The Vilnius University Party Committee collection reflects the official policy and attitudes towards teachers, researchers and students. The university administration and Party Committee tried to control the educational process and the creative expression of scholars and students. On the other hand, documents from the collection help us to better understand the creative ambitions of Lithuanian researchers and even students, which did not always comply with the official ideology.
Vilnius University Party Committee Collection (1945-1986)
Historiat zbirke
The collection is stored in the Archive of Lithuanian Communist Party Documents, which is a subdivision of the Lithuanian Special Archive. The Vilnius University Party Committee was a subdivision of the Vilnius City Party Committee organisation. The collection covers the period from 1945 to 1986. Vilnius City Party Committee documents were sent to the Lithuanian Communist Party Archive, which was a subdivision of Institute of the History of the Communist Party. During the Soviet period, the archive was closed to researchers and the public. The situation changed after 1990. In 1991, the Party archive was transformed into the Lithuania‘s Society Organisations Archive. Since then, the collection of the Vilnius University Party Committee (fond no 7017) was opened to researchers and the public. In 2001, the archive was reformed once again, and became the Archive of Lithuanian Communist Party Documents, which is a subdivision of the Lithuanian Special Archive.
The collection gives us an understanding of the policy of the university authorities towards the intellectual elite, teachers and students. The Party Committee tried to control not only the educational process, but also the creative expression of scholars and students. Documents from the collection help us to better understand the creative ambitions of Lithuanian scholars and even students, which did not always comply with the official ideology. The main aims of teachers and researchers were to preserve the Lithuanian national heritage and to popularise masterpieces of Lithuanian art and literature.
Opis vsebine
The collection consists of various documents: Party Committee resolutions, reports, and minutes of Party Committee meetings. The most valuable documents in the collection are those which cover various manifestations of cultural opposition. They include documents about the activities of scholars from the Department of Lithuanian Literature: Vanda Zaborskaitė, Irena Kostkevičiūtė, Meilė Lukšienė and Aurelija Rabačiauskaitė. They were accused of 'anti-Marxism' and bourgeois nationalism in their academic work, and were dismissed from the university. The collection also contains documents relating to students' creative ambitions. A group of students from the Faculty of Philology (including Tomas Venclova) wanted to print a volume of articles by young writers and scholars with the help of their professors. The work was criticised by the Party Committee and was not published.
Švedas, Aurimas. Matricos nelaisvėje: Sovietmečio lietuviu̜ istoriogafija (1944 - 1985) [Imprisoned within the Matrix. Soviet Lithuanian Historiography (1944–1985)]. In Lithuanian. Vilnius: Aidai, 2009. Book
Maslauskienė, Nijolė , interview by Ivanauskas, Vilius, Sirutavičius, Vladas , Grybkauskas, Saulius, September 26, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection
