Paper long abstract:

The paper highlights contested issues of social memory regarding the national identity politics in Lithuania. Certain ways of social memory (re)construction revealed in recent qualitative research project on the globalization and Europeanization effects on the politics of national identity in Lithuania. The first one is based on deconstruction of meta-narrative of Medieval Lithuania. De-sacralization and critical re-interpretation of the 'heroic' middle-ages, which was omnipresent and fundamental building block of Lithuanian national identity indicates the de-authorization of it. Another social memory block, related to traumas and triumph of the Lithuanian independence (occupations, deportations and eventual re-establishment) is given top priority by the dominant discourse as the most important part in the Lithuanian past. Our focus is on how those two ways of social remembering are represented in public and private narratives. Narrations and re-interpretation of events that disturb the positive image of the nation (e.g. Holocaust) are seen as the most challenging for the social memory change in Lithuania.