad tokios modernios tautos savybės
kaip etninė prigimtis ir kalba buvo primestos XVI–XVIII a. valstybės gyventojams. Vartojant modernaus
nacionalizmo suformuluotas sąvokas, vertinant iš šių dienų pozicijų, atrodo, labiau pasisekė lenkams. Visų
pirma, Abiejų Tautų Respublikoje dominuojanti kalba buvo lenkų. Jau vien šis faktorius jaunam XIX a.
pabaigos lenkų nacionalistui galėjo būti lemiamas pradedant svarstyti apie lenkišką senosios Respublikos
prigimtį [...] Tos pačios priežastys, nulemtos moderniosios tautiškumo sampratos sukėlė dar daugiau problemų XIX a. pabaigos – XX a. lietuviui. Kalbos faktorius, leidęs taip lengvai paskelbti lietuvius – politinės
tautos atstovus – savais lenkams, lygiai taip pat kliudė pripažinti savais istorijoje net ir LDK piliečius”.
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L iudas G lem ž a
the 20th century; therefore, in consideration of the events of the 16th-18th centuries, a milder concept of “acculturation” came into use instead of the negatively
viewed “Polonization”. Comparing the observations of Nikžentaitis with the discussed ideas, it can be observed that for the acceptance of the national history, the
language factor still remains significant. Other factors which distinguished ethnic community from the neighbours are of secondary importance in the national
history narratives despite the fact that they were far more important in the 18th
century. It is evident that this attitude is influenced by the Soviet heritage which
enhanced the fostering of the folk culture and rejected the importance of confessional dependency. The social visions of the national revival, which programmed
the events to the future, should also be considered.
In the Ukrainian historical syntheses, the 18th century is presented as the period
of existence between Russia and Poland. A Ukrainian historian Vladimir Mokry
claims that the conception of opposition between the Polish and the UkrainiansRuthenians in the 15th-18th centuries was formed in the 19th century and has not
lost its significance until now. Jakovenko mitigates the confrontation with Poland
by explaining that the country was spreading universal ideas of the West. However,
drawing on the attitudes of the czarist times, some Ukrainian historians still see
the Belarusians among the “nations disadvantaged by Poland”49. The Belarusian
historiography, which follows the historical traditions of the GDL, rejects these
claims. However, following the tradition of statehood, which protects the nations
of the GDL as a shield from the historical and related political threats of Poland,
and basing on the provisions which formed in the 20th century, the Belarusian
historians put threats arising from the Kingdom of Poland as the stronger partner
in the first place. The statehood tradition of the GDL in Belarus is closely related
with the continuity of the national history. Differently from the Ukrainian historiography, in Belarus, the partitions and resistance against them receives exceptional
attention. There are also no disputes about the negative consequences originating
from the dependency to the Russian Empire. However, most emphasis is given to
the political relation of the GDL and Poland i.e., the internal history of the Commonwealth.
A great challenge related to the reforms of the Enlightenment is the processes
of centralization and unification. Although these trends receive almost no attention in the historical syntheses of the Ukrainian and Slovak historians, they are
49
112
W. Mokry, Stosunki między Polakami i Ukraińcami w XV-XVIII wieku, Rzeczypospolita wielu narodów i jej
tradycję, Kraków, 1999, s. 191. The problem of different viewpoints of the Ukrainian historians about the
past is discussed in: T. Stryjek monografijoje: T. Stryjek, Jakiej przeszłości potrzebuje przyszłość? Interpretacje
dziejów narodowych w historiografii i debacie publicznej na Ukrainie 1991-2004, Warszawa, 2007, s. 633-635;
N. Jakowenko, Druga strona lustra.., s. 400-403.
C O N S T RU C T I N G T H E N AT I O N A L PA S T D U R I N G T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T:
T H E C A S E S O F L I T H U A N I A , B E L O RU S S I A , U K R A I N E A N D S L OVA K I A
central to the Belarusian and, especially, the Lithuanian historiographies. The
Belarusian and Lithuanian historians, who relate the statehood traditions to the
GDL history, often painfully accept the centralization of the government of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and attempts to unify law in the whole territory of Poland and historical Lithuania. Each resistance against these initiatives of
the Polish nobility since the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries constitutes the
foundation of the national narrative in Lithuania and Belarus. For this reason, the
attitudes to the Four-Year Diet reforms are not unanimous. There is no doubt that
the reforms had to help the state to withdraw from the crisis; however, the end of
the reforms has long been associated with Poland rather than Lithuania. Until now,
the manifestations of conspiracy theories in assessing these historical events can be
met. A Polish historian Andrzej B. Zakrzewski believes that the issue of the GDL
status in a common state with the Kingdom of Poland in 1791-1792 requires further investigation50. Therefore, the debate on the statehood of the GDL becomes
increasingly emotional.
The first historian to pose the delicate situation of the Four-Year Diet back in
the third decade of the 20th century was Adolfas Šapoka. His approach to the Constitution of the 3rd of May evolved from stricter to more moderate evaluations. In
1936, in the first professional “Lithuanian History”, Šapoka wrote that the FourYear Diet was destroying the autonomous government of Lithuania; in 1938, he
mitigated the position by explaining that the Constitution of the 3rd of May did
not harm the autonomy of the Lithuanian government; in 1940, Šapoka already
claimed that not a word was included in the Constitution which would ruin the
Lithuanian government51. Šapoka’s changing attitude was clearly influenced by the
evaluation of the “Mutual Vow of the Two Nations” law which was passed on the
20th of October, 1791, after the Constitution of the 3rd of May. The law declared
the unionist attitudes between Poland and Lithuania. However, the first claim of
the professional synthesis of the Lithuanian history remained more known and
heard among the Lithuanian society and historians as it played an important role
during the “period of national revival” in the 8th decade of the 20th century. Discussions about the Constitution of the 3rd of May were once again brought into focus
only at the end of the 20th century in the articles of the Polish historian Juliusz
50
51
A. B. Zakrzewski, Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie (XVI-XVIII w.): prawo, ustrój, społeczeństwo, Warszawa, 2013, s. 6.
The issue has already been mentioned: R. Jurgaitis, R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, Ketverių metų seimo epocha Adolfo Šapokos tyrimuose, in A.Šapoka, Rinktiniai raštai, t. 2: Lietuva reformų seimo metu. Iki 1791
m. gegužės 3 d. Konstitucijos, Vilnius, 2008, p. 31-35. Original quotes: „ardoma Lietuvos savarankiškoji
valstybės organizacija“, „[Gegužės 3 d.] Konstitucija savarankiškai Lietuvos organizacijai kelio neužkirto“,
„kuriuo Lietuvos valstybinė organizacija būtų griaunama“.
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Bardach and the Lithuanian historian Leonas Mulevičius52. The articles devoted
attention to the “Mutual Vow of the Two Nations” law of the 20th of October,
1791, passed after the Constitution of the 3rd of May. As after Šapoka’s work no one
has analysed the document for half of the century, the importance of the document
was rediscovered.
Not all historians agreed with the idea that the 3rd of May Constitution is an
important historical event for both Poland and Lithuania; Šapoka’s thesis posed
in the first professional “Lithuanian History” (1936) claimed that although the
Targowica Confederation, supported by the Russian army, was hostile to the FourYear Diet reforms and supported the old regime, it also restored the old autonomy
of Lithuania and Poland53. In disagreement with the mentioned attitude of some
historians, the researchers of the 18th century observed that the confederates did
not have their army and relied on the military forces of the Russian Empire. Therefore, it was offered to treat the GDL confederates as Russia’s allies and by no means
to refer to the 1792 war as civil (because there were some suggestions) as, in the
words of Rakutis, some defended their homeland and some betrayed54. Attempts
to revive the image of the reform opponents as the rescuers of Lithuania and the
portrayed the events of the end of the 18th century as an intermediate existence
between Russia and Poland are similar to the position of the Ukrainian historiography. However, the reaction of the conservative nobility to the Four-Year Diet
reforms and the accepted help of the foreign army to achieve the political aspirations are criticized in the Lithuanian history syntheses and even referred to as a
symbol of the collapse of the state55.
Researchers of the 18th century GDL observe that the Lithuanian historians
mostly disagree whether the Constitution of the 3rd of May is Polish or PolishLithuanian. Is the document significant only to Poland or also to Lithuania?56 In
any case, the thesis that the Lithuanian name is “erased” from the document and
the state becomes referred to as Poland remains valid so far. Specifically, the issue of
the GDL autonomy and statehood is of key importance in the discussion.
Often, there are concerns that the two political nations, Polish and Lithuanian,
are referred to in the Constitution as one “nation”, or “the Polish nation”. However,
52
53
54
55
56
114
J. Bardach, Konstytucja 3 maja a „Zaręczenie obojga narodów“ 1791 roku, Studia juridica, t. 24, 1992,
s. 23-32; L. Mulevičius, „Lietuvos savarankiškumas ir Abiejų Tautų savitarpio garantijos įstatymas“, Lituanistica, 1992, nr. 4(12), 1993, p. 70-78.
Lietuvos istorija, red. A. Šapoka, Kaunas, 1936, p. 433; also see: R. Jurgaitis, R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, „Ket­
verių metų seimo epocha Adolfo Šapokos tyrimuose“, p. 35-36.
V. Rakutis, LDK kariuomenė Ketverių metų seimo laikotarpiu (1788-1792), Vilnius, 2001, p. 12.
A. Kuncevičius, Z. Kiaupa, J. Kiaupienė, Lietuvos istorija iki 1795 metų.., p. 400. Original quote: „valstybės
žlugimo simboliu“.
R. Jurgaitis, R. Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, Ketverių metų seimo epocha.., p. 36.
C O N S T RU C T I N G T H E N AT I O N A L PA S T D U R I N G T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T:
T H E C A S E S O F L I T H U A N I A , B E L O RU S S I A , U K R A I N E A N D S L OVA K I A
the Lithuanian nobility identified themselves with the GDL in certain situations
and with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in other, and these trends are
found since the 17th century. The fact that the GDL becomes referred to as a
province rather than a state is painfully accepted. However, as Grzegorz Blaszczyk
points out, Lithuania was a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
not Poland’s57. In response to the discussion, Kiaupa summarizes the events of the
Four-Year Diet by saying that the opposition between the federal state established
by the Union of Lublin and the aspired unitary state became evident in the Diet
of 1788-1792. Although the Four-Year Diet has led to significant changes, especially in the development of the centralized government, the Republic remained a
federal state, Lithuania remained a legal entity, and the binominal structure of the
Republic was retained58. Although the discussions continue to focus on the events
of 1791, it is often forgotten that the position of the Lithuanian delegates on the
issue of the GDL was raised not only in 1792 by the general confederation of the
GDL, but also implemented in the Grodno Diet and re-opened at the beginning
of the 1794 uprising.
Just as in Lithuania, in Belarus, it has long been argued that the Constitution
of May 3rd denied the GDL statehood59. This approach is determined not by the
historiography (the new historiography revised the approach in response to the
latest research), but by a collective belief and common attitudes. The Belarusian
historians rehabilitated the Constitution of May 3rd by basing on the research of a
Polish historian Bardach. Due to the language barrier, the Lithuanian research and
discussions did not reach the Belarusian historians.
In Lithuania, it is still possible to find claims that all positive evaluations of
the Constitution of the 3rd of May are erroneous and not grounded. These claims
are further influenced by the common attitudes and conceptions of the interwar
period, which were revised by a number of the professional Lithuanian historians.
For example, a review of the secondary school textbooks criticizes the “positivist”
approach of one textbook which does not mention the potential impact of the
Constitution of May 3rd to the further development of the state and the nation60.
Also, two alternatives (referred to as verified hypotheses) of the evaluation of the
reforms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th
57
58
59
60
G. Blaszczyk, „Współczesne spojrzenie na stosunki polsko-litewskie w latach 1569-1795”, Rzeczypospolita w
XVI-XVIII wieku. Państwo czy wspólnota?, red. B. Dybaś, P. Hanczewski, T. Kempa, Toruń, 2007, s. 84.
Z. Kiaupa, Lietuvos istorija.., p. 86.
Гiсторыя Беларусi, ч. 1… с. 231; O. Latyszonek, Tradycja współistnienia narodów w jednym państwie i jej
konsekwencje z punktu widzenia narodu białoruskiego, Rzeczypospolita wielu narodów i jej tradycję, Kraków,
1999, s. 207-208.
S. Merkinaitė, V. Radžvilas, Istorijos mokymas mokyklose kaip valstybinės istorijos politikos problema, Istorijos subjektas kaip istorijos politikos problema, Vilnius, 2011, p. 155.
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L iudas G lem ž a
century are distinguished. First, the reforms and the Constitution are treated as a
positive, although late step in the modernization of the state, which could have created favourable conditions to the formation of the modern Lithuanian nation and
state. Second, the reforms can be considered as the last step in the destruction of
the GDL statehood and the final collapse of the Lithuanian nation: if the reforms
were implemented and Lithuania would have become Poland’s province, the process of denationalization would have been irreversible61. It should be pointed out
that these two alternatives provided in the professional historiography presuppose
negative assessments, whereas the relation of the events of the end of the 18th century with the processes of the second half of the 19th-20th centuries is not possible,
unless it would be predefined what would change and what would remain stable
for more than half a century. One way or another, the fears that the Constitution
of May 3rd could stop the national revival of the Lithuanians in the 19th century
are not grounded.
C onclusions
Summarizing, it can be stated that although the national historiography declares
identity with the historical state, it does not cope with the three factors, namely,
territory, cultural environment (mostly related to confessional dependency) and
language. These criteria function as reference points for the nations which construct their identities without direct relation to the historical state of the 18th century. Typically, history is presented through the vision of confrontation between
the periphery and the centre. The later events are incorporated into the narration
or even dated earlier. On the other hand, the second half of the 18th century is
not marked with disagreements of a similar kind. Therefore, the examples of the
19th century are often projected into the Age of Enlightenment, which brought
significant innovations at the dawn of the birth of the modern nations. To say in
another way, the deconstruction of historiography shows that such themes like
territory, religion, language, and social factors have been determined by ethnocultural conceptions. Interpretations of historians are based on a special pattern.
On the one hand, they are creating stories objectively and there are no direct
associations with nationalist conceptions. On the other hand, they are based on
some predetermined attitudes.
In sum, the modern nations’ national history of transitory period (which is
the Enlightenment) from an undefined and ambiguous state to the existence can
61
116
Op. cit, p. 161.
C O N S T RU C T I N G T H E N AT I O N A L PA S T D U R I N G T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T:
T H E C A S E S O F L I T H U A N I A , B E L O RU S S I A , U K R A I N E A N D S L OVA K I A
be seen as a construct which emphasizes selected historical events to provide the
validity of the status quo. In addition to reasonable claims and attempts to retain
the continuity of the historical tradition, the Lithuanian and the Belarusian historians defend the positions of the GDL in the Four-Year Diet in order to give the
historical grounding to and strengthen the independence in the 20th-21st centuries.
In any case, the general public processes influenced by the Age of Enlightenment
are a common historical heritage, which allow us not only to be proud of the so
called “first constitution in Europe”, but also invite to revise the old evaluations
of the past.
Liudas Glemža
A pšvietos epochos nacionalin ė s praeities konstravimas :
L ietuvos , B altarusijos , U krainos ir S lovakijos atvejai
S A N T R AU K A . Apšvietos epochos idėjos XVIII amžiuje atvėrė kelią valstybių teritorijų
centralizacijai ir unifikacijai. Šios tendencijos XX a. atsiradusioms nacionalinėms valstybėms
su savo profesionaliomis istoriografijomis, matančioms nacionalinės istorijos tęstinumą nuo
viduramžių iki XIX a. tautinių judėjimų, tapo rimtu iššūkiu konstruojant savo praeitį. Dėl
šios priežasties Apšvietos epocha tapo savotišku pereinamuoju laikotarpiu. Pavyzdžiais pasirinktos keturių valstybių nacionalinės istorijos sintezėse vaizduojami XVIII a. įvykiai. Atkreiptas dėmesys į tai, kad skirtingą istorinę praeitį turinčių tautų nacionalinėse istoriografijose
mėginama suaktualinti įvykius tapatinant juos su vėlesniais procesais.
R A K TA ŽO D Ž I A I : Apšvietos epocha, nacionalinė istoriografija, nacionalinis atgimimas,
Abiejų Tautų Respublika, Vengrijos karalystė.
117
C R E AT I N G N AT I O N A L C O M M U N I T Y & H I S TO RY:
O F F I C I A L S P E E C H E S O N I N D E P E N D E N C E D AY
I N B E L A RU S ( 2 0 0 1-2 0 1 2 )
A liaksei L astouski
S U M M A RY. The article examines the processes of formation and translation of the images of
authority, people and historical past in the public speeches of the Belarusian president Aliaksandr
Lukashenka on the celebrations of Independence Day. Representations of different periods of
historical past (pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet) are analysed. The author concludes that official
view of the Belarusian history is very limited and oriented to pragmatic political aims.
K E Y WO R D S : Public speech, politics of memory, identity construction.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of independent
states were established. These states faced new and difficult tasks: establishment
of a stable political system, transformation of command economy, geopolitical
identification as well as consolidation of society, and strengthening of national
identity. The most common and influential path of transition common to the postcommunist states of the Eastern Europe was establishment of democratic regimes,
transition to the market economy, desire for the integration into the European
Union, and victory of the ethno national project. However, this “ideal” trajectory
of transition had its deviations, difficulties, and even traitors.
The transition of Belarus is very often defined as anomalistic due to specific historical reasons, i.e. strong Russification and Sovietization. Sometimes the country
is called “the last dictatorship in Europe”, “a state without a nation” or “a country
without history”.
