Mūsų Lietuva
1966
Introduction
Mūsų Lietuva is a large-scale Lithuanian-language regional encyclopedia published in 1966 by the Lithuanian Encyclopedia Press in South Boston, a cornerstone institution of the Lithuanian diaspora in America. This volume — identified on the copyright page as the third tome — presents detailed historical, geographical, cultural, and ecclesiastical descriptions of Lithuanian towns, counties, and localities, illustrated with photographs and drawings. It stands as one of the most comprehensive Lithuanian-language reference works produced outside Soviet-occupied Lithuania, preserving knowledge of the homeland for exile communities.
Community and publication context
Community and publication setting
Context and significance
Significance
Mūsų Lietuva represents one of the most ambitious scholarly undertakings of the mid-twentieth-century Lithuanian diaspora: a multi-volume regional encyclopedia documenting the towns, landscapes, communities, and histories of Lithuania at a moment when the Soviet occupation rendered equivalent work impossible inside the country. Produced by the Lietuvių Enciklopedijos leidykla in South Boston — the same institution responsible for the monumental Lietuvių Enciklopedija — this work ensured that detailed knowledge of Lithuanian localities, their ecclesiastical heritage, cultural landmarks, population histories, and administrative geography would survive in Lithuanian and remain accessible to exile communities and future generations.
The Šiauliai sections visible in this copy exemplify the encyclopedia's scope: from prehistoric archaeological evidence and medieval chronicles through the Tsarist era uprisings, the wars of independence, interwar institutional development, and the catastrophic losses of the Nazi occupation period, including explicit documentation of the Jewish community and the ghetto established 1941–1944. This kind of multifaceted, honest, and detailed historical accounting — incorporating Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and Jewish community histories within a single locality entry — was not possible in Soviet Lithuanian publications of the same period. The work thus constitutes both an irreplaceable historical record and a testament to the intellectual resources and cultural commitments of the Lithuanian exile community in America.
How this record carried memory
Comprehensive encyclopedic documentation of Lithuanian geography, history, and culture produced in diaspora to preserve knowledge of the homeland during Soviet occupation; part of the major Lithuanian exile encyclopedia project centered at Lietuvių Enciklopedijos leidykla in Boston.