Postcard: Stalin Avenue

Stalino Prospektas, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1956. It's now "Gediminas Avenue."

Why we don't know much about Stalin.

"Americans might be less receptive because of our own mythology of the Second World War. Anything that detracts from that simplified portrait is often unwelcome. Tales of Nazi horrors inflate the American experience and place American efforts front and center. Discussion of the central role of the Soviet Union, and its 20 million dead, deflates American experience and pushes American efforts to the margins."

A Friend's Mother

 

Kaunas, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, November 11, 1978. This is the mother of my Mom's friend Joy. On the back of this photo, Joy wrote, "This is my Mama, Marija, in Kaunas when she reached her 80th birthday. From 1941 she endured 17 years in the Siberian prison camp, along the shores of the Laptev Sea. We survived those years in Stalin's prison listening to propaganda."

Back to the USSR

Travel posters from Soviet, government-run travel agency.

Federalism contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Said Putin: 

Putin was particularly critical of Lenin’s concept of a federative state with its entities having the right to secede, saying it has heavily contributed to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. He added that Lenin was wrong in a dispute with Joseph Stalin, who advocated a unitary state model.

(P.S. Stalin is back in fashion.)

"A Corner of Lithuania Frozen in Time"

Photographs from the Lithuanian "panhandle."

"Mission Siberia"

An annual pilgrimage.

Seventy-Five Years Ago Today

The Soviets occupied Lithuania. Here are a few photos family members took that day.

"Over the fifteen years that Putin has ruled Russia, the story of the Great Patriotic War has acquired new meanings and symbols. Stalin’s name and likeness have gradually been reintroduced into the story–and into the streets of Russian cities."

A Russian examines the symbolism of Victory Day.

See also here.

Victory Day

Former Soviet republics reject symbols that celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Victory Day.

ADDED: Enjoy some humor.

A Recovered Image

My Mom's friend Joy sent this photo in the early 1990s.

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1923. This is my Mom.

*     *     *     *     *

 On the back of the photo, Joy wrote:

 Dearest [Irene's Mom],

This is you!

This photo is historical. It was with me in Siberia in my photo album. It endured all of our sufferings along the shores of the Laptev Sea. It was there for all 17 years of the deportation. Then the photo returned with me to Lithuania in 1958, and now it is in America! 1991.

The issue of ethnic Russians living in Crimea.

The ethnic Russian population in Crimea is a "justification for this entire operation: the ethnic Russians on the Crimean peninsula are allegedly in danger."

How did the population of ethnic Russians rise to a majority in the Crimea? "[T]he only reason that Crimea had a Russian majority was because Josef Stalin deported the native Crimean Tatars en masse to Central Asia after World War II and resettled Russians to replace them."

They still try to rewrite history.

Russia's ambassador makes some controversial observations on the eve of the ninety-fifth anniversary of Lithuanian independence.

Click on the "Deportation," "Displaced Persons," or "Siberia" tags below.

Stalin World

Grutas Park.

(Interviews conducted in ... Russian.)

Josephine, a Mystery

My Mom's maternal Aunt Dora—whom you may remember as an intriguing figure—sent many family photos to my Mom. Dora stayed in Lithuania after the second Soviet occupation, and she lived in the house my maternal Grandparents had built. In that house, Dora found many snapshots my Mom and her Dad, Jake, had left behind when they fled Lithuania in 1944. Beginning in the late 1950s—after Stalin died—Dora started mailing those photos to my Mom. By now, I've posted most of the images on this blog.

Dora was very good about providing written descriptions on the back of photos, especially when she sent an image from a family plot. So this photo, of a headstone and its family bench, is a mystery because Dora wrote nothing on its back. The inscription tells me that the decedent was Josephine, and Josephine was related to the family of my maternal Grandfather, Jake.

Josephine was 32 years old when she died on November 19, 1927. Was she a sister of Jake and his other siblings, Mary, Cody Jr., Zigmas, and the younger brother who died in a shooting accident? My Mom doesn't recall a Josephine or whether a Josephine was a sibling of Jake's or a cousin. Mom does have a foggy memory—from her childhood—of a relative who delivered a still-born baby and then died after she contracted sepsis.

"Rest in peace, our beloved Josephinette, while you wait for us."

UPDATE: Last year, I wondered, "Whose portrait hangs on that wall?" I now see that it's a portrait of Josephine, and I think it's the same portrait that's on her headstone. The placement of Josephine's portrait in a public part of the house—the dining room—tells me that Josephine probably was the deceased daughter of my Mom's paternal Grandparents, Cody Sr. and Wanda. Josphine was a sister of my paternal Grandfather, Jake.

I was searching that "Customs" post just now for some information I had written last year about Kūčios, and there she was, staring at me from the wall, about an hour after this post published.

Death of the "Little Princess"

Svetlana Alliluyeva has died.

UPDATE: There's more here about Alliluyeva's connections to Wisconsin.