In the development of the official memory narrative of the Republic of Belarus,
two key milestones can be highlighted. The first is 1991, the year which marked the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of an independent Belarusian state,
along with the restoration of the national Belarusian historiography which was
repressed in the Soviet period. The historiography has taken three key paths:
a) delving into the ‘glorious’ historical past and tracing the roots of the Belarusian national statehood back to the early medieval Principality of Polatsk. In other
119
A liaksei L astouski
words, the Soviet narrative which posited medieval Kievan Rus as the cradle of the
three East Slav nations of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine is rejected;
b) focusing on Europe: treating the Belarusian history as a part of the European
history, with common processes and characteristics, and, therefore, opposed to the
Russian history;
c) demonstrating the negative influence of Russia on the Belarusian history.
Another event that radically changed the fate of the Belarusian politics of
memory is the election of Aliaksandr Lukashenka as the President of Belarus in
1994. In contrast to the early post-Soviet period, in the Lukashenka period, the
Belarusian historiography turned back to its pan-Slavic, Russophile and Soviet
roots1. A historian David Marples has argued that Lukashenka ‘recognizes the historical legacy of Belarusians only selectively – strictly in the Russian context’ and
that under Lukashenka, ‘history as a form of public policy is limited to the Soviet
period, at the expense of important fundamental periods of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania and the Polish Commonwealth’2.
These two versions of history employ radically different chronological frames
and foundation myths. The national historiography traces the roots of the Belarusian state back to the Principality of Polatsk, a feudal principality of the 9th-12th
centuries which achieved a significant political influence in the region. The official
state historiography, by contrast, features a myth of origin which is based primarily
on the partisan resistance during the World War II, and on the figure of partisan
as a heroic defender of the state against the external aggressor. This myth was put
in place in the Soviet period. After the World War II, the former commanders of
the partisan groups became the local leaders in the communist Belarus, and the
mythologized image of the ‘partisan republic’ allowed them to legitimize their own
authority and acquire symbolic prestige in the general Soviet hierarchy3. The heroic
Belarusian ‘Partisan Myth’ was fixed in the historical memory and turned out to be
beneficial to the government in the post-communist period, too4.
It is also worth noting that the most important public holidays in the Republic
of Belarus – the Independence Day and the Victory Day – are directly related to
the triumphant moments of the Great Patriotic War. Since 1991, the Independence Day was celebrated on July 27, the day of the Declaration of the Sovereignty
1
2
3
4
120
Kuzio Taras, “History, Memory and Nation Building in the Post-Soviet Colonial Space”, Nationalities Papers
30, No. 2 (2002): 241-264.
Marples David,”Sila i slabas’c’ bielaruskaha autarytaryzmu”, ARCHE 4 (2007).
Urban Michael, An Algebra of Soviet Power: Elite Circulation in the Belorussian Republic 1966-86 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Leshchenko Natallia, “National Ideology and the Basis of the Lukashenka Regime in Belarus”, Europe-Asia
Studies 60, No. 8 (2008): 1419-1433.
C R E AT I N G N AT I O N A L C O M M U N I T Y & H I S TO RY:
O F F I C I A L S P E E C H E S O N I N D E P E N D E N C E D AY I N B E L A RU S ( 2 0 0 1 - 2 0 1 2 )
of Belarus. In 1996, by the initiative of the President of Belarus Aliaksandr Lukashenka, a nationwide referendum was held, a result of which was moving the date
of the holiday to July 3. This date refers directly to July 3, 1944, when the Soviet
Army liberated Minsk, and later that day was celebrated as the “Day of the Liberation of Belarus from the Nazi Invaders”. Thus, even the independence of Belarus is
in close semantic conjunction with the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
In most Eastern European countries, the national historical narratives in the postcommunist period were organized by more or less the same pattern: searching for a
long genealogy of the statehood, and emphasizing the traditions of democracy and the
imposed nature of the totalitarian communist experience. Obviously, Belarus stands
out in this case trying to include the Soviet historical myths in the foundation of
the national self-determination, and creating collisions and conflicts in the historical
memory. This situation, for sure, does not contribute to the consolidation of society.
For the Belarusian authorities, and particularly for Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who
remains an unchangeable president of Belarus since 1994, an extremely relevant
task is to achieve the legitimacy of their own rule (which is vigorously contested by
both the democratic opposition in the country, and the international community)
and the consolidation of society.
Experience shows that for this purpose, tools of social policy are used – populist
campaigns aimed at attracting support of different segments of the population, as
well as purely symbolic campaigns that can be called the rituals of power.
In our study, we tried to consider the content enclosed in the solemn speeches
during the country’s main national holiday – the Independence Day. We took the
public speeches of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the President of the Republic of Belarus from 1994 up to the present as the main source. A special attention paid to
Lukashenka’s speeches was due to several reasons: according to the Constitution,
the President is the head of the state and has the highest power competence; in
addition, Lukashenka has been the President for a very long time. Moreover, as the
primary analysis of the public speeches shows, Lukashenka is a renowned public
“speaker” of the state course – he gives extensive speeches very often, while public
speeches of other officials are far rarer and far less informative.
Thus, the purpose of the study was the reconstruction of the dynamics and the
content of interpretations of the historical past of the country in the public program
speeches, as well as the rhetorical techniques of building a symbolic community.
The German researcher Rainer Lindner noted that especially Aliaksandr Luka­
shenka, a former history teacher, often uses the historical material (taken from the
Soviet propaganda arsenal) in public speeches. “Not devoid of charismatic traits,
he thus learned to stage – reaching significant impact on the masses – the political
speeches or actions using historical references or linguistic images. No wonder the
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A liaksei L astouski
advisory staff of the president from the very beginning included historians who
tried to provide him with the history-related rhetorical figures”5.
Accordingly, the historical past is effectively used by the Belarusian authorities
for building the desired image of the past, present and future of the Belarusian
nation, although this can never be called a unique invention, but rather a local
incarnation of a generally accepted scenario of power.
The analysis models, in which the historical past has a central role in building
the myth of power legitimization, have expanded and received acknowledgement
in political science and sociology in recent years. Tradition and continuity warrant
the legality and necessity of the existing authorities in the public consciousness by
assigning the qualitative characteristics of stability and respectability to them. The
single interpretation of the historical past also helps to consolidate the power elites,
contributing to their mutual understanding and strengthens their will to rule the
society, which is also seen as single and coherent6. Modernity is estimated as the
result of a linear historical process which had the realization of this power project
as its latent or explicit goal. Further, historical myths are also principal for the
international legitimacy of states and recognition of their sovereignty or historical
rights to the zones of influence.
Accordingly, public speaking has two main functions:
1) consolidation of the elite, setting the scope and content of the common cause;
2) legitimization of the government in the eyes of society through the use of
various symbolic tools, among which the creation and restoration of historical
myths takes the central and most important place.
Lukashenka’s public speaking is widely and intensively broadcasted through various
media channels (TV, radio, printed press, and the Internet). Obviously, in the state
policy of Belarus, public speaking is one of the most important means of creating a
common symbolic space of power, with an imagined community – “the Belarusian
people”, which, in this case, is reduced to the public of the media messages. The corresponding medialization of these performances gives them the priority value in the
processes of determining the content of the national identity and the construction of
the relevant frames. As noted by a Latvian researcher Solvita Denis, “with the help of
certain communication strategies, Aliaksandr Lukashenka seeks to define the limits of
his own understanding of nation and delegitimizes any competitive concept”7.
5
6
7
122
Lindner Rainer, Historyki i ulada: nacyjatvorchy praces i histarychnaia palityka u Bielarusi XIX-XX st. (Saint
Petersburg: Niewski Prastor, 2005), 411.
Sherlock Thomas, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 4-11.
Denis Solvita, “Strategicheskaia “smies” dlja nacii: novogodnie obraschcheniaa A. Lukashenko (20032009)”, Palitychnaia sfiera 14 (2010): 80-89.
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The current research focuses on the public speaking of the period 2001-2012. The
period starting from 2001 was chosen due to the fact that it is referred to as the
beginning of a new stage in the self-determination of the Belarusian government.
According to the Belarusian political analyst Andrei Kazakievich, from this point “the
strategy of expansion operated by the political mission (which was only partially successful in signing a number of agreements, protocols and memorandums with Russia)
changes into the strategy of self-preservation and adaptation to the adverse and hostile
environment”8. It can be defined as the establishment of a new stage in the self-understanding and self-description of the Belarusian authorities, which found the most striking manifestation in the launch of the Belarusian state ideology project.
T he P resident and the P eople
When it comes to the political identity of political actors, the image of “I-WE” and
the reference groups with which the actors are symbolically in the same space, and
share the common values are particularly important.
The corpus study suggests a complex structure of space where the following
interrelated key elements of authorities-people-COUNTRY stand out.
The most stable personal identification with the power belongs to the President
of the Republic Aliaksandr Lukashenka. In his speeches, the definitions of “I”,
“Lukashenka”, “the President” look synonymous and interchangeable. So at this
point, a semantic transformation of the definition “President” (elected position
which theoretically can be taken by different people) is converted into a personal
attribute inseparable from the personality of Aliaksandr Lukashenka. In this context, the official prohibition in the Republic of Belarus on using the word “President” in relation to any other position except for the country’s leader looks rather
logical. In the system of representations created by the Belarusian authorities, there
can be only one President in the country.
The people in the public speeches of the Belarusian politicians is, actually, a
sacred category (“the holy unity”), the main source of legitimacy of the government, which, through the institutions of elections and referendums creates this
government (the Parliament, as well as the President and all the presidential power
is formed by the people).
The word “people” is supposed to include all the citizens of the country, but
in practice has certain qualitative characteristics that act as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. The people of Belarus is simple. Accordingly, the government
8
Kazakievich Andrei, “Bielaruskaia sistema: marfalogia, fizialogia, gieniealogia”, ARCHE 4 (2004) 51-84.
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promotes the image of homogeneity and cohesion, the total unity of the people,
and this consistently leads to the absence of disagreements, debates and different
opinions “inside” the people. A Latvian researcher Solvita Denis also notes that the
unity is the main communication strategy for the president’s appeals: “There is a
kind of auto-training of national unity, and the legitimacy of the need for the unity
is achieved primarily through the creation of the image of what will happen if the
Belarusian people is not united. A formula ‘unity-stability-confidence in the future’
is revealed. And the key concept of the communicator is precisely the unity”9.
Another important consequence of the use of the formula of the “simple” people is the programming of reduced social standards, when wealth can be justified
only by intensified work. On the other hand, exactly in this attitude lies a radical
disruption with the Soviet system of values in which, according to the Marxist philosophy of history, there was a stable system of opposition of the workers / the poor
(good) versus the parasites / the rich (bad). In the public statements of Lukashenka,
one can still hear the echoes of this value system, where the main quality of the people is work. However, the main strategy of the country’s leadership for many years
declares improving the living standards and welfare of the population, which leads
to a partial rehabilitation of wealth as a desired ideal – only to the extent when it
is not speculative but “earned”. “This ideology of minimal but stable consumption
became the new people’s faith and penetrated the whole social life”10.
The fact that the statements of Lukashenka frequently turn to the events of
1994, when he first won the presidential election are also important. The situation
in the early 1990s is described as apocalyptical, when the country was on the brink
of a precipice, and destruction reigned in most areas of life. Only a wise decision of
the people (the election of A. Lukashenka as the president) saved the country from
the disaster. Accordingly, Lukashenka is not only the one chosen by the people, but
is also the people’s saviour. On the other hand, constant references to the presidential elections of 1994 and almost complete ignorance of the subsequent elections
in the speeches of 2008-2010 suggest that the choice of the people was made only
once – but forever. The next elections can only confirm the choice made and ritually renew the direct link between the people and the president, but are not able to
destroy this relationship. Therefore, the procedure of the presidential elections is
seen by Aliaksandr Lukashenka as the confirmation of his legitimacy, but not as a
competitive procedure with an unknown result.
9
10
124
Denis, 83-84.
Gornykh Andrei, “Viechnoie vozvrashchenie po-bielorusski” in Belorusskii format: nievidimaia real’nost’.
(Vilnius: EHU, 2008), 180.
C R E AT I N G N AT I O N A L C O M M U N I T Y & H I S TO RY:
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P re - S oviet H istory
Again, unlike most of the Eastern European countries which are passionate about
the political archaeology, the Belarusian authorities, by the tradition initiated in
the Soviet era, are rather wary of speculations with the past.
One can not say that the historical past of the times of the Principality of Polotsk,
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is completely ignored in the public speeches of Aliaksandr Lukashenka. In appropriate
circumstances, when an extensive genealogy of building the Belarusian statehood is
restored (a perfect reason for that is the Independence Day), these times are mentioned as the constituent elements of the genesis of the contemporary state: “We
know and respect our history, do not abandon the old traditions. We remember
about the Polack and Turov Principalities, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, about the
Belarusian lands as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian
Empire” (Lukashenka, 2001), “The Belarusian statehood has a solid foundation.
It originates from the ancient Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the heroes of
the Battle of Grunwald” (Lukashenka, 2002). However, in this case, it is extremely
interesting that these two references to the extended traditions of the Belarusian
state – which in principle follow the tenets of the national historiography – were
used in two speeches at the Independence Day ceremonial meetings only for two
years in a row, 2001 and 2002 (it is also significant that these statements were in
the Belarusian language, while the later ones are in Russian). In further speeches,
such references to the historical past are reduced to the acts of bravery in the Great
Patriotic War and the positive experience of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Repub­
lic, which is the foundation for the modern Belarusian state.
It should be noted that the Principality of Polack and the GDL are explicitly mentioned in Lukashenka’s speeches only once in the past three years (2008-2010), although
in some interviews to the Lithuanian and Polish editions he spoke of the “common
past”. Thus, we can state with confidence that these historical periods, being central
to the national historiography, are unimportant and marginal to the vision of the
Belarusian past advocated by the President of the Republic of Belarus. On the other
hand, the lines of interpretation of the times of the GDL and the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth where the main emphasis is on the foreign rule (popular among the
Russo-centrist project of the Belarusian nation) are missing in his speeches.
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T he S oviet H istory
The main object of symbolic correlation for the Belarusian authorities is the Soviet
period, with which they have to enter into the complex relationship of refusal /
overcoming / continuation. The problem was particularly acute in the beginning
of the 90s, in the early post-communist years, when the task of avoiding the Soviet
forms, radically set by the domestic and foreign policy processes, was almost impossible to fulfil due to significant proportion of the continuity of the elites and the
weakness of the opposition. The return of a positive attitude to the Soviet past
was used as one of the key elements of the electoral program of A. Lukashenka,
which further confused the unsolved problem of separation of the society from
the patterns and values of the communist legacy. On the other hand, the degree of
continuity and the importance of the Soviet legacy for the official historical narrative vary according to the opinion of different researchers. For example, Per Anders
Rudling writes that the institutionalized Soviet nostalgia has become the cornerstone of the state policy of modern Belarus11, although elsewhere he stresses that
this nostalgia is selective, and while the Soviet myth of Victory is preserved in an
untouched status, the subject of the October Revolution is almost unused by the
regime12. Andrei Kazakievich also concludes that for the state-political concept of
the Belarusian nation developed and manifested by the Belarusian authorities, the
Soviet political and cultural continuity is of fundamental importance. “Sovietness
and Soviet past are seen not only as normal, but also as valuable. Continuity in the
social system and economic development is emphasized. The political system of
the BSSR is viewed as a source of valuable experience and beginning of statehood.
Certain historical events of the Soviet period are cultivated as central to the history
of the nation”. However, this researcher also indicates the lack of a coherent vision
of the past, which determines only a partial continuity of the Soviet period13.
The analysis of the public statements indicates that the Soviet period is reconsidered by the Belarusian authorities in a rather specific way. Several pathways can
be identified as most frequently used to represent the Soviet past:
1) the foundations for the Belarusian statehood were laid in the Soviet era;
2) the Soviet period is characterized by a high level of welfare;
3) the greatest historical achievement of the Soviet times is the Victory in the
Great Patriotic War;
11
12
13
126
Rudling Per Anders, “Lukashenka i “chyrvona-karychnievyia”: dziarzhaunaia idealogia, ushanavannie minulaha i palitychnaia prynaliezhnasc’”, Palitychnaia sfiera 14 (2010): 90-113.
Rudling Per Anders, “Vialiakaia Aichynnaia vaina u sviadomasci bielarusau”, ARCHE 5 (2008): 43-64.
Kazakievich Andrei, “Kancepcyi (idei) bielaruskai nacyi u pieryiad niezaliezhnasci, 1990-2009”, Palitychnaia sfiera 14 (2010): 21-40.
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4) the USSR was a great state;
5) the collapse of the USSR was disastrous.
These subjects are extremely stable and are present in almost every speech by
Aliaksandr Lukashenka that has to do with the commemoration of the past (the
Victory Day, the Independence Day, and the Day of the October Revolution).
The rehabilitation of the Soviet period, which is often seen as a complete reconstruction, is a rather nostalgic rethinking in the manner of “good old days”. This
leads to the “oblivion” of the communist ideology and the actual deconstruction
of the rigid ideological framework of that era. The Soviet past is constantly present
in the public speeches of Lukashenka, but in a specific mode of nostalgia, where
it acquires the status of an ideal past, which, however, passed into oblivion, and
which only has its descendant in the modern Belarusian state.
