AURELIJA GRITĖNIENĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

Research areas: semantics, lexicology, dialectology.

THE POSTWAR LITHUANIAN PARTISAN IN PUBLICISTIC DISCOURSE

The Partisan of Postwar Lithuania in the Discourse of Opinion Journalism

I wrote about the partisans and keep walking around with the feeling that I have failed to say something particularly important, perhaps even the most important thing. (Romualdas Ozolas. 2002. Lithuania: A Political Portrait of the Year, p. 120)

The Partisan of Postwar Lithuania in the Discourse of Opinion Journalism

I wrote about the partisans, and I keep walking around with a feeling that there is something really important, perhaps even the most important, that I didn’t say. (Romualdas Ozolas. 2002-ieji. Lietuva: politinis metų portretas, p. 120)

ABSTRACT

The object of this study is approximately 7,500 sentences selected from publicistic texts in the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language that discuss the postwar Lithuanian partisans. Applying the concept-analysis method of the Lublin school of ethnolinguistics, the study seeks to determine how the Lithuanian partisan is conceptualized and categorized in publicistic discourse, and what his cognitive definition is. Semantic analysis of the material revealed that the partisan’s identity in the corpus is heterogeneous. In publicistic discourse, the partisan is understood in three ways: 1) as a specific, clearly named person; 2) as an abstract, unidentified figure; 3) as a false, fabricated identity.

KEYWORDS: cognitive ethnolinguistics, semantics, the postwar partisan concept, cognitive definition.

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ANNOTATION

The article focuses on approximately 7,500 sentences on postwar Lithuanian partisans selected from the texts of opinion journalism stored in the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language. Following the methodology of conceptual analysis elaborated by the Lublin ethnolinguistic school, the article attempts to find out how the Lithuanian partisan is conceptualised and categorised in the discourse of opinion journalism and what its cognitive definition is. The semantic analysis of the data made it clear that the identity of the partisan reflected in the corpus is not uniform. The perception of the partisan in the discourse of opinion journalism is three-fold: 1) as a particular, explicitly specified person; 2) as an abstract, unidentified figure; 3) as an unreal, falsified identity.

KEYWORDS: cognitive ethnolinguistics, semantics, concept of postwar partisan, cognitive definition.

INTRODUCTION

In the electronic version of the Great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (hereafter LKŽe), partisan is defined as follows: “a member of armed volunteer units of local inhabitants operating against the rear.” A similar definition of this word is also given in the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian. There, the noun partisan is defined similarly to its definition in LKŽe, except that it is additionally stated that partisan units may fight not only against the rear, but also “against the state authorities.” In the Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian, the definition of a partisan is more specific: it clearly states that partisans operate “against occupiers”¹. This article analyzes not the generalized concept of a partisan recorded in lexicographic sources, but a very specific figure defined by place and time—the postwar Lithuanian partisan, that is, a participant in the partisan warfare waged in Lithuania against Soviet rule in 1944–1953. Historians state that “about 100,000 people, or about 4 percent of all Lithuanians, actively participated in or actively supported the armed postwar resistance”; this resistance movement was 10–15 times more intense than in Latvia and 30–60 times more intense than in Estonia (Anušauskas 2004: 241, 252; Kuodaitė, Tracevskis 2013: 34)². The anti-Soviet resistance, which lasted almost a decade, was one of the largest and longest partisan wars in twentieth-century Europe (Kuodaitė, Tracevskis 2013: 4).

¹ In the Dictionary of Standard Lithuanian, the letter P has not yet been fully edited. The definition was taken from the dictionary manuscript. The examples show that the meaning of this word is now expanding; partisan is used with a newly noted meaning.

² The scale of the partisan movement in postwar Lithuania is also illustrated by the following corpus examples: To Moscow’s puppets, every Lithuanian was associated with the partisans and the Chronicle of the Catholic Church.

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In 1944–1953, at least 50,000 people served in the ranks of the partisans in Lithuania (Gaškaitė, Kuodienė, Kašėta, Ulevičius 1996: 366). Thus, the tragic partisan struggle of the postwar period affected the lives of many Lithuanians. The aim of this article is to use late-twentieth-century journalistic discourse³ to analyze which features of the partisan concept⁴ are prototypical⁵ and what the cognitive definition⁶ of a partisan is.

Such a cognitive study is relevant in today’s context: in 2018, the Seimas declared it the Year of Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, and debates about how to assess partisan activity repeatedly surface in the press⁷. Thus, the article sets out a specific task: to investigate how, in today’s journalistic discourse, collective consciousness perceives a participant in armed resistance that lasted for decades—the postwar partisan—and the extent to which the formation of this concept is shaped by the historical, political, and ideological context. The article will answer this and other questions on the basis of material from the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian (hereafter DLKT), since a corpus “reflects life, and life is in constant flux, which must be reflected and described accurately, objectively, and without dogmatism” (Čermák 2000: 296). Corpus analysis, in particular, provides semantics with objective empirical data on “observed semantic features and regularities” (Marcinkevičienė 2000: 49); corpora “comprise tens and hundreds of millions of words counted in authentic usage. These are not specially devised examples but living language use, which makes a corpus an especially valuable source for lexical research from the perspective of semantics” (Macijauskaitė 2000: 121). Cognitive linguistics is increasingly turning to corpora as one source for identifying differences in word meaning (Gries 2006: 60), since traditional dictionaries often reflect the ideology of their editors (Williams 2013: 18).

Following an extended search of journalistic texts, 790 examples containing the lexeme partisan were found in the corpus. More than 400 sentences discuss

³ Discourse is understood here in the broad sense, as language or speech with certain characteristics (for more on broad and narrow conceptions of discourse, see Marcinkevičienė 2008: 15).

⁴ Concept is understood here as a unit of thought: all the information about something present in the consciousness of people who speak a particular language. For more on the term concept, see: Чернейко, Cho Son Te 2001: 51; Papaurėlytė 2003: 25; Papaurėlytė-Klovienė 2007: 15–17; Gudavičius 2011: 109–117.

⁵ A prototype is the most characteristic member of a category, by which the category itself is recognized. For more on the concept of prototype, see: Geeraerts 2006: 327–355; Gudavičius 2009: 59–61; Jakaitienė 2010: 58–60; Ungerer, Schmid 2006: 10.

⁶ A cognitive definition is based on everyday, personal knowledge and experience of the world; it shows what associations arise in a speaker’s mind in a particular linguistic situation (Bartmiński 2007: 44; Gudavičius 2009: 70–72; Rukovska, Smetona, Smetonienė 2017: 30).

⁷ Cf. the writer Rūta Vanagaitė’s opinion about partisan commander A. Ramanauskas-Vanagas, the debates surrounding a monument in Lukiškės Square reminiscent of partisan bunkers, and so on.

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not about the postwar Lithuanian partisans. In 1942–1944, Red (other partisan, Soviet, Bolshevik) partisans⁸ operated in Lithuania. In addition to these, the corpus compiled by Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University also mentions partisans from various other countries and peoples: Afghan, Irish, Albanian, Chechen, Georgian, Yugoslav, Kurdish, Polish, Palestinian, Romanian, Tajik, Tamil, and others. Such sentences are excluded from the general sample. Thus, the article analyzes about 7,500 sentences that refer exclusively to postwar Lithuanian partisans⁹.

Context is not the only means of distinguishing Lithuanian partisans from others; certain formal features also help. Spatial (local) affiliation is marked by the typical attributive phrase Lithuanian (Lithuanian-speaking) partisan, e.g.:

Armed Lithuanian partisans appeared in the area.

It is unlikely that Lithuanian partisans seek inspiration in the activities of their most bitter enemies.

Affiliation with a specified period is marked by the attributive phrase postwar partisan, e.g.:

Only postwar partisans, resisters, and those conscious individuals who became such before a specific date—before the 1991 coup—are admitted to the association.

Sometimes temporal and spatial affiliation is made explicit in a single sentence, e.g.:

His father, a pharmacist, treated, bandaged, and operated on both Russian Bolsheviks during the German occupation and Lithuanian partisans in the first postwar years.

The article examines only the masculine noun partisan and conducts a semantic analysis of it. Corpus data show that the lexeme female partisan¹⁰ is much rarer, since women who were postwar partisans were most often assigned the role of liaison. This is also illustrated by sentences from journalistic writing, e.g.:

The partisans avoided accepting women into the ranks of active fighters.

The lexeme partisan has several synonyms. The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽ) records the following: bandit, with a pejorative meaning¹¹; and forest-dweller, greenhorn, which signal an association with the forest; activities

⁸ The corpus also attests that there were various kinds of partisans in Lithuania, e.g.: Aduškė has few traces of history: the Antanai Forest, famous for sheltering various kinds of partisans; a chapel built for the insurgents of 1863 and restored with municipal funds; and one hillfort.

⁹ Cf. how the postwar Lithuanian partisan is “defined” within the corpus itself: We call irregular army fighters for Lithuania’s freedom partisans; the Bolsheviks call paratroopers sent to Lithuania to fight the Germans partisans.

¹⁰ A search of the corpus for the feminine noun female partisan yielded only 71 sentences.

¹¹ Thus, partisans were most often called that by Soviet propaganda hostile to them, which sought to diminish the partisan movement and its participants; however, the image of the partisan as a bandit remains alive in the minds of some Lithuanians to this day.

