This article is dedicated to analyzing public criminological discourse in Stalinist, post-Stalinist and post-Soviet Lithuania. Its chronological boundaries are between 1940 (when Soviet first-time occupied country) and early 2000s (when Lithuania released new, not Soviet-based criminal code, finalized post-Soviet criminal prosecution reform and joined European Union and NATO). The article does not include the period of Nazi Germany occupation of Lithuania (1941–1944), since the conditions of that period are very different and requires additional research. Early 2000s have also marked the end of mass crime and gang and mafia violence. Since then, crime numbers considerably decreased and today are relatively low. The public discourse, as the article reveals, does not necessarily match the crime reality. For instance, in Stalinist period, the politically constructed enemy was the dominating definition of the criminal.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.