T he G reat Patriotic War
The Great Patriotic War has its own specificity, which took shape even under the
Soviet rule. First of all, the Belarusian war myth foregrounds a huge number of casualties among the Belarusian people. Within the local myth, the Belarusian nation
acquires an aura of not only heroism, but also, and equally, of martyrdom. The tragic price that the Belarusian nation paid for the victory is underlined and echoed in
the continuous playback of one rhetorical statistical figure: every fourth Belarusian,
we are constantly being reminded, died during the war. Moreover, in recent years it
is also increasingly common to hear that every third inhabitant of Belarus died in
the war (the fact that ethnic and territorial definitions are constantly confused nullifies any attempt to verify these figures, but in no way diminishes their emotional
significance). Secondly, the Belarusian version highlights the exceptional role of the
Belarusian people in the victory over the fascism. Here again, the ‘Partisan Myth’
comes into play, with its emphasis on the huge (unprecedented, according to some
accounts) scale of the Belarusian anti-Nazi resistance movement.
The Belarusian war myth thus places the popular notion of “the Soviet people
as the conqueror of fascism” into the shadow, with the Belarusian people taking up
this place of honour instead.
However, the myth of the War is not only used to create a positive identity of the
collective community (Hero Nation and Martyr People). The stunning emotional
potential founded here is also used for the negative purposes of creating a negative
image of political opponents that are associated with the war enemies. This utilitarian
aspect was noticed by a French political researcher Alexandra Goujon, who writes that
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the memory of the War is also used to legitimize Lukashenka’s policy with respect to
his opponents, who are often shown as fascists or as belonging to the fifth column14.
Moreover, some Western countries are also charged with attempts to overthrow the
government of Belarus in the vein that reminds of the Nazi Germany’s plans.
C onclusions
The study of the use of the historical past in the official public speeches indicates
the absence of a coherent and consistent image of the past in the discourse of
the Belarusian authorities. Elements of various meta-narratives are used (national, Soviet, Russo-centrist), but their proportion and significance mainly depend
on the situational needs and tactical interests. These contradictions and eclectic
approach of the Belarusian historical policy can not be explained by the lack of
resources or poor intellectual potential; they must inevitably result from the geopolitical situation in which modern Belarus appeared. The desire to avoid clear
and final decisions, the aspiration to be both here and there – all this reinforces
the country’s status as a borderland between the big geopolitical players, where the
policy of balancing can only be inconsistent and eclectic. Therefore, neither the
trend of nationalization nor Russification can achieve the final victory. On the one
hand, the lack of the possibility to construct the canonical image of history offers
some advantages for the freedom of historical research; on the other hand, it leads
to uncertainty of the public historical consciousness.
Aliaksei Lastouski
Tautin ė s bendruomen ė s ir praeities k ū rimas : oficialios
B altarusi j os nepriklausomyb ė s dienos kalbos ( 2 0 0 1 – 2 0 1 2 )
S A N T R AU K A . Straipsnyje nagrinėjami diktatūros vaizdinių formavimo procesai viešose Baltarusijos prezidento Aleksandro Lukašenkos kalbose apie tautą ir istorinę praeitį per Nepriklausomybės dienos šventes. Taip pat straipsnyje analizuojama istorinė praeitis įvairiais laikotarpiais – ikisovietinė, sovietinė ir posovietinė. Autorius daro išvadą, kad oficialus požiūris į
Baltarusijos istoriją yra labai ribotas ir orientuotas į pragmatinių politinių tikslų siekimą.
R A K TA ŽO D Ž I A I : vieša kalba, atminties politika, identiteto konstravimas.
14
128
Goujon Alexandra, “Memorial Narratives of WWII Partisans and Genocide in Belarus”, East European
Politics and Societies 24, Number 1 (2010): 6-25.
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E
C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO PE:
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
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S U M M A RY. The region of Central Europe, as well the cities in this area, underwent radical
changes in the 20th century: extermination of the Jews, evacuation/repatriation of the Poles, the
Germans and the Ukrainians, homogenization of the communist system (in ideological, and
demographic sense). After 1989/1991 it became possible to restore the cities’ “lost identity”.
It is worth to compare two different, but similar cities in our region: Wrocław as consciously
upbuilding its identity on multiculturalism, openness to the world and at the same time struggling with the “amputated past”. On the other hand Lviv/Lemberg seems to be a city, standing
between the national idea, the “alien past” (the Polish and the Jewish heritage) and orientation
towards Central Europe.
K E Y WO R D S : Multicultural city, Wrocław, L’viv, minorities, 20th century, symbolic spaces,
heritage.
Central Europe, as we all know very well, is full of paradoxical situations in past
as well as in present. In this article, I highlight briefly the phenomenon of two different, yet similar “Polish” cities, namely Breslau/Wrocław and L’viv/Lwów/Lvov.
One may ask, why I have chosen (as a researcher from Hungary) exactly this topic
and these cities (one is in Poland, the other is in Ukraine). The answer is rather
simple: in recent years, the Budapest-based Terra Recognita Foundation (Terra
Recognita Alapítvány, TRA) managed to publish some books about the traditional
multiculturalism in our region (Budapest, Kosice/Kassa/Kaschau and Bratislava/
Pozsony/Pressburg).1 Through these case-studies we can explore the history of the
region in the 20th century (in regional and even wider state/country contexts),
its demographic situation, mainly from the point of view of ethnic and religious
1
Europe in Budapest – a Guide to its Many Cultures, eds. Csaba Zahorán and István Kollai (Budapest: Terra
Recognita Foundation, 2011), A Capital On The Borderland: Traditional Multiculturalism in Contemporary
Bratislava, ed. István Kollai (Budapest: Terra Recognita Alapítvány, 2009), Remembering the City: a Guide
Through the Past of Košice, eds. Veronika Gayer, Slávka Otčenášová and Csaba Zahorán (Terra Recognita
Foundation and Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Šafárika v Košiciach, Budapest 2013).
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diversity, and the memory policy after the independence (the past twenty years):
how the city leadership/central government and/or civil society discover the city’s
“alien past”, how they create the city’s identity, present it to its own citizens and
domestic or foreign visitors. In this article, I briefly present the history of L’viv and
Wrocław in the 20th century with a specific focus on the multi-ethnicity issue, and
give a brief comparison between these two cities.
L’ viv / L emberg / Lwów
This city was, at least in the crucial 19th century, in the hands of the Habsburgs,
and was the capital of Galicia – a region which was taken by Austria in 1772, as
a result of the first partition of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.2 During the Austrian rule, the city prosperously developed (Vienna-style
architecture), but had no economic background. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lemberg, as the city was called in the Monarchy, was inhabited mostly by
three groups: by the Poles, dominating in politics, administration and education
(Polonisation of University and Politechnika), by the Jews, strong in economics (the
centre of the Polonisational movement within the community3), and by the Ukrainians/Rusyns, a peasant population dominating in the eastern regions of Galicia
and fighting for their own nation-state and more rights within the autonomous,
but controlled by the Poles Galicia. The ethnic diversity was complemented by the
religious matrix, as Lemberg was the centre of the archdiocese for the Roman Catholic (the Latin rite) and the Greek Catholic (the Byzantine rite) Church.4
Immediately after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918, the
Poles gained the city (and the whole region of the contested Galicia), by defeating
the Ukrainians and their independence movement (West-Ukrainian People’s Republic was established in Eastern Galicia for a few months). The turbulent days and
the armed struggle between the Poles and the Ukrainians in the city itself caused
a huge pogrom, in which the dozens of Jews were killed and injured by the Polish
2
3
4
130
On the history of the city: Lviv: a City in the Crosscurrents of Culture, ed. John Czaplicka (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2005). This book contains the
articles published in Harvard Ukrainian Studies in 2000 nr 24. (Hrsg.): Lemberg, Lwów, Lviv: eine Stadt im
Schnittpunkt europäischer Kulturen, hrsg. Peter Fässler – Thomas Held – Dirk Sawitzki (Köln: Böhlau Verlag,
1993). On Galicia from the point of view of multiculturality cf. (eds.): Galicia: A Multicultured Land, eds.
Christopher Hann – Paul Robert Magocsi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
Wacław Wierzbiniec, The Processes of Jewish Emancipation and Assimilation in the Multiethnic City of
Lviv during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2000, vol. 24, 223–250.
Liliana Hentosh, Rites and Religions: Pages from the History of Inter-denominational and Inter-ethnic
Relations in Twentieth-Century Lviv, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2000, vol. 24, 171–203.
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
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soldiers and lower-class civilian population at the end of November 1918.5 These
events (the fights between the Poles and the Ukrainians, pogrom) should be seen
as a milestone in the mutual relationship between the city’s national groups – the
Poles regarded the Ukrainians with mistrust, even with hostility and vice versa, the
Jews were on “no man’s land” keeping distance from both communities.6
The restoration of the Polish independence in 1918 meant the possibility for
the Polish political elite to construct a nation-state; however, the Second Republic
(Druga Rzeczpospolita) in terms of population was not a homogenous country, as
more than one third of the population were non-Poles. The events in November
1918 (regaining the city from the Ukrainians) and the Cemetery of the Defenders
of Lwów (“orlęta lwowskie”, “Lwów eaglets”, alluding to teenagers and students
fighting on the Polish side) became an important part in the Polish national mythology. The city was seen as an antemurale (bulwark) of not Christianity but rather
of Polishness; for example, after the First World War the motto: “Semper fidelis”,
i.e. always faithful to Poland, appeared on the coat of arms.7
However, it was still a Polish-Jewish city (50% Poles, 33% Jews according to
census in 1931), with a visible Ukrainian minority (not only in the city, but in
general, the biggest nationality in the interwar Poland), who regarded Lwów “under
the Polish occupation” as their cultural (Shevchenko Scientific Society, press in the
Ukrainian language), political (several parties, right-wing and left-wing as well)
and religious centre (here, a Greek Catholic metropolitan archbishop Andriy Sheptytskyj, the spiritual leader of the Ukrainians at that time, resided). During the
interwar period, the Jews in Lwów made up a heterogeneous group in the aspects
of culture (language, i.e. Polish vs. Yiddish, religiosity, press) and politics (Zionist,
Bundist, conservative and communist influence within the community).
This world, which was not so perfect regarding the national coexistence but was
otherwise rather predictable, perished during the World War II. In 1939-1945,
the city had to bear the practices of two dictatorships (the Nazi/German and the
Bolshevik/Soviet one). In September 1939, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, Lwów (as well as the so called “Kresy Wschodnie”, the Polish “Eastern Borderland”) was incorporated into the Soviet Union. The Soviets immediately started reshaping the city’s administration, economy and education system, in which
the Ukrainians were favoured (the Ukrainian language became official, instead of
5
6
7
William W. Hagen, The Moral Economy of Popular Violence: The Pogrom in Lwów, November 1918, in
Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, ed. Robert Blobaum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2005), 124–147.
Philipp Ther, War versus Peace: Interethnic Relations in Lviv during the First Half of the Twentieth Century,
Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2000, vol. 24, 251–284.
Anna Veronika Wendland, Post-Austrian Lemberg: War Commemoration, Interethnic Relations, and Urban Identity in L’viv, 1918–1939, Austrian History Yearbook 2003, vol. 34, 92–95.
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Polish), and deportations of the former political and social elite, in which the Poles
played a dominant role, took place. In the summer of 1941, the Nazi Germany
attacked the Soviet Union. The district of Galicia, along with the discussed city,
was incorporated into the General Government (Generalgouvernement). The new
occupier had an evil plan to implement the Endlösung: during a short period of
1942-1943, the annihilation of the entire city’s Jewish population was carried out
(in Bełżec death camp or near Lwów, in the forced labour camp of Janowska).8 The
Polish population also suffered under the German rule, and the political and intellectual elite was persecuted (killing by Einsatzkommando – with the assistance of the
Ukrainian radical nationalists – the university professors, for example, Kazimierz
Bartel, the former Polish Prime Minister, and the former rector of Politechnika).9
The Red Army captured the city in July, 1944. It was clear that Lvov would
remain under the Soviet rule, and Moscow did not wish to be present in the biggest
city of Western Ukraine, where a huge portion of the inhabitants of Polish nationality existed (with a hostile attitude to the Soviet system). The solution to homogenize Lvov was an agreement between the communist-dominated and provisional
Lublin Committee and the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR on the population
exchange. According to the agreement, the Poles from the Soviet Ukraine and the
Ukrainians from Poland could be repatriated: 618.000 people chose a new life in
Poland in 1944-194910, almost 100.000 Poles repatriated from Lvov.11 Those who
remained in their birthplace (only a very small proportion of the Polish population,
mainly of peasant origin), can be called “Yalta’s shipwrecked”.
The Soviet regime showed no mercy to the enemies: the liquidation of the underground, the nationalist and the anti-Soviet Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Lvov
and in whole Galicia, where UPA was quite strong, and several waves of deportations
on real or perceived adversary of the communist system immediately began. Another
obstacle of the Sovietisation was the powerful Greek Catholic Church, which was
subjugated to the Russian Orthodox Church (the Moscow Patriarchate) in 1946.
Not only the Church, but also the region had to change after 1944. The city so far
oriented to Europe and to the Western world became a part of an Empire with a
centre in the East. A few kilometres from the Polish-Soviet border, a kind of “Iron
8
9
10
11
132
Christoph Mick, Incompatibile Experiences. Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv under Soviet and German
Occupation, 1939-1944, Journal of Contemporary History 2011, vol. 46, nr. 2, 336–363.
Grzegorz Hryciuk, Polacy we Lwowie 1939-1944. Życie codzienne (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza 2000).
Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki, 1939-1959. Atlas ziem Polski – Polacy, Żydzi, Niemcy, Ukraińcy, red.
Witold Sienkiewicz – Grzegorz Hryciuk (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Demart, 2008), 86., 100. more data on
this topic in Przesiedlenie ludności polskiej z kresów wschodnich do Polski 1944-1947, ed. Stanisław Ciesielski
(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 1999).
Stepan Makarczuk, Ewakuacja Polaków ze Lwowa 1944-1946 (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w
Toruniu, 2001).
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
Curtain of Civilisation” appeared. The Soviets’ goals were clear: to establish an important industrial centre in the region of Galicia, which had never had serious economic
background in the past. This new industrial environment needed skilled (and unskilled) labour force. According to experts, the newcomers can be divided into three
groups. The largest was made up of the peasant population from the nearby Ukrainian speaking villages. Due to them, the city was Ukrainianized and not Russified.
The second group came from the central and eastern parts of the Soviet-Ukraine,
mostly the Ukrainians by origin, but strongly Sovietized. Their skills (as engineers
and bureaucrats) were necessary to organize and operate the Soviet system in the
newly acquired areas of the western Ukraine. The third group was made up of the
newcomers from other republics of the Soviet Union (officers, economic experts),
as homo sovieticus they were the strongholds of the Empire and the propagators of
the Russian language.12 The population change in Lvov can be characterized by the
following data: in the first days of the Soviet occupation (July 1944), the population
of Lvov was about 149,000; almost ten years later, this number reached 380,000, and
the proportions of the ethnic Ukrainians changed from 26% to 44%, respectively.
During the Soviet period, the growth of thecity’s population (in 1989, 778,000) and
its Ukrainian character (in 1989, 79%) can be observed.13
After 1944, not only the population change transformed the city’s landscape
radically: new block houses were built (although the regime left the historical centre, which was saved during the war from destructions, intact ), streets, squares
and parks were renamed according to the Communist ideology (the main street,
of course, was named after Lenin, he had a statue in front of the Opera), the new
Soviet-style monuments appeared (and the ancien régime’s monuments disappeared), the city’s history was rewritten in the spirit of the Russian-Ukrainian eternal
friendship. After 1944, based on the Soviet model, a typically Ukrainian Lvov was
born from the former Polish and bourgeois Lwów.
After the independence in 1991, we can observe that the national consciousness
in L’viv (and Galicia region) was much stronger, than in other regions of Ukraine.
The local elite and ordinary citizens saw the city as a kind of “national and/or spiritual capital” of the country. This attitude manifested itself during and right after the
independence: mass manifestations for the national independence in 1989-1990,
the desovietisation of the public sphere (the first in the country city council made
a decision to remove the Lenin’s statue from the centre). The city leadership had
a clear objective: to respond to the Soviet-era “anti-national” policy by recovering
12
13
Oleksandra Matyukhina, W sowieckim Lwowie. Życie codzienne miasta w latach 1944-1990 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000).
William Jay Risch, The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2011), 41–42.
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G á bor L agzi
the L’viv’s Ukrainian character in the public sphere. Soon, the names related to
the Soviet past disappeared in the public areas and the Ukrainian character clearly
became dominant and suppressed the city’s multicultural past.14
In the course of a process during the past two decades, the streets of L’viv were
“conquered” by the national heroes (or antiheroes). For example, a 7 meters tall statue of Stepan Bandera (the leader of the Ukrainian radical national movement before,
during and after the World War II, who died in emigration), looking like a welldone Lenin-monument, or naming a street after Dzhohar Dudayev (instead of Mikhail Lermontov), the former leader of the separatist Chechen movement, fighting
against the Russian troops.15 These decisions by the city leadership can be treated as
“politically incorrect”, as the figure and/or the memory of Bandera can easily irritate
Ukraine’s two big neighbours, Russia and Poland.16 Nowadays, the strong national
feeling (nationalism) is also palpable and can be seen in defending (sometimes in an
irrational way) the “national truth”. For example, during the renovation and opening of the Polish military cemetery (the defenders of Polish Lwów in 1918), which
was possible only thanks to the determined wish/ukaz of the president Viktor Yushchenko in 2005, who “defeated” the local politicians and their unfriendly approach
to this important lieu de mémoire of the Polish national identity.17
The multicultural past of the city is remembered by some NGO-s: Ji (“Ï”) is the
most important intellectual magazine in the city (the first issue in 1989)18. In 2003,
an entire issue (29) was devoted to the city and its multicultural past, through essays,
scientific articles, memoires and poems.19 The other significant actor regarding the
multicultural past is an NGO, namely, Centre for Urban History in East Central Europe
that focuses precisely on this topic, organizing workshops, conferences, exhibitions
and publishing articles on the history of L’viv. It is worth mentioning that the Centre
is running an interactive homepage (in the Ukrainian, English, Polish and Russian
languages), which is very professional in content and in appearance.20
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
134
Yaroslav Hrytsak – Victor Susak, Constructing A National City: The Case of L’viv, in Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, eds. John J. Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble (Washington, D. C. –
Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press – Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 151–153.