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having a temporal seme naktinis¹². In the corpus, the synonym banditas most often occurred alongside the lexeme partizanas; somewhat less frequently, miškinis, žaliasis, žaliukas, miško brolis, e.g.:

The Soviet authorities called the postwar partisan banditas, and the resistance struggle banditry.

Back then, even the word “partisans” did not exist. People called them miškiniais, žaliukais. DKT gives a considerable number of contextual synonyms for partizano¹³: brother, dissident, Dzūkian, freedom fighter, underground activist, participant in the freedom struggles, defender of freedom, forest warrior, resistance fighter, kulak’s son, terrorist, and so on. E.g.:

Džūkas was almost synonymous with partisan in the postwar period, but this passion for war, passion for death and consciousness remain alongside poetic passion; strength, death and tenderness go together among the Dzūkai as nowhere else.

Samogitians proposals from 1951, partisans began calling themselves brothers.

Forest warriors and underground activists – the Lithuanian partisans, who fought against red fascism, are completely ignored by this law; thus, the painful past is being used to sow division.

Opponents of the resistance often like to call partisans kulak’s sons, and those sympathetic to them exploiters of working people.

What do I call the Lithuanian partisans today: would softening the term “bandit” into the international term “terrorist” be any better?

The contextual antonym of this word¹⁴ is usually the concept stribo¹⁵, ideologically and politically opposed to the partisan concept (they were also called istrebu, skrebu, liaudies gynėju, etc.). Sometimes other lexemes can also be contextual antonyms of partizano: kagebistas, komunistas, e.g.:

To put partisans and stribai in the same category today is catastrophic.

A true absurdity is when a resistance fighter or partizanas, who fought for Lithuania’s freedom, and a kagebistas, who strangled that freedom, are awarded the same medal.

¹² Fiction contains even more contextual synonyms for partizano: for instance, in Justinas Marcinkevičius’s novel in miniatures “Neužmiršti Sulvalkijos vardai” (2014), partisans are also called giriniais (p. 72 et al.), miško vyrais (p. 52 et al.), miško broliais (p. 66), and so on.

¹³ Contextual synonyms are words whose synonymic relations are temporary, i.e., they become synonyms only in a particular context (Pikčilingis 1975: 209–210; Jakaitienė 2010: 130).

¹⁴ Words whose antonymic relations are temporary, i.e., which become antonyms only in a particular coherent context, are called contextual antonyms (Pikčilingis 1975: 228–229; Jakaitienė 2010: 138).

¹⁵ Stribas (cf. Russian ucтpeбитeль) was a member of civilian armed paramilitary units of the Soviet authorities which helped the occupiers carry out repressions in Lithuania in 1944–1954. In postwar Lithuania, partisans fought two types of People’s Commissariat (NKVD) divisions, several border-guard regiments, approximately 7,000 so-called istrebiteli, and an equal number of Soviet party activists. In 1952, each partisan faced 30 soldiers of the USSR Ministry of State Security (MGB) and stribai (Starkauskas 2001: 77; Vėliūtė 2009: 7).

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In this article, partizano synonyms and antonyms are not analyzed in greater detail and are not included in the overall sample of examples. Using the conceptual analysis method of the Lublin School of Ethnolinguistics, the article seeks to establish how the Lithuanian partisan is conceptualized and categorized in journalistic discourse, and what his cognitive definition is. Cognitive ethnolinguistics researchers view language as an integral part of culture. Their aim is to show what is activated in a speaker’s consciousness when a person utters or hears a word in a particular context (Smetona 2018: 179). The content presented by a cognitive definition is cognitive in nature: it seeks to establish how speakers understand an object and how that object’s features and evaluations are categorized. This definition reflects all features of meaning—central and peripheral, denotative and connotative. Strictly adhering to the established methodology, conceptual analysis should be conducted on the basis of three types of data: the language system, questionnaires, and texts (for more on the methodology of cognitive ethnolinguistics, see Rutkovska, Smetona, Smetonienė 2017: 29–35). As already noted, this article analyzes in greater detail only data from contemporary journalistic texts. It is therefore important to emphasize that the cognitive definition of the partisan presented here is neither absolute nor definitive; it is formulated on the basis of an analysis of only one type of text. In the future, after examining data from language systems, literary texts, and questionnaires, this definition should be supplemented.

The history of postwar partisan activity began to be studied in depth with the onset of the national revival and the restoration of freedom¹⁶. In nearly 30 years of freedom, numerous books and articles have been written on this subject, and collections of partisan memoirs, photo albums, songbooks, and the like have been published. Arvydas Anušauskas, Nijolė Gaškaitė, Dalia Kuodytė, Algis Kašėta, Bonifacas Ulevičius, Rūta Gabriele Vėliūtė, and other researchers from the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania have written particularly extensively on the subject¹⁷. Several dissertations in history have been written on this subject: Mindaugas Pocius (2005) studied partisan resistance in Lithuania and the struggle against residents accused of collaboration; Mingailė Jurkutė’s (2016) research focused on the memory of the Lithuanian partisan war (drawing on Soviet, local, and diaspora narratives); Aistė Petrauskienė (2017) described partisan war sites, their commemoration, and their heritage designation in independent Lithuania. Literary scholars and anthropologists are also interested in the partisan war and its participants. The anthropologist Romas Vaštokas (196) described the image of the postwar partisan in Lithuanian fiction (prose, songs, and poems). How Lithuanian partisans are portrayed in contemporary novels by Lithuanian authors and

¹⁶ In the diaspora, writing about the partisan movement in postwar Lithuania began much earlier; see the works of Vytautas Stanley Vardys (1969), professor at the University of Oklahoma and political scientist; publicist Kazimieras Vidikas (1962); historians Kęstutis Girnius (1990), Romualdas Misiūnas, and Rein Taagepera (1992); and others.

¹⁷ For a comprehensive chronicle, see the bibliography at the end of this article.

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Nerijus Brazauskas (2015) examined the partisan war, how the concept of collective memory is brought to the fore in these works, and how history is interpreted. To date, the figure of the partisan has not been studied from a cognitive perspective. Linguists at Vilnius University, drawing on the principles of cognitive ethnolinguistics formulated by Jerzy Bartmiński, have identified numerous concepts: FIRE, WATER, HOME, FAMILY, WORK, EUROPE, FREEDOM, HONOR, and others; in the future, they plan to study the concepts of HEALTH, JUSTICE, HOMELAND, SOUL, and others (see Rutkovska, Smetona, Smetonienė 2017: 15–16 for more). No studies have yet been written about the image of the partisan in the Lithuanian language; therefore, formulating the PARTISAN concept on the basis of an analysis of published texts is meaningful. Although it is clear that the real world will never be fully “expressed,” “reflected,” or “spoken” in language, and that language will never present the world exactly as it is, one may nevertheless expect language to contain things about the world that never were, are, or will be in it (Ozolas 2003: 91). In today’s context, such semantic research is relevant. In examining the material, every effort was made to avoid preconceived assumptions or stereotypes formed in society; instead, the analysis simply examined what concept emerges from the semantic analysis of individual examples, and then connected them into a whole and proceeded to a broader generalization. In the future, as already mentioned, the cognitive definition of the partisan could be supplemented with data from various dictionaries, literary texts, and questionnaires.

1. THE PARTISAN’S IDENTITY: A SPECIFIC INDIVIDUAL

The DLKŤ examples show that the concept of the partisan in the Lithuanian consciousness is not uniform. In our collective memory, the partisan is usually associated either with a specific, clearly identified person or with an abstract, unidentified figure.

1.1. Identifying a Specific Individual

In terms of semantic information, examples identifying a specific individual can be divided into several groups.

1) Examples in which the partisan is identified by three proper names: his given name, surname, and alias are given. An alias is an obligatory attribute of a partisan, e.g.:

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Every partisan, upon joining a unit, had to take an oath and choose a pseudonym¹⁸.

The pseudonym is usually written after a hyphen, following the full first and last name, e.g.:

On July 6, 1946, partisan Alfonsas Jokubauskas-Šuva of the Kęstutis United District was killed in the Pytagiai Forest.

There are cases in which the pseudonym is written in quotation marks after the full first and last name, e.g.:

The account is given by Vincas Grinkus “Kariūnas,” a former partisan in the Trimitas unit, who currently lives in Vilnius.

In the corpus, the pseudonym is sometimes written after the full first and last name, following a hyphen and in quotation marks, e.g.:

Partisan Vytautas Čekaitis-“Mėnulis” was also an NKVD agent, “Rel-sas”; he never belonged to the Vytenis unit, but knew that it existed.

Rarer cases occur in which the pseudonym is written after the full first and last name in parentheses, or in quotation marks and parentheses, e.g.:

And on that day, four partisans—Tomas Kondratas (Briedis), Adolfas Bilinskas (Jurginas), Navickas (Kardas), and Švalkus (Šernas)—had visited the Plutlevičius family.

The memoirs of partisan Petras Grilauskas (“Grietis”) were recorded by gr. Antanas Šimėnas.

In rare cases, the pseudonym is given first, followed by the person’s actual full first and last name, e.g.:

The partisan Jaunis-Jonas Kuras was killed.

2) Several hundred illustrations were found in the corpus in which a partisan is identified by two personal names: a full (much less often, abbreviated) first name and a last name, e.g.:

Kazys Veršulis, a partisan from our village, was killed too.

Partisan K. Gvergždis tried to approach the barn and let the horses out, but he was shot immediately.

