The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War - Paperback

by Violeta Davoliūte (Author)

Lithuania suffered in the course of the twentieth century successive horrific invasions, significant border changes and large scale population displacements. One consequence of these traumatic events is that different protagonists constructed radically different historical narratives, which have in turn been used by ruling regimes and oppositions, to reinforce their own identity. This book discusses these various constructed historical narratives and identities, focusing especially on the construction, and dismantling, of "Soviet Lithuania". Because Lithuania was fought over so much, it exemplifies the degree to which the identity of both regimes and oppositions is a mental construct.

Author Biography

Violeta Davoliūte is a researcher and freelance journalist based at the Department of History, Vilnius University. She has published widely in the fields of memory, trauma and cultural studies in Eastern Europe. Her most recent book is Maps of Memory: Trauma, Identity and Exile in Deportation Memoirs from the Baltic States. Vilnius, 2012 (co-edited with T. Balkelis).