Liliana Hentosh – Bihdan Tscherkes, L’viv in Search of its Identity. Transformation of the City’s Public Space,
in Cities after the Fall of Communism: Reshaping Cultural Landscapes and European Identity, eds. John Czaplicka,
Nida Gelaris and Blair A. Ruble (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 263.
On the interpretation of Stepan Bandera and UPA after independence cf. David R. Marples, Heroes and Villains. Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007).
Nathaniel Copsey, Remembrance of Things Past: the Lingering Impact of History on Contemporary PolishUkrainian Relations, Europe-Asia Studies 2008, vol. 60, nr. 4, 531–560.
http://<www.ji-magazine.lviv.ua>.
L’viv, Leopolis, Lwów, Lemberg. Genius loci, red. Taras Voznjak (L’viv: Nezalezhnyj kul’turolohychnyj chasopys «Ji», 2004).
http://<www.lvivcenter.org>.
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
Today, L’viv is not a multicultural city as it used to be before 1939. The Polish
and the Jewish minorities are almost invisible (0.9%, respectively 0.3% of the
population). Nowadays, the city has a remarkable Russian minority (9%, 67,000
people), but these communities are newcomers, having no roots in the pre-war
Polish Lwów.21 It is worth noting that the Jewish revival, which was possible during
and after perestroika, had to face several obstacles. First of all, the L’viv’s Jews were
rootless, having no image or knowledge about the bustling religious and social life
before the Holocaust. Secondly, the Shoa itself was disastrous for the Jews (besides
the annihilation of the community, almost all synagogues and prayer houses were
destroyed by the Germans) and the Soviet regime did not tolerate the religious life
in general (the one and only functioning synagogue after the World War II was
closed by the authorities in the 1960’s22). Today, there exists a Jewish cultural (but
not religious!) society, one functioning synagogue (in service of foreign rabbis), but
the community cannot ignore the majority’s or the city’s leadership’s indifferent
attitude to the “erased” Jewish heritage.23
In our days, L’viv seems to be a Ukrainian city with respect to the language and
spiritually for the tourists, but it is also opened to Central Europe. There are monuments which remind us of the era of Austro-Hungary: restaurants, coffee houses
and some visible monuments (for example, the statue of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who was born in L’viv) are all trying to arouse nostalgic feelings.24
B reslau / W rocław
The region of Silesia, together with the city of Wrocław (Latin: Vratislavia) was in
the early Middle Ages separated from the feudal Poland ruled by the Piast-dynasty.
21
22
23
24
According the census in 2001. On the minority communities in contemporary L’viv cf. Anna Wylegała,
Die Russen und die russischsprachige Minderheit im gegenwärtigen Lemberg. <http:// homepage.univie.ac.at/
philipp.ther/lemberg/dierussen.html>, Abel Polese – Anna Wylegała, Odessa and Lvov or Odesa and Lviv:
How Important is a Letter? Reflections on the “Other” in Two Ukrainian Cities, Nationalities Papers. The
Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 2008, vol. 36, nr. 5, 787–814, Karolina Fuhrmann, Olga Tomicka,
Jolanta Turowska, Von der Mehrheit zur Minderheit. Polen in Lemberg nach 1945. <http://homepage.univie.
ac.at/philipp.ther/lemberg/mehrheitminderheit.html>.
Tarik Cyril Amar, Yom Kippur in Lviv. The Lviv Synagogue and the Soviet Party-State, 1944-1962, East
European Jewish Affairs 2005, vol. 35, nr. 1, 91–110.
Cf. Omer Bartov, Erased. Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, (Princeton – Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2007), Tarik Cyril Amar: Different but the Same or the Same but Different?
Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet Lviv, Journal of Modern European History 2011,
vol. 9, nr. 3, 373–396, Anna Susak, Jewish Heritage in the Historical Memory of East-European City Dwellers:
the Case of Lviv in Comparative Context (Budapest 2009), <www.etd.ceu.hu/2009/susak_anna.pdf>.
Cf. Ihor Junyk, Under the Blue Bottle: Habsburg Nostalgia in Post-Soviet L’viv, in Moment to Monument.
The Making and Unmaking of Cultural Significance, eds. Ladina Bezzola Lambert and Andrea Ochsner
(Bielefeld: Transript Verlag, 2008), 125–138.
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G á bor L agzi
Later on, it was in the possession of the Czech Crown, and then in the result of the
battle on White Mountain, the Habsburgs, who in turn lost the city in 1741 to the
Prussian rule which remained here for two centuries.25 In Prussia, then in unified
Germany, Breslau developed quickly and became a strong intellectual centre (with
the famous University, which gave some Nobel-prize winners to the world, for
example, Theodor Mommsen, Philip von Lenard, Paul Ehrlich or Gerhardt Hauptmann). It also became a multiconfessional city: Breslau was inhabited mostly by
the Germans, the majority of them were the Protestants and the minority were the
Roman Catholic. There was also a considerable Jewish community, which chose
the (linguistic and cultural) assimilation with the German people. The era of nationalism in the second half of the 19th century did not foretell a peaceful future –
although the World War I ended in German defeat, Breslau found itself nearby
the independent Poland, also with a small Polish community, which started to
self-organize.26
The Weimar period brought stagnation, but in 1932 election, NSDAP received
44% of votes. The Poles, the Czechs (due to the closeness to the Slavic ethnic territory, i.e. the independent Czechoslovakia and Poland) and the non-assimilated
Jews were shown less tolerance than in other German cities. After 1933, there was a
persecution of the Jews (Kristallnacht)27 and the Poles (expulsion of the Polish students in 1939 from the University, the liquidation of schools and press), regarded
as Untermensch category. During the war, the ethnic structure of Breslau changed
remarkably: the Holocaust destroyed the Jewish community (despite the fact, the
Jews of Breslau were greatly assimilated, far away from religious rites). On the other
hand, a huge amount of forced labour workers from the Polish, Baltic and Ukrainian territories appeared in the city against their will.
As the Red Army approached the Third Reich, the city became Festung Breslau
(fortress) in 1945 and went through heavy fights. In consequence, the majority
of the city had been destroyed. According to the decision of the Big Three (the
winners), the eastern parts of Germany (and half of East Prussia), as a compensation for the lost Kresy, became Polish (this newly acquired region is known as
“Recovered Territories”/“Ziemie Odzyskane”), and a new city was born: Wrocław.
25
26
27
136
On the history of the city so far the best synthesis: Norman Davies – Roger Moorhouse, Microcosm. Portrait
of Central European City, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002). In Polish language can be reccomended Teresa
Kulak’s work (Wrocław. Przewodnik historyczny, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2006), which was
published in Polish mythology maintaining and (re)creating series, under the title “A to Polska właśnie”
(“And this is what Poland is”).
Till van Rahden, Juden und andere Breslauer: die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in
einer deutschen Großstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).
Abraham Ascher, A Community under Siege. The Jews of Breslau under Nazism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 2007).
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
This decision at that time came as a surprise for the Polish, as Breslau or Stettin
(Szczecin), unlike Gdańsk (Danzig), were not treated as Polish cities.
Wrocław became Polish in terms of citizenship (which belonged to the communist Poland) and ethnically: the German population, which did not flee with
withdrawing Wehrmacht, was expelled by the Polish authorities, according to
the Potsdam conference decisions. Let me mention a significant fact – by 1949,
only 1% of Wrocław were the pre-war inhabitants28. The remaining population
settled here from Central Poland (mostly), and repatriated from Lwów/L’viv (and
Stanisławów, now Ukr. Ivano-Frankivsk). The University and the University of
Technology (Politechnika) were re-established by the intellectuals from Kresy,
although according to 1948 data, at that time, only 10% of the population originated from Lwów.29
The period after 1945 can be characterized as a Polonization and degermanization, that is the erasing of the German past and forcing the official Polish narratives
(“age-old Polish city near Odra”), thus returning to the early feudal Polish borders
(a country ruled by the Piast dynasty between Odera/Oder and Bug rivers, which
Poland “recovered” from the Germans after 1945, although these regions always
used to be Polish). The degermanization (in Polish: “odniemczanie”) on the surface
was a quick process – the public space was given names in the Polish language and
the heroes from the Polish mythology, the German monuments were also erased
and replaced by the Polish ones. For example, the monument of Frederick William
III, the king of Prussia in Main Square was demolished and replaced by Aleksander
Fredro’s one (by the way, the Polish writer’s monument had been earlier removed
from L’viv). During the restoration of the Catholic cathedral, which was hardly
damaged in the siege of Breslau, the church was “Polonized”, that is the Polish
saints and the Polish language memorial plaque appeared.30 The degermanization
was partly accepted and supported by the newcomers, as due to the suffering during
the World War II, everything which could be linked to the Germans was hateful.
At the same time, unofficially, some of the locals tried to explore the remnants
of an alien, but attractive past. This attitude was called by Andrzej Zawada as an
“amputated memory” in his well-known essay entitled from 1996 “Bresław” (i.e.
Breslau and Wrocław):
28
29
30
Gregor Thum, Uprooted. How Breslau became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2011) 91.
Jana Eggers-Dymarski, Joanna Gizewska, Karin Lenk and Gabriele Pfeifer, Mit krąży nad miastem: Ślady
Lwowa w dzisiejszym Wrocławiu, in Polski Wrocław jako metropolia europejska. Pamięć i polityka historyczna
z punktu widzenia oral history, red. Philip Ther, Tomasz Królik and Lutz Henke (Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, 2006), 107.
Magdalena Helmich, Jakub Kujawiński, Margret Kutschke, Juliane Toman, „Odniemczanie” i polonizacja,
czyli z niemieckiego Breslau powstaje polski Wrocław, in Philip Ther, Tomasz Królik, Lutz Henke 82.
137
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Wrocław is a city with an amputated memory. I had trouble getting used to this city
because with every step I found myself unsettled and irritated by its crippledness. It was
impossible to walk down the streets of Wrocław without thinking of it. Which is why it
was healthy to get out the city and go elsewhere, where people remembered their past,
where the present day was defined by tradition.31
After 1989, it was possible to restore and recover the identity and to find a place
in Poland’s new deep-rooted economic-political situation. Members of city council
in 1990 restored the old coat of arms, the renaming of street names took place, and
some publications were published on Wrocław’s history, without the communist
or nationalistic manipulations. In the formation of the new local identity, thus
accepting the Wrocław’s “alien past”, the restoration of the Main Square played
a crucial role – the city centre became not only a place for entertainment for the
local inhabitants or tourists, a kind of meeting point, but also the most important
identity symbol for the old-new German-Polish city.
Wrocław’s democratic city leadership choose a unique solution – to build
from a homogenous city a multicultural one in terms of image or self-image.
The most important impulsion came from the above: in 1996, the city’s mayor
(Bohdan Zdrojewski, the current minister of culture) asked a well-known British historian, Norman Davies, to write the story of Breslau/Wrocław. So, today,
we have “Microcosm” on the history of Breslau/Wrocław (and the region of
Silesia/Śląsk/Schleisen), published simultaneously in three languages (English,
German, Polish)32, and becoming a bestseller in Poland. Also, other important books on the city’s recent history were published. For example, a German
historian’s, Gregor Thum’s, monograph33; Encyclopaedia, a monumental work
(over 1,000 pages), where everybody is a Breslauer, no matter of origins.34
Besides, the mayor’s office supported the publishing of other books on the city’s
history (on the Jewish community35, about the city’s old [German] and new
[Polish] street names36).
31
32
33
34
35
36
138
Quote after Gregor Thum, 382.
Norman Davies, Roger Moorhouse, Microcosm, in German idem, Die Blume Europas. Breslau – Wrocław –
Vratislavia. Die Geschichte einer mitteleuropäischen Stadt (München: Droemer Knaur Verlag, 2002), the Polish version: idem, Mikrokosmos. Portret miasta środkowoeuropejskiego: Vratislavia – Breslau – Wrocław (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2002).
Gregor Thum, Die fremde Stadt. Breslau nach 1945 (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 2003), in Polish language idem,
Obce miasto. Wrocław 1945 i potem, (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Via Nova, 2006), in English: idem, Uprooted.
How Breslau became Wrocław….
Encyklopedia Wrocławia, red. Jan Harasimowicz – Włodzimierz Suleja (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2000).
Leszek Ziętkowski, Dzieje Żydów we Wrocławiu (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 2000).
Niemiecko-polski spis ulic, placów i mostów Wrocławia, 1873–1997, red. Tadeusz Kruszewski (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1997).
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
However, not only the publications have formed the Wrocław’s image – there
are also several NGO-s functioning, with the material and moral support of the
city council, which aim to maintain and promote the city’s multicultural heritage, or show (mainly for the younger generations) the city’s German and Jewish
past (for example, Fundacja Dom Pokoju/House of Peace Foundation promoting
the intercultural dialogue, based on tolerance and consciousness of own history
and identity37, or Edith Stein Society/Towarzystwo Edyty Stein, focusing on the
Jewish-Christian and the Polish-German dialogue38).
Not only organizations cultivate the multicultural world. Some other ways to
preserve the German heritage can also be mentioned. One of them is a monument
(“Pomnik Wspólnej Pamięci”/”The Monument of Collective Memory), which
commemorates the non-existing German cemeteries (during the “degermanization” the graveyards were destroyed and blocks or green areas were built on them),
precisely in Park Grabiszyński, which is located in the former cemetery (Kommunal Friedhof in Graebschen). On this lapidarium, we can see a suggestive caption
(both in the Polish and German languages): “To the memory of our city’s former
inhabitants, who were buried in the non-existing graveyards.”39 Other evidence for
the attitude towards Breslau in today’s Wrocław is visible in the detective stories
written by Marek Krajewski, who leads the readers into 1930’s (the book “Śmierć w
Breslau”/”Death in Breslau” became a bestseller in Poland in 1999 and was translated into several languages).
A paradoxical situation can be seen in the multicultural projects run by and for
the majority of the population in Wrocław. According to the census in 2002, 97%
of the population declared themselves as the Poles (621,000 people), the Germans,
the Jews, the Ukrainians, the Roma communities here can be counted in hundreds.40 The common feature of Wrocław’s minorities, that due to their small number and dispersed situation (a high number of mix marriages) the assimilation is in
advanced stage; however, the Jews, the Germans and theUkrainians can maintain
cultural organizations and be present in city’s social life. It should be underlined
that the minority population, as well as the majority, has no roots in the pre-war
Breslau (neither the Germans, nor the Jews).41
37
38
39
40
41
Internet access: <www.dompokoju.org>.
Internet access: <www.edytastein.org.pl>. Edith Stein was born in Breslau into a Jewish family, studied here
at the university, converted into Catholic faith and became a Carmelite nun, died in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.
Paweł Andrzejczuk: Pamiętajcie o cmentarzach, których nie ma. <http://wroclawzwyboru.pl/2010/08/27/
pamietajcie-o-cmentarzach-ktorych-nie-ma.html> (accessed: 10 December 2013).
Cf. The Data of Central Statistical Office (www.stat.gov.pl).
On the Jewish community: Agnieszka Zabłocka-Kos, In search of new ideas. Wrocław’s „Jewish distict” –
yesterday and today in Reclaiming memory. Urban regeneration in the historic Jewish quarters of Central Eu-
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It is paradoxical for a stranger in Wrocław that the memory of the non-existing
Polish city Lwów is still alive in the former German town: the bookshops selling publications on Lwów, in restaurant the tourists can consume dishes from the
Polish Eastern Borderlands. Moreover, some important Polish institutions located
in nowadays Wrocław (for example, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich/National
Ossoliński Institute, or a well-known panorama of the battle in Racławice) remind
the heritage of the Polish Lwów, as after the end of the World War II not only the
population, but also some pieces of the national cultural heritage were evacuated
to Poland from L’viv.
C omparison
What is the common feature of both cities? These two cities were in the past, as
well as in the present, borderland cities not only in a geographical sense (close to
the Polish-German, or the Polish-Ukrainian border), but also in ethnical-cultural
terms. They are good examples of classical Central European cities, with multicultural environment before the World War II (majority, smaller minorities, plus
a sizeable Jewish community) and a peaceful or not so peaceful coexistence of the
majority and minorities. Both cities had several owners from their foundation:
Wrocław – the Piast-dynasty, the Czech Crown, the Habsburgs, the Prussians (Germans), the Poles; L’viv – the Jagellonian-dynasty, the Habsburgs, the independent
Poland, the Soviet Union and the free Ukraine as well. During and shortly after
the World War II, the region of Central Europe, as well several other cities in this
area, underwent radical changes: the extermination of the Jews, the evacuation/
repatriation of the Poles and the Germans, the Ukrainians, the homogenization of
the communist system (in ideological, and also in demographic sense, by “internal
colonization”). Traditional multicultural world, which characterized our region,
came to an end.
What we can see especially in Wrocław and to a lesser extent in L’viv, is the restoring of both cities’ “lost identity”, which was possible after the independence,
overcoming the communist decades in political, cultural, and in mental terms.
That is why, in Wrocław, and, partly, in L’viv, the cities’ leadership and the civil
society are building a kind of “virtual multicultural world”, based on a “used to
be history”. Not surprisingly, as it was proved by Maria Lewicka’s sociological
research conducted in 2000’s, for the majority of Wrocław’s and L’viv’s citizens,
ropean cities, ed. Monika Murzyn-Kupisz and Jacek Purchla (Kraków: International Cultural Centre, 2009),
325–342.
