This article aims to reveal the story of collaboration between Algirdas Julius Greimas (1917–1992) and the Lithuanian-American Social Democratic journal Darbas (published from 1947 to 1960 by the Lithuanian Labor Association in the USA). Although this periodical had been published since 1947 it was in 1956 when Greimas wrote his first article for Darbas. He was probably encouraged by the Demokratinio Darbo Talka, an organization established in 1954 by a younger generation of left-wing intellectuals who had formerly belonged to the liberal Šviesa movement. Greimas agreed with their goals, their values, and their attitudes towards relations between the Lithuanian diaspora and Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Gradually he became one of the most important writers and had his own column. He was not only writing for the journal, but he was also putting a lot of effort into shaping the ideological stance of this periodical while not being afraid to criticize the editorial board or other writers for their lack of confidence in Socialism and for their inability to analyze the world from the Socialist point of view. While writing his own texts on history and other issues Greimas was trying to set a proper example of doing that. It sometimes even looks as if he was using a kind of soft mind-engineering instead of expressing his real opinion.

This article aims to introduce the ideas of the journal Darbas, published from 1947 to 1960 by the Lithuanian Labor Association in the USA. Among its editors and contributors we find such people as Steponas Kairys, Jonas Kiznis, Juozas Repečka, Algirdas Julius Greimas, Juozas Petrėnas, Juozas Vilčinskas, Kostas Ostrauskas, and Kazys Barėnas. The ideas they expressed were mainly Social Democratic. They followed trends in such countries as Germany and Great Britain and gradually distanced themselves from Marxism (with the exception of A. J. Greimas, who, possibly affected by France‘s cultural and political environment, proposed fine-tuning the journal‘s ideology and insisted on applying the dialectical method in texts about history). The USSR and its ideology, its dogmatism, and its undemocratic nature were always criticized by the authors writing in of Darbas. They even refused to call the Soviet system “Socialist” by stating it was just a profanation of Socialist ideas. Darbas proposed the idea that it was very important to communicate with people in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, and to keep up with the country‘s life as much as possible. Contrary to many others emigres, they refused to identify the regime with the nation. They also tried to see some of the positive processes in Soviet Lithuania and suggested the idea that these were the result of hard work by the Lithuanian people rather than achievements of the Bolsheviks. In their imagination, the contributors to Darbas saw the Free Lithuania of the future not just as a sovereign state but as a country in which there would be no place for different forms of despotism. They emphasized that everyone in the whole nation had a responsibility to be vigilant in the defense of freedom and above all to oppose all despots, one‘s own no less than foreign ones.