Klaipėdos universitetas

The Tėviškė (Homeland) Society for Lithuania’s cultural relations with compatriots abroad was set up in Soviet Lithuania in 1976 on the basis of previous analogous institutions. Through the society, attempts were made to control the cooperation with emigrant compatriots, disseminate the Soviet propaganda, restrict the spread of objective information, and discredit the right-wing emigration organizations that nurtured the idea of restoration of Lithuania’s independence. The aim of this paper is to review the programme of cultural exchanges with emigrants in the USA, implemented in the Soviet times, by highlighting the musical aspect. The research is based on the Cold War paradigm, the work of historians who analysed the topic, the still unexplored documentation of the Tėviškė Society, and the letters addressed to it and currently stored in the Lithuanian Special Archives. The cultural cooperation programme also included the field of tourism, which was especially useful for governmental institutions wishing to demonstrate the achievements of Soviet Lithuania to foreign visitors. It was partly supervised by the Tėviškė Society. However, this is a subject for a new study and will not be analysed in the present paper.

Internet users using digital diplomacy techniques can generate state soft power on social networks through the promotion of traditional power resources – culture, values and behaviour. In this way, the digital dissemination of information by states becomes an instrument of their power policy. This article analyses the concept of digital diplomacy, the transformation of its characteristics and activities in the digital space. The text examines the interaction between digital diplomacy and soft power, also focuses on the European Union’s digital diplomacy, which has become an important part of the EU’s foreign policy. Due to the novelty of the topic and the lack of research in the public discourse, the article is relevant to research in order to find out what digital diplomacy methods the EU institutions, diplomats, individual Internet users are and how it forms the European information geopolitics.

During the Great War, the main conflicting powers established the first public institutions to create and spread propaganda. Governments treated cinema as a powerful medium which might influence men’s minds. While cinema became a potential weapon to use in propaganda struggles, screens in neutral states were made into battlefields. But the cinema wars did not finish after 1918. After the war, films depicting the Great War were made in various countries, and the films often contradicted each other. The article analyses the role that films and stories depicting the Great War played on Lithuanian cinema screens in the interwar period. The first part of the article discusses the relevance of themes of the Great War in the films and newsreels made in interwar Lithuania. The second part provides an overview of foreign films depicting the Great War that were shown in Lithuanian cinemas in the interwar period. Four types of films are distinguished, according to their function. Attempts are made to answer the question whether these films could have contributed to reflections on the Great War in the public sphere in Lithuania at that time.

A fierce national East Prussia-related conflict between Germans and Poles after the First World War basically contrasted with the prewar situation in the province. After the decision taken at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to hold a plebiscite in two governmental districts of this German province on their inhabitants’ political affiliations, the vast population there had to take a test on the basic choice of their political, and simultaneously cultural, orientation. Today, researchers agree that the plebiscite of 1920 caused irreversible damage to the multiethnic area. There is no doubt that the so-called Ostdeutscher Heimatdienst organisation strongly contributed to this. The article raises questions as to what circumstances promoted the establishment of the organisation, who its principal actors were, and how they affected the East Prussian population.