Academic literature on the topic 'Post-communism – Lithuania'

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to put into focus and explain distinctive features of the political developments in Lithuania during second post-communist decade, comparing them with other Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and those Central European countries with political systems which resembled most closely Lithuania (Poland and Hungary) by the end of the first post-communist decade. In all these countries, second post-communist decade witnessed the rise of the new successful populist parties. The author argues that this populist rise is the proper context for understanding of Rolandas Paksas’ impeachment in Lithuania in 2003–2004. His Order and Justice Party has to be classified together with the Kaczynski twins Law and Justice Party and its even more radical allies in Poland, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Gábor Vona’s Jobbik in Hungary, Juhan Part’s Res Publica in Estonia and Einars Repše’s New Era in Latvia. They all were right-wing populist parties, proclaiming in their anti-establishment rhetoric the war on corruption of the (ex-communist) elite and the coming of new politics. While the rise of right-wing populism did not change the political system in Estonia and Latvia, its outcome in Hungary and Poland was the breakup of the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact which was the foundation of the political stability during first post-communist decade. The Kaczynski twins founded Rzecz Pospolita IV (4th Republic of Poland), grounded in the thorough and comprehensive lustration of the ex-communist cadres. Fidesz leader Orban used the two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament to promulgate a new constitution. Lithuania is unique in that the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact was not abolished, but preserved and consolidated thanks to the collaboration of all, by this time, established and left-of-center populist parties during the impeachment proceedings. The impeachment of Paksas can be considered as the stress test of the young Lithuanian liberal democracy just on the eve of the accession of Lithuania to the European Union and NATO. An unhappy peculiarity of the stress tests is that they sometimes break or damage the items tested. Preventing the transformation of liberal post-communism into populist post-communism in Lithuania, the impeachment as stress test was a success. However, against the expectation of many observers, it did not enhance the quality of democracy of Lithuania. The legacy of impeachment are disequilibrium of the balance of power between government branches in favor of the Constitutional Court, strengthening of the left-of-centre populist political forces and the interference of secret services into Lithuanian politics with the self-assumed mission to safeguard Lithuanian democracy from the perils of populism.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate vertical and horizontal mismatch between education and current occupation for graduates in four post-communist societies: Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia. In this way it contributes to the field by exploring how mechanisms, known from previous studies on western societies, affect job mismatch in emerging market economies. Design/methodology/approach – Two dependent variables are constructed: working in a non-graduate occupation as defined by the ISCO job title depicts vertical mismatch; assessment of the job from the perspective of the fields of study describes horizontal mismatch. Since the dependent variables are dichotomous ones, binary logistic regression models are fitted to the data predicting the incidence of mismatch. Explanatory variables cover mechanisms affecting job mismatch: variation by fields of studies, accumulated work experience during studies, labour market uncertainties during early career, trade off between job safety and job mismatch, persistence of “bad” labour market entry during early career, influence of parental background on school-to-work transition. Findings – The analysis reveals significant differences for study fields in association with occupational specificity of the disciplines. Only study-related work experience seems to be advantageous to find a matching job. Labour market uncertainties increase the probability of job mismatch. Job safety is more important than a matching job. Originality/value – Mismatch in first occupation has strong and long-lasting effect on the job match even five years after the graduation. The effect of parental background on job mismatch is curvilinear.

Aleksandras Shtromas (1931-1999), a British-American scholar, became an eminent figure in his native Lithuania, yet Westem social scientists have yet to discover this human rights activist, Soviet dissident, and political thinker. Shtromas had no doubts about the inexorable collapse of the Soviet Union, resting his analysis on the assumption that communism was unable to provide any viable social and moral order. The vast majority of the Soviet intelligentsia had become skilled at the ideological cat-and-mouse games, wrestling wth Soviet Newspeak and censorship, and employing an Aesopian language in order to survive and remain as decent as possible in a world of brainwashing and lies. A gifted prophet of post-communism, Shtromas was the only political scientist in the world who took the disintegration of the Soviet Union as early as the late 1970s as an ongoing process. This essay links Shtromas' legacy to the great East European dissenters.

