The collection consists of manuscripts on historical studies, memoirs and correspondence by Stasys Matulaitis, a historian, national activist, member of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (from 1896), and from 1917 a member of the Communist Party. In 1950, Matulaitis openly criticised the authorities of Academy and the work of the Institute of History at a session of the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Lithuania. He was fired from his job at the Institute. The most valuable documents in the collection are Matulaitis’ letters to the presidium of the Academy.
Location
Lithuania, LT-01103, Vilnius, Gedimino pr. 12
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The collection is stored in the Lithuanian Communist Party Documents Archive, which is a branch of the Lithuanian Special Archive. Matulaitis started to accumulate documents at the beginning of the 1920s. After his death in 1956, the Central Committee of the LCP ordered his personal archive to be sent to the Institute of Communist Party History. From 1991, the Institute of Communist Party History was reorganised into the Lithuania’s Society Organizations Archive. Since then, Matulaitis’ collection has been open to the public and researchers. From 2001, the Lithuania’s Society Organizations Archive was reorganised again, and became the Archive of Lithuanian Communist Party Documents, which is a branch of the Lithuanian Special Archive.
Matulaitis researched the history of the Lithuanian nation and the history of Lithuania’s Social Democratic Party. (Only a few of his articles were published after his death in 1957.) In 1950, he openly criticised the authorities of the Academy and the work of the Institute of History at a session of the Academy of Sciences of Soviet Lithuania. His main argument was that the Academy and the Institute of History ignored the history of the modern Lithuanian nation. He was accused of bourgeois nationalism, and dismissed from his job. The most valuable documents in the collection are Matulaitis’ letters to the presidium of the Academy, in which he criticised the activities of the Academy.
Description of content
The collection consists of the historical manuscripts ‘The History of Lithuania from 1810 till 1905’ (80 pages) and ‘The History of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party’ (100 pages). Neither manuscript has been published. The collection also contains manuscripts of various articles on Lithuanian history, letters to newspapers, the proclamation ‘Citizens’ (1941), and a diary of Matulaitis from 1950. The most valuable documents are two letters to the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. In the letters, Matulaitis explains why he decided to openly and sharply criticise the Academy and the Institute of History. One of his main arguments was that the authorities of the Institute ignored and ‘sabotaged’ the history of the Lithuanian nation.
Maslauskienė, Nijolė , interview by Ivanauskas, Vilius, Sirutavičius, Vladas , Grybkauskas, Saulius, September 26, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection
