Category: News

A Visit by the Lithuanian Language Students

In January, the Academy of Education of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) organized the Lithuanian Language and Culture winter course. Students from more than fifteen countries came to Vilnius to learn the language and get acquainted with Lithuanian culture and history.

The participants of the discussion

On January 14, students visited the National Library of Lithuania. They listened to the lecture on Lithuanian diaspora and its most prominent representatives in science, politics, economy, culture, and art given by Dr. Dalia Cidzikaitė, chief researcher of the Lithuanian Documentary Heritage Department of the National Library of Lithuania. Afterwards, the students were given a tour of the library, followed by a discussion about the image of Lithuania created by foreigners studying Lithuanian language.

The Centenary of the National Library of Lithuania

A special event. Photo credit: Agnė Jankauskaitė

In 1919, the young state of Lithuania began creating its main institutions. One of them was the Central State Bookstore founded on December 20, 1919 which later would become the National Library of Lithuania. The most important functions of the Bookstore in Kaunas were to collect mandatory copies of publications published in Lithuania and the books of persons who for one or another reason were no longer their owners and of former tsarist institutions. In the first year, the Bookstore housed approximately 18,000 books. Today the National Library of Lithuania has 6.5 million of books.

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Lithuanian-American Poet and Zen Practitioner AL ZOLYNAS

By David A. Bainbridge

I would like to introduce you to my favorite poet, Algirdas Zolynas. His most recent book was his just released, Near and Far, Garden Oak Press, December, 2019,141 pages. $11.69 at B&N.

Al’s poems are personal, rich in emotion, and often leavened with humor. Many capture the beauty and mystery of every day life. Some of my favorites include: Bread, In Gratitude; Near Sunskai, Lithuania; Watching a Day; the Western Felt Works, Leaving Kaunas, 1944, and Sideways Down Rapids.  

Also worth a look in earlier books: Love in the Classroom, The Zen of Housework, Nothing to do—Nowhere to go, The Way He’d Like it, Running down Summit Avenue in Saint Paul in a Heavy Snowfall, and Living with Others.

Al was born in Austria of Lithuanian parents in 1945. They had fled the Soviet advance and survived bombing raids in Berlin. His parents became part of the wave of 11 million displaced people (DP) after the war. His father had been an attorney and one of his grandfathers signed the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence in 1918. As refugees they were refused entry to the US, where you had to have a sponsor, a place to live, and a guarantee that you would not displace American workers or, better yet, a related American citizen. 

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The Society for the Study of World Lithuanians

The participants of the first discussion. Photo: Vytautas Magnus University

On November 8, 2019, on the initiative of Vytautas Magnus University, the Society for the Study of World Lithuanians was established.

The president of the Society, Dr. Ilona Strumickienė, says that the name was chosen in memory of the Society for Aiding the Lithuanians Abroad which was active in Lithuania in 1932-1940. The Society provided aid to and maintained contacts with Lithuanians living abroad. It also contributed to strengthening of the Lithuanian identity among expatriates. In 1935, the Society organized the first World Lithuanian Congress in Kaunas.

By following the example of the Society for Aiding the Lithuanians Abroad, the newly established society hopes to build a network of and disseminate message about Lithuanians around the world, share discoveries and research results, and help strengthening civil society in Lithuania.

The first event organized by the Society was a discussion about how Lithuanian schools receive children who have returned from emigration which took place on December 13, 2019.

Two Ph.D. Theses on Lithuanian Diaspora

On October 25, a doctorate student of Vytautas Magnus University, Egidijus Balandis, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis “Sport in the Social Fabric of Lithuanian-Americans in the Early 20th Century.”

Using the history of sport, Balandis analyzes the activities of Lithuanian-American organizations and civic participation of Lithuanians in American life. The main goal of his thesis is to explore the role of sport in a wider social fabric of Lithuanian-Americans of the early 20th century. Balandis looks at the attempts by Lithuanian-Americans to establish contacts and accumulate social capital through sport organizations, competitions, the non-sport activities of Lithuanian-American athletics clubs and the celebrities of that time. Using archival sources, periodicals and historiography, the author analyzes the by-laws of Lithuanian-American sport clubs, features of self-governance, various forms of activities, social functions, and their involvement in building social networks and relations with a broader part of the civil society of Lithuanian diaspora. In doing so, he tries to answer the question what role did sport play in social networks of ideologically oriented Lithuanian-American movements, and what attitudes they held towards sport and sport activities. Balandis also investigates the attempts of the Lithuanian-American media and more famous athletes and fans to construct the portraits of sport heroes and their intentions to use these portraits as both an opportunity to bring Lithuanians together and as a tool of social control applied on different diaspora layers.

On October 11, Monika Šipelytė, a doctorate student of Vilnius University, defended her Ph.D. thesis on the topic of political and diplomatic activities of Lithuanians in Switzerland in 1915-1919 and their impact on the statehood of Lithuania. The dissertation analyzes in depth the early emigration of Lithuanians to Switzerland and their political aspirations, actions, and achievements during the WWI. More specific activities, such as international and national conferences, development and dissemination of state projects, publishing, and internal and external correspondence are discussed in five chronologically arranged chapters.