Transformation of Lithuanian academic and research institutions of history during 1988–1990 Resurgence from the Soviet Regime according to the minutes of meetings

The period of Resurgence or Movement (Sąjūdis) in 1988–1990 is one of the most important breakthrough moments in the history of Lithuania. The Soviet Empire began its road leading to collapse. It was the time to change and to purge away ‘marxism’ and ideological clichés from Lithuanian historical scholarship. Not everyone wanted to change but finally they had to follow the main stream. The main aim of this article is to reveal what transformations were fixed in the minutes of meetings of academic institutions staff members during this breakthrough period. The sources of this research are official meeting journals preserved in the Central State Archive of Lithuania and the Special Archive of Lithuania. It allows us to compare how this transformation was discussed in four academic institutions. It is some kind of a chronicle of changes in these days. After the revision of these sources, the author comes to such conclusions. The Vilnius University Faculty of History had faced the problem of scarcity of courses devoted to the Lithuanian history and had to change the program of studies. New departments of history were established. Historians of the university organized conferences in order to discuss the most controversial and relevant historical topics. Students complained about the courses of Marxism and History of the USSR. The Lithuanian Institute of History had to revise the research and publishing plans, to discuss how to rearrange the historical studies and to start new topics such as migrational and demographical processes, the establishment of the Republic of Lithuania and its diplomacy, the Pact of Ribbentrop–Molotov, deportations, repatriation, Stalinist collectivisation, resistence etc. The first doctoral dissertations from these new fields of research were defended. Lithuanian historians refused to work with their colleagues from the USSR if Lithuanian national culture was diminished or ignored in common academic projects. Historians became public figures, they started to organize press conferences, participated in public meetings. The Institute of the Communist Party History, the most ideologized institution, also had to react to the changes. The institute organized the ‘round table’ discussions about relevant and painful historical problems and finally it was disbanded with some loss of important personal archival files. The Department of Lithuanian History at the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute played a minor role in the academic field of contemporary Lithuania but their professors reviewed the doctoral dissertations presented by the Lithuanian Institute of History and Vilnius University, rearranged the programme of studies and offered the propositions how to modernize the educational books