Darbai ir dienos / Deeds and Days 2016, nr. 65

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hdl:20.500.12259/31335
Leidybą rėmė Europos socialinis fondas / Publication sponsored by European Social Fund
  1. Viršelis / Cover
  2. Informacija apie Darbai ir dienos / Information about Deeds and Days 2016, nr. 65
  3. http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-8769.65

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  • Publication
    Valstybės viduje: pilietinės savivokos galimybė ir pilietinio elgesio trajektorijos
    [Inside the state: possibilities of civic consciousness and trajectories of civic behavior]
    research article
    Genys, Dainius
    Darbai ir dienos. Kaunas, Vilnius : Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas; Versus Aureus, 2016, T. 65, p. 207-243
    The successes and failures of participants in civil society in specific situations as well as legitimized or delegitimized goals help to define civil society. By studying the specific strategies and citizens’ activities with respect to the details of the context, we can get a clearer image of the peculiarities of civil society. The paper, devoted to a well-known civic dispute involving the historic Romuva movie theater, discusses the functionality of civil society during this conflict. The study is based on the case study method; therefore the data representation is contextual and cannot be generalized to the whole of Lithuania, but it can provide plenty of information on the analyzed object. Post-communist civil societies face different challenges than Western societies, as they have arisen in a different context; hence they face a specific problem: to form, justify, and legitimate the civil society. By analyzing the civil struggle surrounding the Romuva cinema, we examine the lack of civil society legitimacy in the face of the different interests of citizens, business, and government. What challenges and problems confront citizens who take it upon themselves to defend the public interest? The study showed the lack of legitimacy of noninstitutionalized civil society groups. In view of the activities of government bureaucracies, or rather of their failures, and the pragmatic interests of businessmen, it turned out that citizens’ enthusiasm, creativity, and critical reasoning are not sufficient in order to protect the public interest, as noninstitutionalized civic groups’ activities are not considered legitimate and thus are often not taken into account.
      24  126
  • Publication
    Sovietinė ideologija XX amžiaus 8–9 dešimtmečiais surinktuose atsiminimuose
    [Soviet ideology in memoirs collected in the 1970s and 1980s]
    research article
    Balkus, Mindaugas
    Darbai ir dienos. Kaunas, Vilnius : Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas; Versus Aureus, 2016, T. 65, p. 195-206
    The article analyzes the memoirs collected by the Society of Monument Protection and Ethnography of the Lithuanian SSR in the 8th and 9th decade of the 20th century, in which the Soviet ideology is reflected. The legal framework of the Society of Monument Protection and Ethnography of the Lithuanian SSR and its guidelines for the collection of ethnographic materials are briefly reviewed in this work. The relationship of the contents of the memoirs with Soviet ideology is discussed. The article also tries to pin down the possible motives for the occurrence of Soviet ideological features in these memoirs.
      460  195
  • Publication
    Pogulaginė sąmonė ir atžangos dialektika
    [Post-gulag consciousness and the dialectic of regression]
    research article
    Mažeikis, Gintautas
    Darbai ir dienos. Kaunas, Vilnius : Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas; Versus Aureus, 2016, T. 65, p. 55-86
    The 20th century is the Age of Darkness ruled by big propaganda, mass revolts, and totalitarian regimes. Many of these sprouted from the absolute ideals of the Enlightenment which in time provided the conditions for a Darkening and a Regression. Eastern Europe and Lithuania will remember this period as the great sunset of civilization marked by civil and class wars, the Holodomor, the Nazi concentration camps, the Holocaust, the Gulag, the deportations and exile, the collective farms and their labor days. In the midst of this process of de-civilization the article focuses on the Gulag and post-Gulag consciousness as it is reflected in human memory, literature, and film. The injuries that de-civilization and its proper part, the Gulag, inflicted on human thinking and imagining, and the consequences of these injuries on our own lives, are analyzed in terms of a dialectic of regression. This dialectic is opposed to a dialectic of progress or development and rather than showing phases of advancement it shows stages of deterioration. It is a thesis of this article that the dialectic of regression is not symmetrical to progress and does not repeat the same stages, only reversing direction, but displays a logic of its own and features peculiarly distinctive circles of Hell.
      242  152
  • Publication
    „Homo sovieticus“: pilko ir pliko žmogaus portreto bruožai laisvėjančios Lietuvos spaudoje
    [„Homo sovieticus“: glimpses of bleak and bare human existence in the press of a re-awakening Lithuania]
    research article
    Venclauskienė, Laima
    Darbai ir dienos. Kaunas, Vilnius : Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas; Versus Aureus, 2016, T. 65, p. 143-162
    Homo sovieticus, a term employed to define certain traits of Soviet mentality as it had been shaped (in Lithuania) by 50 years of life in the USSR, was a subject that Lithuanian periodicals from 1988 to 1990 wrote about in the course of rejecting what was deemed alien to the nation as embodied in the socialist system, the state, its symbols, and its values. Existing homo sovieticus concepts denote the specific mentality of a person living under the Soviet system and/or a specific type of person formed by the system, with adaptability/conformism, passivity, avoidance of responsibility, and a sense of helplessness being the chief characteristics of this individual. Homo sovieticus is contrasted to, and used to satirize, the new Soviet man, demonstrating the true result of this propaganda project; and it is also an outcome of a person’s ability to conform. Homo sovieticus in Lithuanian publications is not a marginalized or demonized other, but rather an ailing self mutilated by the Soviet system as well as a future (national) self in need of healing and re-adjustment. The Soviet human being is dehumanized, with his/her value being reduced to the function (s)he performs and to the level of assimilation into the collective, a nameless mass. In the periodicals, homo sovieticus is being portrayed as a little cog in the machine, an intimidated grey mediocrity. Accustomed to unquestioningly obey the Soviet power, (s)he is afraid of and hungry for power at the same time, trying to satisfy this aspiration in basically everything (s)he does (everyone, from cashier or shoe mender, seems to willingly demonstrate any power they have). [...]
      795  648
  • Publication
    Tremties kaip kančios įvaizdžiai viešajame diskurse ir tremtinių pasakojimuose
    [How public discourse and the stories of deportees represent the torment of exile]
    research article
    Grickevičiūtė, Dovilė
    Darbai ir dienos. Kaunas, Vilnius : Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas; Versus Aureus, 2016, T. 65, p. 113-142
    Deportations as suffering are an important part of the public discourse and the national ideology of Lithuania. They are associated with their victims’ innocence and helplessness and are represented through emotionally charged stories of extreme experiences full of torment and deprivation. These images of exile tend not to focus on the suffering of individual deportees but to represent the whole nation as the victim and target of deportations, which are thus endowed with a national and patriotic essence. Individual stories that are formed in this context take on some of the popular features of portraying and perceiving deportations as epitomes of suffering. However, even though being deported really was a very difficult experience for many individuals, deportation stories present a much broader and much more variegated image of exile. Suffering there does not always take the most important part.
      702  163