1951 m. JAV įsikūrusioje Lietuvių studentų sąjungoje (LSS) greitai išsiskyrė dvi tarpusavyje konkuruojančios studentų grupės: ateitininkai ir vadinamieji nepriklausomieji. Nepriklausomų studentų grupė susikūrė kaip atsvara gerai organizuotiems ateitininkams ir savo gretose bandė suburti įvairių pažiūrų, skirtingų ideologinių organizacijų demokratinio-liberaliojo sparno akademinį jaunimą. Jų skelbtos tolerancijos, nepriklausomos minties, humanizmo, liberaliojo sparno lietuvių jaunimo organizacijų bendradarbiavimo idėjos sulaukė jaunimo palaikymo; nepriklausomų studentų grupės kūrėsi įvairiuose universitetiniuose miestuose. Nepriklausomieji kurį laiką neturėjo formalios organizacijos, 1953 m. pasivadino Nepriklausomų studentų sąjūdžiu (NSS), o 1954 m. buvo įkurta visas nepriklausomųjų grupes vienijanti organizacija – „Lietuvių studentų santara“. Straipsnyje, remiantis publikuotais ir archyviniais šaltiniais, analizuojami Nepriklausomų studentų sąjūdžio genezės, narystės, veiklos klausimai. Didelis dėmesys skiriamas nepriklausomų studentų persiorganizavimui 1954 m. – „Lietuvių studentų santaros“ įkūrimui ir naujos organizacijos santykiams su Akademiniu skautų sąjūdžiu

The article briefly introduces US American politician, politician, lawyer Antanas Olis (1898-1958) and publishes two of his speeches to American Lithuanians: May 21st, 1949 speech at the inaugural congress of the American Lithuanian National Union (ALTS), and the last speech by Antanas Olis, broadcast on “Margutis” radio in the occasion of February 16th in 1958. Olis’s words are distinguished by tolerance, liberalism, and the promotion of the fundamental principles of freedom. Some of the problems raised by Olis nearly seventy years ago are still relevant today: how to stay a Lithuanian in a foreign land and not dissolve into a sea of strangers, how to entice young people to Lithuanian community activities, how to communicate between generations and interests, how to find balance between being a Lithuanian and a citizen of another country.

The article is dedicated to Antanas Olis (1898–1958), a Lithuanian American public and political figure, lawyer. It analyses the key moments of his life and activities, his influence in the political, public and cultural life of the émigré community. The article investigates the activities of Antanas Olis after Lithuania’s occupation by the Soviets when he actively joined political activities and made a special contribution in organising and participating in various political campaigns which sought to bring up the issue of Lithuania among Americans. Through his ties with Americans and his work in the national Republican Party group, Olis won his way to the broader horizons of the US politics in the attempt to draw attention to the case of the freedom of Lithuania.

Algirdas Julius Greimas was one of the more influential leaders of the Lithuanian liberal movement broadly conceived. The first postwar years saw him actively engaged in the activities of diaspora resistance organizations, the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Alliance, and the United Democratic Resistance Movement. From 1950 onwards he was no longer active in politics but remained close to his intellectual soulmates and continued to be one of the liberal movement’s leaders in the diaspora. This article analyzes Greimas’s relations with the organizations Šviesa and Santara in particular and young Lithuanian liberals in general. Both of these organizations (Šviesa, created in 1946 in Germany, and Santara, founded in 1954 in the U.S.) came into being as independent associations of liberally-minded Lithuanian academic youth disclaiming any ties with older organizations that existed earlier. Nevertheless the experience of such elder generation liberals as Greimas, their ways of thinking, ideology, and moral support were important signposts for young people as they developed their own organizations. Greimas put a lot of hope in Šviesa and showed much interest in, and concern for, its activities. His closest ties were with members of resistance groups, but he was directly involved with Šviesa, too: he initiated and founded its Paris chapter. Although he was not active in, nor a member of, Santara (and later Santara-Šviesa), in 1965 he participated in Santara-Šviesa’s annual conference and read a paper there which, along with his other essays and ideas, provoked vigorous responses not only among members of Santara but the wider Lithuanian-American community as well.

This article briefly surveys the information/ propaganda war raging between Lithuania and the diaspora during the Soviet period. In analyzing this war it is possible to distinguish separate stages of it – from the collection, processing, and use of information in one’s own press to open informational and propagandistic warfare in the public sphere. The diaspora community actively participated in this war, and it had its own tactics, objectives, and means to achieve them. A variety of weapons were used, including those employed by Soviet propaganda itself, which was cleverly positioned with a opposed viewpoint to produce a contra-propagandistic effect. Soviet efforts to neutralize the other side were usually ineffective.

Lithuanian Independence Alliance, an organization called Lietuvos nepriklausomybės talka (LNT) in Lithuanian, was founded in 1955 in the emigration and joined together four influential political forces: the Lithuanian National Alliance (tautininkai), the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters’ Union, Resistance Union of Lithuanian, and the Lithuanian Rebirth Movement. This new organization was active in the late 1950s and early 1960s when émigré institutions actively competed with each other for reasons of ideological partisanship and because of personal and group disagreements on how best to promote the Lithuanian cause. Initially LNT was created in opposition to the central Lithuanian political organization known as the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (VLIK). But gradually it turned to other activities, primarily attending to the study of developments in Lithuania itself. This article analyzes the circumstances that brought LNT into existence, its activities, and its relations with other organizations. In 1964, LNT together with its component organizations joined the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania.