Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The edition of the first Lithuanian songbook Dainos oder Litthauische Volkslieder (Königsberg, 1825) prepared by Königsberg University Professor and the Head of the Lithuanian Language Seminar Martynas Liudvikas Rėza is still raising questions. Some may be answered by sources kept in Weimar: Goethe and Schiller archives, Duchess Anna Amalia Library and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s private library at the Goethe’s house-museum. These sources are poorly investigated, published only in a fragmentary way and some have not yet been translated into Lithuanian. The investigation of the circumstances of the collection reveals details that were unknown or underestimated, for example, that the preparation of the Rėza collection was pushed by Abraham Jakob Penzel’s plans to prepare a Lithuanian song collection and to ask for Goethe’s support, as well as the circumstances of how and when Goethe received the manuscript of the collection from Königsberg and why he did not reply to Rėza. It also reveals some of the circumstances of preparation of the collection, methodology and subsequent Rėza’s plans that were not implemented. Some questions also remain unanswered: when, under what circumstances, and for what purpose was an identical song edition published in Leipzig in 1827 and how did it reach the library of Duchess Anna Amalia.

This article argues that Bulgaria’s 2013–2014 protests were rooted in an imagined ‘normal’ life that protesters turned into political action, what I call the politics of praxis. The politics of praxis refers to the practice of aspirational everyday life as a form of political engagement. Protesters craft the type of world they deem ‘normal’ by performing and practising what they imagine an EU-era Bulgarian society should be. Everyday ‘normalcy’ is both (1) to what protesters aspire, and (2) the conditions of everyday protest life. It is only within the unordinary space of protest that utopian visions of EU-era ‘normal’ life can be realised.

2009 m. dešimtys tūkstančių Makedonijos piliečių išėjo į sostinės Skopjė gatves protestuoti prieš autoritarinį ministro pirmininko Nikola Gruevskio režimą. Jaunų kaukėtų aktyvistų veiksmai, mėtant į Gruevskio režimo simbolius nutaikytas dažų granatas, rūpėjo vos keletui, jei apskritai rūpėjo, mano tyrime dalyvavusių statybininkų. Kodėl darbininkai neįsitraukė į vis daugiau žmonių angažavusius protestus? Šiame straipsnyje nagrinėjama, kaip kasdienė darbo patirtis ir išnaudojimas Makedonijos statybų aikštelėse suformavo naują darbininkų klasės identitetą, pasirinkusį „normalumą“ (angl. normality) ir atmetusį protestavimą kaip politinių permainų galimybę.

The article presents the part of the written legacy of Davainis-Silvestraitis that had not yet been published and not included into the scientific circulation – his diary written in 1904–1911, aimed at overviewing the development of the Lithuanian national movement and to evaluate the national-social activities of the Lithuanian intellectuals in Vilnius. Davainis-Silvestraitis positioned himself as a public figure for whom the description of the events of the Lithuanian national movement had to be more important than himself or his personal experiences. However, the diary of Davainis-Silvestraitis that started as being written to others, very quickly became the diary for “self” which is primarily a more interesting material for reconstruction of his own life rather than the assessment of the Lithuanian national activities in Vilnius. The diary of Davainis-Silvestraitis perfectly reveals the difficult living and livelihood opportunities for Lithuanian intellectuals in Vilnius, whose main occupation was publicist activities. In his diary, Davainis-Silvestraitis simply “drowns” among the descriptions of his unsuccessful attempts to secure material well-being working in the Vilniaus žinios bookstore, writing articles and collecting adverts for the Lietuvių laikraštis newspaper. The descriptions of the Lithuanian national activities in Vilnius in the diary of Davainis- Silvestraitis are more like a documentary chronicle of events, rather than a deeper assessment of the phenomena and processes of the Lithuanian national movement, although he himself was often a participant of the events he was describing. Davainis-Silvestraitis presented his observations solely about the circumstances surrounding the signing of the “Lithuanian Memorandum to the Russian Prime Minister, Count S. Vitte” (1905), raising a hypothesis that the issue of the Suwalki Gubernia encouraged at least some of the Russian Empire representatives to have quite a favourable view on the appearance of this document. In his diary, Davainis-Silvestraitis suggested that some of the nobility representatives who supported the Lithuanian national movement had even visited the Great Seimas of Vilnius and that further cooperation was “deterred” by the position of some Lithuanian political parties and groups regarding the issue of land redistribution.