Characteristic features and oppositional attitudes of informal intellectual groups in Soviet Lithuania

The article presents a description of social networks and activities of various informal groups among intellectuals in the late Soviet period in Lithuania. The analysed material includes 9 interviews, memoirs, diaries, and KGB documents. Because of these networks and certain official privileges which intelligentsia obtained in Soviet public life to demonstrate alternative virtues and discourses, official and unofficial culture could sometimes escape ideological control. Such non-systematic activities took different forms: publication of classical philosophical texts by “Mintis” publishing house, unideologized lectures read at universities, a movement for authentic folklore and protection of cultural heritage, search for individual forms of expression in art and poetry, etc. Though most of the new unidealogized ideas were sooner or later brought to an end, intellectuals, who constructed groups with trust, solidarity, and civic engagement, found new forms of nonconformist behaviour. On the other hand, such a public engagement in soviet life demanded to obey (voluntarily or not) certain ideological rules. The ideological regime aimed at building “a new man”. To resist this, Lithuanian intellectuals strived to construct an alternative “us” identity, which was an effort to demonstrate “our” distinctiveness from “them” (i.e. people which were loyal to or manipulated by the Soviets). Even though some dissidents, emigrants or other individuals with oppositional attitudes participated in “our” groups, they had a different civic identity which was constructed in opposition to the Soviet rule. They can be considered as “others” from the perspective of “our” groups. [...]Humanitarinių mokslų fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta