by professor Pinchos Fridberg, PhD habil.
Standard Foreword
The text of this article exists in three languages, Lithuanian, English and Russian. None of them has managed to get published in the better-known pages of the democratic Lithuanian press.
If an interested reader asks, “Why not?” I would tell him:
I guess it’s forbidden to publish “the Naked Truth!”
Of course he probably needs an “airbag,” i.e., the word “allegedly” should be added!
Probably if I wrote “the ALLEGED Naked Truth” there would be problem in publishing it.
On February 20 I sent the Lithuanian version of my article to the Lithuanian president, and I called and asked he be made aware of it. They promised me my request would be passed on to the Chancellery and an advisor to the president.
The story described is not the first, a similar thing happened with my article “The Jew Whom Ramanauskas-Vanagas Rescued, WHo Probably Wasn’t a Jew” (in Russian here).
* * *
I’m not engaging in politics, I’m just recording the bare facts.
I “accidentally” discovered a biography of professor Arūnas Gumuliauskas on Lithuanian wikipedia.
I bring your attention to bear on these words:
“Graduated from Vilnius University in 1981. [worked three years according to assignment]. Post-graduate work at the same university from 1984 to 1987. Defended doctoral candidate dissertation ‘Activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party in the Development of the Art of Theater in the Republic (1966-1980),’ [became] doctor of the liberal arts.”
There is no information on Lithuanian wikipedia professor Gumuliauskas might have defended any other dissertation!
Therefore the question arises:
Exactly how did a dissertation glorifying the Communist Party of the Soviet Union come to be recognized in independent Lithuania as worthy of the degree of doctor of the liberal arts?
Additional questions:
-the name of the cathedral or faculty where the dissertation was written;
-the name of the exact discipline in which it was defended;
-the names of the opponents;
-the goal of the research and tasks for achieving it;
-the publications in which the main findings were published.
I found answers to these in the professors’ reading room of Vilnius University.
I present copies of several pages of the abstract of the dissertation:
[Translation]
Gumuliauskas, Arūnas
The Activities of the Lithuanian Communist Party in the Development of the Art of Theater in the Republic (1966-1980). Discipline: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Abstract of dissertation for acquiring the degree of candidate for the discipline of history
[Translation]
Work performed at the cathedral [faculty] of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at Vilnius University.
Primary opponent: professor Mykolas Burokevičius. *
[Translation]
Goal and main tasks. Primary goal of the work: a complex analysis of the activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party in the development of the dramatic arts in the Republic (1966-1980).
The following tasks have been set for achieving this goal:
-to demonstrate how, based on Marxist-Leninist theory, employing the progressive inheritance of the past under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Government, the Lithuanian Communist Party is creating a national theater.
-to examine the activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party and the government of the republic in developing and improving a network of theaters, enhancing their material foundation, selecting assigning, organizing and inculcating ideologically significant understanding and civic consciousness of the cadres.
-to summarize the ideological work of the republican Communist organization in forming repertoire and raising the ideological and artistic level of theater plays. To demonstrate the activities of the main Party organizations and their increasing influence over the creative process.
-to demonstrate the activities of the Lithuanian Communist Party in bringing the broader masses to the spiritual values of the dramatic arts, developing the Marxist-Leninist worldview of the working people, and to the importance of the theater in the process of internationalization and the general cultural enrichment of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
-to show the difficulties and failures which have appeared expanding the socialist theater of Lithuania, demonstrating the Party’s struggle to overcome them.
[Translation]
The main points of the dissertation are laid out in these publications:
1. The Activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party in Strengthening Relations with the Working People of the Republic (1966-1980), Lithuanian Communist Party Issues of History, 1987, vol. 1, pp. 38-49.
2. The Activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party…
3. The Activity of the Lithuanian Communist Party…
P.S. I’d like to know how it is that the true-blue patriots of modern Lithuania have failed to notice this unique fact.
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Translated from the Lithuanian version to English by Geoff Vasil