The Collective Memory and its Transformations: The Great War and the Battle for Independence in Lithuania (1914–1920)

Abstract

The author aims to discuss three topics using the memory research method. The first part discusses construction of the imagined community and collective memory of 19th century Lithuanian intellectuals in a country where education in the national language, and the printing of books and papers, were banned. The second part of the article presents the impact of the Great War and the struggle for independence on collective memory as revealed in memoirs written in the 1914–1940 period by fighters on the front lines, refugees, intellectuals, and people in the occupied country. The third part discusses the extinction of the Great War and the battle for independence from collective memory as a natural and specially constructed phenomenon, caused by the Soviet regime.

Keywords

• history
• imagined community
• collective memory
• the Great War
• memoirs
• censorship