Recent surveys on post-soviet Eastern Europe reveal that ethnicity and ethnic differentiation are gradually losing their salience among local citizens, while social identification (for example, identities of workers or businesspeople) has become increasingly important as a way for people to perceive both themselves and ongoing political and economic changes. This tendency purports to herald the emergence of a society in which citizens compete for rewards and opportunities on the basis of merit rather than ethnic heritage. In Lithuania and Western Ukraine, however, this is not the case. National identification axes are the most important, and a strong national identity promotes democracy and opposition to communism.

The paper focuses on the ways of visualizing political and economic transformation in the works of artists from post-communist Europe mainly in the 1990s. Those works, which today, in a wide geographical context, may be interpreted as problematizing the idea of transformation, were often originally appropriated by such discourses of the post-transformation decade as the art of the new media and technology (Estonia), performance (Russia), feminism (Lithuania), body art (Hungary), and critical art (Poland), which marginalized the problem of transformation. Analyses of the works of artists from Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia make it possible to determine and problematize the poles of transformation in a number of ways, pointing at the inadequacy of those poles which traditionally spread from the end of totalitarian communism to democracy identified with free market economy. By the same token, they allow one to question their apparent antithetical character which connects the transformation process to the binary structures of meaning established in the period of the Cold War. The presented analyses demonstrate that the gist of the transformation was not so much the fall of communism, which is surviving in the post-1989 art of East-Central Europe due to the leftist inclinations of many artists with a Marxist intellectual background, but the collapse of the binary structure of the world. Methodologically inspired by Boris Buden, Susan Buck-Morss, Marina Gržinić, Edit András, Boris Groys, Alexander Kiossev, and Igor Zabel, they restore the revolutionary character of 1989 and, simultaneously, a dialectical approach to the accepted poles of the transformation. An example of ideological appropriation, which may be interpreted as problematizing the political transformation, is Trap. Expulsion from Paradiseby the Lithuanian artist Eglė Rakauskaitė. The first part of the paper focuses on Jaan Toomik’s May 15-June 1, 1992, interpreted in the theoretical terms proposed by Marina Gržinić and Boris Groys as a work of art that visualizes the concept of post-communism as excrement of the transformation process. Placed in the context of such works as In Fat(1998) by Eglė Rakauskaitė, 200 000 Ft(1997) by the Hungarian artist Kriszta Nagy or Corrections(1996-1998) by Rassim Krastev from Bulgaria, Toomik’s work is one of many created at that time in East-Central Europe, which thematized the transformation process with reference to the artist’s body. Krastev’s Correctionsproblematizes the transformation as a process of self-colonization by the idiom of the West, as well as a modification of the utopia of production, one aspect of which was propaganda referring to the body, changing it in an instrument that transformed the political order into a consumerist utopia where bodies exist as marketable products. The part titled, “The Poles of Transformation as a Function of the Cold War,” focuses on A Western View(1989) by the Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov and This is my blood(2001) by Alexander Kossolapov from Russia. In a theoretical context drawn from the texts by Zabel, Buden, and Ekaterina Degot, Solakov’s work has been interpreted as problematizing the transformation understood as refashioning the world, no longer based on the bipolar division into East and West. The paper ends with an analysis of Cunyi Yashi, a work of the Hungarian artist Róbert Szabó Benke, which problematizes the collapse of the bipolar world structure in politics and the binary coding of sexual identity. In Szabó Benke’s work, the transformation is represented as rejection of the binary models of identity – as questioning their role in the emergence of meanings in culture.

