Beyond nostalgia: notes on history and memory of the Soviet era in Lithuanian postcolonial fiction

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LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Postkolonializmas; Literatūra; Sovietmetis; Postcolonialism; Literature; Soviet era.

ENThough this paper contains just a few glimpses at Lithuanian postcolonial fiction including several important novels that appeared before the collapse of the Soviet colonial regime in Lithuania and other Baltic states as well as some written during the recent decades, these as well as other fictional narratives provide little evidence, if at all, of the alleged feelings of nostalgia for the life in the Soviet era. Instead, most literary texts are based on a critical attitude toward the colonial period, and the imagery of the novels and shorter fictional texts contain irony, sarcasm, and black humor in their fictional accounts of the realities of the Soviet era. Most prominent Lithuanian writers of fiction today are more likely to be inclined to revisit and re-examine the era of dependence through a critical lense, exhibiting a distance from the realities of the colonial period rather than mediating any feelings of sympathy or nostalgia for the period when Lithuanians and other Balts were deprived of their freedom and statehood. Though I would not be inclined to doubt the validity of the findings of recent sociological and anthropological research, the causes of nostalgia should perhaps be sought in the dissatisfaction with some of the present social and economic realities and the failure of neoliberal policies pursued by several successive Lithuanian governments on both the Left and the Right. In my opinion, the signs of nostalgia speak more about the contradictions in our present social life rather than represent a collective attitude toward the past. [Extract, p. 23]