„Degintas, bet nesudegęs“: Pirčiupių reikšmės ir jų kaita sovietinėje ir nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje

LTStraipsnyje nagrinėjama Pirčiupių memorialo – pirmojo Lietuvos SSR įsteigto memorialo „hitlerinio teroro aukoms“ atminti – raida ir Pirčiupių kaimo sunaikinimo istorijos vaidmuo sovietinėje ir nepriklausomos Lietuvos atminimo kultūrose. Sovietmečiu naudojantis šia istorija siekta pagrįsti esminį ideologinį teiginį, jog nacių represijų, teroro ir masinių žudynių taikinys buvo visa „tarybų“ Lietuvos visuomenė, sykiu diegtas ambivalentiškas Pirčiupių kaip taikaus lietuvių valstiečių kaimo, sunaikinto hitlerininkų, ir aktyvaus „partizanų kaimo“ vaizdinys. Atgimimo laikotarpiu Pirčiupių memorialo akcentas ir vienas iš Lietuvos SSR kultūros kanono simbolių – Motinos skulptūra – nebuvo pašalinta, tačiau pati Pirčiupių sunaikinimo istorija, dėl kontrreakcijos į intensyvią Pirčiupių istorijos panaudą sovietmečiu ir šiuo laikotarpiu sukurtas reikšmines asociacijas, kitų Lietuvos atminimo politikos prioritetų bei socioekonominių aplinkybių tapo antraeile atminimo vieta bei ilgainiui palankia terpe trečiosioms šalims plėtoti savąjį istorijos naratyvą. Esminiai žodžiai: Pirčiupiai, Pirčiupių Motina, paminklai, kultūros paveldas. [Iš leidinio]

ENThe article examines the development of the Pirčiupiai Memorial – the first memorial established in Soviet-occupied Lithuania to commemorate the victims of Hitler’s terror – and the role of the story of the destruction of the village of Pirčiupiai in the of Soviet culture of memory and then in independent Lithuania. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, as the Khrushchev regime renewed and reinforced the narrative of the Great Patriotic War, the story of the destruction of the village of Pirčiupiai was singled out as one of the most important symbols of this period. During the years of Soviet occupation, this story was used first of all to justify the fundamental ideological assertion that the target of Nazi repression, terror, and mass murder was the whole of “soviet” Lithuanian society and the Lithuanians; 2) to marginalize the significance of the victims of the Jewish genocide; and 3) to conceal the crimes committed by the USSR army and the NKVD forces in the rural areas of eastern Lithuania in 1944–1945: the mass burning of villages and the repression of civilians. The Soviet narrative maintained the ambivalent images of Pirčiupiai as (1) a peaceful Lithuanian village that was destroyed by Germans and the “bourgeois nationalists” who assisted them, and (2) a village that resisted and supported Soviet partisans (this image was strengthened over time), with an emphasis on the storylines of the village that was “burned alive” and “resurrected from the ashes” in the Soviet period. The monument to the Mother of Pirčiupiai was not affected by the wave of removal of Soviet-era monuments from Lithuania’s public spaces in 1989–1991.This exception can be explained by 1) the fact that the monument stood on the authentic site of the mass murder, and 2) the universal semantics of the object (the figure of a grieving mother). The history of the destruction of Pirčiupiai itself, 1) due to the counter-reaction to the intensive use of it during the Soviet period and the set of associations created during this period, 2) other priorities of Lithuanian commemoration policy, and 3) socio-economic circumstances, became a secondary commemorative site in the Lithuanian memorial landscape. The failure of Lithuanian public organizations, various interest groups, and political elites to identify Pirčiupiai as an important memorial site for the collective identity of the Lithuania society (or even for their own “political visibility”) eventually created a favorable environment for the representatives of third authoritarian countries (Russia and Belorussia) to develop their own neo-Soviet historical narrative. Since 24 February 2022, following Russia’s invasion and genocide of Ukraine, the soft regulation of historical imagery, which was carried out for many years by representatives of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus at public events in Pirčiupiai and other places of IIWW, is no longer working and does not seem to have any future. Keywords: Pirčiupiai, Mother of Pirčiupiai, monuments, cultural heritage. [From the publication]

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