3) Numerous illustrations give only the partisan’s last name, e.g.:

Įžakėnas was a brave and courageous partisan.

In 1953, the partisan Palubeckas led the Chekists to his bunker.

4) Several sentences were found in which only the partisan’s first name is given¹⁹, for example:

Rosė is the only partisan, Paulius.

¹⁸ As already mentioned, all empirical material for the study was collected from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language; therefore, the specific metadata for each example is not given separately.

¹⁹ As is well known, a person’s given name could also be used as a pseudonym during the postwar period. It is difficult to say what function the personal name serves in these sentences (whether it denotes a given name or a pseudonym). To determine this, a broader context would be needed; a 300-character corpus concordance alone is insufficient.

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Balys Bisys, pseudonym Lokys, and Jonas and Augustas Medikai, pseudonyms Aidas and Tūzas, were killed, as was a partisan called Juozu Jūtų, whose surname could not be established.

5) In many illustrations, only the partisan’s pseudonym is mentioned. As already noted, this is an essential attribute of a partisan, for example:

One partisan, whose pseudonym was Tankistas, was killed.

Several instances were found in which the pseudonym is written in quotation marks, for example:

It also says there that the operation was led by “Jungas,” a partisan from the village of Pačiudėkiai.

Having discussed the naming of a specific individual, we can move on to an analysis of the typical features of the partisan concept. The selected examples from DLKT show that describing a Lithuanian postwar partisan requires discussing his place and time of origin; affiliation with a clan, family, region, or military territorial unit; positions held; social status; character traits (and, less often, physical appearance); the time and place of combat and death; partisan activity (and its evaluation); ties with the surrounding community and relatives; death; place of eternal rest; and connection with the present.

^1.2. Place and time of birth

A partisan’s identity, like that of any person, consists of many details. The text records several sentences about the partisan’s place of origin. Sometimes the native village is given, for example:

Partisan Gozdas-Lapelis Lapelis came from the village of Žibučiai.

In some cases, the partisan’s association with a village, rural district, and so on is specified, but it is not always clear whether this was their place of birth, somewhere they lived, or merely somewhere they fought, for example:

The postwar period, deportations, the famous Juodes partisan Dimeikis, whose body after his death no one saw.

Stasys Jurevičius and one partisan from Troškūnai were killed in battle.

Publicistic texts discuss partisans who actually lived (or are still alive), so quite a few specific biographical facts are often given in the same sentence. The exact date of birth is often provided alongside the place of birth, for example:

Partisan Petras Kemblys was born in 1923 in the village of Šarai, Jūžintai rural district, Rokiškis county.

Antanas Žibutis tells his story (born in 1937 in the village of Mariniškiai, Taujenai rural district).

Alongside the date of birth, the same sentence also provides other detailed personal information (the duration of partisan activity, positions held, place and date of death, circumstances, and so on), for example:

Panevėžio senamiestyje kapinėse ieškota partizano Antano Barausko-Vėjavaikio (1913–1945), žuvusio vadovaujant J. Kučą-Finką, palaikų, bet nerasta.

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The commander of the Dainava District, Dzūkas, a partisan in the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters’ Movement, born in 1925, fought for the restoration of a democratic Lithuania from September 1946 and held various positions in the movement.

A partisan’s age is also indicated by a specific number of years, e.g.:

The majority of partisans were 18–20-year-old young people.

When, several decades ago in Lithuania, an 18-year-old partisan was laid before a huge tank after prolonged torture so that he would betray himself, his friends, and their secrets, he remained silent.

55 years ago, in 1947, 30-year-old Justin Lelešius-Grafas, a Lithuanian partisan and priest, was killed.

Approximate age is expressed by the noun young man and the adjectives young, small, e.g.:

From some snippets of hearsay that reached my ears, I understood that the young man making his confession had come from the forest and was a partisan.

The young partisan would often slip away home to meet his parents, and even more often—after telling his mother he was going back to the doctor, and telling Dr. Kliśonis that he was hurrying to visit his mother—would dash off to meet the men of Balys Vaičėnas.

Beside him, by the step, stood a young partisan (codename Simas).

As the examples show, the typical postwar partisan was a young (18–40-year-old) man. Historians attest to this as well: “The average duration of partisan activity was two to three years. Most fighters were killed before the age of 22” (LK 1996: 12).

1.3. Kinship and marital relationships

In journalistic texts about partisans, their relationship to family is quite often mentioned. This refers to the ties of men who went into the forest with the loved ones they left behind. A partisan is a son, father, brother, or some more distant relative of those who stayed at home, for example:

Their entire family—the father, mother, and three children (the little sister died soon afterward)—was deported to Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1946, since Stasė’s father was a partisan.

They hid because their son and husband were partisans.

Of course, having a partisan brother is an acceptable reason to be persecuted.

His entire creative output was nearly savagely paid for by Antanas Kapčius, the poet’s partisan relative, who was imprisoned in the same camp.

Viewed from the present-day perspective, a partisan may also be referred to as someone’s grandfather (as already noted, during the postwar years partisans were relatively young men), for example:

Grandfather Petras was a Lithuanian partisan who fought for Lithuania’s independence.

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The corpus contains more than one sentence that also discusses a partisan’s somewhat restrained affiliation, e.g.:

His elder brother Alfonsas Vaišnoras was a partisan—he went into the forest in 1945.

1.4. Affiliation with a region

Partisans operated in all regions of Lithuania, e.g.:

However, to present the partisans from all regions of Lithuania as broadly as possible, we also had to seek help from the “Aušra” Museum in Šiauliai, the regional museums in Skuodas and Utena, and private collectors.

Most often, affiliation with a particular ethnographic region is indicated.

Aukštaitija, e.g.:

It is said that the groundwork for such a union had been laid, since the Aukštaitija partisans represented by Markulis already had a common command—the Aukštaitija Partisan Headquarters.

Dzūkija, e.g.:

The visitor gained the impression that the Dzūkija partisans led by Kazimieraitis were then the best-organized and strongest partisan group in Lithuania.

Suvalkija, e.g.:

Other postcards are dedicated to the Suvalkija partisan Vincas Štrimas-“Šturmas” (1921–1948), and the distinguished regional figures Jonas Bražinskas (1876–1963) and Petras Jakštas (1899–1989).

Žemaitija, e.g.:

This is what the 24-year-old Žemaitija partisan Juozas Žagaras wrote in his diary at the time.

Sometimes a partisan’s affiliation with a rural district, local area, district, town, village, and so on is indicated. E.g.:

Before leaving, it was necessary to establish contact with partisans operating in the Jurbarkas area.

For instance, in Prienai District, partisan unit commander “Anupas” distributed partisan newspapers titled “Laisvės žvalgas.”

He maintained contacts with the Krekenava and Ramygala parish-based partisan commanders: Kazys Varnonis (“Vėtra”) and others, providing them with information.

In Pagarbis, seven crosses were erected for the partisans in Ašminta Eldership, in Pagarbis village.

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1.5. Affiliation with a region, district, unit, etc.

Like an army, Lithuanian partisan formations had a clear and strict internal structure. Their organization and discipline were among the factors that meant resistance to the occupiers lasted almost a decade (LK 1996: 8). This is clearly demonstrated by examples from the corpus:

The partisans were the Lithuanian army, waging a guerrilla war against the occupiers. This status clearly shows that the partisans were not merely armed men, but a highly disciplined and organized military structure with specific and noble goals.

The largest military territorial unit was a region. It consisted of 2–4 districts. There were 3 regions: South Lithuania, Northeast Lithuania, and West Lithuania (LK 1996: 10). All these regions are also mentioned in the corpus, e.g.:

The partisans of Dzūkija, and later of all South Lithuania, were led by Lieutenant Colonel Juozas Vitkus-Kazimieraitis.

At that time, J. Kimštas-Žalgiris, commander of the Northeast Lithuanian partisans, issued an order to all partisans of Aukštaitija to sever ties with Markulis’s BDPS committee.

He began his partisan “career” as chief of staff of the Žebenkštis detachment; in 1947 he became commander of the Kęstutis district, and in 1948—having organized the Western Lithuania partisan region—became its commander.

According to historians, in 1944–1945, 2–5 detachments began to form, comprising partisan districts (Anušauskas 2004: 247). In 1947, 9 districts operated in Lithuania (LK 194–1953). All of them are mentioned in the corpus; here we will present only a few more typical examples²⁰:

In an encirclement, the last partisan of the Vytautas district, Antanas Kraujelis “Siaubūnas,” was shot; the last partisan of the Žemaičiai district, Pranas Končius “Adomas,” was killed.

In 1950, in the Vyčio district, 13 partisan units were still active, comprising about 100 active fighters.

At various times, up to 30 resistance units operated in Lithuania (LK 1995: 9). Smaller unit commanders (of battalions, companies, or platoons) were appointed to lead them: most often these were Lithuanian Army officers, former Riflemen, policemen, and teachers. The corpus mentions about 10 resistance units, for example:

Nuojo's path, following that of his father, a partisan and head of intelligence for the Žalioji unit. In October 1945, after the Žebenkštis and Lydis units were merged, the Žaibas district was established, and the partisans elected J. Žemaitis as its commander.

²⁰ Partizanų kovos sričių, apygardų ir rinktinių žemėlapį ir schemą žr.: LK 1996: 31; Vėliūtė 2009: 107.

