Post-Soviet transformation of Lithuanian state cultural policy: the meanings of democratisation

Abstract

This paper presents a general overview of the process of the democratisation of cultural policy in Lithuania by exploring explicit arguments about democratisation in debates and policy documents in Lithuania (1988–2011). At the early stage of transformation (1988–1992), democratisation was envisaged as the administrative decentralisation of political institutions, particularly the Ministry of Culture, and as the introduction of democratic principles, such as freedom of speech and cultural self-regulation. More substantial meanings of democratisation were articulated in debates about ethnic diversity and social equality. The study reveals tensions between the values of high culture and pop culture and the unitary notion of Lithuanian national ethnic culture and the cultures of national minorities. At a later stage, the salience of the ethnic dimension decreased when the democratisation of cultural policy was conceptualised in relation to the knowledge economy, which required revision of the early post-Soviet confrontation between culture and its economic use.

Keywords:

• Lithuania
• post-Soviet transformation
• democratisation
• knowledge economy

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewer for their useful comments. Errors are the author’s only.

Notes

1. I would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewer for their useful comments. Errors are the author’s only.

2. In 1988, cinema was returned to the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture (Lithuanian Cultural Policy 1997, p. 33).

3. So far publications about the democratisation of Lithuanian state cultural policy are limited to non-academic reports.

4. For an outline of the concepts of the democratisation of culture and cultural democracy, see Girard (1972).

5. Although LDDP calls itself social democratic, its policies are more neoliberal than the policies of the LDDP’s main oponent, the conservative party. the Fatherland Union (Tevynes Sajunga) (Norkus 2009, p. 34).

6. The ever growing literature about the democratic transformation of East European countries agrees that democratisation is an open process. For a good overview of existing approaches see Gel’man (2003); for democratisation in Lithuania see Girnius (1999). See also the Economist’s Democracy Index that classifies Lithuania as a ‘flawed democracy’, placed on the ranking between India and Timor-Leste in 2010.

7. The importance of the Congress was also emphasised in the first, and so far only report Cultural Policy in Lithuania (1997, pp. 31–32).

8. This is, of course, a very general sketch of the Soviet system of cultural policy, because it would take a separate volume to enumerate all professional and political departments. The crucial point, however, was the pervasive principle of democratic centralism.

9. See The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture and Education, Decree no. 144, 19 April 1990, Vilnius. Lithuanian Archive of Literature and Art (LLMA), f.342, a.1, b.3914, l.237, 239–241.

10. These are: the National Philharmonic Society, the National Opera and Ballet Theatre, the National Drama Theatre, the Lithuanian National Museum, the Lithuanian Art Museum, the National M.K. Čiurlionis Art Museum, the National Museum-Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and the National M. Mažvydas Library.

11. Recent radical criticisms of ‘class blind’ and implicitly elitist Lithuanian cultural policy were driven by the curator Redas Dirzys, based in Alytus, a small town west of Vilnius. A manifesto that called for organised resistance stated that Lithuanian artists ‘were as impoverished as the lowest unskilled workers’, the Ministry of Culture only ‘served the interests of the government and large businesses’ and creative unions knitted mafia-like networks of protectionism (Data Miners and Travailleurs Psychique 2010).

12. As it stressed folk culture and language as the core of national identity, Lithuanian nationalism was traditionally classified as ethnic rather than civic. For definitions of Lithuanian national identity in intellectual thought, see Donskis (1999); for a good overview of national minority policies, see the report by Kasatkina and Beresneviciute (2004).

13. Data from the State Statistical Department.

14. One of less known cases is systematic measures undertaken by the Ministry of Culture to culturally engage the ethnic groups that are most socially and economically disadvantaged, such as the tiny Roma community that amounts only to 2900 in 2011.

15. It may certainly be argued that ethnic culture-oriented events were channelled into the commemoration of Lithuania’s Millennium programme (1009–2009) that took place in parallel with Vilnius-the European Capital of Culture.

16. There are applied and academic studies, mostly based on quantitative audience surveys, about the cultural needs of Lithuania’s population, but no qualitative study of the society’s cultural practices has yet been undertaken.

17. A first comprehensive study of the work of the Ministry of Culture was funded by the European Union Structural Funds and was launched in 2010.

18. Although not all of them were in good shape: in 1980 the Ministry of Culture listed about 254 houses of culture that urgently needed renovation. LLMA, f. 342, a. 1, b. 3323, l.59.