Santrauka. Straipsnyje lyginamos tarpukario ir pokomunistinės agrarinių reformų pradinės sąlygos, eiga ir rezultatai, šį diachroninį palyginimą praplečiant ir kontroliuojant sinchroniniais palyginimais su analogiškais procesais kitose Rytų ir Vidurio Europos šalyse tarpukario ir pokomunistiniais laikais. Svarbiausius abiejų reformų panašumus lėmė 1949–51 m. kolektyvizacija, visus Lietuvos žemdirbius pastačiusi į padėtį, kurioje iki 1922 m. reformos buvo dvarų darbininkai kumečiai, kurie dalį atlyginimo gaudavo natūra – ordinarija. Jos dalis buvo dvaro inventoriumi bei gyvuliais dirbamas dvaro žemės sklypas, analogiškas kolūkiečių asmeninių pagalbinių ūkių sklypams. Skirtingai nuo Rusijos, Lietuvos kolūkiečiai nebuvo kolūkių baudžiauninkai, o tik kumečiai. Kaip ir dvarų iki 1922 m. reformos darbininkams, sovietiniams kumečiams buvo taikomas represinis darbo jėgos kontrolės režimas, suteikęs kolektyvinių ūkių vadovams faktinę „raudonųjų baronų“ galią. Pagrindiniai tarpukario reformų Rytų Europos šalyse tikslai buvo anksčiau privilegijuotų tautinių mažumų galios apribojimas ir bolševizmo įtakos slopinimas. Tik Baltijos šalyse ji neturėjo neigiamų ekonominių pasekmių, ką Lietuvoje užtikrino kartu su dvarų parceliacija vykęs kaimų skirstymasis į vienkiemius. Palyginti su tarpukario reforma, pokomunistinė agrarinė reforma buvo mažiau nuosekli, nes jos eigą lėmė interesų konfliktas tarp naujos sovietinių kumečių kartos, suinteresuotų įprastų darbo vietų išsaugojimu, ir išėjusių į miestus buvusių žemės savininkų palikuonių. Kadangi Lietuva buvo viena tų pokomunistinių šalių, kuriose stipresnė buvo antroji stovykla, čia buvo įgyvendinta radikali restitucinė žemės reforma ir šeiminį ūkį restauruojanti de-kolektyvizacija. Dėl sovietmečiu įvykusios vienkiemių likvidacijos ir demografinių pokyčių, ji negrąžino Lietuvos kaimo ir žemės ūkio į 1940 m., bet sukūrė būklę, labiau primenančią Lietuvos kaimo situaciją iki 1922 m. reformos: gausus mažažemių („trihektarininkų“) sluoksnis, gatviniai kaimai (buvusios kolūkinės gyvenvietės), fragmentuota žemės valdų struktūra, iš žemės ūkio bendrovių (ŽŪB) išaugę arba naujai besikuriantys latifundiniai ūkiai, primenantys ikireforminius dvarus. Pačių ŽŪB, įsikūrusių kolūkių gamybiniuose centruose, pokomunistinė raida analogiška 1922 m. reformos apkarpytų dvarų, kurių nuosavybėje liko jų centrai, likimui: dauguma bankrutavo ir buvo išvaržyti, tačiau dalis virto konkurencingomis kapitalistinėms žemės ūkio įmonėmis. Savo ekonominiais rezultatais tarpukario reforma pranoksta pokomunistinę, nes po jos ir bendra žemės ūkio gamybos apimtis, ir jos produktyvumas tik augo, tuo tarpu kai pirmuoju pokomunistinės transformacijos dešimtmečiu abu rodikliai smuko. Ekskomunistinės kairės propaguota nuosaiki agrarinė reforma nebūtų leidusi išvengti gamybos apimties smukimo, nes tą apimtį užtikrino vėlyvuoju sovietmečiu žemės ūkiui sudarytos „ekonominio šiltnamio“ sąlygos (dosnios subsidijos) ir neribota paklausa. Tačiau nuosaikesnė ar palaipsnė reforma veikiausiai būtų leidusi jau pirmajame dešimtmetyje padidinti žemės ūkio gamybos produktyvumą. Lietuvai tapus ES nare ir jos žemės ūkiui vėl patekus į „ekonominį šiltnamį“, žemės ūkio veikla nebegali būti vertinama vien ekonominiais masteliais. Matuojant pokomunistinės agrarinės reformos padarinius Lietuvoje gamtosaugos vertybėmis, jie yra labai pozityvūs.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: 1922 m. žemės reforma Lietuvoje, pokomunistinė agrarinė reforma Lietuvoje, represinė darbo jėgos kontrolė, tarptautinis tarpukario ir pokomunistinių agrarinių reformų palyginimas.Key words: Land reform in Lithuania in 1922, post-communist agrarian reform ir Lithuania, repressive control of labour, international comparison of the interwar and post-communist agrarian reforms.ABSTRACTA COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF AGRARIAN REFORMS IN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIAThe paper compares the initial conditions, the course and the outcomes of the interwar (1922) and the post-communist (since 1989) agrarian reforms in Lithuania, controlling and enlarging these diachronic comparisons with synchronic comparisons of the analoguos processes in other Eastern and Central European countries at the same times. Most important similarities between both reforms were created by the collectivization in 1948–1951, which for all Lithuaniam tillers shaped the condition in which before the 1922 reform the wage workers (kumečiai) at the large estates were