Ateitininkų santykiai su A.J.S. Šviesa DP stovyklose

Abstract

The article analyzes how relations between two Lithuanian intellectual organizations for youth education - the Ateitis Federation and Šviesa - evolved during the period of life in the DP camps. Most of the refugees in these camps believed they would fairly soon return to a liberated Lithuania. This belief encouraged attempts to re-create some of the cultural structures of formerly independent Lithuanian life within a diaspora context. One of these structures was the Ateitis organization, which resumed activities right after the war. But since conditions of life had indeed changed other Lithuanian refugees were led to create new organizations that had not existed in formerly independent Lithuania. One of them was the Šviesa Academic Youth Association. During the DP camp period the Ateitis organization, hitherto dominant in the sphere of youth education, brushed up against a worthy opponent, the liberal Šviesa organization. During the first few years relations between them were tense. Conflict occurred on the levels of both the individual university student associations and the central student association. Eventually relations between the ateitininkai and the šviesiečiai became calm and civil. Members of both organizations learned to get along and to cooperate on questions important to the whole community.