140
M U LT I C U LT U R A L PA S T A N D P R E S E N T I N T H E C I T I E S O F C E N T R A L E U RO P E :
T H E C A S E s O F W RO C Ł AW / B R E S L AU A N D L’ V I V / L E M B E RG / LWÓW
the local history starts right after 1945, and the local heroes are solely from their
own nation.42
Wrocław undertakes the German past, even if it is alien to the Poles, but visible
in the streets (built by the German architects). Still, the city has a contact with and
interest to the East – I would say a strong, still unilateral love to the Polish Lwów
(and the Ukrainian L’viv), generally to lost Kresy. We can say that Wrocław (the
political elite, together with the civil world) choose the European (proximity to
Berlin and Prague), regional (emphasizing the capital of Lower Silesia, which is
also an “amputated region”, without continuous tradition and remembrance) and
national (a homogenous Polish city in terms of population) direction. For the local
citizens, who settled here only a few decades ago, on the one hand, the local history
is tragic, violent and unpleasant; on the other hand, Wrocław’s “amputated past”
makes an opportunity to accept the city’s new narratives and identity.43
On the contrary, we cannot say this about L’viv, which cultivates a kind of
a hybrid self-image. The city emphasizes the Ukrainianess and its importance
in using the national language in everyday life, in science, in culture (nevertheless, failed in the past two decades to “convert” the central and eastern regions of Ukraine to the national idea from Galicia), sometimes its local character
(L’vivness), regional character (Galicianess) or even Central European features
(Austrian, what is important to underline here: not the Polish past). This controversial multivectoral orientation appears to be insoluble, but the experiences in
the present-day Ukraine suggest that parallel, but antagonistic historical discourses may exist.
Since the independence the municipality (namely, the above mentioned mayor
Bohdan Zdrojewski, 1990-2001, and especially Rafał Dutkiewicz, 2002-) working
on Wrocław’s image as a European, young, dynamic, open to the world (also to
tourists and foreign capital, investors) city. It is worth mentioning that the city
has been selected as a European Capital of Culture for 2016. Such a success story
(a persistent and consequent organic work on behalf of the city) can not be applied
to L’viv, where the civil society in the years of the independence seems to be rather
weak (but the post-Soviet and the national attitude strong). The NGO-s in recent
years could not “translate” for the majority the city’s multicultural heritage in a
understandable way. However, on the city’s official logo we can see an identity
shaping motto (“L’viv – Open to the World”), which seems to be more a marketing
42
43
Maria Lewicka: Dwa miasta – dwa mikrokosmosy. Wrocław i Lwów w pamięci swoich mieszkanców, in:
My Wrocławianie. Społeczna przestrzeń miasta, red. Piotr Żuk and Jacek Pluta (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo
Dolnośląskie, 2006), 96–134.
Gregor Thum, Wrocław – the Myth of the Multicultural Border City, European Review 2005, vol. 13, nr 2,
234–235.
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G á bor L agzi
trick, than a real and sincere self-declaration.44 A visible difference between the two
cities can be seen in the following: Wrocław, its leadership and civil society can
afford a certain degree of freedom of self-image; moreover no need to emphasise
permanently the city’s Polishness is seen. However, L’viv is the only municipality in
Ukraine where the national language and culture plays a dominant role in public
life, and in consequence, the city’s national character must be stressed.
It is worth to compare the two different, but similar cities in our region: Wrocław
as consciously upbuilding own identity on multiculturalism, openness to the world,
and at the same time struggling with the “amputated past”. On the other side, L’viv
seems to be a city which stands between the national idea and the “alien past” (the
Polish and the Jewish heritage), and is oriented towards the Central Europe. In both
cases, we have an example of Central European tragic historical experience – how the
20th century condensed in one particular city and/or region: the colourful mixing
of nations, languages, religions, prosperity in the interwar period and in the era of
independence, along with brutal dictatorships (the Nazi or the Soviet one), the annihilation of the entire Jewish community, senseless destructions during the wars, the
expulsion of the majority population due to the change of state borders, and homogenization of the city regarding the population and public sphere.
Gábor Lagzi
D augiakult ū r ė C entrin ė s E uropos miest ų praeitis ir dabartis:
V roclavo / B reslau ir Lvivo / L embergo / Lvovo atvejai
S A N T R AU K A . XX amžiuje Centrinės Europos miestai išgyveno radikalias permainas: išžudyta žydų bendruomenė; iš gimtųjų vietų buvo iškeliami ar išvyko lenkai, vokiečiai ir ukrainiečiai; komunistinė sistema skatino homogeniškumą (ideologinį ir demografinį). Tik po 1989–
1991 metų miestams pavyko susigrąžinti „prarastą tapatumą“. Šis tyrimas lygina du panašius
ir tuo pat metu skirtingus Centrinės Europos regiono miestus. Vroclavas sąmoningai renkasi
daugiakultūrio tapatumo kryptį bei atvirumą pasauliui ir bando suprasti „amputuotą praeitį“.
O Lvivas / Lembergas svyruoja tarp tautiškumo idėjos, „svetimos praeities“ (lenkų ir žydų palikimo) ir tapatinimosi su Centrine Europa.
R A K TA ŽO D I A I : daugiakultūris miestas, Vroclavas, Lvovas, mažumos, XX amžius, simbolinės vietos, paveldas.
44
142
Johanna Herzing, Agnieszka Milewska, Maciej Wąs, Geschichtspolitik in einer multinationalen Stadtlandschaft, in Eine neue Gesellschaft in einer alten Stadt. Erinnerung und Geschichtspolitik in Lemberg anhand der
Oral History, hrsg. Lutz Henke, Grzegorz Rossolinski and Philipp Ther (Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza
ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, 2007), 89–107. On the memory policy of today’s city
leadership cf.: Delphine Bechtel, Von Lemberg nach L’viv. Gedächtniskonflikte in Einer Stadt an der Grenzen, Osteuropa 2008, vol. 58, nr. 6, 211–228.
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S U M M A RY. The paper is aimed at complementing the research of historical memories and
national narratives in Central and Eastern Europe by analysing the Serbian case in relation to
the issue of Kosovo. Focusing on the historical memories of the Kosovo Serbs in the post-war
years, the paper aims to find out the prevalent forms of memorialisation, identifying the events
chosen by the Kosovo Serbs to remember and the mechanisms employed to shape, maintain
and transmit memories. Drawing on ethnographic observations made during five years of field
research all over Kosovo, national collective memory of the Kosovo Serbs is traced through
the dominant historical images, publically displayed symbols and commemorative discourses
related to the collective experiences of the post-war period. The second part of the paper analyses the competing Kosovo-related narratives in Serbia, identifying the main messages shaped
by the narratives with regard to the relationships between the citizen, the nation and the state,
the dichotomy between ethnocultural solidarity and the concept of civic nation, as well as the
relationship between the citizen and the narrative itself.
K E Y WO R D S : historical memory, national narratives, national collective memory, the Kosovo
Serbs, post-war Kosovo, Serbia.
1 . I n t roduc t io n
Although comparable to other historical ethnoterritorial conflicts across Central and
Eastern Europe, Kosovo stands out against the regional background due to its current irresolution, or the lack of political agreement on its status. During the first
decade of the 21st century, Kosovo proved to be the most dangerous spot in Europe
in terms of ethnic confrontation. Attempts at resolving its legal status have produced
implications for international relations going far beyond the regional context1. At the
1
The article is written according to the research project “Central and Eastern European Region: Research of
the Construction of National Narratives and Politics of Memory (1989-2011)” – VP1-3.1-ŠMM-07-K02-024 – sponsored by the Programme for Human Resources Development for 2007-2013 “Support to
Research Activities of Scientists and Other Researchers (Global Grant)”.
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same time, Kosovo remains primarily a European problem. Within the comparative
research of historical memories and national narratives existing in the wider region,
Kosovo’s case is important for several reasons.
First, both Kosovo’s and Serbia’s governments are officially committed to
become part of the same European political space that most neighbouring states
have already joined. Second, strong involvement of the EU and its members in
Kosovo makes it an acute European topic. News about the victims among the
members of European missions serving in Kosovo reveal the proximity of seemingly far-away Balkan realities to Europe.
Attempting to delve into the current epicenter of the conflict, the present
contribution focuses on the Kosovo Serb population. The Kosovo Serbs, having
participated the least in determining the newest stage of Kosovo’s history, were
nevertheless hit by the post-war developments in the most dramatic manner. Currently representing the primary motive for Serbia’s claims to Kosovo, this group
by all means remains a hostage to the status-related dispute between Priština and
Belgrade.
Any analysis of the Kosovo Serb memories is inseparably linked to the Kosovorelated narratives existing on the Serbia-wide scale. This is especially important in
the complex context of European integration, where Belgrade appears to be conditioned by Kosovo-related issues to a much bigger extent than was Priština conditioned by Kosovo’s Serbian population in the process of lifting the international
supervision of independence.
14 years that have passed since the end of the Kosovo war provide abundant
material for tracing the main directions and motives of memories and narratives
related to the turbulent post-war period (1999-2013).
In analysing the historical memory of the Kosovo Serbs, we focus on the prevalent forms of remembering and explaining post-war events on individual and collective levels. The ways in which historical memory is translated into national collective memory are explored by studying the representations of the state and the
nation’s past that dominate the public space, symbols and discourse.
Empirical data draws on primary sources collected during the field research conducted in Serb-populated areas all over Kosovo between June 2009 and December
2013. In the said period, places and commemorative events were singled out for
case study according to the following criteria: event attendance, event prominence
(the object of commemoration, the degree of mass media coverage and the level
of celebration officiality) and event recurrence (selecting the most regular commemorations). Besides, the research has been complemented by including places
whose war and post-war experiences suggest particularly strong war traumas to
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persist. Commemorative actions are analysed in their spatial and temporal context,
considering the profiles of the main actors and participants.
Methods of data gathering include ethnographic (anthropological) observations
with participation and interviews. The empirical data is conceptualized by applying the method of composite story construction borrowed from identity studies.
The dominant story is identified from the prevalent symbols and discursive elements
recurring in individual stories collected across the territory and persisting over time.
The composite story includes events, relationships between actors, goals, actions
taken, and actions advocated or lessons for the future2. The advantage of this method
is its open-ended character and flexibility: it allows the subjects to express their own
conceptions and enables the researcher to identify relevant cognitive variables.
The main questions for the present study include the prevalent forms of memorialisation, the events chosen by Kosovo Serbs to commemorate and the mechanisms
employed to shape, maintain and transmit memories. The sources for studying
historical memory include discourses pronounced during commemorations and
interviews with key participants, complemented by messages of local art performed
during commemorations and publicly displayed identity symbols. The sources for
studying narratives include academic, political and church discourse.
2. H is torical memory of Kosovo S erbs i n t he pos t - war period
Over the post-war period, both temporal and territorial spaces for the manifestations of Serb collective memory in Kosovo shrunk considerably. Commemorations
and celebrations can only take place in areas still populated by Serbs. Outside the
Serb enclaves, commemorations happen only on certain days of remembrance and
under the police escort. Vidovdan, the yearly commemoration of the Kosovo Battle
(1389) and the most attended Serb manifestation in Kosovo, takes place on Gazi­
mestan, the historical site of the battle. These three types of commemorations are
analysed successively in the following sections.
2.1. M emory of war a n d pos t - war vic t ims
The two most commemorated events among Kosovo Serbs are related to the memory of the civilian victims of the two biggest post-war crimes: the killing of 14 reapers in Staro Gracko near Priština on 23 July 1999 and the killing of two children
2
Sylvan, Donald A. and Amanda K. Metskas. “Trade-offs in Measuring Identities. A Comparison of Five Approaches”. Abdelal, Rawi, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Rose McDermott (eds.). Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 92, (72-110).
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in Goraždevac near Peć on 13 August 20033. Both Staro Gracko and Goraždevac
villages today are enclaves, or isolated Serb settlements inhabited by several hundreds of people. As the following paragraphs will show, the commemorations of
these events, although held in different places and related to the events that happened with a distance of four years, nevertheless reveal similar discursive elements.
Including memories of other Serb localities into our analysis allows us to speak of a
general pattern of historical memory maintained among the Kosovo Serbs.
The Staro Gracko and Goraždevac commemorations are prominent events not
only among Kosovo Serbs, but also on Serbia-wide scale, as shown by the extensive media coverages that consistently classify them among the key events of the
respective days.
2.1.1. C ommemorat io n of S taro G racko
The tragedy of Staro Gracko refers to the murder of 14 farmers by unidentified
members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The crime happened on 23 July
1999 (after the end of the war and the introduction of international peace-keeping
force), as the victims were returning to the village after harvesting wheat in the
field.
Due to persisting insecurity, the commemoration of Staro Gracko is not held
on the nearby cemetery located outside the enclave where the victims are buried.
Bombs were planted on the cemetery several times since 1999; the last incident of
this kind happened in April 2011, on the eve of Easter4. Commemorative ceremonies are held in the center of the enclave in front of the memorial tablet bearing the
names of the victims.
In Staro Gracko, commemorations are organized by the local village community every year, according to the same pattern. The central event is the service for
the victims, celebrated by the bishop of Raška and Prizren. The service is followed
by speeches delivered by the leaders of the village community (working as teachers)
and the relatives of the victims. Commemorative poems are recited by the local
people. The guests include heads of Serbian local municipalities and representatives
of the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija that always deliver speeches. It is noteworthy that in five years of the present research, not a single case of a representative
3
4
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Other major crimes include the bomb blast of the Niš Express bus in Livadice near Podujevo on 16 February
2001, when 12 passengers including a two-year-old child were killed and 40 people were injured, and the
killing of the Stolić family in Obilić on 4 June 2003. The commemorations of these events are not held in
Podujevo and Obilić, where no Serbian population is left and the places of the crimes are not marked. The
commemorative service for the Podujevo victims is usually held in Laplje Selo.
“Nagazna mina na groblju”. Radio Televizija Srbije, 25 April 2011, <http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/
story/135/Hronika/881770/Nagazna+mina+na+groblju.html>.
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of the international community or a Kosovo Albanian official attending the event
was registered. The only representatives of international missions are soldiers that
attend the event with the purpose of ensuring security, but never participate in the
commemoration. Staro Gracko is a mixed Serbian-Albanian village, but the local
Albanians never take part in the commemorations.
The commemorative plaque bears the names of 14 people killed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, as well as the names of the villagers killed earlier during the
war by the NATO bombs, including a 4-year-old girl. In total, 21 victims in less
than half a year are considered “too much for a state, let alone for a small village”.
Staro Gracko claims an identity of a village that “encapsulates the fate of the whole
Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija”. All the commemorations tend to
link together in a single discourse the victims of the 1999 bombing, the post-war
victims, the victims of March 2004 violence, as well as suffering in earlier historical
periods (most notably, the Second World War). The purpose of killings and violent
attacks are perceived as deliberate pressure upon the Serbs to leave Kosovo. Stressing that prior to the massacre the whole village was ready to emigrate, the tragedy
is commonly interpreted as the event that inspired the people to stay5.
The main discursive themes of the commemoration are impunity and the abandonment of the victims by those that were intended to protect them. In 14 years,
the perpetrators of the crime are not found and brought to justice; the international community is thus not trusted unless it proves to care about the victims6.
The progress and efficiency of the international community’s help is evaluated in
the light of restricted freedom of movement that persists: the local population still
cannot move 50 meters from the village to visit the graves of the victims and to
hold the commemoration at the cemetery.
The commemorations firmly established a peculiar identity of victims as “reapers” (Serb. žeteoci) that shed their blood while peacefully working on their fields.
Wheat, harvest and the act of reaping appear as powerful symbols consistently
invoked during commemorations. “Rodilo je žito” (“the wheat is ripe”), a recited
poem reads. In the sermons, the blood of martyrs is likened to wheat grain that
is buried to bring abundant harvest. The nearby field where the crime occurred is
represented as a place where “the reapers of life” (the civilian villagers) encountered
“the reapers of death” (the KLA). On 22-23 July, a commemorative football match
in memory of the victims is held every year in the centre of the enclave, bringing
5
6
This decision is commonly explained by “spiteful pride” (Serb. inat) as an inherent feature of Serbian national character.
Beside the villagers’ suspicions with regard to the identity of the killers, the names of the perpetrators became
known to mass media earlier than the official investigation produced any results. “Sve se zna, samo pravde
nema”. Politika, 24 July 2013, <www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/Sve-se-zna-samo-pravde-nema.sr.html>.
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together the Serbian football teams from all over Kosovo7. The name of the event
in 2013 was “Don’t forget the bloody harvest!”.
2.1.2. C ommemorat io n of G ora ž devac
The comparative analysis of commemorative discourses in Staro Gracko and
Goraždevac reveals a series of identical themes, often expressed by identical words.
On 13 August 2003, Pantelija Dakić (12) and Ivan Jovović (19) were killed and
four other children were wounded in Goraždevac, as unidentified perpetrators hidden in bushes fired shots at a group of Serbian children spending their leisure time
on the bank of the river Bistrica.
In Goraždevac, as in Staro Gracko, the UNMIK committed itself to “turn up
every stone” in order to find the perpetrators. According to the relatives of the
victims, the information collected by the investigation by the year 2007 was sufficient to identify the perpetrators; the documents mentioned concrete names. In
2011, the investigation was closed by the EULEX due to the lack of witnesses. In
10 years, the Bistrica killers have not been found.
