The collection consists of more than 500 recorded interviews with national (Sąjūdis), dissident and ex-Soviet figures, and from the cultural opposition and informal groups, conducted during two research projects in 2009-2015. These interviews were carried out and used by the leader (Ainė Ramonaitė) and researchers in the following projects: 1) ‘Sąjūdžio fenomenas: pilietinio judėjimo tinklaveikos studija’ (The National Phenomenon: A Study in Civil Movement Networking, from 2009 –to 2011), and 2) ‘Nematona sovietmečio Lietuvos visuomenė: neformaliųjų sisteminių ir nesisteminių tinklų skirties peržiūra’ (The Invisible Society in Soviet-Era Lithuania: The Revision of the Distinction between Systemic and Non-systemic Social Networks, from 2012 –to 2015). There are a few interviews conducted before these projects that were added to the collection by participants in the projects from their own private collections.
This collection is the biggest database of interviews in Lithuania on the Soviet system, social groups during Soviet times, social networks, the dissident movement, the cultural oposition and the underground movement.
The main aim of both projects was to find the social roots of the national movement (Sąjūdis) in Lithuania, and to explain how it was possible to stay inside the Soviet system without being directly involved in the anti-Soviet dissident movement. The projects explore the ethnographic movement in Soviet Lithuania, which was more or less tolerated by the regime and kept under observation, some social actions by groups of the intelligentsia that made them even more mobilised and sophisticated in behaving with the regime, and the hippie movement, which stood outside the values of the Soviet system. A number of interviews were made by participants in these two projects considering each of the non-Soviet networks mentioned.
The Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University recently won funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (RCL) for the new project ‘Sovietmetis kaip sakytinės istorijos objektas: atminties (re)konstravimo galimybės ir ypatumai’ (Soviet Times as an Object of Oral History; RCL funding is 59,760 euros). Although this is a new project and it has another leader (Dr Inga Vinogradnaitė), it is the logical continuation of the previous two projects, aiming to collect more interviews and to develop concepts of oral history in collaboration with partners from Latvia (Daugavpils University).
