[Family and the state in Soviet Lithuania: gender, law and society. Dalia Leinarte]

ENOrdinary women dressed in ordinary clothes watch another woman walking by, whose attire and appearance appear as if from another world, one filled with luxury and elegance. This iconic photograph taken in 1959 captured the reaction of women in Moscow to the outfit worn by a Dior model who happened to be passing by. Those poor Soviet women – one cannot help but think when looking at the cover of this book. Perhaps this was the aim of the book’s publishers. However, choosing a photograph that is in no way related to Lithuania to appear on the cover of a book about Lithuania, be it Soviet Lithuania but Lithuania nonetheless, is questionable. After Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Sovietologists have been increasingly conscious of disavowing the colonialist habit of identifying the whole USSR with Russia and the inclination to not notice differences between its republics. Perhaps today a different photograph might have been chosen for the cover, after all, Soviet Lithuania boasted a strong photography school. Also, the population of this Baltic state might also find it rather insulting that a book about their country was released as part of the Library of Modern Russia series, as if acknowledging it as a part of Russia.