On democracy in soviet lithuania: transformations in the concept of democracy under the conditions of institutionalized censorship during 1956-1990

On Democracy in Soviet Lithuania: Transformations in the Concept of Democracy under the Conditions of Institutionalized Censorship During 1956-1990 The control of language is one of the ways to strengthen the political regime. In this way, political regime can create an institutionalized way to pass on the knowledge of ideology to the future generations. One way to control the language and discourse of society is to create an institution, responsible for censorship of the ideas. The mechanism of that kind of institutions was created in Soviet Lithuania. The censorship in Lithuania was fully institutionalized in 1956 and finished in 1990. This paper focuses on the analysis of institutionalized censorship in the Soviet Lithuania in a period from 1956 to 1990. The key goal of the study is to find out how the political knowledge (political self-perception) has changed during the Soviet era in Lithuania, when institutions of censorship were active. In order to reach the goal, the study analyses the meaning of the concept of democracy in three periodical publications: Komunistas, Ausra and Aidai. The analysis revealed that the context of institutionalized censorship meant the decrease of the discussions in the public discourse regarding the political ideas. The concept of democracy in the discourse of newspapers, which felt direct or indirect influence of the censorship, is described one-sided. The goal of the discourse of independent newspaper, on the contrary, is to provoke discussion in order to achieve the improvement. Furthermore, the censorship creates two different and contrasting discourses of the same political idea: official ideological concept and unofficial attempt to contradict it. Nevertheless, the development of the institutions of censorship had no significant influence on the change of the political thought. This paper can be understood as a humble attempt to integrate into the discussion about the continuity of political knowledge