The paper presents research on Lithuanian culture in the 1950s–1960s, some memoirs written by artistic people, and an interview conducted specially for this article. Changes in the visual arts, music, photography, theatre and cinema are described.
After World War II, many Lithuanians were unwilling to remain in the USSR, and armed resistance remained active in Lithuania until 1953. However, even in the post-Stalin era, dissident tendencies continued to grow, including in the arts and culture spheres. With Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power, the artistic community found opportunities to participate in the state-controlled cultural game, but, until the late 1980s, Lithuanian culture was forced to develop within the framework of ideological and moral compromise. Forced to maintain loyalty to the authorities, culture became an important backdrop for the occupation regime. However, the fates of the political leaders of Soviet Lithuania also depended on the authority of Lithuanian art.
Experts speak of ‘seminonconformism’, ‘quiet modernism’, the dramatic combination of the traits of fighters, creators, careerists, and collaborators in artists, and of the horizons of freedom that were finally reached in 1990.
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