Points of memory in the narrative of a ‘Mnemonic Warrior’: gender, displacement, and the anti-Soviet war of resistance in Lithuania

ABSTRACT

Drawing on feminist theories on memory and memory work, this article analyzes the biographical narrative of Aldona Vilutienė (neé Sabaitytė), a former partisan messenger and deportee, who created the first museum commemorating the anti-Soviet resistance and the deportations carried out under Stalin in post-Soviet Lithuania. The analysis is focused on points of memory, a theoretical concept developed by Marianne Hirsch who defined them as ‘points of intersection between past and present, memory and post-memory, personal remembrance and cultural recall.’ This approach helps us to better understand the complex processes of memory production and reconstruct the lived experiences associated with remembering war and displacement. In addition, it challenges the portrayal of partisan war and deportations as monumental national traumas.

KEYWORDS:

• Women and war
• deportations
• memory entrepreneurs
• points of memory
• testimonies
• Lithuania

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Georgia Gwinnett College for generous support during my academic leave in Fall 2015 when I worked on this essay. I would also like to thank Justinas Sajauskas for allowing me to use several images of vizitėlės.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example, in 2012, The Lithuanian Research and Studies Center in Chicago organized ‘Hope and Spirit’ exhibit that featured handicrafts and artifacts made in Soviet far north. Several documentaries were produced, drawing on the materials presented in the exhibit.

2. In 1993, Vilutienė founded the Tauro Apygardos Partizanų ir Tremties Muziejus [Tauras District Museum of Partisans and Deportation] in Marijampolė, a provincial town in Lithuania. She served as the Director of this museum until 2000.

3. A journalist from Tremtinys [Deportee] newspaper introduced me to Aldona Vilutienė and participated in the conversation.

4. The use of the term ‘genocide’ in the title of this institution has been subject to intense domestic and international scrutiny since its inception. The criticism being that the term is used inappropriately to describe the Stalinist repressions that are researched by this Institute, in addition to the Holocaust and the Soviet period. Perhaps in response to this criticism, the Museum of the Genocide Victims, an institution associated with the Genocide and Resistance Research Center, created a section on the Holocaust. There is a section, consisting primarily of photographs, on the Roma genocide in Lithuania as well. However, the largest part of the exhibit focuses on the Soviet period.

5. Raslanas was accused of organizing Rainiai massacre in 1941 when he served as the Head of NKVD in Telšiai. He was sentenced in absentia in 2001 for what was described as ‘the crimes of genocide’ in Lithuania.

6. Mingailė Jurkutė, a contributor to a new book Partizano sąsiuviniai [Partisan’s notebooks], made this point in 2013. She identified Mindaugas Pocius’ recent book on collaboration during the war of resistance (2009) as an attempt, albeit with limited success, to address the problem (Jurkutė 2013). Mikelevičius (2013) mentions a program at the Genocide and Resistance Research Center which focuses on addressing the relationships between the partisans and the civilians.

7. Today in Lithuania in some circles partisan songs are considered to be an important legacy from the postwar period and are performed during song festivals.

8. According to Ivanauskaitė-Šeibutienė (2013), Lietuvių tautosakos rankraštynas [The collection of manuscripts on Lithuanian folklore] holds thousands of such texts.

9. Ona Andziulytė-Liutkevičienė’s essay ‘Žvilgsnis į laisvę’ [A glimpse of freedom] was published in Aldona Vilutienė’s book Laiko dulkes nužėrus (2013, 128).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Georgia Gwinnett College.

Notes on contributors

Dovilė Budrytė

Dovilė Budrytė is a Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College. Her areas of interest are historical memory, gender studies, and nationalism. Her publications include articles on memory, ethnicity, and democratization in the Baltic states and three books. Her recent book is Memory and Trauma in International Relations: Theories, Cases and Debates (with coeditor Erica Resende, Routledge 2013).