Meanwhile, over the ten years, not a single inhabitant of Goraždevac was able to
visit the place of the crime. The local Serbs can only move within a two-kilometerlong area, whereas every walk is risky due to frequent harassments. Today, about
750 Serbs live in Goraždevac, with more than 200 young unemployed people
deprived of any prospects in the enclave. The only places to visit are the church,
the school and the swimming pool built in order to compensate the local population for the impossibility to go to the nearby river. The Italian KFOR checkpoint
guarded the village till 2011.
During the night of 20-21 January 2013, the cemetery and the monument
to the killed children was shelled. As a sign of dissatisfaction with current political affairs, many other Serb places of memory all over Kosovo came under attack
during the same night8.
The commemorative discourses reveal that time has not healed wounds of what
is remembered as “the most sorrowful and grievous days”. Deprived of the freedom
of movement, regular water and electricity supply, the local people claim to be still
living in fear. According to the prevalent discourse, in the ghetto-like conditions
that marked the beginning of the 21st century, time looks to have stopped, and
memories of the tragedy of 13 August 2003 continue to dominate the every-day
life even a decade later. As one of the local inhabitants put it, “We have at least two
7
8
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The football ground and the nearby club are the only leisure facilities for the enclave’s youth.
The motive was the removal of the monument to the members of the Liberation Army of Preševo, Bujanovac
and Medveđa (UÇPMB) from the centre of Preševo by the Serbian government.
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or three ‘August thirteens’ in a week, and nothing will ever erase these memories”.
Alluding to this, the memorial monument in Goraždevac bears an inscription, “To
be buried alive is more frightful than to die”9.
In Goraždevac, too, the memorial monument bears both the names of the victims of the NATO bombing and those of the post-war victims. In Goraždevac, the
local tragedy is always placed in a wider context of the overall situation of Kosovo
Serbs in the post-war period. The ten-year commemoration of the Goraždevac killings, held on 13 August 2013, saw not a single representative of international missions present, although the event was attended by a far greater number of people
than the local church could accommodate.
Post-war grievances are accompanied by the revival of religious traditions, contextualized in the actual settings and performing the consolidating function among
the local population. Goraždevac is famous for the oldest wooden church in the
Balkans, for the first time mentioned in 1223. The church is dedicated to saint
prophet Jeremiah, venerated by the village’s inhabitants. Despite the abnormal life
conditions, nowadays Jeremiah’s day (14 May) is celebrated in a more solemn and
diversified fashion than it used to be before the war.
2.1.3. P e ć a n d O rahovac : impossibili t y of public commemorat io n s
The Goraždevac tragedy bears close resemblance to the saddest day in the history
of the Serbian community of the nearby city of Peć. On 14 December 1998 (four
months before the NATO intervention), six young Serbs were killed in the “Panda”
coffee bar in front of the Peć gymnasium.
The announcement on the burial of the six youths, placed on the main gate
of the Patriarchate of Peć in December 1998, today is still in place. The relevance
of this commemorative act is strengthened by the exceptional significance of the
Patriarchate of Peć for the Serbian Orthodox Church and for the Serbian state.
A closer look at the wider context reveals that this symbolical act is intended to
compensate for the impossibility of any public commemoration of the victims in
the city of Peć.
Kosovo’s judicial system does not investigate the Panda case. Four of the six victims are buried on the Peć cemetery, but today their graves are impossible to find.
The local Serbian cemetery is desecrated, overgrown with shrubs and turned into a
dump, with hundreds of gravestones ruined and graves piled with garbage. In June
1999, the complete Serbian population left Peć. Out of 38.000 Serbs that lived in
9
Serb. “Nije toliko strašno umreti koliko je strašno biti živ sahranjen”.
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the city before the war, only 5 families remain there today. Nowadays, Serbs come
to Peć only to honour their dead and to visit the Patriarchate of Peć.
An even more striking example is represented by the Orahovac cemeteries. Since
the end of the war, the Serb population of Orahovac cannot visit the cemetery left
in the Albanian part of the city and to bury their relatives there. Some gravestones
in the cemetery bear huge inscriptions “UÇK” (Alb. KLA). Meanwhile, throughout the post-war period, the Serbs use to be buried in a tiny churchyard in the
Serbian part of the city.
Orahovac is known for being the first urban area conquered by the KLA in
August 1998. The local Serb population retains memories of August 1998 as the
most sorrowful time. In those days, local Serb civilians were taken hostages by
the KLA in hospitals, while many others were kidnapped and their destiny is still
unknown.
In June, 1999, NATO forces allowed the KLA to retake control of the city, and
new crimes were committed. KFOR refused to guarantee security to the Serbs in
the centre of the city, so the Serb population was forced to move to Upper Orahovac. With the help from the local population, the KFOR command figured out
where the boundaries were between the Serb and the Albanian areas, and encircled
the Serbian quarter with barricades. The period of the Dutch KFOR protection
is remembered by the local people as a period of captivity, when sick people were
starving to death. The Dutch soldiers did not have an order to protect the Serbs,
openly confessing that they came to protect only the Albanians. The Serbs taken to
Prizren for medical care did not return alive. At the same time, people remember
the armed KLA fighters posing for pictures on a Dutch tank, aiming at the Serb
houses. Throughout the first post-war decade, the Serbs’ freedom of movement
was limited to some 300 m2 of free territory, delineated by the three main streets
of Upper Orahovac.
Meanwhile, the public space in the Orahovac area nowadays is marked by the
official glorification of the KLA. Thus, the road connecting the nearby localities
bears the name of the “KLA road”. Every August, huge banners commemorate the
“KLA epopee”. Not only is public commemoration of the Serb victims impossible
under the conditions of restricted freedom of movement. For a decade, the Serbian
inhabitants of the Upper Orahovac enclave used to travel 80 kilometers to the
Serb-populated North Mitrovica by KFOR-escorted buses just for buying basic
foodstuffs (e.g., sugar).
Orahovac and the nearby Velika Hoča is home to “Metohijski žubori”, an autochtonous local ensemble of children. The ensemble performs songs written by the
poet from Orahovac, Gavrilo Kujundžić. Popular both among the local Serbs and
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beyond Kosovo, the texts document the national collective memory of the Serbs
living in the Orahovac region. In 1998, Velika Hoča was shelled 17 times by the
KLA; the war sufferings of children are commemorated through the song “Dečiji
prkos” (“Child’s Obstinacy”). The song “Đenerale” (“General”) draws parallels
between the KLA and the Ottoman conquerors. Another parallel is drawn between
the Serbian historical hero Hajduk Veljko that fought the Turks and the general
Veljko Radenović who liberated the civilian hostages from the KLA in 1998. The
old Kujundžić tower memorial in Velika Hoca has become reactualized nowadays.
On that site, a group of Serbian insurgents led by Lazar Kujundžić were killed by
the Ottoman soldiers in 1905.
A common practice of Kosovo Serb commemorations is to have names of victims inscribed on commemorative plaques placed in the central areas. Among the
biggest ones, one such memorial is located in Velika Hoča, dedicated to the memory of killed and kidnapped Serbs of the Orahovac Municipality in the period of
1998-2000. Another memorial is near the main bridge at the Northern (Serbian)
side of Kosovska Mitrovica.
2 .1.4. 17 M arch 2004: “ The S eco n d V idovda n ”
The 17th of March, 2004 stands out as the most tragic date in the post-war collective experience of the Kosovo Serbs. On that day, a mass violence campaign directed
against the civilian Serb population started all over Kosovo. As a result, 8 Serbs
were killed, 143 were injured and two disappeared; 35 churches were destroyed,
set on fire or otherwise damaged; along with 935 houses, 10 schools, ambulance
stations and post offices. The complete Serbian population left six major cities and
nine villages, where entire residential areas were also set on fire in order to prevent
the Serbs from returning. The events of March 17-19 irreversibly weakened the
Serb community and can be regarded as a point of no return for the Kosovo Serbs’
sustainable life in Kosovo. Although the number of participants in the campaign
is estimated at over 50.000, the investigation did not disclose the organizers, while
only secondary actors were prosecuted10.
March 2004, a disaster dubbed “the second Vidovdan”11, is often placed in a
historical context of earlier waves of exodus, much wider than the events triggered
by the 1999 war. Thus, at a political commemoration held on 17 March 2013
in Mitrovica, the whole history starting from the Battle of Kosovo onwards was
10
11
OSCE Mission in Kosovo. “Four Years Later: Follow up of March 2004 Riots Cases before Kosovo Criminal
Justice”. July 2008, <http://www.osce.org/documents/mik/2008/07/32022_en.pdf>.
Radosavljević, Artemije. Sa Kosovom u srcu. Gračanica, Beograd: Eparhija raško-prizrenska i kosovsko-metohijska, 2008, p. 18.
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presented as a generator of numerous waves of Serb exodus from Kosovo: the First
Serbian exodus led by the Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević in 1690, the Second
Serbian exodus led by the Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanović in 1739, the period of
1878-1912 and the Prizren League, the retreat of the Serbian army through the
mountains of Albania and Montenegro in winter 1915-1916; the prohibition of
return to the displaced Serbs to Kosovo by the communist authorities; and the
construction of the lake Gazivode in 1977 that displaced about 8.000 Serbs.
It has to be noted that 17 March is not commemorated in the Kosovo Albanian
public space neither by the official institutions nor by mass media. Meanwhile, services are held in most Serbian churches all over Kosovo, not least because churches
were a special target in March riots, with numerous medieval monasteries ruined
or set on fire (Devič, St. Archangels Monastery and “Our Lady of Ljeviš” church in
Prizren, etc.). The March events are considered an even bigger disaster compared
to the end of the war in 1999. Failure to protect is an essential part of the commemorative discourse: “Those committed to defend them turned their back upon
the Serbs”. Due to persisting fear and insecurity, March events did not lose their
up-to-date significance, “as if it happened yesterday”: after having “suffered for
their Serbian names and the God’s truth”, the Serbs are “still living in ghetto”, while
over 4000 displaced people did not return home12.
In the prevalent discourse, apart from the chronological distance, no other difference is made between the Ottoman violence, waves of exodus, destructions and
turning monasteries into horse stables, burning down relics of saints starting from
the late 15 century, and violence, arsons, cemetery desecrations and destruction of
churches happening in the beginning of the 21 century.
Among the churches burnt down in March 2003, St. Nicholas church in Priština,
built in 1830, had been deliberately projected as a simple house without a dome,
so as not to incur Turkish repressions. Nowadays, ringing church bell from time
to time becomes an object of provocations. In Visoki Dečani Monastery, klepalo
is still often used instead of the bell. Klepalo is a wooden stick used for summoning people for the church service by the rhythmical knocking of the church walls.
Historically, this ritual was used in the Ottoman times, when ringing church bells
was prohibited. Nowadays, heavily guarded by the Italian KFOR, the monastery
has experienced eight grenade attacks during the post-war years.
It is notable that all Kosovo Serb commemorations are necessarily accompanied
by the participation of the clergy. Both Vidovdan and the commemorations of the
post-war victims, as well as traditional feasts and commemorations, are necessarily
12
152
Quotes are from the sermon of bishop Teodosije pronounced at the commemoration held on 17 March
2013 in Priština.
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religious ceremonies. A special role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in coordinating the national collective memory and shaping the national narrative requires
additional explanation.
First, after the withdrawal of the Serbian army and state institutions from
Koso­vo, the Serbian Orthodox Church (Diocesis of Raška and Prizren) remained
the only Serbian institution to be fully present on Kosovo’s territory alongside of
the Serbian population. The major monasteries became centers of Serb gravitation
in the post-war period; these nuclea are also better protected. The concentration of
the Kosovo Serbs’ life around the religious sites contributes to the amalgamation of
the local Serbian population and the Church.
Second, the Church fully shared the collective experiences of the Kosovo Serbs
in the post-war period13. Mass destruction of its shrines gave the Church a particular legitimacy and social capital to coordinate and to guide the collective memories
of the Kosovo Serbs. Coinciding with the Church’s primary functions, engagement
with post-war sufferings provided it with an especially prominent space in the life
of the Serbian population.
Third, the Church’s influence in the region is historically rooted. The main bulk
of Serbia’s spiritual heritage is located in Kosovo and Metohija (the latter name is
entrenched in Serbia’s current constitution; where Metohija refers to one-half of
the province, or the Church possessions in the medieval period and an area currently characterized by a stronger degree of religiousness as well)14. Historically,
when there was no Serbian state, the Church has been playing a role of the national
institution for the Serbs15.
The Church has been particularly active in calling upon the Kosovo Serbs to
stay in Kosovo (the bishop Artemije likening those that are selling their houses
and leaving for Serbia to the “followers of Vuk Branković”16). The preservation
13
14
15
16
In this context, church initiatives for the canonization of monk Hariton Lukić, kidnapped in Prizren by the
KLA on 16 June 1999 and later decapitated, and of 3-year-old Milica Rakić killed by the NATO bomb in
Batajnica, should be mentioned.
Testimony of the local priests.
The role of the Church as a key actor of national liberation struggle is aptly presented in: Vivian, Herbert.
Servia: the Poor Man’s Paradise. London: 1987 (Serbian translation: Srbija: raj siromašnih. Beograd: Službeni
glasnik, 2010, pp. 103-129, esp. p. 110-111. In the wider context of retraditionalization, the Serbian Orthodox Church has been the most trusted institution in Serbia over the past years. In 2005, it was claimed to
be the most trusted institution by 54,2% of Serbia’s inhabitants. In 2010-2011, this percentage was as high
as 60,8% (followed by the educational system (49,2%), the army (42,9%) and the health care institutions
(36%)). Naumović, Slobodan. Upotreba tradicije u političkom i javnom životu Srbije na kraju 20. i početkom
21. veka. Beograd: Filip Višnjić, 2009; Radisavljević-Ćiparizović, Dragana. Religioznost građana Srbije i njihov odnos prema EU – sociološki ugao. Jablanov Maksimović, Jelena (ed.). Religioznost građana Srbije i njihov
odnos prema procesu evropskih integracija. Beograd: Hrišćanski kulturni centar, Centar za evropske studije,
Fondacija Konrad Adenauer, 2011.
Radosavljević, Artemije. Sa Kosovom u srcu. Gračanica, Beograd: Eparhija raško-prizrenska i kosovsko-metohijska, 2008, p. 18-20.
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of Kosovo within Serbia and opposition to separatism is another prominent goal
in the discourse. The Church remained strongly opposed to the Belgrade-Priština
agreement, as shown by the official statement, admitting nevertheless that “the
land also belongs to those Albanians that peacefully cohabit there with the Serbs
for ages”17.
The cyclical representation of history permeates the traditional church narrative
on Kosovo: “The reality in Kosovo is a constant Great Friday (Veliki Petak) and an
incessant Feast of the Cross (Krstovdan) which lasts from one Easter to another, for
centuries from Kosovo till Kosovo”18. Parallels to earlier phases of the conflict are
frequent, mainly due to the fact that in various phases of the conflict throughout
history, the same sacred objects used to be repeatedly attacked by actors that were
perceived as having historical continuity. A case in point is the Devič Convent
located in the Drenica forest. The convent was looted by the Austro-Hungarian
troops in 1915, by Albanian ballists in 1941, by the KLA in presence of the French
KFOR troops in late June 1999, to be burnt down again by the KLA in March
2004. As a sign of historical continuity, a big carved cross located in the monastery
church bears the inscription of the two years, 1941 and 2004. A similar continuity can be traced in the history of Prizren’s shrines, notably, the Holy Archangels
Mo­nastery. Ruined in 1615 by the Ottoman Turks, it was revived in 1998, to be
ruined again in 1999 and in March 2004 in presence of the German KFOR.
On 17 March 2013, the commemorative office held in the church of Kosovo
Polje mentioned specifically the memory of those who suffered “from Kosovo until
Kosovo all over Kosovo and until today” (Serb. “od Kosova do Kosova po Kosovu i
do dana njeg dana”). Put differently, the service was dedicated to all martyrs that
suffered from the first Kosovo disaster until the second Kosovo disaster, all over
Kosovo and whose sufferings continue up to the present day. Experience of everyday life, revealing historical path dependency, is translated into commemorative
practices. In this pattern of national collective memory, direct connections between
earlier historical periods are apparent.
2.2. Tradi t io n al commemorat io n s a n d celebrat io n s :
pos t ‑war co n n otat io n s
This section presents commemorations and celebrations whose primary purpose
is unrelated to the war and post-war events. The war and the post-war context
gave all Serb celebrations and commemorations in Kosovo an important additional
17
18
154
“SPC: Sporazumom Srbija predaje svoju vekovnu teritoriju”. Politika, 22 April 2013.
Jevtić, Atanasije. Stradanja Srba na Kosovu i Metohiji od 1941. do 1990. godine. Priština: Jedinstvo, 1990.
Internet izdanje: <http://www.rastko.rs/kosovo/istorija/stradanje_srba/atanasije_1deo_c.html>.
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meaning that determines patterns of historical and national collective memory in
powerful ways. Due to specific conditions, common celebrations have taken on a
dimension of the post-war victimhood19.
Most frequently the displaced Serbs return to their abandoned places during
Zadušnice (All Souls’ Day). Commemorated on the first Saturday of November
and in March before the Easter lent, Zadušnice are the only days when the Serbian
language can be heard at the abandoned cemeteries in Kosovo. For such visits, military or police escort is needed; persisting security treats or the failure of the state to
provide transport often render Zadušnice visits impossible20. On 16 February 2001,
a bus bringing people from Niš to Gračanica to visit cemeteries for Zadušnice was
blown up near Podujevo. In Mušitište near Suva Reka, a group visit on Zadušnice
of 1 November 2010 was interrupted by bursts of gunfire from shrubs surrounding
the cemetery21.