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Very often, the same sentence indicates a partisan’s affiliation with more than one military territorial structure: alongside a larger unit (a district), a smaller unit is also mentioned, e.g.:

A partisan of the Birutė detachment of the Kęstutis district who fell in battle at Mįšios.

In 1946–1948, they had gathered into the “Putinas” partisan squad of the “Tigras” detachment.

Ten partisans of the Merkys squad were brutally shot dead.

A smaller military unit was a company, e.g.:

At the festive celebration, partisan Anicetas Sinanonis (codename Sigitas) shared his recollections; he belonged to the Butigeidis company of the Algirantas district.

1.6. Positions Held

The examples from the DLKT also tell us a great deal about the positions held by partisans. Like soldiers in a regular army,²¹ freedom fighters had their own positions, military ranks, and so on. The corpus shows that there were privates and reservist partisans, e.g.:

At first he was an ordinary partisan, later—squad commander.

Today my clock is already counting my seventh decade; I, a former reservist partisan, condemn this shameful fact, which still manifests itself in our army.

The illustration lists officer ranks (general, lieutenant, adjutant, and so on), e.g.:

The participants unanimously elected J. Žemaitis as the future president; he was awarded the rank of partisan general.

Juozas Palūnas, who had been a partisan since 1944, was appointed commander of the Prisikėlimas district (in 1949–1950, commander of the Maironis detachment) and held the rank of senior partisan lieutenant.

His adjutant was partisan Viktoras Šniolis.

Partisan leaders’ positions are often designated by the nouns commander and chief, e.g.:

Dad was a partisan, later becoming partisan commander Liūtas.

J. Žemaitis became chief of staff of the Žemaičiai unit, which consisted of about sixty partisans, chief of staff.

²¹ Partizanų būriai buvo tvarkomi pagal Lietuvos kariuomenės pavyzdį (Vėliūtė 2009: 23); lietuviška rezistencija išskirtinė tuo, kad jos metu buvo sukurta centralizuota karinė valdžia (Anušauskas 2004: 242).

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The text very frequently mentions partisan auxiliaries, liaison agents²². They were close to the freedom fighters, active supporters of theirs, as if an intermediary link between the partisans and the outside world. Liaison agents carried out specific tasks for the partisans: they maintained communications between partisan units, gathered intelligence, distributed the underground press, and supplied the partisans with various necessities (LK 1996: 11). This is also most often discussed in publicistic discourse, e.g.:

As a liaison agent, he could identify the partisans’ hiding places and their helpers, so he was in no hurry to become a partisan himself.

When the second Soviet occupation began, she worked in pharmacies in Panevėžys, Svėdasai, and Debeikiai, established contacts with the partisans, supplied them with medicine, and soon became a liaison agent.

Some liaison agents later became partisans themselves, e.g.:

Sitting beside her is former partisan and former partisan liaison agent Antanas Šimėnas.

Only once are partisan scouts mentioned in publicistic discourse, e.g.:

I am sending partisan scout Vladas Snauskas to Vilnius.

1.7. Social Status

The corpus examples also provide some information about the partisans’ social background. The partisan ranks were made up primarily of “middle-class peasants and the intelligentsia from among them, mostly officers, non-commissioned officers, and teachers” (Starkauskas 2001: 8). The text illustrations also show that before the resistance struggle, these people led ordinary lives: they studied, farmed, taught, and did other kinds of work, e.g.:

Bronius Kacevičius and Vladas Simanonis, partisans of the spruce forests, hid there.

A 50-year-old “partisan” (a Lithuanian peasant from Šakiai District) had to take the Soviet military oath because he had not served in the army.

When the Russians tried to recruit him, the teacher joined the partisans in 1944.

Dalė Raslavičienė also barely had time to travel from school to school, where she told stories about the years of deportation, sang songs from her youth, and spoke about the partisans, whose ranks included more than one student from Veiveriai Gymnasium.

²² There were indeed many more partisan supporters than freedom fighters themselves, because the commanders understood that resistance to the occupiers was possible only with the support of the population (Vėliutė 2009: 94).

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1.8. Character Traits

Not every man dared to choose the path of a partisan, since many sensed that such underground activity was doomed to physical destruction. Being a partisan required not only physical but also spiritual strength and certain character traits²³, because “resistance is a choice” (Greimas 1991: 305)—a difficult, arduous, definitive one. It would not be possible to construct a full psychological portrait of a partisan from corpus examples alone, but some key character traits emerge in the selected collocations. First, courage is mentioned, e.g.:

Lapelė was a brave, dutiful partisan.

It is believed that the body of a valiant partisan can be laid out.

Alongside the brave partisan heroes stood the book smugglers of the modern age, publishers and distributors of the underground press.

Courage is also accompanied by caution, e.g.:

When walking through a town or settlement, a partisan must be extremely cautious and wear clothes typical of that locality.

A considerable number of people began to join the partisans, but, fearing provocateurs, the partisans were reluctant to admit newcomers into their units.

The illustration discusses the partisans’ loyalty, honor, determination, optimism, idealism, and dedication to their choice²⁴, e.g.:

The letter was delivered to Vaitelis by a recruited partisan, who had received from Nikitin not only a letter but also an order to kill the district commander; however, the partisan remained loyal to his commander.

There was little need to encourage them, however, for the partisans were steadfast and resolute in spirit. The men’s spirits improved: partisans quickly forget their hardships and misfortunes. Questions such as these could be asked: why were professional stribai nothing but illiterates; why was a partisan an honest and noble person; why was there not a single stribas who had willingly sacrificed his life for Lithuania’s freedom.

One trait often attributed to partisans is religiosity, for example:

Sakalas manages to preserve the unity of moral, patriotic, and religious values that forms the backbone of a partisan’s personality, but his comrade-in-arms does not.

²³Historians note that among the partisans were some who fought not so much for Lithuania as for their own personal security; there were also adventurers who sought to profit in the name of the partisans (LK 1996: 19), though the partisan movement was nevertheless “dominated by idealists, fighters convinced of their own cause” (Štromas 2001: 215).

²⁴Comparisons found in the corpus also speak indirectly of the partisans’ endurance, patience, and caution, for example: How many times you watched and ran about, unable to enjoy the fine taste of your friends, short of clothes—and as silent as a partisan. Suddenly four Gytis slip into the room and, like a partisan, creep along the wall toward the box with a whisper.

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The partisan resembles the order of knights even in his religious spirit, which accompanied the partisans’ public and personal lives.

In this context, religiosity is understood somewhat more broadly, not merely as faith or devoutness. According to Algirdas Julius Greimas, “the resistance fighters are united by a single faith, and the resistance movement is a religious congregation with its own martyrs, its own sacrifice” (Greimas 1991: 306); it is a particular, distinctive emotional atmosphere in which a worldview develops and is experienced²⁵.

Individual character traits are mentioned less often, for example:

In his notes, Balys recorded the words that in Lithuania future gentlemen “will claim our merits for themselves, be the first to boast, while the true partisan, modest and quiet, may be forgotten.”

All partisans are guests on this earth, unwilling to stay long, so they do not linger. The sad, tired eyes of partisan Tomas Vizbaras-Lebedis, nearing the end of his eighth decade.

The partisans’ positive character traits are mentioned most often, although it is acknowledged that:

Not every partisan or participant in later underground organizations was an honest or irreproachable person.

The partisans’ character and conduct were also greatly shaped by various formal statutes, rules, instructions, regulatory acts, and customary prohibitions, for example:

Partisans were forbidden to fall in love and to drink.

Partisans were strictly forbidden to drink alcohol, so that they would not lose their vigilance or, exhausted, perish in an eternal sleep.

Analysis of the illustrations reveals a somewhat idealized image of the partisan: they are exceptionally brave, religious, resilient, morally steadfast patriots, loyal to their ideals. Today, even historians acknowledge that the resistance struggle was marked by “a special emotional atmosphere, faith, and a perception of values unlike that in normal life” (Anušauskas 2004: 250).

1.9. Physical appearance

The text contains few sentences that describe the partisans’ physical appearance. A person’s appearance while constantly facing combat or death is not essential. It is mentioned only when discussing photographs and recalling one or another specific person, e.g.:

²⁵ The Resistance not only had to withstand the Soviets. Today we recognize that the partisan movement and its worldview were significant to the origins of Sąjūdis (Landsbergis 1999: 257). According to historians, the Resistance arose from the genocide of the nation, while Sąjūdis was “its surviving child, taken from the womb of its withered mother” (Gudavičius 1999: 670).

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A fair-haired young man standing among clergymen in the photograph is the partisan Juozas Šukys.

The man was a partisan of medium build with a tuft of mustache beneath his nose; he seemed to me not to be young anymore and to resemble an ordinary peasant.

The partisan’s main attribute was a weapon, e.g.:

They armed the special unit even with weapons taken from fallen partisans.

The security officers mockingly hand a rifle to the partisan they arrest.

The partisans were not afraid of the local stribai: by then they were well armed, with an aircraft machine gun, a mortar, and quite a few automatic rifles.

1.10. The time when partisan activity began

The precise time when partisan activity began is most often specified: illustrations mention a particular year, season, or month, e.g.:

Klajūnas began his partisan career in 1945 in Utena County.

In late autumn 1944, the Šniūnai became partisans.

At the beginning of 1945 he joined the partisans and fought until the spring of 1953, when he was arrested; in 1954 he was shot.

In April 1945 he left civilian life and began his partisan career under the codename Vanagas.

