Ancient narrative and modern promise: the political arguments for the value of the humanities in Lithuania

This essay, while focusing on contemporary Lithuania, raises issues that are of perennial import to the academic study of the humanities in modern nation states, particularly the ‘national’ disciplines of history, language, and literature. There is a constant tension between the scholar’s desire for the freedom of academic inquiry, and the desire of state, which often pays the scholar’s wages, that the scholar produce research that is ‘useful’, especially findings that can be used to legitimize a particular political course of action. In this way, the Law on the creation of the Historical Institute of Latvia in 1936 stated that the purpose of this new research institution was to study and explain historical phenomena in the ‘spirit of nationalism and truth’ (‘nacionālisma un patiesības garā’) – in that order of precedence. This directive reflected the politics of the authoritarian regime of Kārlis Ulmanis at the time. Similarly today, is not uncommon for the various state funding bodies and central research councils to earmark significant resources for research programs conforming to the political agendas of the parties currently in control of the relevant ministries. This problem is by no means exclusive to Lithuania, or even the Baltic states. But, as the authors here ask, using Lithuania as an illustrative example, what is the cost of subordinating the freedom of scholarly inquiry in the humanities to a narrow, politicized view of what the product of research should be?