Vilnius will rename several streets named after pro-Soviet authors, Salomėja Nėris and Liudas Gira, the city’s authorities decided on Wednesday.
The city council also decided to rename the square named after another pro-Soviet author, Petras Cvirka.
The street named after the poet Salomėja Nėris (1904-1945) will be renamed Vėtrungės Street, while the street named after the writer Liudas Gira will be renamed after the anti-Soviet partisan leader Lionginas Baliukevičius-Dzūkas.
The new names were chosen by Vilnius residents who took part in a municipal survey.
The name change is part of the ongoing “desovietisation” of public spaces. A recently passed law has tasked a special commission to decide which street names “promote authoritarian and totalitarian regimes”.
Gira and Nėris both praised the Soviet government in their works. In 1940, as delegates to the so-called People’s Seimas, they and other representatives went to Moscow to ask for Lithuania’s admission into the Soviet Union.
However, some researchers stress, in Nėris' defence, the importance of her work for Lithuanian literature and collective memory, and point out to her later repentance for her collaboration with the Soviet authorities.
Cvirka Square temporarily nameless
Vilnius City Council also decided on Wednesday to rename the square named after the writer Petras Cvirka.
The issue was supposed to be resolved in mid-June, but the meeting was interrupted when the opposition refused to participate.
On Wednesday, the councillors only decided to change the name, without picking a new one. The new name will be proposed once there is a proposal for the square’s renovation.
In early January, the so-called Desovietisation Commission decided that Cvirka Square promotes a totalitarian regime and should be renamed.
A statue of Cvirka, installed in the 1950s, stood in the square until 2021.
A special commission of experts concluded that Cvirka was an active collaborator with the occupying Soviet authorities. He was a member of the Lithuanian Communist Party, a deputy of the People’s Seimas elected on the basis of rigged election results, and secretary of its presidium (in June–July 1940).
From 1940, the first Soviet occupation, he supported the Soviet government and praised Joseph Stalin. Cvirka remained a member of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union until his death in 1947. He was also the chairman of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union between 1945–1947.
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