Deklaracja Niepodległości Litwy z 16 lutego 1918 roku i jej miejsce w litewskim dyskursie po 1990 roku (en translation)

Abstract: The article attempts to reveal the changes in the discourse about the Lithuanian freedom and the independent state after 1990. The aim is to explain what narrative about history was demanded by the dream visions of the past and how much the new passion of freedom influenced the historical thought. In the 20th century, Lithuanians lost their freedom and regained their state many times and that is why as many as three national holidays are related to the beginnings of the statehood. Attempting to explain the current manner of the representation of the historical experience of Lithuania in the 19th century as an epoch of demise, national bondage and liberation, one has to understand that it is not only the quarter of the century which has passed since the new independence of Lithuania and since the year of the restoration of the independent state (the 1990s) and not only the current political problems that could influence the changes in the representation of history. The long 19th century crossed the dimension of the cognitive memory, usually related to the lasting of 3-4 generations. It is so remote that it has become part of the cultural, mainly written, kingdom of memory. Twenty five years of freedom have brought a lot of arguments suggesting that the national consciousness, tainted with national bondage and occupation, begins to excessively fetishise the state and the statehood itself. In this vision, man, his privacy, the quality of democracy, valuable principles and symptoms of the primacy of law are pushed to the background or at least no in-depth research is being carried out on these problems and no effort is made to include the issues related to the whole heritage of the past in the concept of memory. In such an atmosphere, even the question of what is more important – statehood or human rights? – arouses at least public irritation if not outrage