In June-July 2010, the OESC Mission in Kosovo evaluated 392 Orthodox cemeteries in Kosovo22. The very number of desecrated cemeteries left without care
reveals the scale of displacement of the Serbs from Kosovo. The report lists 229
cemeteries in bad or very bad condition (58%), 46 cemetery in very good condition (12%), 83 are in good condition (21%), and 24 (9%) cemetery in a satisfactory condition. Groups of relatives that visit cemeteries are often unable to raise
the gravestones that are brought down, let alone to put the cemetery in order.
According to the available testimonies, every new visit to cemetery is more painful
than the earlier ones, as vandals are continuously desecrating what has been earlier
destroyed. The Christian symbols are the object of especially fierce attacks.
Cemetery desecrations last continuously from mid-1999. The fiercest waves of
destruction occurred in 1999 and in March 2004. In January 2013, cemeteries
all over Kosovo became target to a new wave of violence, reminiscent of March
2004. The latter development shows how ordinary commemorations have become
inseparably linked to the overall political context: the destruction of cemeteries in
Kosovo manifests itself as part of identity politics23.
19
20
21
22
23
Victimhood as a primary discursive motive in Kosovo is extensively presented in: Zdravković, Helena. Politika žrtve na Kosovu: identitet žrtve kao primarni diskurzivni cilj Srba i Albanaca u upornom sukobu na Kosovu.
Beograd: Čigoja štampa, 2005.
Todić Vulićević, Radmila. “Groblje kao oblik kulturne baštine Srba na Kosovu i Metohiji i potreba očuvanja etničkog identiteta i religijske pripadnosti”. Šuvaković, Uroš, Ana Bujas, Vanja Šaula and Aleksandar
Dunđerin (eds.). Kulturno nasleđe Kosova i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za Kosovo i Metohiju, 2013,
p. 93.
“Pucnji na zadušnice”. Politika, 7 November 2010.
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Održavanje pravoslavnih grobalja na Kosovu. September 2011, <http://www.osce.org/sr/Kosovo/84403>.
The leaflets distributed in returnee localities, calling for the Serb exodus, are explicitly framed in terms
of collective responsibility: “Because you all are criminals, directly or indirectly”. “KFOR zabrinut,
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In March 2013, piles of garbage were located at the entrance to the Peć ceme­
tery, one of the biggest Christian cemeteries in Kosovo. In the same period, there
was a garbage pile on the entrance to the cemetery in Kosovo Polje and almost
no gravestones left intact at the Gnjilane cemetery. Cemetery in Istok (with only
several Serb families left) was in a similar situation, with over 100 gravestones
damaged or ruined. In Samodreža, there exists a church reconstructed on the site
where, according to the legend, the army of prince Lazar received communion
before the Kosovo Battle in 1389. Nowadays, the church’s roof is destroyed, and
its interior is permanently filled with garbage. Due to security risks, group visits to
the church cannot last more than half an hour. On the Serbian cemetery of South
Mitrovica, about 90% of gravestones are ruined, and from 1999 there are no new
burials there. It is noteworthy that, as part of its commemorative discourse related
to cemeteries, the Serbian population of North Mitrovica consistently stresses its
efforts to preserve the local Albanian cemetery intact.
Most local municipalities in Kosovo have not foreseen special budgetary funds
for the maintenance of Orthodox cemeteries. Maintenance works, if occur, use to
be of ad hoc nature and are carried out on a minor number of cemeteries. Cemeteries do not have the status of memorial sites and are thus not protected from
further desecration. The major activist Serbian NGO that advocates the protection
of cemeteries gives an allegorical representation of the national collective memory.
In this interpretation, the whole Kosovo Serb nation is currently experiencing the
destiny of Planinka from Priština, a Serb woman married to Albanian, buried without any identification mark, as if she never lived24.
In 2013, the paths at the Priština cemetery still remain turned up by bombs
fallen in the 1999 war. Back in 1999, during the NATO bombing campaign, world
news agencies disseminated a letter of 11-year-old Simonida Maksimović, whose
mother’s tomb on the Priština cemetery was hit by the NATO bomb. In the letter
written in the style of Anna Frank’s diary, the girl writes: “Now I don’t have where
to take the flowers. The graves of my mother and my grandfather are gone. They’ve
been destroyed by those evil people, with their air planes, that are destroying my
Priština every night. [...] Now I’m crying much more than when my mother died.
Now I don’t know where my mother and my grand father are. They are not at the
cemetery. There is a huge crater”25. In another letter addressed to the NATO commander Michael Jackson, mentioning the ongoing killings of civilians, desecration
24
25
156
Srbi uznemireni”. Radio Televizija Srbije, 15 March 2012, <http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/9/
Politika/1102974/Kfor+zabrinut+zbog+pretnji+Srbima.html>.
Todić Vulićević, op.cit., p. 94.
“La mamma è morta di nuovo”. Corriere della sera, 30 April 1999, <http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1999/
aprile/30/mamma_morta_nuovo_co_0_9904301273.shtml>.
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of cemeteries by bombs, usurpation of flats, violence and exodus, the girl wrote:
“You took our happiness and our childhood away from us”26.
In the context of post-war realities, traditional religious feasts also acquire an
additional connotation. In Kosovska Mitrovica, an ethnically divided city, the Serbian church of St. Sava has remained in the Albanian-populated part. The church
was set on fire in March 2004, and no Serb inhabitants are left there. Meanwhile, in
the Serbian part of the city, the location for the new church was carefully selected27:
it is visible from astride the river Ibar and dominates the panorama of the city. The
location of the church on the top of the hill and open manifestations of identity in
the Serbian part of Kosovo stand in sharp contrast to the impossibility of holding
open celebrations south of the river Ibar. These two patterns are apparently interrelated, the former being intended to compensate for the latter.
In the church that remained in the southern part, only major celebrations are
held. On Christmas, Easter and the feast of St. Sava, a small part of the city’s population, mostly those displaced from the south, cross the bridge, escorted by the
Kosovo police. In 2013, the Christmas liturgy in Southern Mitrovica was short, as
the Kosovo police strictly limited its duration due to security reasons. Among other
peculiarities of the post-war settings that impact on the course of the celebrations,
electricity stoppages that happen during the Badnji dan (Christmas Eve) service
from year to year can be mentioned.
Memory of the war occupies a key place in traditional celebrations. With regard
to South Mitrovica, the discourse of the clergy emphasizes the duty to remember
and “to visit what our grandfathers and forefathers did not build for themselves,
but for future generations”. “We have no right to forget what is ours, because
other­wise God’s right hand will forget us”28.
Abounding in symbolics and rhetoric of individual and group identification
with religious and ethnic tradition, religious celebrations prove to be a key factor of
consolidation, homogenization, social and cultural integration of the local Serbian
26
27
28
“Ubili su mi mrtvu majku”. Narodne novine, 4-5.9.1999. In public representations of historical memory
of Kosovo Serbs, children letters and performances play a particularly prominent role. Letters and poems
“My Sky Has Been Wrapped in Barbed Wire” (Serb. “Moje su nebo vezali žicom”) by 11-year-old Jovana
Radovanović from Orahovac brought fame to the author, attracting visitors coming from all over Serbia and
from abroad to visit her in the enclave.
According to the widespread belief of the inhabitants of Mitrovica, a church dedicated to St. Demetrius
existed on this place in older times. Mitrovica is believed to be named after the holy protector of the city,
St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, an antique military commander who suffered for spreading Christianity.
These details complement the overall symbolism of the local collective identity.
Pavlović, Aleksandar. “Proslava Božića u Severnoj Kosovskoj Mitrovici u organizaciji Srpske Pravoslavne
Crkve”. Šuvaković, Uroš et. al. (eds.). Kulturno nasleđe Kosova i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za Kosovo i Metohiju, 2013, p. 116.
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L eo n as Tolvaišis
community and its memory29. Feasts of holy protectors of the cities (St. Demetrius
in Mitrovica, St. George in Zvečan, St. Basil in Leposavić, revered as the protectors
of the entire local Serbian community) contribute to uniting the people into a collectivity. Mass attendance of the events testifies to the strong sense of collectivity in
the context of persisting ethnic tensions, uncertainty and fears for the future in the
divided city located on the “frontline”30. All religious and commemorative events
are massively attended by the young Serbian population: the events are considered
“not to be missed”, used for meeting and communicating.
Comparable motives can be traced in church celebrations across Kosovo, as
memory-related messages connect the traditional church feasts to the historical
Kosovo suffering, reactualized in the actual settings. Thus, in January 2010, during
the Christmas Eve service celebrated by the bishop Artemije in Gračanica, the song
“Boj na Kosovu” (Battle of Kosovo)31 was sung during the key moment of taking
the badnjak log out of the church before setting it on fire.
2.3. Nat io n al collec t ive memory of t he Kosovo B at t le
Gazimestan and the celebration of Vidovdan stands out against the background
as the most attended Kosovo Serb celebration, held on the historical site of the
Kosovo Battle, where currently no Serb inhabitants are left.
The day of the Kosovo Battle is celebrated on the 28th of June. The central
events are the liturgical service held by the Serbian patriarch in Gračanica and an
office in memory of the Kosovo heroes held on Gazimestan, the memorial complex
built on the Field of Kosovo. On 28 June 2012, the Vidovdan commemoration was
attended by 10.000 people, mostly youth.
In order to delineate the object of commemoration among the people celebrating Vidovdan, as in the previous sections, we apply the method of composite story,
identifying the prevalent motives within the following categories: the meaning and
representations of Kosovo; the interpretation of the situation of Kosovo Serbs after
the end of the war in 1999 onwards; the classification of the event that is commemorated; main actors and relationships between them; actions advocated, visions
29
30
31
158
Ibid., p. 123.
The representation of the river Ibar as the “Serbian Rubicon” can be seen in the graffito “Kosovska Mitrovica: because there is no way back” (“Kosovska Mitrovica: jer odavde nema nazad”), often replicated in media
coverages from Mitrovica, as well as on locally sold souvenirs intended to represent the city. Similar symbolism accompanied mass gatherings on the barricades in North Kosovo in 2011-2012.
The song ends with the lines: “Nobody returned from the battle. The mothers did not want to bewail, raising
instead young falcons. Today, the Serbs act in the same way, too” (“Iz boja se niko ne povrati. Ne htedoše majke
naricati, već podižu sokoliće mlade. Još i danas Srbi tako rade”). Similarly, a sermon in the Draganac monastery
on 17 March 2013 paraphrased the poet Petar Petrović Njegoš, “on the tombs, flowers will arise for some
young generations”, alluding to a hope that children will be born despite all grievances.
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and lessons for the future. The analysis draws on the on site observations of the
Vidovdan celebration on 28 June from 2009 till 2013. The target group is ordinary
participants32 present at the celebration, while sources include observed rhetoric,
imagery, slogans, symbols displayed and the most frequently invoked poetry, music
and films.
Not only does the interpretation of Kosovo as the cradle of the Serbian statehood
and nationhood remain unchanged, but this kind of territorial identity strengthens
through the interpretation of the events of the past 14 years. The prevalent rhetoric
of commemorations, publicly displayed symbols and songs abound in references
to Kosovo as the land of historical heroes Lazar, prince Milo and tsar Dušan. Kosovo is commonly referred to as “the heart of Serbia”, “the holy land”, “the Serbian
land” and “the Serbian Jerusalem”. The sacral understanding of Kosovo is further
strengthened by martyrdom and representations of Kosovo as “the crucified land
soaked in the blood of martyrs”. The underlying logic of the Vidovdan commemorations thus implies inseparable bonds between the territory and a particular group
defined in ethnocultural terms.
The most common designations used to denote the situation of Kosovo Serbs
after 1999 refer to a new period of slavery and foreign occupation. Direct parallels are drawn between the centuries spent under the Ottoman occupation and
the newest period of international administration followed by the declaration of
Kosovo’s independence in 2008. The historical term “zulum”, denoting Ottoman
repressions of the local population, is abundantly used with regard to the contemporary grievances.
Vidovdan is classified as the day of the historical disaster that was followed by
the centuries-long occupation of Serbia by the Ottoman Empire. The event is most
frequently interpreted as the military debacle that paved the way to the victory
of the Serbian nation in a long-term historical perspective. As prince Lazar puts
it in the film “Battle of Kosovo” (commonly appreciated in the framework of the
commemoration), “With my blood, I delineate the borders of Serbia”33. The most
prominent values are those of loyalty of an individual to the collectivity and readiness to sacrifice for the state and the nation.
The primary meaning of the event thus merges with the contemporary context, and the current loss of Kosovo to the internationally supported Albanians is
32
33
Although the Vidovdan commemorations attract numerous groups representing political parties and organizations that prioritize ethnic identity in their political programs, the Vidovdan commemoration is a much
wider popular event, as it is also massively attended by the people (mostly youth) coming from all over
Kosovo and beyond.
The film “Battle of Kosovo” (1989) was directed by Zdravko Šotra and based on the drama by Ljubomir
Simović. A famous quote of Milos Obilić from the same film reads: “Serbia is not a handful of rice to be
pecked out by every crow brought by the wind”.
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L eo n as Tolvaišis
likened to the past loss of Kosovo to the Ottomans. The contemporary celebrations of Vidovdan represent the interpretation of the current developments in Kosovo as a new phase of the same six-centuries-long historical cycle: a new historical
defeat suffered from superior forces and collective martyrdom in a new unequal
battle. The designation “Second Kosovo battle”34 is used with regard to the Battle
of Košare fought on the Serbo-Albanian border between 9 April and 10 June 1999.
The battle is famous for a huge disproportion in the strength of the belligerent
sides, as 1.000 Serbian soldiers managed to repeal the attacks of 6.000-strong KLA
insurgent army.
The cyclical perception of history is made up of a series of recurrent elements
that can be considered cognitive shortcuts, massively employed in order to explain
the reality. The 1999 Kosovo war are interpreted as the Second Kosovo Battle,
the March 2004 campaign of mass expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo acquires the
meaning of the Second Vidovdan; the NATO-led international military mission
is understood as a successor to the Ottoman army; and Kosovo’s independence is
commonly perceived as the return to pre-independence Ottoman-like yoke, with
sufferings of the Serbian people and their shrines identical to those experienced
under the Ottomans.
The main actors that can be distinguished in the narrative include the Serbian
people opposed to other actors35. The terrorist KLA is the most frequent perpetrator,
followed by the NATO interveners. Given the failure of the international military
mission to prevent the exodus of the Kosovo Serb population and mass destruction of
its houses and churches, the KFOR is perceived as Priština’s ally. A distinction is made
between those KFOR troops that managed to protect Serbian shrines and civilian
population (the Italians in Peć and Dečani) and those who stood aside (the Germans
in Prizren, the French in Devič). Kosovo is generally perceived as the KLA state, given
a strong KLA core of most Kosovo Albanian political elite.
During yearly commemorations of Vidovdan, sporadic clashes with Kosovo
Albanian police, occurring from year to year, culminated in 2012, when the police
confiscated all Serbian insignia (T-shirts and flags). Happening on the Kosovo
Field, this clash had a clear symbolic connotation of the Kosovo police acting as a
successor of the Ottoman army and waging a war against Serbia over Kosovo.
34
35
160
Drecun, Milovan. Drugi Kosovski boj. Beograd: Miba books, 2013. The song “Drugi Kosovski Boj” (“The
Second Kosovo Battle”) appears at the end of the documentary “Pakao Košara” (“The Hell of Košare”) by
Milovan Drecun. The poem links together in a single discourse the tombs of ancestors that defended Kosovo
in the past and the readiness of the present generation to defend their homes that are in Kosovo, where the
tombs of the fallen heroes are.
“Defiant Song” (Prkosna pesma), a poem by Dobrica Erić that is frequently recited at public commemorations in Kosovo, is specifically devoted to the international actors. The poem also mentions inat, mentioned
above in the context of Staro Gracko.
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Among the actions advocated and lessons for the future, the keywords dominating the narrative are the Kosovo pledge (zavet) not to give up Kosovo. Accordingly,
most frequently invoked goal for the local Serbs is to survive in Kosovo in spite of
all difficulties, to withstand the pressures and to ensure the perpetuation of the Serbian national culture on the land of Kosovo. Again, the narrative invokes ethnocultural solidarity and an individual’s commitment to the survival of the collectivity.
Table 1. The traditional national narrative about Kosovo: a historical continuity in Gazimestan commemorations
Na rra t ive va lues
Interpretati on of 1 3 8 9
In te r pre tation of 1 9 9 9 -2 0 1 3
“A clash of civilizations”:
suprem a cy of t he cultural
concept
The expansion of Islam
toward Christian Europe,
slowed down on the Kosovo
Field
The eradication of Christianity from
Kosovo through mass destruction of
churches
T he collectivity facing a
superior enem y
The Serbian army versus the
numerically superior Ottoman troops
Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)
against the world’s strongest military
alliance
Loss of independence: the
collect iv it y enslaved wi th
t h e d efea t of t h e state
The centuries-long occupation of Serbia by the Ottoman Empire
The loss of Kosovo: unfavorable international context (mass recognition of
Kosovo); hopeless demographic imbalance
in favor of Albanians; political domination
by Albanians
An ind iv id ua l’s loyalty
to the collectivity: “an
ex ist ent ia l ch oice”
Facing a superior enemy,
choice between the Heavenly
Kingdom and an earthly
kingdom
A tradeoff between patriotism and the
acceptance of Kosovo’s independence for
the sake of survival
3 . S erbia n n at io n al n arrat ives abou t Kosovo
Kosovo remains the most complicated issue related to Serbia’s constitutional
arrangement, political development and related national narratives. Put differently, the Serbian population of Kosovo is inseparably linked to the wider Serbian
national narratives.
