| Abstract [eng] |
Questions of the nation’s role in the Soviet system were tied with Leninist national policy, which emphasized the ideas of internationalism and the benefits of socialism to national development. Although Soviet discourse produced stories of the progress of nations, the Western totalitarian perspective on Soviet studies looked at it skeptically, and this skepticism became even stronger in post-Soviet Lithuanian historiography, blaming the Soviet regime for occupation and the trampling of the honor and interest of the Lithuanian nation. In this article I will not judge either the arguments for Leninist policy or their critiques, but try to look at the multiform of Soviet national policy grounded in the everyday level and to raise a point for broader insight into current Lithuanian historiography, exploring the issues of the national policy of the USSR. )e article mainly discusses ideological/symbolic areas of the local cultural elite in the sense of cultural production and showing the attitudes on Soviet national and cultural policies. The dominant context-shaping Soviet national policy was related with the ideas of internationalism and “blossoming of the nation”, with “blossoming” in this text becoming a powerful metaphor, eliciting several competing meanings, national aspirations and the strategies of local cultural elite. Research materials for the study cover archives, interviews with respondents who belonged to the cultural elite, and some biographical descriptions. The chronological boundaries embrace the 1970-1988 period, including two epochs of the Soviet system, namely the period of Brezhnev’s stagnation and the period of Gorbachev’s perestroika, launched in 1985. |