living and working. They received in money only part of their salaries. Another part was paid in kind, including a land plot which was cultivated using the inventory and draught animals provided by landlord. This is quite similar to the small plots allocation for personal use to collective farms workers, and how they were cultivated. However, differently from the workers of collective farms in Russia, who untill late 1960s had no passports, Lithuanian collective farmers were not made serfs, because the passportization of Lithuanian countryside population was implemented by Soviet auhorities as part of their efforts to suppress resistance movement. Similarly to agrarian wage workers before 1922, collective farm workers were subject to the repressive labour force control regime, providing for managers of collective farms the de facto power of „red barons“. Main aims of the interwar agrarian reforms were the restriction of power of the formerly privileged minorities and suppression of Communism. However, only in the Baltic States the reforms had no negative economic outcomes. In Lithuania, such outcomes were preempted by the dispersion of villages into individual settlement farms, which proceeded along with the parcellization of large estates. Comparing with interwar reform, post-communist agrarian reform was less consistent, because its course was under heavy impact of the interest conflict between the new generation of the collective farms workers, interested to keep their working places, and those descendants of the former land owners, who left villages for cities. As far as Lithuania was one of those post-communist countries, where second group was stronger, in this country a radical restitutive land reform was implemented along with the de-collectivization which has restored family farming. However, because of the interjacent liquidation of the individual settlements (re-concentration of rural population in the villages) and demographic changes in the Communist time, it did restore in the Lithuanian countryside and agriculture the status quo of 1940. Rather, it has created the state that is more reminiscent of situation in the Lithuanian countryside before the agrarian reform of 1922: broad social stratum of small plots (3 ha) owners; villages; a fragmented land ownership structure; and large farms reminiscent of landed estates before 1922 reform. While some of them are new ventures (e.g. huge swine-breeding farms, operated by foreignly owned agrobusiness), many emerged out of agricultural partnerships, which were the fragments of the former collective farms. They were established by former collective workers to operate technological complexes of former collective farms which were too large for using by family farms. The evolution of these remainders of collective farms is similar to the evolution of the former landlord farms after their landholdings were reduced by agrarian reform of 1922. The reform left in ownership of the landlords the buildings and other estate with part of land (up to 80–150 ha). Most of these residual estates went bankrupt and were sold in parts at auctions, while some of the survived becoming competitive agricultural enterprises. Similarly, most efficient partnerships survived, expanded and became competitive large-scale corporate capitalist agricultural enterprises. The economic outcomes of the interwar reform are superior to those of post-communist reform: after the first reform, both the general agricultural output and the productivity increased, while both indicators decreased during the first decade of the post-communist agrarian reform. Ex-communist Left in Lithuania promoted moderate agrarian reform, involving transformation of collective farms into the private corporate capitalist agricultural companies. The author argues that such reform would not be able to prevent the reduction in output, because the output as of in 1989 was possible only under economic hothouse conditions of the late Soviet time for agriculture (lavish subsidies, unlimited demand, „price scissors“ favouring agriculture). However, most probably, a more gradual reform would help to increase the agricultural productivity already during its first decade. After Lithuania was accepted to EU and its agriculture is in the „economic hothouse“ again, the agricultural activites cannot be assessed only by economic criteria alone. If the outcomes of the post-communist agrarian reform are assessed by values of ecology, they are very positive indeed.

