TOWARDS THE ROOTS OF THE NATION

Ethnocultural movements tried to revive the traditions of the ancient Lithuanian faith. This may have alienated the youth from the Catholic Church, which the communist nomenclature considered to be one of its most dangerous opponents. However, there was no major conflict between the Christian clergy and the promoters of paganism. Priests did not forbid believers from participating in the Baltic expeditions, and exposed the persecution of the expeditioners in their underground press. The participants of the expeditions rebuilt crosses, visited prominent clergymen, and covered church roofs. Some members of the “university on legs” (which is what the dissident, underground publisher and poet Algirdas Patackas called the expeditioners) participated in the underground activities of the Church, the nationalist resistance or human rights defenders. The KGB began to “educate” the ethnographic researchers – they followed them, conducted interviews, recruited them, had them fired from work, arrested them, and built cases against them. The authorities closed the Ramuva Ethnographic Society in Vilnius and the expedition section of the Vilnius tourist club, and arrested the “pilgrims” Vidmantas Pavilionis, Šarūnas Žukauskas, Izidorius Rudaitis and Antanas Sakalauskas. Jonas Trinkūnas, who was the ideological leader of the Ramuva movement, was dismissed from his job at the university. But the persecuted community did not break up – smaller Rasos celebrations were organised in other places, and expeditioners got together in secret. The folk song club that was founded by Ramuva and the expedition community was expelled from the Palace of Trade Unions, but found a place for itself elsewhere. Folk ensembles were created, and the Skamba Skamba Kankliai folklore festival was started. As the communist empire began to disintegrate in the 1980s, the forces that destroyed nature and historical heritage weakened. The burgeoning cultural movements started to take bold steps to protect the environment. On the initiative of the club Ąžuolas expeditioners, the Atgaja environmental club was established in Kaunas. The Žemyna green foundation and the Talka monument preservation club were established in Vilnius. Participants of the ethnocultural movement created Sąjūdis support groups and became a powerful force at the first rallies of the Lithuanian National Revival.