Monika Rogers (Lithuanian Institute of History)
This paper will explore the complexities associated with the legal definitions and popular terminology, used to describe communist crimes in Lithuania after the 1990’s in different discourses: legal, political, academic and public. It will analyze links between collective memory (where, for instance, the term “genocide” was often used to describe the Soviet crimes in Lithuania) and national Lithuanian law. It will also discuss the definitions of communist crimes in Lithuania from the perspective of international humanitarian law.
The paper will focus on such questions: what are the main definitions of Soviet crimes in Lithuania? What are the historical roots of these definitions? What role myth and imagination play in constructing them? How did these definitions change over time, since the declaration of Lithuania’s independence? How collective memory influenced national Lithuanian law in the given context – and how the international legal perspective changes these views?