Imagining the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Politics and Economics of the Rebuilding of Trakai Castle and the ‘Palace of Sovereigns’ in Vilnius
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1179/174582110x12871342860243
ISSN1745-8218
Autores Tópico(s)Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies
ResumoIn 1884 the prominent nation-builder Jonas Basanavičius declared that castle mounds and literature were the only appropriate elements from which to build the Lithuanian nation. Basanavičius's view, this article suggests, had a lasting influence on the public uses of history in twentieth-century Lithuania. The study explores the construction of two iconic images of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Trakai Castle and the 'Palace of Sovereigns' in Vilnius. Built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Trakai Castle was once the seat of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but fell into neglect before its reconstruction in the 1960s. Dating back to the thirteenth century, the Palace in Vilnius deteriorated during the eighteenth century, was dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth, and has been completely rebuilt since 2000. It is striking that the reconstructions of castles were the largest state investments in culture in both the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. The reconstruction of Trakai Castle was criticized on economic and ideological grounds by Nikita Khrushchev. The rebuilding of the Palace polarized Lithuanian intellectuals. The presentation compares the intellectual, social, and political rationales which underpinned the two projects and explores the changes and continuities in the uses of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes.
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