An approximate time is indicated by subordinate clauses, e.g.:

When it became unsafe here too, he went to join the partisans Šarūnas and Rūstymas in the Šimonys Forest.

And when, as the war was ending, his parents and sister left for the West, Olegas joined the Lithuanian partisans.

Lexemes with the approximate-time semantic feature, such as war, postwar period, occupation, and so on, are very common. E.g.:

During the Soviet occupation, J. Aleksas’s son had already joined the partisans.

In the postwar years, one of their sons—Petras—joined the partisans.

He met him and his cousin Jonas Kazlauskas, and remembered his cousin Juozas Kazlauskas, who had joined the partisans after the war and had been killed by the stribai.

1.11. Partisan Activity

Male partisans began their activities immediately after the war, but genuine partisan activity began only after taking an oath: “upon joining the ranks of the partisans, men took an oath; a record of duties performed was drawn up, and in 1946 military uniforms, insignia, and decorations were introduced” (Anušauskas 204: 247). This is also borne out by examples from the text:

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In August 1944, in a partisan camp in the Plateliai Forest, Lieutenant General Motiejus Pečiulionis raised his right hand and solemnly [recited] the words of the military oath. However, J. Žemaitis rejects offers promising him life and remains faithful to the oath he swore as an officer and partisan.

The corpus contains several sentences in which partisan activity is described very generally, for example:

Partisans must carry out propaganda, agitation, and explanatory work among the people.

Partisan activity is most often characterized by several dozen verbs denoting active action. Several more prominent groups of such verbs stand out. Verbs of moving and travelling: come, run, make one’s way, surround, travel, and so on. For example:

When he saw that partisans were surrounding the village, it was already too late.

Combat verbs: cut down, fight, shoot down, seize, liquidate, destroy, hang, fire upon, shoot, shoot dead, attack, and so on. For example:

They were caught on the road near the place where the partisans were exchanging fire with the “stribai” and soldiers.

But the partisans continued to fight, hoping that independence would soon dawn.

Various other verbs denoting active action: punish, betray, hand over, dig, destroy, resist, follow, make contact, block off, and so on. For example:

In 1946 we began publishing our own newspaper, “The Lithuanian Partisan”²⁶.

Security informants and agents, as well as Soviet activists, were especially harmful to them, so the partisans warned, punished, and eliminated them.

Illustrations less often discuss the relatively passive activities of partisans²⁷ (these do not express specific active actions). Such activity is primarily marked by various verbs of speaking: began to speak, spoke, told, remembers, and so on. For example:

The partisan Juozas Jakavonis, who is still alive today, told how, when he was still a child, he learned about a prayer book floating on Meris.

As the partisan J. Kadzionis-Bėda recalls, clashes with the “stribai” and soldiers were frequent at that time.

²⁶ From 1945 onward, the resistance press was published throughout Lithuania—in villages, forests, and remote underground hideouts. Each district had at least one periodical. More than 70 newspaper titles were published (Gaškaitė 1997: 96; Vėliūtė 2009: 110).

²⁷ In the context of the partisan movement, the phrases passive activity and passive resistance are used in a qualified sense, since the adjective passive, in its primary meaning, is contrary to the concept of resistance. Thus, passive activity here is understood as activity that is not outwardly expressed, but takes place within a person (cf. Gaškaitė, Kuodienė, Kašėta, Ulevičius 1996: 9).

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Some sentences describe actions taking place within a partisan: thought, pondered, dreamed, hoped, cherished hopes, and so on. For example:

Lithuania, which the Lithuanian partisans dreamed of.

The partisans cherished the idea of uniting all Lithuania for a struggle to the death.

Clearly, when partisan activity is discussed in the corpus, many more verbs denoting active actions are used. Verbs denoting states, that is, an inactive relationship to an action, are used relatively infrequently.

1.12. Relations with the Surrounding Community and Relatives

Contact with the surrounding community was most often maintained through liaison agents, for example:

Ona Gogaitytė-Marčiukė, a liaison agent and supporter who helped the partisans of the Tauras district, sheltered partisans and buried those who had been killed.

The corpus mentions various other supporters of partisan activity (individuals, the church, etc.), for example:

Convinced that the people of Lithuania were supporting the partisans, the occupiers began mass deportations to Siberia.

The Lithuanian partisans were supported by the church, which made the movement relatively stronger.

A total of 1,700 dollars was donated to support the Lithuanian partisans; 1,000 dollars of this was donated by Ruta Sakienė in memory of her late husband’s brother, Petras, who had been killed as a partisan.

The illustrations discuss the relatives whom the partisans had left behind and tried to visit, either in person or at least in their thoughts: first and foremost, mothers and sisters; fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, and others are mentioned less often.²⁸ For example:

More than one partisan’s mother or sister experienced this.

The partisan’s parents, Jonas and Marijona, were deported to Siberia along with their son Stasys’s wife, Gene.

Another, perhaps the most important person in a partisan’s life after his mother, is his sister.

Their hands had also fallen on the brother of the partisan Katinas (a codename), who had returned on leave from the army.

I raped a partisan’s son...

The Lithuanian Court of Appeal announced on Wednesday a decision favorable to the partisan’s daughter, Nuzudė.

Instead of a sister, he asked for provisions to be delivered to the home of a partisan’s wife.

More distant relatives are mentioned less often: a brother-in-law, an uncle, and so on. For example:

²⁸Interestingly, partisan songs, too, most often mention the mother, sister, and beloved: in 104 partisan songs, the mother is mentioned 112 times, the beloved 50 times, the brother 47 times, the sister 32 times, the father 17 times, while the wife is not mentioned even once (Vašokas 1969: 6).

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Valdas Ščiglinskas, grandson of Lithuanian volunteer Jurgis Naudžius, with his wife Rima and their sons Edgaras and Evaldas; Alfonsas Sapjanskis, sons of partisan Dragūnas; and other participants belonging to the Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees.

At night, the Skrebai took him to the village of Daumantai, to his partisan uncle, and buried him in the garden.

1.13. Time and place of combat

The most general temporal marker is the noun postwar period, e.g.:

At the beginning of the national revival, living postwar partisans flew in, gathered the remains of their comrades that had been buried wherever possible, and buried them in the Ariogala cemetery.

The exact years, months, and days of combat are also mentioned, e.g.:

In 1944–1945, the district’s partisans carried out many combat operations, destroying Soviet institutions and administrative offices in smaller towns.

During the first pogrom, on the night of June 25–26, Lithuanian partisans killed more than 150 Jews, set fire to or otherwise destroyed several synagogues, and burned down the Jewish quarter, which consisted of about 60 houses.

The time of day is often mentioned—morning, evening, night, e.g.:

At dawn, he saw partisans running from the forest.

In the evening, when it was completely dark, we took off our military clothes, changed into partisan clothing, and set out for the villages.

During the night, the partisans crept up and blew up the “government” building.

The typical geographical setting for combat is the forest. This setting is indicated by prepositional phrases and the noun forest in various case forms. The place of combat may be abstract (simply a forest or woodland), e.g.:

Immediately after the funeral, Father went into the forest to join the partisans.

The two watched as the partisans calmly left the forest.

A specific forest is often identified, e.g.:

When the partisans from the Obeliai area withdrew to the forests of Ignalina in 1949, Antanina maintained contact through the forester Araminas.

Residents who asked about the partisans staying somewhere in the depths of Leno Forest shrugged their shoulders.

It was indicated that they should meet with the partisans of Šimoniai Forest, with the unit led by Petras Masilionis (“Napoleon”).

Post-war partisans also fought in enclosed spaces. Most often, underground camouflaged partisan hideouts are called bunkers, for example:

The other partisans were also with them in the bunker: Juozas Žaržius – Jazminas, Adelė Talutė, Kazys Kniazys.

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It is known from Chekist documents themselves, or even from some sources of Soviet historiography, that partisans sometimes built two-story bunkers.

Less often, an underground room set up for concealment is called a hideout, for example:

From the very beginning, the partisans had dug a large, very well-equipped hideout with bunks and bedding in Suvalkija raite, on a hillock (the place was called Savi kalnai).

In some illustrations, the location of the bunker is not specified, for example:

It seems to me that [he/she] was freely in a Lithuanian partisan bunker.

There are still living female couriers in Ragúoj who saw the executioners torture the partisans taken out of the bunker.

In some sentences, we find information that a bunker was built in a forest, raite, and so on²⁹. For example:

The bunker where Bronė Žemgulytė hid with several other partisans was concealed in an unsuspected spot in Aisėnai Forest, a couple of kilometers from the Veiviržėnai–Priekulė road.

From the illustrations, we learn that bunkers were also built within a homestead (under the kitchen, sauna, in the cellar, and so on), for example:

Exactly the same kind of bunker had been built under the sauna of a man who helped the partisans.

The Chekists carried out an “operation”: they tried to capture alive the partisans located in the bunker under the kitchen.

1.14. Death

Partisans were people with tragic fates. According to historians, about 20,000 partisans died in Lithuania between 1944 and 1953. According to statistics from 1945, “every day 27 freedom fighters died in Lithuania” (Gaškaitė, Kuodytė, Kašėta, Ulevičius 1996: 352). The corpus contains numerous sentences that speak of the deaths of freedom fighters. A partisan’s death could take many forms. Most partisans fell in combat, for example:

The commander and 22 partisans were killed in battle.

Was killed was Juozas Dimeikis-Diedes, a partisan in the security detachment, while the wounded partisan Edvardas Barčas-Adžus was taken prisoner.

