Existential problems of emigration in Bronys Raila's reflections

Bronys Raila was a representative of real, objective, and critically acute journalism in emigration. Impatient, searching, and temperamental, he asserted himself in wide range of activities leading to the Lithuanian nation’s extrication from Bolshevik oppression. We can call him one of the most productive and one of the most controversial Lithuanian journalistic commentators of the 20th century. The topics which especially agitated him included the way political emigrants lived, how they communicated among themselves, and how they related to the homeland they were forced to leave. What were they doing for the liberation of Lithuania? What are the positive and negative aspects of their activities? What should they do to benefit their country? What role does generational alienation perform in this context? Raila was called “a destroyer of illusions and dogmas of emigrants’ activities.“ Accordingly, it is interesting to analyze his texts and to reconstruct his individual and peculiar viewpoint on the above-mentioned problems in the context of their period. Raila emphasizes the necessity of communication between Lithuanians living in the homeland and those living in emigration. He thinks communication it is the only way for the emigrants to know their occupied nation truly, to understand its culture and its way of life. And for the occupied homeland communication with those abroad is the only way to find out what freedom tastes like. To get reacquainted with the real Lithuania and in this way to contribute to the fight for freedom is the main mission of the emigrants. Raila rejects as unnecessary both the struggle for political power in emigration circles and their unwarranted claims to national Lithuanian authority. Emigrants can and should offer strong support for the liberation of Lithuania; nevertheless, the main actors in this struggle are the Lithuanian people themselves– those who remained in the country.[...]Vytauto Didžiojo universiteta