SUMMARY:

Postwar Vilnius under late Stalinism (1945−1953) is an ideal case study for analyzing the evolution of collective identity under conditions of rapid geopolitical, demographic, and social change. Continuities between the modernizing nationalist drive of the interwar period and the modernizing socialist drive of the postwar period disclose the importance of the “Vilnius Question” to the evolution of Lithuanian national identity throughout the twentieth century. Informed by the biographical trajectories of several key period actors as well as their literary works and recollections, the concepts of the “imperial situation” and the “imperial sublime” are employed to characterize the external factors driving events during this period and the subjective response of these actors, respectively. Collective biography and the discourse of memory provide a partial, but essential light into this murky period of Soviet Lithuanian history.