Others die from their wounds or by poisoning, and so on. For example:

She had experienced battles and the deaths of young men, as well as helplessness, when partisans with torn lungs and grievous injuries died without medical assistance: wounds had to be dressed without any anaesthesia, without painkillers,

²⁹ Išsamiai partizanų bunkeriai aprašomi Nijolės Gaškaitės knygoje (Gaškaitė 1997: 74–81).

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For instance, at the direction of the MGB, Antanas Valantinas, priest in Kupreliškis (Kupiškis district), gave partisans poisoned drink—two of them died and five were arrested.

To avoid falling into enemy hands and betraying their comrades, partisans often committed suicide³⁰, for example:

People saw how a partisan, covered in blood, knelt, crossed himself and, placing a grenade against his head, blew himself up.

Surrounded, he shot himself the last partisan of the Vytautas District, Antanas Krauelis “Siaubūnas”; the last partisan of the Žemaičiai District, Pranas Končius “Adomas,” was killed.

Those mortally wounded ask their comrades in arms to kill them, for example: A partisan, dying with blood-filled eyes, said: “Finish me off, brother.”

Death is the constant companion of partisans. When you witness the deaths of your comrades, sometimes you must kill your mortally wounded friends; you fight and send enemies to the next world, and feel keenly your own transience, because you look death in the face every day.

1.15. Time and place of death

The corpus examples very often specify the precise time of death. The exact year of death is often given, e.g.:

It is believed that the last partisan in the Vytis District died in 1959.

On the same day, his son, partisan Algirdas Varkala, who had died in 1948, was posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Vytis, 2nd Class.

In some examples, not only the year of death but also the month and day are specified, e.g.:

The last partisans of the Granitas District died in April 1952.

He died on November 13, 1949, together with partisans Jonas Dagelis-Gintaras and Danutė Dovydaitė from Surdegis.

Very often, the time of death is associated with a specific place, e.g.:

Gražina’s father, partisan Jonas Bunikis, died on an early August morning in 1947, at the homestead of Antanas Šmuilas, a resident of Pypliškė village.

The last partisan of the squad, Pranas Jurkėnas-Eimutis, from Kirkai village in the Dabužiai area, died in Gabrenai Forest in 1954.

Less often, the time of death is specified less precisely—only the season is given, e.g.:

The following summer three partisans—Balys Putrimas, Sirus from Bikūnai village, and Grigalis from Dovainai—were shot in Vešeikiai Forest.

³⁰Morally steadfast partisans, finding themselves in a hopeless situation and wishing to avoid arrest and torture during interrogation, would not hesitate to blow themselves up or shoot themselves. More than 500 such cases are known (LK 1996: 13; Anušauskas 2004: 251).

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The corpus contains many illustrations that indicate the very precise location of death: a specific village, rural district, or local area, e.g.:

Another of my fellow students, partisan Petras Pocinas, was killed on 4 March 1947 in the village of Masrėnai (Deltuva rural district).

Can we understand what the news of the death of her second son, Jonas, a partisan, in the village of Raišupis meant to her tortured soul?

The circumstances of death are often specified more precisely, e.g.:

Taip belaukdama gavau žinią, kad partizanas su trim kovos draugais žuvo 1946.06.13/14 Gediminaičiuose (Švenčionys apyl.), egulio Antano Norvilo sodyboje išduoti.

On 17 March 1965, during a military operation led by KGB Major Nachman Dušanskis, the last Lithuanian partisan, Antanas Kraujelis, committed suicide in the home of Antanas and Ona Pinkevičius, after first destroying the documents.

As the examples show, in almost all cases, when the death of a partisan is discussed, a specific time and a specific place are clearly linked.

1.16. Place of Eternal Rest

Those killed in 1944–1945 were most often left at the places where they died, enabling their relatives to bury them secretly (Gakaitė 1997: 49). The corpus contains several illustrations of partisans being buried secretly, e.g.:

Both partisans were killed in the unequal battle and were secretly buried in Putiliškės cemetery by their contacts.

The partisans killed in this battle were secretly buried in the cemetery of Lenas parish.

However, there are incomparably more sentences mentioning that the tortured bodies of partisans were dumped in town market squares, on pavements, propped against the walls of houses, and so on. For example:

The slain partisans were then brought to Varėna and thrown onto the pavement outside the NKVD headquarters.

They took the slain partisans to Kavarskas, lined them up against the brick wall, photographed them, jeered at them, and kicked them.

In the spring of 1945, I saw the first murdered partisans in the town square.

These were brutal, but fairly typical, scenes of the time. To intimidate the population, NKVD officers often brought the slain to towns and laid them out in public places. Such actions were officially called “identification,” but in reality their purpose was to humiliate the dead and show the living what fate awaited all those who chose the path of armed resistance (Gakaitė 1997: 50).

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Examples have been found in which it is said that corpses are left to rot in open spaces and buried anywhere (in ditches, gravel pits, marshes, near homesteads, in forests, and so on). For example:

Just think: so what if hundreds of thousands were deported, imprisoned, killed; so what if ditches are full of partisan bodies...

The bodies of the fallen partisans were taken away and propped up in Rokiškis Square, and later dumped in a ditch outside the town.

Not only did crosses sprout in cemeteries after partisan remains were reburied from gravel pits, ditches, and wells, but also in the Lithuanian soil that received the greatest number of bodies.

Today, places soaked with partisan blood are marked with crosses, memorial plaques, monuments, and the like, but the vanished corpses still live on in the memory of the older generation.

1.17. Assessments of Partisan Activity and Its Connection with the Present

The corpus contains more than one example in which attempts are made to assess the partisans’ activity at the time, their struggles, betrayals, and the like. For example:

They were talking all about us, the partisans.

There were criminals among the partisans, but the partisans were not criminals.

And then one can talk about specific partisans, partisans and non-partisans, very good partisans and really bad partisans.

Some had already grouped our partisans into several categories. One group consisted of idealists, another of those driven into the forest by circumstances, and a third of opportunists.

Most illustrations present a positive assessment of the partisans: they are called national champions and heroes³¹, legends; their blood is considered honorable, sacred, and so on. For example:

Thus, the partisans are rightly called national champions, heroes, and the like.

The struggle of the Lithuanian partisans was heroic, because fighting when you know you will not win and will die is the ultimate mark of heroism.

The postwar partisans are emphatically portrayed as patriots of their homeland and defenders of its people.

Even this place is marked by a partisan’s blood, living and sacred.

³¹The image of the partisan as a national hero is particularly prominent in partisan songs and poetry. Here, partisans are clearly identified with traditional heroes of Lithuanian folklore or history: they fight and die like the giants of legends or the martyrs of the Catholic Church (Vėtokas 1969: 2–3).

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However, it is suggested that partisan activity is sometimes overestimated or not properly, objectively evaluated, for example:

In the article, people associated with primitive patriotism are those inclined to idealize and mythologize the postwar partisan struggle.

Apparently, it was and still is convenient for someone to discredit and accuse the partisans of things they never did.

Once again, a dark image of the partisans is being hammered into our heads, – said Vytautas Kubilius.

It was necessary to resort to blackmail and betrayal; it was imperative to discredit the partisans in the eyes of the people.

It is emphasized that many people supported the partisan struggle, for example:

Why has no decent person ever said a good word about the stribai, while almost everyone in Lithuania who knew what was at stake loved, supported, sheltered, and praised the partisans?

The people in the villages loved and respected the partisans, supporting and sheltering them.

We lived as one family with the partisans.

A few sentences were found in which partisan activity is evaluated negatively, for example:

You are elevating the so-called partisans, when they should be called bandits...

And those who lay claim to being “prominent writers” all seem to have agreed to portray the partisans in their “documentary” sketches and other articles and books as jackals feeding on carrion, or, more poetically, as vampires thirsting for Soviet people’s blood and vanishing at dawn.

Illustrations were found that discuss people killed by partisans, repressions, the cruelty of some partisans that should not be forgotten, unjustified violence, and so on. Thus, unpleasant facts are not concealed, although some acts were committed not by the partisans themselves but by people acting under their name, for example:

The executions carried out by partisans against people in this category were viewed controversially among the partisans themselves.

From around 1950 onward, partisans too killed civilians and stribai, relatives of traitors or security agents, and shot entire families.

Today, there are still living partisans among us. From the perspective of the present, they are called former. The lives of these people connect the past and the present, for example:

Yesterday, in the courtyard of the Ministry of National Defence, President Valdas Adamkus presented former partisans with orders and medals.

That year, a gray-haired partisan said on Soldiers’ Day: “Trust NATO, but keep your powder dry.”

A bridge from the past to today is built through the partisans’ children and grandchildren; the partisans’ dreams and the memories they left behind also sustain the connection between past and present, for example:

S. Nėfas spoke about the partisans’ battles, emphasizing that “the most important thing we have today is a free Lithuania, which the Lithuanian partisans dreamed of.”

And will young people, today’s pupils, even read these partisan memoirs?

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The memory of fallen partisans is commemorated with monuments, crosses, memorial plaques, trees planted in their honor, and so on. For example:

In various parts of Lithuania, crosses and monuments are being erected to partisans who fell for the freedom of the Homeland.

Planted for the partisan Juozas Lukša-Daumantas as well, the commemorative, namesake trees, for the victims of January 13 in Vilnius, and a little birch for the poet Paulius Širvys.

