A Death Transformed: The Political and Social Consequences of Romas Kalanta’s Self Immolation, Soviet Lithuania, 1972 Amanda Jeanne Swain A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Glennys Young, Chair James Felak Guntis Smidchens Program Authorized to Offer Degree: History © Copyright 2013 Amanda Jeanne Swain University of Washington Abstract A Death Transformed: The Political and Social Consequences of Romas Kalanta’s Self Immolation, Soviet Lithuania, 1972 Amanda Jeanne Swain Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Glennys Young History “A Death Transformed: The Political and Social Consequences of Romas Kalanta’s Self- Immolation, Soviet Lithuania, 1972” explores Soviet and post-Soviet interpretive narratives and political practices in response to two days of street demonstrations that followed the 1972 suicide of a nineteen-year-old man in Soviet Lithuania. My analysis reveals that Communist authorities and participating youth viewed the demonstrations as a struggle over the acceptable boundaries and content of modern Soviet youth culture. Despite extensive evidence that by 1972 youth were actively negotiating the boundaries of what were acceptable activities, Communist authorities and young people operated within an ideological framework that denied young people’s capacity to express discontent with the Soviet system. In post-Communist Lithuania, social and political elites constructed narratives of May 1972 that reclaimed agency by representing the demonstrations alternatively as nationalist dissent, civil resistance or Sixties-style youth protest. The diversity of narratives reflected on-going debates about the nature of post-Communist Lithuanian identity. This work seeks to make significant contributions to the historiography of the Soviet Union and to scholarship on the politics of memory and European integration. It contributes to current scholarship that is re-conceptualizing the Brezhnev period in the Soviet Union, looking beyond stagnation to the dynamic relationships between Communist ideology and everyday life by revealing how political and social practices contributed to Soviet youth’s identity formation. My analysis counters an entrenched scholarly consensus that Kalanta’s self-immolation and the ensuing demonstrations are explained by Lithuanian nationalism. My project also contributes to research on the politics of memory and European integration. While most work in this area has focused on the role of externally-imposed universalist values as a result of East European EU accession, my analysis of narratives of May 1972 in popular media and official commemorations reveals that internal debates about the form of post-Communist society have equally disrupted nationalist narratives. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and assistance of many individuals who, in one way or another, contributed to my graduate studies and extended their valuable assistance in the completion of this project. First and foremost, I must thank my advisor Glennys Young, for her expertise that allowed me to see the broader implications and value of this project. I greatly appreciate the invaluable knowledge and insight into the Baltics that Guntis Smidchens contributed to this work. I have had the privilege of working with James Felak as my master’s thesis adviser in the Jackson School of International Studies and in the doctoral program. My work with Jordana Bailkan for my fourth doctoral field profoundly shaped my understanding of history as a scholarly discipline. I extend my gratitude to Michael Biggins in the University of Washington Libraries, who fulfilled my requests for book purchases and always had a solution when I needed to find a piece of information. This project truly would not have been possible without my Lithuanian language teachers Ieva Butkutė, Indra Baronina, and Aušra Valančiauskienė. It has been a pleasure to work with the UW History department staff. Susanne Young and Lori Anthony made sure that my administrative I’s were dotted and T’s were crossed as a graduate student and patiently answered my constant questions. Matt Erickson provided invaluable help in organizing the undergraduate courses that I taught. Jeri Park, Cassie Edwards, Lydia Gold and Wanjiku Gitahi handled a multitude of tasks and kept me supplied with Smarties. I have been lucky to find a community of scholars in the History graduate program. My heartfelt thanks goes to the members of the various incarnations of my dissertation reading/writing group – Scott Brown, Katharine Chapman, Mira Green, Rebecca Hughes, Stefan Kamola,, Juned Shaik, Andrew Stone and Catherine Warner – for their excellent critiques and moral support. I am honored that the members of the Seattle Lithuanian-American Community welcomed in 1991 and have shared their knowledge, experiences and contacts with me. I am especially grateful for the support of Ina Bertulytė Bray, who “adopted” me into the community and has been a gracious and enthusiastic advocate of my work. Although he did not have a direct hand in the dissertation, I have benefited greatly from the advice and expertise of Alfred Erich Senn. Whenever our paths cross – whether in Seattle, Lithuania or Madison – he has generously made time to discuss my project. I am deeply indebted to the many people who assisted me while I was conducting research in Lithuania – especially Dr. Egidijus Aleksandravičius at Vytautas Magnus University for encouraging me to pursue this topic and for making sure I had access to people and resources; Dr. Česlovas Laurinavičius at the Lithuanian Institute of History for his guidance and the pleasure of many conversations; Alisija Rupšienė at Vytautas Magnus University, who first taught me how to navigate life in Lithuania back in 1993 and who has helped this project in more ways than I can count; Robertas Čerškus, who shared his experiences, made contacts, and found materials that were invaluable for my research; Saulius Skučas, who transcribed my oral interviews; Henrikas Gulbinas, who introduced me to hippies; and Kastytis Antanaitis, who shared documents with me. One of the best aspects of working in Lithuania was the opportunity to get to know a cohort of junior scholars whose friendship and knowledge benefitted me personally and professionally – in particular, Giedrė Milerytė, Ingrida Celiešiūtė, Arūnas Antanaitis and Giedrius Jankauskas at Vytautas Magnus, as well as Vilius Ivanauskas and Živilė Tamkutonytė at the Lithuanian Institute of History. The hours that I spent conducting research were made exceedingly more productive by the assistance of the staff at the Lithuanian Special Archives, the Lithuanian National Library, the Kaunas Regional Archives, and the Kaunas Public Library. In particular, I want to thank Danutė Stankevičienė, who made sure that I found every document that might possibly be available in the KGB archives and who expected me to converse with her in Lithuanian for thirty minutes every day. Both my scholarship and my language skills benefited from her attention. Of course, this dissertation would not have been possible without funding for graduate studies and for research in Lithuania. I am grateful for the support of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies (REECAS) in the UW Jackson School of International Studies, which awarded me three consecutive years of Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for the study of Lithuanian language. The third year FLAS and a Chester A. Fritz Grant for International Study from the UW Graduate School funded nine months of research in 2009. I am especially grateful for a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, which allowed me to return to Lithuania in 2010-2011 to conduct an oral interview project and additional archival research. My scholarship benefitted greatly from conference travel funding provided by the UW History Department, the UW Baltic Studies Program, the Totaraitis/Roberts Travel Scholarship, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). My work was enriched by the opportunity to participate in the Wilson Center East European Junior Scholar Training Seminar and the Memories of Stalinism Project at the University of Bologna’s Institute on East-Central Europe and the Balkans. I am exceedingly grateful to my friends in Seattle for not abandoning when I was buried in academic work and for constantly reminding me that there was life outside of graduate school. I would never have achieved this goal with the love and support of my family. This dissertation is dedicated to my father, who encouraged his forty-year-old daughter to leave behind a perfectly good career and get a Ph.D. in history. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Lithuania: History and Historiography .................................................................................................................................. 3 Re-conceptualizing the Soviet “Sixties” ................................................................................................................................ 7 Re-conceptualizing Youth Cultural Practices .....................................................................................................................