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it is important to remember this book smuggling as a symbol that even small nation can resist against huge empire like soviet union. every effort counts, and as
by akoncius 9y ago
it is important to remember this book smuggling as a symbol that even small nation can resist against huge empire like soviet union. every effort counts, and as a result, we in Lithuania still use our language.
- danharaj 9y agoThe Soviet Union did not exist at the time of the ban described in this article.
- salesguy222 9y agoHowever the absolute monarchy of the Russian Empire did, and something tells me they might have been even more fanatical about censorship and imperialism than their Soviet successors...
- malas 9y agoits predecessor existed - russian empire.
- jerry40 9y agoI'm just curious who was an EU predecessor
- georgecmu 9y agoIn reverse chronological order: Third Reich, Napoleon's Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Western Roman Empire, Roman Empire
- qb45 9y agoThat's like blaming Hitler for WW1, though. The OP is very much not an example of fight with USSR.
- akoncius 9y agoactually it's not. yes, governments were different in different war events, but it's a broader issue - Russia views ex-soviet (or even countries occupied before USSR) countries as countries which belong to Russia , so this policy/opinion/view continues through generations. so no, it's not like you are saying.
- jerry40 9y agoNot sure why you blame USSR in this topic, as far as I know, it supported regional languages and printed many books, newspapers and magazines in the languages of its republics. I bet that books at that period were much cheaper than they're now.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago"it supported regional languages and printed many books, newspapers and magazines in the languages of its republics." The big boom in minority-language publishing came in the 1920s and early 1930s, when there were major drives to improve minority-language literacy and translate as a rule higher-education teaching materials into local languages. However, starting from Stalin, minority-language publishing was reduced to little more than a token effort, mostly socialist-realist poetry or fiction and newspapers of exceedingly local concern. Furthermore, the print runs for minority-language books were minuscule, even for very large minorities like the Tatars. It wasn't until glasnost that minority-language publishing took off again.
- jerry40 9y agoI grew up in a little republic which is smaller than Tatar Republic and we hadn't problems with the national literature. Of course it wasn't so rich, I've never managed to find Ulysses in that language. I have an impression that when Moscow sent plans like "to rise X new writers and to print out Y new books in the ______ language" , local party members were catching people on the streets to create new republican poets of them.
- akoncius 9y agosorry, I mixed two different things which are kind of same - Russian empire before USSR and USSR. in both periods Lithuania was occupied by Russia. so my point is still the same - resistance against agressor is possible even for small countries.
- vgaldikas 9y agoThis is about tsarist russia, not about USSR. Knygnesiai did not operate in USSR :)