3.1. Tradi t io n al n arrat ive : “ t he Kosovo my t h ” a n d “ t he Kosovo pledge ”
According to the narrative represented by Serbia’s most political parties and a
prominent part of the academic community, Kosovo constitutes a key marker of
the historical identity of the Serbian nation36 and as such should be kept within
36
Terzić, Slavenko. Stara Srbija (XIX-XX vek): drama jedne civilizacije, Beograd: Istorijski institut, 2012,
p. 57.
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Serbia. This narrative is in line with the above-presented motives of contemporary Gazimestan commemorations emphasizing the bonds of the entire ethnocultural group with Kosovo’s territory and the necessity of the individual’s loyalty
to the supreme values of the collectivity. The legalistic and political version of the
narrative emphasizes loyalty to the constitution, most actively defended by the
Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). As of 2013, the newest developments within
the narrative are threefold: sticking to the traditional interpretation; proposals
for strengthening the narrative and providing responses to counternarratives.
The traditional narrative stresses Kosovo’s fundamental importance for the Serbian national identity, testified by an unique concentration of about 1300 objects
of historical heritage on less than 11.000 km2. Numerous court residences testify
that key state affairs were managed by the ruling elite on this territory in the past
ages (Hrebeljanović, Branković, Musić, Vojinović aristocratic families, Nemanjić
dinasty)37.
Dubbed “the most precious Serbian word”38, Kosovo is something more than
a mere state territory. The narrative regards the Kosovo battle as a “foundational”,
“constitutive” and “constructive”39 event of Serb popular tradition, memory and
statehood. Kosovo is likened to Thermopylae (480 b.C), Poitiers/Tours (732),
Kulikovo (1380)40 and Orléans (1428-1429)41. Those that abandoned their Ko­sovo
beyond their boundaries are doomed to become minor and irrelevant42. In line
with the culturalist conceptions of ethnicity, Kosovo is a classical example of a particular attitude toward an ancestral land representing an identity base of a modern
nation, becoming particularly strong when an ethnic group has a national religion
if its own43.
According to the narrative, Kosovo represents a myth (legend) transmitted and
preserved through the popular creativity, the rich epic tradition and the elaborated
Kosovo cycles of popular poetry. The myth emerged from the awareness of huge
sacrifice of the whole generation (the developed Serbian medieval society) led by its
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
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Prizren is still oftereferred to as “the royal city” and “Dušan’s city” during commemorative events.
Bećković, Matija. Kosovo: najskuplja srpska reč. Valjevo: Glas Crkve, 1989.
Vesković, Milica. “Značaj kulturnog nasleđa Kosova i Metohije za očuvanje srpskog nacionalnog identiteta”.
Šuvaković, Uroš et. al. (eds.) Kulturno nasleđe Kosova i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za KiM, 2013.
p. 49.
Bogdanović, Dimitrije. Knjiga o Kosovu. Beograd: SANU, 1986.
Radovanović, Milovan. Etnički i demografski procesi na Kosovu i Metohiji. Beograd: Liber Press, 2004,
p. 554.
Bratina, Boris. “Kosovski zavet i evropske vrednosti”. Šuvaković, Uroš et. al. (eds.). Kulturno nasleđe Kosova
i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za KiM, 2013. p. 163-167.
Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991.
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elite for the sake of supreme principles of freedom44. As a key to understanding the
message of history, this categorical imperative connects the nation’s present with its
past and future aspirations.
According to other definitions, Kosovo is not a myth, but a memory and awareness that establishes link to the historical past45. Imbued with meanings and interpretations given by the people themselves, the Kosovo myth is claimed to be the
history that the nation itself selected to remember and to ground its values upon.
The examples for the future generations include: heroism (prince Lazar, Miloš
Obilić, Milan Toplica, Ivan Kosančić), readiness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of
the collectivity’s survival (Banović Strahinja, Srđa Zlopogleđa, Boško Jugović) and
betrayal (the traitor Vuk Branković, giving up Kosovo for the sake of the earthly
kingdom, or more prosperous life, as the contemporary discourse puts it). Inspired
by the most widespread interpretations of the events, images created by the art
strengthened their popular representations of events and contributed to their perpetuation (“Seobe” by Milo Crnjanski, representations of the Kosovo battle by the
most prominent Serbian painters, motives of musical art, the film “The Battle of
Kosovo”46).
The military and political defeat thus immediately launched the struggle for
freedom. The message of the Kosovo myth is related to cultural and identity strategy47 aimed at long-term strengthening national vitality48 in order to restore the
lost statehood. The representation of the Kosovo battle as a central event of the
Serbian history is perceived as a major incentive that guided the Serbs for ages, preparing them to live for the liberation, to keep together and not to crumble away.
Preserved and transmitted to future generations, the Kosovo values were aimed
at the survival of the collectivity in the moments of danger49. Preservation of
cultural-psychological identity was aimed at surviving after the collapse of sociopolitical framework until more favourable conditions would enable its reestablish-
44
45
46
47
48
49
Đurić, Miloš. Vidovdanska etika. Zagreb: Srpsko akademsko društvo Njegoš, 1914.
D.Bogdanović, cit. in Baščarević, Ivan. “Kosovski mit u strukturi srpske nacionalne svesti”. Šuvaković, Uroš
et. al. (eds.). Kulturno nasleđe Kosova i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za KiM, 2013. p. 177.
In the Kosovo legend, as in the New Testament, the betrayal is discovered during the supper, on the eve of
the death. This circumstance, like the overall juxtaposition of earthly and heavenly principles, testifies the
predominant role of the Church in developing of the narrative.
A similar long-term identity strategy is apparent in the history of the Smederevo fortress, built in 14281430s, where a big red cross was bricked into the white wall. Exposed to fierce attacks by the Ottomans
advancing toward Belgrade and constantly hit by Turkish bullets, the cross increasingly reddened over time
against the white background.
Vesković, op. cit., p. 52.
Šljukić, Srđan. “Kosovski mit kao kulturna baština: vrednosti i nacionalni opstanak”. Šuvaković, Uroš et. al.
(eds.). Kulturno nasleđe Kosova i Metohije. T.2. Beograd: Kancelarija za KiM, 2013, p. 140.
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ment50. The motive of helping the community survive the critical emergency situation is prominent in the contemporary initiatives that bring humanitarian aid to
the Kosovo enclaves.
The said form of collective self-perception became the main metaphor in later
interpretations of key historical events in 19th and 20th centuries51. The current
developments are perceived as cyclic recurrence of Kosovo phenomenon in Serbian
historical experience, passing the same stages repeatedly52. In today’s Serbia, images
of the “traitor Vuk Branković” are particularly frequently employed in the daily
political discourse53.
Among the most recent developments within this narrative, we may single out
the proposals to abandon the designation of “myth”, proposing instead the term
“Kosovo pledge”54. Transmitting the moral message and value system, the Kosovo
pledge is to be considered a moral imperative, not a narrative.
Responding to criticisms coming from the counternarrative, the authors adhering to the traditional narrative claim that demands for “demythologization” are
tantamount to renouncing one’s identity, and, as a consequence, disarming and
being defeated easier55. Accompanied by proposals of alternative myths and being
part of the clash itself, demythologization is perceived as aimed at destroying Serbia’s cultural resources in order to deprive it of Kosovo forever.
Invoking collective memory and victimization proved to be an efficient tool of
collective mobilization, building ethnic cohesion and justifying political action.
The newest versions of the narrative argue that by insisting on this single feature
of the myth, all other positive features related to the perpetuation of ethnocultural
collectivity are neglected56.
In a similar vein, the narrative has also responded to the suggestions coming
from political opponents that call for accepting “the new reality”, i.e. the impossibility to restore the Serbian rule over Kosovo. The narrative reminds that the new
reality in Kosovo has been created by the means of forceful ethnic homogenization,
tolerated by the international community. According to Oliver Ivanović, the state
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
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Đurković, Miša. Zavet despota Stefana. Politika, 18 February 2010.
Bakić-Hajden, Milica. “Kosovo: vanvremena metafora sred vremenitog prikazivanja”. Nova srpska politička
misao, year 6, 1999, No. 3-4.
Knežević, Miloš. “Ciklusi kosovskog mita”. Nova srpska politička misao, year 6, 1999, No. 3-4.
An example of the usage of this metaphor with regard to Belgrade-Pristina negotiations can be seen in:
Dimitrijević, Vladimir. “Platrofmersi, realizam Vuka Brankovića i šeik umesto Miškovića”. Dveri srpske,
10 January 2013, <http://www.dverisrpske.com/sr/za-dveri-pisu/saradnici/114-vladimir-dimitrijevic/4148platformersi-realizam-vuka-brankovica-i-seik-umesto-miskovica.html>.
Bratina, op.cit.
Šljukić, op.cit.
Baščarević, op.cit., p. 182.
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secretary for Kosovo and Metohija, the fact that the Serbs cannot give up Kosovo as
part of their national identity is also a reality, regardless of legal and political forms
it can take over history57.
The degree of the narrative’s popularity can be reflected by the results of public
opinion polls. In 2011, 59% of respondents, if asked to choose between Kosovo
and the membership in the EU, would opt for Kosovo58.
The European dimension, nevertheless, constitutes an important part of the
narrative. Europe’s attitude toward the Serbs is argued to reveal Europe’s selfabolition59. Historically legitimized as an area of freedom, Europe is argued to
have fallen below the level of its own values, whereas the Serbs, being attacked
by Europe, proved again to be the protector and custodian of the values abandoned by Europe itself. Frequent references are also made to the Kosovo Battle
that had slowed down the Turk advancement toward Europe by half century
at least.
The “European” narrative is strong in the discourse of the Church as well. As
several Kosovo Serbian shrines have a status of world heritage conferred by the
UNESCO, the post-war destruction of churches happening in the presence of a
huge European military mission was dubbed “the face of Europe”60, reminiscent
of a motive of the national song “Vostani Serbije” (“Arise, Serbia”) reflected in the
words, “Show Europe your delightful face”61.
3.2. The “ New R eali t y ” cou n t er n arrat ive : “ Kosovo as a n eighbour ”
The counternarrative has three versions, developed on the local (the Kosovo Serb),
nation-wide (Serbia) and international levels, respectively. What unites them is the
consensus on the harmful nature of the Kosovo myth and the conviction that Serbia’s claims to Kosovo are unrealistic, backward and self-destructive. The following
section deals with the Serbian counternarrative in detail.
If the traditional narrative follows the lines of primordialist attitude to the
nation and emphasizes the value of individual’s loyalty to the collectivity, the counternarrative is framed in terms of constructivism, and, hence, emphasizing the
57
58
59
60
61
The statement of Oliver Ivanović on Gazimestan, aired by the Kosova Press news agency on 28 June 2013.
“Istraživanje agencije Partner: ako je Kosovo uslov, većina građana Srbije je protiv ulaska u EU”. Nova srpska
politička misao, 21 December 2011, <http://www.nspm.rs/hronika/istrazivanje-agencije-partner-ako-je-kosovo-uslov-srbiji-ne-treba-eu.html>.
Bratina, op.cit., p. 166.
Kosovo i Metohija – lice Evrope. Multimedialna interaktivna enciklopedija, <http://www.tipon.eu/p_kosovo.
php>.
“Ode to the Uprising of the Serbs”, the national anthem written by Dositej Obradović during the First
Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1804.
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constructed nature of the Kosovo myth and prioritizing the individual values over
the collectivist ones. The counternarrative ascribes the authorship of the phrase
“Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” to Milošević himself62. The harmfulness of the
myth is derived from its proved potential of becoming a powerful political arm,
reviving the most sensitive stereotypes and hitting the most painful spots of collective memory. This is exactly how Slobodan Milošević instrumentalized the Kosovo
issue in order to introduce centralism, to legitimize his political power, which in
the long run led to the wars of the Yugoslav disintegration63. This political instrumentalization is claimed to be still in place64. According to anthropologist Ivan
Čolović, the main hero of the myth remains the same: it is the Serbian nation that
wages war with its enemies, kills and suffers, sacrifices itself and vengeates. Only
circumstances change.
The Helsinki Committee of Serbia has been among the most consistent proponents of the reversal of Serbia’s Kosovo policies65. Pragmatic proposals on the
part of the academic community include suggestions to draw as many EU-related
benefits as possible from the recognition of Kosovo66.
The first political force to see the official Kosovo policies as the obstacle on
Serbia’s path toward the EU was the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), followed
by the Serbian Reneval Movement (SPO, led by former minister of foreign affairs
Vuk Drašković)67. Both parties are advocating “good neighbourly relations” with
Kosovo. The keywords of this counternarrative include the “reversal of the unviable
policy toward Kosovo”, “turning to the future” and “accelerating Serbia’s European
path”68. The counternarrative draws on the fact that, starting from the times of
Yugoslavia, Europe has been incomparably more frequent travel destination for the
Serbs than Kosovo.
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
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“Kosovski mit: kamen o vratu Srbije”. Slobodna Evropa, 2 May 2009. <http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/
content/most_kosovo_mit/1620087.html>.
A particular role is attributed to the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1986) and
its stances on Kosovo. Silber, Laura and Allan Little. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. London: Penguin, 1996;
Ramet, Sabrina P. Thinking about Yugoslavia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 71; Bieber,
Florian, and Židas Daskalovski (eds.). Understanding the War in Kosovo. London, New York: Routledge,
2009, p. 39; Judah, Tim. Kosovo. What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008,
p. 55-62; King, Iain and Whit Mason. Peace at Any Price. How the World Failed Kosovo. Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 2006, p. 35.
Marković, Tatjana. “Idiosyncrasies of the grand narratives on Serbian national identity”. 5 Aprıl 2007,
<http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/emerg/TMarkovic1.pdf>.
Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava. “Zaokret u spoljnoj politici: neuspela instrumentalizacija Kosova”. Helsinški bilten, br. 68. September 2010, <http://www.helsinki.org.rs/serbian/doc/HB-Br68.pdf>.
Pavićević, Vladimir. “Od Kosova do Kosova”. NIN, br. 3235, 27 December 2012.
“Drašković: Kosovo je država i to se ne može promeniti”. Slobodna Evropa, 4 April 2012. <http://www.
slobodnaevropa.org/content/draskovic-kosovo-je-drzava-i-to-se-ne-moze-promeniti/24947482.html>.
Jakšić, Boško. “Majko, od sutra neima boga”. Politika, 10 November 2013.
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According to the counternarrative, the traditional Kosovo policy is the reason of
the actual Kosovo problem. The policy “Kosovo is Serbia” is seen as the continuation
of irresponsible Milošević’s policy, while the Serbs in Kosovo are being sacrificed in
the same manner they were sacrificed in Croatia and in Bosnia. The new strategy,
instead, should accept Kosovo as a neighbour69 and to prioritize the cohabitation
of the Serbs and the Albanians in Kosovo70. Any perpetuation of unviable Kosovo
politics is seen as contrary to the development of Serbia in line with the values of
civilized world, modern economy and education. The counternarrative thus clearly
prioritizes the citizen and individual values over any collectivities.
In line with this counternarrative, the leaflets distributed on the streets of Belgrade read: “Today is 2013, not 1389”71. Kosovo is also likened to a noose around
the nation’s neck that pulls the whole nation to the bottom of an abyss72. The
essence of the “reversal narrative” is leaving the past behind and turning to the
future, based on universal values that lead to prosperity.
In the same vein, on 24 April 2013, several days after the Belgrade-Priština
agreement was signed in Brussels and on the eve of the Orthodox Easter, Nenad
Čanak, the leader of the League of Socialdemocrats of Vojvodina, visited Gazi­
mestan. Here, he placed a wreath bearing the inscription “In memory of fallen
heroes”. According to the official announcement of the party, the visit was intended
to symbolize “a victory of European, and defeat of hateful and divisive politics”
and “another evidence that the European integration is the only way into the good
future of Serbia which opens the doors and erases the borders”73. In other words,
placing wreath on Gazimestan was intended to symbolize Serbia turning the page
of history with regard to Kosovo policies.
Paradoxically, the current “pragmatic European” narrative has reproduced an
exact logic of a tradeoff between the identity and existential issues which upheld
the traditional narrative. This further contributed to the popularity of mythological characters (Prince Lazar and Vuk Branković) in the daily political discourse
on both sides. According to the legend reproduced in the film “The Battle of
Kosovo”, nobleman Vuk Branković attempts to discourage Lazar from fighting
69
70
71
72
73
“Drašković: Kosovo, sused najbliži”. B92, 6 September 2011, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.
php?yyyy=2011&mm=09&dd=06&nav_id=540111>.
“LDP: Kosovo kao sused realnost”. B92, 7 April 2013. <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2013
&mm=04&dd=07&nav_id=702681>; “Drugačija Srbija: Kosovo”, <http://www.ldp.rs/povelja_slobode/
drugacija_srbija/kosovo.759.html>.
The leaflet emerged as a response to the posters of the “Serbian National Movement 1389”, a political youth
organization that adopted the date of the Kosovo Battle as its official name and as the foundation of its
political identity.
“Kosovski mit: kamen o vratu Srbije”. Slobodna Evropa, 2 May 2009.
“Čanak na Gazimestanu”. Danas, 24 April 2013.
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the Turks and in the long run betrays him, siding with the Turks. In so doing,
Branković is guided by “simple facts” and “pragmatic reasons”: “The serpent is
venomous, the peach is sweet, ashes are bitter! The Serbs are few, the Turks are
numerous”. A similar tradeoff between “pragmatism” and “patriotism” underlies
the current Kosovo-related cleavages in the Serbian politics after the declaration
of independence in Priština.
Both the designation and the logic of the “New Reality” counternarrative is
stunningly consonant with the principles of Realpol