Now his surname is commemorated on a stele dedicated to partisans in the Joničiai Cemetery of Garliava Eldership, together with those of Bronius Dagėla-Drąnas and Albinas Kamarauskas-Savanoris.

In four granite slabs, inscriptions are engraved dedicated to Lithuanian partisans, political prisoners, deportees, and émigrés.

Songs, poems, films, television programs, and documentary features are created in their memory; photo albums are compiled, their memoirs published, articles and books about the partisans written, streets named after them, and so on. For example:

The fallen partisans were often celebrated in song.

Can a bestseller about partisans be written?

And most of all, I thank you for continually publishing articles about our dear parti-zans and their photographs.

You played one of the Lukšas brothers in your teacher’s film about the partisans, „Vienui vieni“.

Streets have been named after Lukša-Daumantas, S. Staniškis-Litas, J. Mišiūnas-Žalias Velnias, and other partisans.

Holy Masses are offered for the dead partisans, and various events are held in their honor, for example:

Holy Mass was offered for the partisans in the Čiobiškis church.

Here, together with veterans of the partisan resistance and troops of the field army and volunteers standing in formation, we honored our fallen partisans with a minute of silence.

Thus, partisan activity is most often portrayed positively and in exalted terms in journalistic writing, while the brutal executions carried out by partisans are also passed over in silence. The memory of the freedom fighters and their activities are commemorated in today’s society through various memorial markers (crosses, monuments, books published, and so on).

2. ABSTRACT, UNIDENTIFIED PERSONALITY

This status of a personality is marked by the adjective “unknown,” the prefixed passive participle “unrecognized,” and verbs such as “I don’t know,” “I don’t remember,” “I forgot,” and so on. For example:

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A. That unknown partisan was buried in a single grave by the cemetery fence with Stasiulis. The murderer Aleksandras, the cruel Antanas, Žižūnas Kazys, Žukauskas Juozas, Žukauskas Zgimas, Žureitis Juozas, and five unidentified partisans. Another partisan, I’ve forgotten his surname, climbed up into the attic and escaped through the window. The phrase unknown-to-the-speaker partisan has a somewhat different meaning. “Unknown-to-the-speaker” means a person who is unknown, unseen, and not yet vetted by a particular individual, with whom no acquaintance has been established, although the person may be known and familiar to others. Examples from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language (DLKT) show that one should act cautiously with partisans who are unknown and have not yet been vetted, for example:

Warn trusted residents and couriers as soon as possible not to engage in any conversation with unfamiliar partisans.

That same evening, we wrote a bundle of replies informing residents how to behave when unfamiliar partisans came by.

3. THE IMPOSTOR PARTISAN

Publicistic texts repeatedly mention the difficult lot of the partisan, the suffering of partisans, various trials, and so on. For example:

They would talk about what awaited us all, about the hard days of a partisan who was hunted and shot at.

It was a hard time for the partisans then; soldiers, stribai, and all sorts of spies were constantly on their trail.

It is clear that not everyone could be a partisan. The question of partisan status is raised from various angles, for example:

After all, quite a few people in the forest had not taken the oath. And if you had not taken the oath, you could not claim that you had been a partisan.

Could those who took the oath but “legalized” themselves also call themselves partisans?³²

A typical, ordinary figure, bearing all the characteristic features of the prototypes and therefore recognizable by everyone (i.e., one who had taken the oath prescribed by the leadership, wore a uniform, and so on)—a true partisan, for example:

Believing that he was dealing with genuine partisans, the liaison reported the landing.

³²In 1945, the occupying authorities appealed to the nation, urging those in hiding to legalize their status. In all, about 25,000 participants in the armed resistance legalized their status in Lithuania between 1944 and 1953. By 1952, only a few thousand of them were still alive. The others were arrested or, unable to endure the persecution and unwilling to betray others, returned to the forest and died (Kašeta 1995: 70; Vėliūtė 2009: 21).

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“Internal agents,” who directly helped the agents provocateurs eliminate genuine partisans, also caused considerable harm to the resistance organizations.

Its opposite is the false partisan. The figure of the false partisan is multifaceted. There were quite a few supporters of the partisans who did not have the status of genuine partisans. Such a partisan-like state, a comparatively passive struggle, is most often marked by the qualifying particles still, almost and somewhat like, e.g.:

Adolukas is not yet a partisan—he is only sixteen, but an indispensable courier, ready to die for the partisans.

But they did meet; by then Andrius had been trained and was much more cautious, although after his first baptism of fire he felt almost like a genuine partisan.

This “apparition” performs the role of a found uniform, which means: he himself will still be like a partisan, will be able to go where the partisans fought, lie in wait for the enemies, and avenge his parents’ deaths.

Not everyone’s clear status (a certain division of a person, an identity not yet fully realized) is marked by phrases with the adverb half, e.g.:

Only then did the half-partisan notice the bloodied nose of the stribukas and the blood-red snow blossoming beneath the stribukas’s feet.

One such half-partisan, half-free citizen had found shelter in our unit.

The most obvious, most typical false partisan is the alleged parti- san. This attributive phrase denotes a person seeking to pose as a partisan, don a partisan’s uniform, and win others’ trust³³. Alleged means false, not actually existing, an imaginary partisan, e.g.:

The alleged partisans left, and later they extorted support for the partisans from the residents with threats.

The alleged partisans were usually MGB agents provocateurs or stribai disguised as partisans, who went “from house to house terrorizing and intimidating residents and looking for connections with genuine partisans” (Gaškaitė 1997: 7). The status of a false, alleged partisan is especially often indicated by various verbs and their forms: to conceal oneself, disguise oneself, pretend, dress, change clothes, introduce oneself, call oneself, etc. E.g.:

People do not forget those who, pretending to be partisans, robbed and killed, amassing wealth.

I cannot change robbers, especially those disguising themselves as partisans.

Some obscure men came from the forest and introduced themselves as partisans, but I doubt they have any connection with the partisans.

An assumed identity is also recognizable from the phrase in the name of the partisans, e.g.:

We know that more than one home was robbed in the name of the partisans.

33 Cf. LKŽ 12, the meaning of the verb tarti ‘to pretend, feign’.

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There were also real bandits on the rampage, who had sewn Vytis emblems onto their caps and committed murders in the partisans’ name.

Quotation marks indicate uncertainty or doubt about someone’s identity, for example:

The next day, the Russian garrison attacked the “partisan,” and the “father” once again fell into the clutches of the Chekists.

Then the soldier disappeared from the village, along with the “partisans.”

A partisan’s status is forfeited by betraying one’s own (other partisans) and going over to the enemy. Such individuals are called former, defected, or recruited partisans, and so on. For example:

They were betrayed in the bunker by former partisan Šiaučiulis.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Adolfas Baublys-Merkas’s unit were recalled: a partisan betrayed the couriers; it later emerged that he had been recruited by the stribai.

Nouns with stronger connotations are also used: traitor, scoundrel, turncoat, for example:

The partisans were betrayed by a scoundrel with the code name “Moscow.”

But the grenade did not explode, and the leader of the Aukštaitija partisans became a traitor.

Objective reasons for betrayals are also indicated (partisans agree to legalize their status, become NKVD agents, and so on), for example:

We knew that former partisan Blažūnas, after legalizing his status, had been recruited and started working for the security service.

After the war, the remains were examined by forensic medical specialist Juozas Markulis³⁴, who was also an NKVD agent and betrayed the partisans.

CONCLUSIONS

Having analyzed approximately 750 corpus sentences that discuss postwar Lithuanian partisans, we can formulate a cognitive definition of a partisan. The partisan’s identity in the corpus is heterogeneous. In public discourse, a partisan is understood in three ways: 1) as a specific, precisely identified person; 2) as an abstract, unidentified figure; 3) as a false, fabricated identity. If we are speaking of a specific, clearly identified identity, we define a partisan as follows: a Lithuanian partisan is a participant in the partisan struggle against Soviet rule that took place in Lithuania in 1944–1953, whose exact first name, surname, pseudonym, year of birth (age), and place of birth are known, as well as the period of their partisan activity,

³⁴ Juozas Albinas Markulis-Erelis, who became an MGB agent (using Erelis, Ąžuolas, and Noreika as agent codenames), betrayed about two hundred partisans. In 1947–1948 alone, 13 leaders of the partisan movement who had legalized themselves using false identity documents supplied by him and other agents were later arrested (Vėliutė 2009: 54).

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the place, time, and circumstances of combat, death, and burial; family and social status; specified positions held; affiliation with a particular district, squad, company, or unit, or with an ethnographic region, rural district, local area, administrative district, town, or village; a partisan is usually armed and uniformed, has taken an oath, displays certain character and physical traits, and generally maintains contact with the outside world through liaison agents. The connection between past and present is maintained through surviving partisans or their families, bitter memories, and the children and grandchildren of deceased partisans. Today, their memory is commemorated with monuments, crosses, and memorial stones; films, books, television programs, and so on are produced about partisans. Their activities are evaluated in different ways. Most illustrations present a positive evaluation of the partisans: they are called national heroes, their blood is considered sacred, and they are hailed as legends; however, there are also many sentences about murders committed by partisans, their atrocities, and so forth. These are the most typical, prototypical features of the concept.

An unidentified partisan is an unknown, unfamiliar, unrecognized, forgotten, or widely circulated person, without a specific first name or surname.

