Prisikėlimo šventė
Introduction
Prisikėlimo šventė (Festival of Resurrection) is a collection of poetry by Lithuanian dissident and political prisoner Gintautas Iešmantas, published in Vilnius in 1990 at the cusp of Lithuanian independence restoration. The poems, subtitled 'lagerio ir tremties eilės' (verses of the camp and exile), were composed during Iešmantas's imprisonment in Soviet labor camps and internal exile, including dates and locations such as Pskov Prison (1981) visible in the text. This volume represents a rare case of samizdat-era dissident verse reaching official publication during the Sąjūdis period, making it a significant document of Lithuanian resistance literature and the transition from Soviet censorship.
Community and publication context
Community and publication setting
Context and significance
Significance
Gintautas Iešmantas was a prominent Lithuanian dissident who was arrested, tried, and sentenced to Soviet labor camps for anti-Soviet activity. The poems in this collection were composed under conditions of extreme repression — in prison and exile — and their 1990 Vilnius publication marks the moment when the Lithuanian cultural and political renaissance (Sąjūdis) made it possible for formerly forbidden voices to appear in print in Lithuania itself. The subtitle 'lagerio ir tremties eilės' situates the work within the tradition of gulag literature, alongside figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lithuanian poets who endured Siberian deportation, making it a primary document of both personal suffering and collective resistance.
The volume carries exceptional value as a record of how Lithuanian literary culture persisted under conditions designed to destroy it. The poem dated '1981.1.20, Pskov kaléjimas' (Pskov Prison, January 20, 1981) exemplifies the precision with which Iešmantas grounded his verse in the lived chronology of incarceration, transforming specific dates and places of confinement into monuments of cultural memory. For Lithuanian-American heritage communities, the book represents a bridge between the resistance traditions cultivated in the diaspora and the parallel resistance that endured within Soviet-occupied Lithuania.
How this record carried memory
Dissident samizdat composition during Soviet imprisonment; the colophon word 'Neskelbta' (previously unpublished) indicates these poems circulated or survived outside official channels before reaching print in 1990 during the Sąjūdis independence movement period.
Record connections
People, places, and institutions linked in the catalog