When we observe the social and political life in post-communist countries, we can also notice that generations of people born after the fall of communism are beginning to play an increasingly important role in shaping the views and political preferences of the whole society. Young people socialized in significantly different conditions than their parents’ generation represent (in many areas) attitudes that indicate their “generational difference”. The aim of the article is to describe and explain to what extent the assessments of systemic transformation in chosen post-communist countries are determined by the age of citizens. The author analyzes secondary data from surveys on public opinion in the following countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. In order to explain how young people perceive their position in relation to the older generation, which remembers the communist era, an appropriate case study was conducted. The study was conducted among students from six academic centers in Ukraine (Kyiv, Lviv, Nizhyn, Pereiaslav, Sumy, and Uzhhorod). It was found that the strength of the relationship between age and the perception of systemic change varies across countries. The deepest divisions between the older and younger generations were identified in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria. It was also found that the young generation of contemporary Ukraine is trying to emphasize its own generational difference by creating its own political identity in opposition to the features attributed to older generations.

As the Baltic states commemorated the centenary of their first appearance as independent states in 2018, their celebrations were mixed with feelings of ambiguity about the road travelled since then. Although today we often see Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as 'post-communist' countries, their experience with communism was actually much harsher than in Central Europe, since, for nearly fifty years, the three countries were forcibly a part of the Soviet Union. This has made their journey back into the European community all that more remarkable, and it has also served to keep these countries somewhat more resistant to the dangers of democratic backsliding. After all, their continued independence and well-being are intricately dependent on keeping the European liberal order intact. Nevertheless, the winds of populism have also begun to buffet these three countries, meaning that they have been struggling to keep their balancing act going. This article reviews the development of the Baltic states over the last 20 years, both in terms of domestic politics and EU accession and membership. It profiles the way in which the three countries have been trying to keep their faith in democracy and liberalism alive amidst ever more turbulent political and economic times.

In today’s Central Europe ethnolinguistic nationalism is the region’s standard normative ideology of statehood creation, legitimation and maintenance. This ideology proposes that in spatial terms, the area of the use of national language X should overlap with the territory of nation-state X, in which all members of nation X should reside. In terms of cultural policy, this means that only works written by “indubitable” members of nation X in language X can be seen as belonging to culture X. This self-limiting pattern of ethnolinguistic “purity” (homogeneity) excluded from 20th century Polish literature much of traditional Polish-Lithuanian culture and numerous authors writing in other post-Polish-Lithuanian languages than Polish. Democratization that followed the fall of communism in 1989 partly transcended this ethnolinguistic exclusion, but the old national policy has been back since 2015.

