The collection consists of poetry and translations by the anti-Soviet partisan Bronius Krivickas (1919–1952). It comprises of six manuscripts: poems, and translations of Goethe’s poetry by Krivickas, when he was a guerrilla fighter against the Soviet regime.
Location
01109 Vilnius Kražių gatvė 5 , Lithuania
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The works (both originals and translations) by Bronius Krivickas are clearly anti-Soviet for two reasons: they were written by an anti-Soviet partisan, and their content is anti-Stalinist (considering the original poetry). The poems by Bronius Krivickas were discovered by the poet and literature critic Virginijus Gasiliūnas. According to him, many intellectuals were very surprised when poetry by Bronius Krivickas was discovered at the end of the 1980s. No one had expected that the poetry by anti-Soviet partisans could be so sophisticated. Even in 1989, Gasiliūnas believed that there were only a few works by Krivickas stored in the Lithuanian Archives of Literature and Art. He published a couple of Krivickas’ poems in the local newspaper Biržiečių žodis. Suddenly, he received a letter from an inhabitant of the Biržai district. The author of the letter wrote that she had a notebook with drafts of the same poems. According to this woman, other drafts were destroyed because of the fear of persecution by the KGB.
Another source of Krivickas’ poetry known today is the Lithuanian Communist Party Archive (it was part of the Institute of Party History of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party, today the Lithuanian Special Archive, Department of Communist Party Documents). Krivickas dedicated and donated this collection to Juozas Šibaila-Diedukas (1905–1952), who was killed by Soviet internal security forces in his hide-out in the forest. After this NKVD operation, chekists took the book of Krivickas’ poetry. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, when the partisan movement was defeated, the Communist Party launched a project that aimed to discredit the Lithuanian partisan movement. During this project, ‘evidence’ was collected about the ‘brutality’ of the partisans. Some of this material, the poetry by Krivickas, did not fit the aims of the project. Because of this, these manuscripts were not published during Soviet times.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, documents from the Communist Party Archive were transferred to the archives of the Lithuanian Institute of History.
Description of content
Bronius Krivickas was a Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan and poet, whose literary work was unknown to a large part of society until the collapse of the Soviet Union. These works by Krivickas came out under an underground literary pseudonym, and their authorship was identified only at the beginning of the 1990s. Today, his poetry is already included in school curricula.
The collection includes two translations: Goethe’s lyrics, written in 1948–1950 (67 pages), and various translations, written in 1948–1950 (five pages). The collection also contains poetry: Poilsio valandai. Eiliuoti margumynai (For Recreation Time. Poetic Patchwork), written in 1949–1951 (26 pages), Žiaurusis Dievas: Eilėraščiai (A Cruel God: Poetry), written in 1945–1951 (58 pages), Sonetai (Sonnets), written in 1948–1951 (30 pages), and Po Stalino saule. Satyra (Under Stalin’s Sun. A Satire), written in 1948–1951 (74 pages).
Gasiliūnas, V. (ed.). Bronius Krivickas. Raštai [Bronius Krivickas. Works], in Lithuanian, Vilnius: Lietuvos Gyventojų Genocido ir Rezistencijos Tyrimo Centras, 1999. Book
Gasiliūnas, Virginijus , interview by Sirutavičius, Vladas , Grybkauskas, Saulius, August 17, 2016, March 28, 2017, November 03, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection
Katilius, Algimantas, interview by Grybkauskas, Saulius, August 29, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection
