COURAGE

connecting collections

The National Gallery of Art in Lithuania holds a collection of artworks from the 20th century. The collection includes paintings, sculptures and prints by artists who worked in Soviet Lithuania, as well as by artists who lived abroad. During the postwar period, the style of Socialist Realism was imposed on artists who remained in Lithuania. From the 1960s onwards, the main goals of Lithuanian artists were to preserve the national identity and continue the modernist tradition. With no active or direct links with Western art, artists developed individual versions of Realism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstraction, and other tendencies in modern art. Some of these works can be ascribed to the cultural opposition.

The collection is held in the Lithuanian Special Archive. The archive was arranged to manage a special collection of material that consists mostly of Soviet Lithuanian KGB, Communist Party and Interior Ministry documents. Documents from these former institutions are recognised by the Lithuanian government as material of special status, and they are separated from other government archive documents. The Lithuanian Special Archive is a governmental institution that supervises, keeps, stores and initiates legislation regarding this special group of documents.
The collection is part of this group. It holds various documents about Lithuania’s anti-Soviet armed resistance in 1944-1953. While the partisan movement is related more to the resistance rather than to cultural opposition issues, the collection includes creative work by partisans, such as poetry, drawings, works of art, cards, and other items. The existence of this kind of work demonstrates the phenomenon of Lithuania’s anti-Soviet resistance and cultural opposition which was not limited only to armed rebellion. Partly because of this, the partisan resistance has a deep influence today on the Lithuanian historical memory.

Ljubomir Tadić was a professor of philosophy, academic, and politically active intellectual over many decades. During the socialist period in Yugoslavia he was a prominent opposition figure and critically minded intellectual who struggled against the Yugoslav system. Ljubomir Tadić’s collection is located in the Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade.

The Lovinescu–Ierunca Collection at the Central National Historical Archives (ANIC) in Bucharest is arguably the most important collection created by the Romanian Diaspora in Paris. The collection illustrates not only Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca’s interest in the subject of dissent in Romania but also how their activity at Radio Free Europe (RFE) created a transnational network of support for those who decided to speak against the regime.