The objective of the dissertation is to identify the main features of Western personal social services in institutional and organizational structure of post-communist Lithuania. The first part of the dissertation is devoted to get analytical frame of personal social services. Part two presents the research strategy used to analyze the institutional and organizations structure of personal social services in post-communist Lithuania: object of research, data sources and data gathering techniques, data analysis process and techniques. The analysis of institutional and organizational structure of personal social services in post-communist Lithuania is conducted in the third part of dissertation. Findings: the institutional and organizational structure of personal social services in post-communist Lithuania corresponds to Western structures, but the development was influenced by the legacy of communist period.<br>Disertacijoje tyrinėjama asmeninių socialinių paslaugų institucinė ir organizacinė struktūra Lietuvoje. Pagrindinis darbo tikslas – ištirti Vakarų šalių asmeninių socialinių paslaugų institucinės ir organizacinės struktūros pagrindinių bruožų raišką Lietuvoje. Disertacijos struktūrą lėmė išsikeltas tyrimo tikslas. Pirmoje darbo dalyje siekiama pateikti asmeninių socialinių paslaugų sampratą, išskiriant ją sudarančius elementus, kurių transformacijos analizuojamos kitose darbo dalyse. Antroje darbo dalyje pristatomi tyrimo objektai, duomenų šaltiniai ir duomenų rinkimo metodai, duomenų analizės metodai ir procesas. Trečiojoje darbo dalyje analizuojama Lietuvos asmeninių socialinių paslaugų institucinė ir organizacinė struktūra, siekiant identifikuoti Vakarų šalių asmeninių socialinių paslaugų institucinės ir organizacinės struktūros bruožus, bei atskleisti atitinkamo bruožo raišką sąlygojančius mechanizmus. Disertacijoje konstatuojama, kad Lietuvos asmeninių socialinių paslaugų institucinėje ir organizacinėje struktūroje galima identifikuoti tam tikrus Vakarų šalių bruožus, tačiau jų raiška yra veikiama iki nepriklausomybės atkūrimo buvusios institucinės ir organizacinės struktūros.

Tyrime nagrinėjamas postkomunistinis palikimas šalyje ir jo įtaka Skandinaviško socialdemokratinio modelio gerovės valstybės kūrimo politikai. Prieš du dešimtmečius iš Sovietų Sąjungos išsivadavusios valstybės, taip pat ir Lietuva, dabar susiduria su naujais iššūkiais - gebėjimu kurti gerovę savo valstybės piliečiams. Taigi, pagrindinė šiame tyrime iškelta problema - postkomunistinėse valstybėse atsisakius sovietinio socialinio politikos modelio iki šiol nebuvo sukurta ir įdiegta optimali socialinės apsaugos alternatyva, kuri pilnai atitiktų transformacijos metų realijas. Kadangi komunistinės sistemos prisiminimai įtakoja visuomenės tolesnius lūkesčius, tyrimo objektas darbe išskirtas kaip Lietuvos gerovės valstybės politika. Šio magistro darbo tyrimo tikslas – ištirti, kaip postkomunistinės transformacijos ir likęs sovietinis palikimas įtakojo Lietuvos politiką kuriant socialinės gerovės valstybę pateikiant Skandinavijos šalių pavyzdį. Šiam tikslui įgyvendinti buvo iškelti tokie uždaviniai: Aptarti postkomunistinės erdvės bruožus ir transformacijų pradžią valstybės valdžioje; Aprašyti svarbiausius postkomunistinių transformacijų visuomenėje procesus; Pateikti socialinės gerovės valstybės Skandinavijos modelio pagrindinius ypatumus; Ištirti, kaip Lietuvoje po Nepriklausomybės atgavimo buvo kuriama socialinės gerovės sistema; Išanalizuoti, kaip sovietinis palikimas Lietuvoje trukdo kurti socialinės gerovės valstybę taikant Skandinavijos socialdemokratinį modelį. Siekiant... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]<br>This search contains post-communism countries transitions to democracy and heritage that was left after that in society. Now in Lithuania some problems are seen that makes influence to Scandinavian model welfare state building processes. First of all, the main aim of this paper: post-communist countries didn’t found till now the most optimal and advantageous welfare state model. The main reason is that communism system recollection has influence on society expectations in Lithuania welfare state policy. So, the key object of this paper is Lithuania welfare state policy after rapid reforms. Secondly, the main problems are: to reveal post-communism transformations heritage; to give Scandinavia welfare state model as an example; to discuss Lithuania legitimate basis on welfare state policy; to analyze if this model could be applied in post-communist Lithuania. Welfare state model in Scandinavia contains strong labor market, solid economy and generous welfare spending. The results of analyze shows, that welfare state won’t be built in Lithuania unless people will start to care about all society well-being, not only individual and most of the time – material. Statistic data of searches or interviews how people grades well-being shows, that Lithuania is far more lagging behind Scandinavia and Europe average level. So, in order to make welfare state policy successful society needs to get more solidarity, which was impossible in communism. Moreover, Lithuania economy needs to get... [to full text]