A person is described as a false partisan if they are: 1) in a state of becoming a partisan (not yet a partisan, almost a partisan, like a partisan); 2) a semi-partisan (whose identity has not been fully established); 3) a supposed partisan (pretending, disguised, camouflaged, calling themselves or presenting themselves as a partisan, and so on).

The analyzed medium of texts allows us to assert that, at the end of the 20th century, the postwar partisan was quite often perceived in Lithuanian consciousness in a romanticized, idealized, even mythologized way, as a model to be emulated, an admirable ideal of a citizen (warrior) with a tragic fate. In today’s context, the figure of the partisan emerges as a source of inspiration for state-builders and ordinary citizens alike. This is also attested to by the very latest journalistic texts, for example:

Vanagas’s fate, and the entire partisan struggle, show how closely heroism was intertwined with tragedy here. The brighter the sun, the darker the shadows; thus the partisans’ heroism and self-sacrifice were inevitably accompanied by terrible betrayals, lies, and suffering (delfi.lt; 2018 05 14).

Adolfas Ramanauskas–Vanagas is no longer merely our national hero; the international community is also gradually acknowledging him as an exceptional person, thereby recognizing the exceptional nature of the entire Lithuanian partisan resistance (delfi.lt; 2018 05 14).

However, it must be emphasized that we can construct this image of the partisan based only on journalistic texts from the end of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the image of the partisan should also emerge in the journalism of the 1950s–1970s, since the evaluation of this figure and the image of it in people’s consciousness depend greatly on the political and historical context.

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ŠALTINIAI

Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas, 2013–2018, rengiamas, red. kolegija: Danutė Lutikėvičienė (vyr. red.), Gertrūda Naktinė, Rituė Petrokienė, Dovilė Svekienė, Klementina Vosylė, Jolanta Zabarskaitė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Prieiga internetu: http://bkz.lki.lt.

Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodynas. 7-as patais. ir papild. leid. Vyr. red. Stasys Keinys. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2012, elektroninis variantas, 2015. Prieiga internetu: liks.lki.lt.

DLKŽ – Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstynas. Kaunas: Kauno Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas. Prieiga internetu: http://donelaitis.vdu.lt.

LKŽe – Lietuvių kalbos žodynas 1–20, 1941–2002, elektroninis variantas, red. kolegija: Gertrūda Naktinė (vyr. red.), Jonas Paulauskas, Rituė Petrokienė, Vytautas Vitkauskas, Jolanta Zabarskaitė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2005; atnaujinta versija, 2008. Prieiga internetu: www.lkz.lt.

LITERATŪRA

Anuškauskas Arvydas 2004: Paspiršinimo raida ir pasipriešinimo metodai. – Pilietinis pasipriešinimas Lietuvoje ir Lenkijoje: sąsajos ir ypatumai 1939–1956, ats. red. Arvydas Anuškauskas. Vilnius: Lietuvos gyventojų genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras.

Bartmiński Jerzy 2007: Językowe podstawy obrazu świata. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.

Brazauskas Nerijus 2015: Lietuvos partizanai šiuolaikiniame lietuvių romane: kolektyvinė atmintis ir istorijos interpretacija. – Žmogus ir žodis 17(2), 54–74. Prieiga internetu: http://www.zmogusirzodis.eu.lt.

Čermák František 2000: Tekstynas yra geriausias kasdienio gyvenimo atspindys (pokalbis su prof. Františeku Čermaku). – Darbai ir dienos 24, 295–297.

Gaškaitė Nijolė 1997: Pasipriešinimo istorija, 1944–1953 metai. Vilnius: Aidai.

Gaškaitė Nijolė, Kuodytė Dalia, Kašeta Algis, Ulevičius Bonifacas 1996: Lietuvos partizanai 1944–1953 m. Kaunas: Lietuvos politinių kalinių ir tremtinių sąjunga.

Greimas Julius Algirdas 1991: Rezistencijos sąvoka. – Iš arti ir iš toli. Literatūra, kultūra, grožis. Vilnius: Vaga, 304–307.

Grinius Kęstutis 1990: Partizanų kovos Lietuvoje. Vilnius: Mokslas.

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Geaerts Dirk 1989: Prospects and problems of prototype theory. – Linguistics 27(4), 141–165.

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Gudavičius Aloyzas 2009: Etnolingvistika (Tauta kalboje). Šiauliai: Šiaulių universiteto leidykla.

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Jurkute Mingailė 2016: Memory of the Lithuanian guerilla war: soviet, non-soviet and diaspora’s narratives. Summary of doctoral dissertation. Vilnius university, The Lithuanian institute of history.

LK 1996: Laisvės kovos 1944–1953 metais. Dokumentų rinkinys, sud. Dalia Kuodytė, Algis Kašėta. Vilnius: Lietuvos politinių kalinių ir tremtinių sąjunga, 1996.

Kašėta Algis 1995: Antisovietinio pasipriešinimo mastai Lietuvoje 1944–1953 m. – Laisvės kovų archyvas 14, 65–70.

Kuodytė Dalia, Tracevskis Rokas 2013: The unknown war. Armed anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania in 1944–1953. Vilnius: Genocide and resistance research center of Lithuania.

Landsbergis Vytautas 1999: Rezistencijos reikšmė. – Lietuvos naikinimas ir tautos kova 1940–1998, sud. Izidorius Ignatavičius. Vilnius: Vaga, 255–259.

Macijauskaitė Irma 2000: Dvi antonimų poros: mirtis–gimimas, mirtis–gyvenimas. – Darbai ir dienos 24, 121–142.

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Ч е р н е й к о Л ю д м и л а, Х о С о н Т э 2001: Концепты жизнь и смерть как фрагменты русской языковой картины мира. – Филологические науки 5, 50–58.

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The Partisan of Postwar Lithuania in the Discourse of Opinion Journalism

SUMMARY

Following the methodology of conceptual analysis elaborated by the Lublin ethnolinguistic school, the article attempts to find out how the Lithuanian partisan is conceptualised and categorised in the discourse of opinion journalism and what its cognitive definition is. The advanced search in the texts of opinion journalism of the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language found approximately 7,500 sentences on postwar Lithuanian partisans. By strictly adhering to the chosen methodology, the conceptual analysis should be performed on the basis of three types of data: language system, questionnaires, and texts. The present article focuses on the data of contemporary texts of opinion journalism only. Hence, it is important to underline that the cognitive definition of the partisan proposed in the article is not absolute and finite; it is based on the findings of the textual analysis of one type only. This definition should be supplemented in the future after studying systemic, fiction and questionnaire based data. Scholars have not yet been drawn to study the image of the partisan in the Lithuanian language and our worldviews; therefore, it is meaningful to formulate the concept of the PARTISAN on the basis of the analysis of opinion journalism texts; it is interesting to see how our consciousness perceives the postwar partisan today and how much the formation of this concept is determined by a historical, political and ideological context.

The semantic analysis of the data made it clear that the identity of the partisan in not uniform in the corpus. The perception of the partisan in the discourse of opinion journalism is three-fold: 1) as a particular, explicitly and accurately specified person; 2) as an abstract, unidentified figure; 3) as an unreal, falsified identity. As regards a particular, explicitly specified identity, the following cognitive definition of the partisan can be proposed: A Lithuanian partisan is a participant of the guerilla warfare against the regime of the Soviet Union, which took place in postwar Lithuania in 1944–1953, with a known name, surname and nickname, year of birth (age) and place of birth, the period of involvement in the guerilla warfare, the place, time and circumstances of fight, death and burial, marital and social status, the posts taken, the belonging to a specific military district, platoon, company, brigade or ethnographic region, rural district, countryside district, district, town or village; a partisan is usually armed, uniformed, having made an oath, characterised by certain character traits and external features and usually maintaining a contact with the environment through supporters. The connection between the past and the present is maintained through surviving partisans or through partisans’ dreams, memoirs as well as the children and grandchildren of the perished partisans. Today, their memory is honoured through monuments, crosses, commemorative stones, films, books, television broadcasts about partisans, etc. The evaluation of their activities is rather ambiguous. Most of the illustrations

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speak about their positive evaluation: they are referred to as the heroes and legends of the nation; their blood is considered sacred, etc.; however, quite a number of sentences also speak about the murders, atrocities, etc. committed by partisans.

An unidentified partisan means an unknown, unfamiliar, unrecognised, forgotten or concealed person without a specific name and surname.

An unreal partisan implies a person who is: 1) in the pre-partisan state (not yet a partisan, almost a partisan, like a partisan); 2) half-partisan (the identity is not realised to the full); 3) an alleged partisan (pretended, disguised, camouflaged, calling oneself a partisan, introducing oneself as a partisan, etc.).

The material of the corpus analysed in the study leads to the conclusion that at the end of the 20^th century the postwar partisan often takes the form of a romanticised, idealised, even mythologised, figure, as a certain role model to be followed, as an ideal citizen (warrior) of tragic fate in the Lithuanian consciousness. In today’s context the partisan figure emerges as a peculiar source of inspiration for the builders of the state and its common citizens.

It should nevertheless be noted that such an image of the partisan is prompted by the texts of opinion journalism of the late 20^th century only. The analysis of the opinion journalism of the 1950s–1970s would bring up an absolutely different definition of the partisan, because the evaluation and image of this figure in people’s consciousness is highly dependent on the political and historical context.

Įteikta 2018 m. rugsėjo 19 d.

AURELIJA GRITĖNIENĖ

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lietuva

[email protected]

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