Authors

Ieva Balciune¹;  ¹ Lithuanian Institute of History, Lithuania

Discussion

After the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania in 1944, Lithuania's society experienced a process of turbo-modernisation, accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation. Children and young people were to be involved in universal compulsory education, professional training and public employment. However, the transformation of the society according to the Soviet modernisation plan did not go smoothly, with many children skipping school, wandering freely on trains around the Soviet Union, even living in forests. What was the meaning of this behaviour, was it a youth rebellion? Was it resistance to the modernisation of society, to the duties imposed on young people by the state? More generally, was there space and opportunity for an alternative way of life in an authoritarian regime? And what does it say about Soviet modernity: can the duties that Soviet citizens are obliged to perform - to study, to work in a state job and to live a sedentary life - be avoided?

The presentation will reveal a part of the research on the socio-cultural concept of adolescence in Soviet Lithuania - the manifestations of young people's lives in Soviet

Lithuania that are incompatible with the envisaged trajectories of the Soviet modernisation of society.