Defence date: 13 February 2009<br>Examining board: Prof. Jaap Dronkers, EUI (Supervisor); Prof. Jean-Pascal Daloz, Oxford University; Prof. Arfon Rees, EUI; Prof. Iván Szelényi, Yale University<br>PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses<br>This study looks into the post-communist pathways of the young functionaries of the Communist Youth League, the so-called Komsomol. The Komsomol can be regarded as an important stepping stone within the pathways into the communist elite. Given that these young functionaries eventually had to replenish the ranks of the established communist elite, the study proposes to conceptualize them as the prospective communist elite. It is this prospect of them becoming the communist elite that makes them so interesting to study: their position in the Komsomol signified that they were pre-selected possessors of the quality to strive for ‘good life’. Simultaneously however they are observed as people who desired to organize their accomplishment by following the rules of the game. However, with the breakdown of the communist regime this kind of career logic has abruptly declined. Against this background, the main research question is: ‘What happened to the former functionaries of the Komsomol in the course of the post-communist transformation, and why?’ This thesis attempts to shed light on questions of elite formation by drawing on retrospective accounts of insiders. These perspectives represent a previously hardly researched ‘other side’ of an experience that took place before and after the collapse of communism, an aspect which remains indispensable in understanding the post-communist development. Altogether 36 biographical in-depth interviews were carried out in 2005 with the Central Committee functionaries of the cohort of 1986-1989 in Lithuania. Interviews were also conducted with former functionaries in Belarus and utilized to facilitate the analysis of the Lithuanian data. The discussion of data is organized into two parts. The first empirical part deals with several aspects of the condition of the Komsomol functionaries at the moment of the exit from communism. This part outlines the main desires that motivate their decisions at this turbulent time; it also aims to explore the meaning of this moment in order to understand how it may have affected their lives. Was it a moment of loss? Or was it a moment of liberation? The second empirical part of the study explores the mobility of the former functionaries after the breakdown of communism. Here the study observes how the striving which initially propelled them into the communist structures was eventually converted within the post-communist structures. How did those people who were striving for ‘good life’ in the old system organise their accomplishment during post-communism? While the study represents an exploration into the subjective notions of accomplishment, it also proposes a reflection on how this process of subjective striving results in elite formation.

This chapter turns to the Baltics. It focuses in particular on the case of Lithuania, the country with the highest numbers of both prewar Jewish populations and Jewish victims in the Holocaust in the Baltic region. Lithuania is also the country that has most aggressively pursued a strategy of memory conflation, by which the Holocaust and the Soviet occupation of Lithuania are considered, together, as a “double genocide” and not as distinct historical events with their own tragic trajectories and consequences. Lithuania has also been at the helm of a creative use of post-World War II architecture of international justice, where the state is prosecuting individuals for genocide—not for the Holocaust, but for the “genocide” of Soviet occupation. This chapter begins with the overview of the Holocaust in the Baltic states, then describes Holocaust remembrance practices in the Baltics during Soviet communism, and finally analyzes postcommunist strategies aimed at explicitly using the legal and political structure designed to deal with crimes of the Holocaust to instead criminalize the Soviet past.

This chapter highlights how the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union initiated a new period in the history of the Jews in the area. Poland was now a fully sovereign country, and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Moldova also became independent states. Post-imperial Russia faced the task of creating a new form of national identity. This was to prove more difficult than in other post-imperial states since, unlike Britain and France, the tsarist empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, had not so much been the ruler of a colonial empire as an empire itself. All of these countries now embarked, with differing degrees of enthusiasm, on the difficult task of creating liberal democratic states with market economies. For the Jews of the area, the new political situation allowed both the creation and development of Jewish institutions and the fostering of Jewish cultural life in much freer conditions, but also facilitated emigration to Israel, North America, and western Europe on a much larger scale.