Odzwierciedlenie przemian życia politycznego Litwy końca XX w. w historiografii litewskiej

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos istoriografija, Lietuvos nepriklausomybė, nepriklausomos Lietuvos politika; Lietuvos nepriklausomybė; Nepriklausomybės atkūrimas; Politinis gyvenimas; Sąjūdis; Lithuanian historiography, Lithuanian independence, politics in independent Lithuania; Lithuanian independence; Political life; Reform Movement of Lithuania (Sąjūdis); Restoration of independence.

ENSąjūdis (Lithuanian independence movement) as an object of scholarly investigation has a certain history or maybe even a historiographic tradition. One of the first who started to investigate this problem was the representative of Lithuanian diaspora in the US, professor of the University of Wisconsin Alfred Eric Senn. The changes of Lithuanian political life during the revival period were analyzed also by the Sąjūdis members themselves: Bronislovas Genzelis and Virgilijus Juozas Čepaitis. However, they often fail to avoid subjective views of certain personalities, their data is not always based on sources. Only at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries Sąjūdis received proper attention from historians. The society at large was presented with scholarly publications, collections of articles and sources on particular subjects. Among these publications one can distinguish the one written by Česlovas Laurinavičius and Vladas Sirutavičius which deals with the political history of Lithuania in 1988–1990. After the careful analysis of scholarly publications dealing with the topic of Sąjūdis, one may notice the tendency to restrict the investigations of the events only prior to the restoration of Lithuanian independence in March 1990. However, the process of transformation of spontaneous social renewal movement into a public organization is still remaining a white spot in history. There are several reasons for this, the most important of which is, to my mind, political. Historians are not willing to confuse their scientific investigations with their political preferences. In the Lithuanian historiography one might notice a tendency for historical investigations of Sąjūdis to intensify prior to the anniversaries of Lithuanian independence restoration. Historians usually restricted their works to the analysis of the national revival period events taking place in the country’s capital.True, during the tenth anniversary of Sąjūdis, the situation in this sphere improved as well. There appeared a number of works devoted to local history, which dealt with the revival period in the major cities, districts and even small towns of the country. March 11, 1990 has radically changed the historic development of our nation. There appeared a new term in Lithuanian historiography: the Second Republic of Lithuania. However, this object is still viewed with some suspicion by historians. Therefore it is not possible to talk about any historical periodization of this era and one must rely on political scientists. In terms of democracy building, they do not highlight any reference points and analyze this process as one whole, starting from 1990 and continuing to this day. In the historiography of the Second Republic not enough attention is devoted to the history of Lithuanian political parties. This area is also dominated by the political scientists. The process of re-establishment of Lithuanian independence is reflected in very diverse historical sources. They include the published political speeches of famous politicians, documents, memoirs, thoughts about aspects and perspectives of present-day political life, as well as evaluations of their works by others. One must also mark the fact that interpretations of the same historical events differ in various memoirs. These events are often viewed through the prism of writers’ political views. [From the publication]