By renaming the Kristijonas Donelaitis Memorial Museum in the Kaliningrad exclave, Russia aims to erase Lithuanian identity in the region, Culture Minister Šarūnas Birutis said on Thursday.
Birutis sees the move to rename the museum Literature Museum as yet another effort by Russia to undermine and deconstruct Lithuanian identity, according to a press release from the Culture Ministry.
“This painful issue is being addressed through cooperation with the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, Consul General in Kaliningrad Aušra Černevičienė, and other authorities,” the minister was quoted as saying.
“We have sought the clearest possible justification and an unambiguous declaration of Lithuania’s position that such actions are unacceptable,” he added.
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Birutis noted that Lithuania has been on Russia’s list of unfriendly nations since 2021, which blocks many conventional tools of diplomacy.
According to the minister, tools and dialogue that are understandable and agreed upon in the civilized world are ineffective in the face of war when dealing with “an actively destructive state”.
The Culture Ministry said that Černevičienė, Lithuania’s consul general in Kaliningrad, had contacted the museum staff by phone to express concern over the renaming and inquire about the fate of the museum’s exhibits.
The staff assured her that nothing had changed: the exhibits were intact, and guides continued leading tours about Donelaitis’ life and work in Kaliningrad’s Chistye Prud. They said no changes were planned anytime soon.
The Lithuanian Consulate General in Kaliningrad and the Culture Ministry said they would continue to monitor the situation regarding the museum and its exhibits.
Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780) lived and worked in Lithuania Minor, a territory in the Kingdom of Prussia that had a sizable Lithuanian-speaking minority. He wrote the first classic Lithuanian language poem Metai (The Seasons), which became one of the principal works of Lithuanian poetry.
The Kristijonas Donelaitis Memorial Museum was established in 1979.
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