Tradicijos palikimas: centro dešinės ideologinė vaizduotė Lietuvoje

LTMonografijoje nagrinėjama Lietuvos politinės centro dešinės, krikščioniškosios demokratijos ir konservatizmo, ideologinė vaizduotė, jos atsiradimas XIX a. pabaigoje, kaita ir būklė šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje. Remiantis Oxfordo ideologijų analizės mokykla išskiriamos ašinės centro dešinės sąvokos (asmuo, bendruomenė, pasaulėžiūra, valstybė, socialinis teisingumas, demokratija, laisvė, istorija) ir reflektuojama jų interpretavimo tradicija tiek įtakingų Lietuvos intelektualų mintyje, tiek bendrai Lietuvos bei Europos politinės minties tradicijoje. Nagrinėjant minėtąsias sąvokas, jos siejamos su jas apmąsčiusiais ir plėtojusiais intelektualais (Adomu Jakštu-Dambrausku, Jurgiu Matulaičiu, Stasiu Šalkauskiu, Mykolu Krupavičiumi, Antanu Maceina, Pranu Dielininkaičiu, Vytautu Landsbergiu) bei su vėlesnėmis šių idėjų interpretacijomis politinėse diskusijose bei šiuolaikinių Lietuvos partijų, Tėvynės Sąjungos ir Lietuvos krikščionių demokratų, mintyje. Atskirai nagrinėjamas ir pats lietuviškasis konservatizmo bei krikščioniškosios demokratijos supratimas bei trumpai pristatoma sovietmečiu veikusio katalikiškojo pogrindžio svarba išlaikant nuosaikaus dešinumo tradicijos tęstinumą. Tai darant pateikiamas platus lietuviškosios centro dešinės raidos paveikslas, primenama apie svarbiausius ją plėtojusius intelektualus, jų idėjos įkontekstinamos to meto diskusijose dėl gintinų politinių principų.

ENThe main goal of the study “Legacies of Tradition: Political Imagination of the Lithuanian Centre-Right” is to reconstruct the origins and changes of Lithuanian Christian Democratic and conservative political ideologies. The study focuses on the ideological imagination of the centre-right parties and movements from the end of the 19th century until the 21st century. Following Michael Freeden, this study treats political ideology as a set of logically coherent and historically lasting ideas characteristic of a group of people, which interprets politics and projects future visions of the political community. In this interpretation, ideologies consciously offer a logically coherent perspective of seeing the world and call for specific political aCtl°By choosing this research perspective, the study attempts to present the history of (Lithuanian political) ideas, a perspective that is extremely rare in Lithuanian academic debates. The study focuses not on the institutional and electoral aspects of centre-right activity or the philosophical quest to identify the correct right but rather on the morphological structure of ideology in order to present the history of the ideology. Following this approach, the study points out several core concepts reflected by Lithuanian centre-right intellectuals in their seminal political texts (such as person, worldview, democracy and others). Concepts are essentially contested and changing. Accordingly, when the concepts change their meaning, it is possible to talk about a change in the ideology itself - no ideology is finite. It is a worldview formed in a specific time and space, which can change depending on the changing world.Therefore, to fundamentally understand ideology, it is necessary not only to understand the concepts used and to describe their frequency and relationship but also to know the historical and intellectual assumptions of changes - what provokes a change in ideology and how does it change its structure. This interpretation allows us to look at ideology not as a static thing, a collection of specific fixed ideas, but as a dynamic structure with no final form. It is equally important to trace the changes and question the intellectual circumstances enforcing the changes. To answer this question, it is not enough to compare the structure of the ideology, to see the diachronicity of the ideology (existence at two different times); a synchronic analysis must also be given, (a ‘thick’ historical description), not only questioning how ideology has changed, but also how it functions at a specific historical moment. In order to do this, the study presents individual biographies, historical contexts and relevant ideological debates for a better interpretation of the key concepts. The analysis therefore combines different disciplines, balancing political science, philosophy and intellectual history. However, in the most general sense, it can be said that the study is a practice of a hermeneutic study - an attempt to reconstruct the historical meanings of specific utterances and ‘retell’ them to the modern reader while linking them with the modern political programmes of the Lithuanian conservative party Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (HU-LCD).The basis of this reconstruction is not so much existing interpretations of political thought but rather the reading of primary sources: the texts of intellectuals, texts polemicising against them, and texts interpreting that discussion. On the other hand, especially regarding contemporary trends, a qualitative case study strategy is followed: in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted, party programmes were analysed, and public debates followed. By pursuing this strategy, the current political picture is revealed and simultaneously assumptions can be formulated about the relationship between the present and the past: what is adopted and why, and what is rejected. Considering existing interpretations and the historiography of Lithuanian political thought, the study intends to discuss and clarify some of the several existing claims regarding centre-right ideologies. First, historians tend to interpret the political imagination of the Lithuanian Christian Democrats in the 19th and 20th centuries as unoriginal and a mixture of different ideologies. Alternatively, other interpreters present Christian-Democratic imagination as nationalistic or even fascistic. On the other hand, this monograph claims that Christian Democracy is an independent political ideology whose ideas may coincide with other ideologies, but only partially. In addition, it is wrong to see it as unchanging, since both Lithuanian Christian Democracy and conservatism give various interpretations of social reality and changes over time. [...].