Buities modernizacija Lietuvoje XX a.: modernizacijos skatinimo kampanijos viešojoje erdvėje
Modernization of domestic life in Lithuania in the 20th century: modernization campaigns in the public space

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the processes of domestic life modernization in Lithuania in the 20th century. Two main campaigns of everyday life modernization are specified – one took place in the interwar period (in the late 1920s and in the 1930s), and the second, much more intensive, took place after forty years, in the middle of the 1950s and in the 1960s. The research reveals domestic life as an important and powerful social engineering instrument, which was used quite intensively in the pre-war period and extremely intensively after the war. Despite the fact that both campaigns of modernization had an intention to create a new society and a new man, they had completely different ideological and political backgrounds. The campaign of modernization which took place in interwar times was not centralized or organized from the above. It was more like an initiative of a group of individuals to modernize the way of living and make Lithuania look more like Western countries. The second, post-war, modernization campaign was properly centralized and determined by the highest political decisions. Domestic life was officially declared as an object of interest for policy, ideology and propaganda. The main objective of this campaign was not only to modernize society via domestic life, but also to create a new man, an individual absolutely loyal to the regime.

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