Straipsnių rinkinys Tautinės mažumos Lietuvoje: virsmai ir atmintys

Santrauka. Leidinyje nagrinėjami Lietuvoje gyvenančių tautinių mažumų praeities ir dabarties medžiaginės ir dvasinės kultūros, akademinių ir meninių tradicijų, kuopinės atminties ir paveldo, tapatybės išlikimo ir tęstinumo klausimai, taikant tarpdalykines humanitarinių ir socialinių mokslų tyrimų metodikas. Leidinį sudaro penki skyriai, kuriuose įvairiais teminiais pjūviais aptariami gyvybiškai svarbūs lietuvių, karaimų, totorių, žydų ir kitų tautinių mažumų virsmai, pabrėžiamos pastangos suprasti, atgaivinti atmintyje ir puoselėti etnines kultūrines bendruomenes daugiatautėje ir daugiakultūrėje dabartinės Lietuvos aplinkoje.

Pagrindiniai žodžiai: tautinės mažumos, tradicijos, paveldas, karaimai, lenkai, lietuviai, Lietuva, tiurkai, totoriai, žydai.

National Minorities in Lithuania: Transformations and Memories

Summary. In the present world, nations – along with civilizations and religions – continue to be one of the most decisive and encompassing sources of personal identification. In the Europe of today, especially that part of it wherein nations join together to form the European Union, this feature, along with the aforementioned global factors, has invigorated debates over the actual role national identity plays in helping or hampering the construction of pan-European identity. It is in this context that critical answers to such question as What does it mean to be a Lithuanian?, A Lithuanian of Karaim descent? A Lithuanian of Polish descent in the contemporary globalized world? A Lithuanian of Jewish descent in the European Union under the conditions of the contemporary globalized world? A Lithuanian of Tatar descent in the federalizing European Union under the conditions of the contemporary globalized world?” – answers to such questions constitute the central task of the social and humanistic investigations as well as the intellectual purview of the authors of National Minorities in Lithuania: Transformations and Memories for sharing their latest scholarly findings and insights.

The usage of the phrase “national minority” varies in the book, depending on each contributor’s choice of research methods and terms, often interchangeable with the related concepts of “national,” “ethnic,” “cultural,” and “religious” communities. From an analytic point of view, it is still important to distinguish several semantic presuppositions of “national minority” that differentiate the meaning of the phrase from those of the other closely related concepts. When speaking of national minorities one inevitably assumes a nation’s 1) existence in a state; 2) coexistence with another nation in the same state; 3) tension of competing with another nation for place and influence in the state legally, culturally, politically, economically, and otherwise; 4) relative degree of cultural isolation and unfamiliarity with regard to another nation in the same state and thus constant hermeneutical need for overcoming cross-cultural and cross-symbolic misunderstandings. In discussions about national minorities, these presuppositions (whose common semantic denominator consists in the contiguity and interaction of two or more nations in the same state) may be underlined or deemphasized but they cannot be eschewed completely since they stem not so much from the accidental factual as from the necessary analytical content of “national minority.” The presuppositions do not underly the concept of “national community” and other similar concepts precisely because the latter are not identical to the notion of “national minority.” Once these and similar differences in nonequivalent, yet closely related concepts have been brought to light, it is indeed very fruitful and effective to have a diversity of terms and usages in the actual discussions about national minorities.

Keywords: national minorities, traditions, heritage, Karaims, Poles, Lithuanians, Turks, Tatars, Jews.