22
themselves and other personal property, were
moved to new settlements. Remaining stones
from time to time reappeared in arable fields
(for details, see Vaitkevičius 2004: 30–31).
The use of
apidėmė was, and still is,
predetermined by a number of circumstances:
the relation of the farmer and the community
as a whole to their ancestors, customs, and with
the past in general. In the years of the Volok
Reform, peasants, resisting the transfer of their
farmlands from
one place to another, appealed
not only to their economic experience, but also
to customs related to the respect of parents and to
the home; “the ancestors or parents’ farmstead
was regarded as a sacred place to be respected
and cherished,” wrote historian Juozas Jurginis
(1970: 59). Valuable data on the exclusive
view of the rural population on
apidėmė, i.e. on
the sites of former farmsteads and villages, can
be gained from sources covering the first half of
the 20
th
century’s large-scale land ownership
reform in Lithuania, the first such reform since
the Volok Reform. For example, the former
Voveriškiai village site could not be given to a
particular villager moving to an individual
farmstead; each villager wanted to have at least
a part of it (LŽV 1935: Voveriškiai, Šiauliai
rural district and county). By way of common
agreement, the former Janušava village site
was not turned into strips of farmland. Instead,
the former village site was measured in small
plots used by each owner in compliance with
their individual needs:
In olden times, there used to be the Janušava
village there. The plague killed all its
villagers; only two old men survived. They
took the deceased away from the village and
buried them on the largest Trakai Forest hill
of Janušava. The hill became a plague
cemetery. The village was empty. As nobody
wanted to come and live in it, the houses were
burnt down, and the land was given to new-
comers. The new settlers set up a new Janušava
village
half a kilometer away north of, and in
parallel to, the old location of the village,
leaving the old street as a path of remembrance.
The land between the New Janušava and the
Biliūnai Village was divided into strips. Even
though the same strips
could have passed the
homesteads of the Old Janušava as their
extensions, the people would not include the
homesteads into the strips, but divided the
land in small plots. (LŽV 1935: Janušava,
Kėdainiai city and county.)
Apidėmė in Contemporary Lithuanian
Culture
In the 19
th
and the early 20
th
century, attempts
were made in Lithuania to change the division
of land from the strips that
had prevailed since
the 16
th
century. However, a large-scale land
reform was only launched and implemented by
the Republic of Lithuania after the restoration
of its independence in 1918. Volunteers of the
Wars of Independence, as well as villagers
with no plots of land (or only small ones) were
given estate lands. The reform, of course, also
focused on villages:
villagers were invited and
encouraged to move from the old settlements
to individual farmsteads. From farmsteads,
farmlands, and meadows for haymaking or
grazing, to roads, school locations, forest guard
sectors, and commonly used gravel deposits,
things were changing. Changes in post-Volok
Reform villages in the Polish-occupied Vilnius
Region, as well as in other places of Lithuania,
took place until the first Soviet occupation of
1940–1941. A second occupation started in the
summer of 1944.
Figure 2. The Ramašauskas family bidding farewell to
their native home in the Ročkiai Village (Joniškis
District). (Photo of an unknown photographer 1968.)
By the end of World War II, the owners of
numerous farmsteads emigrated to the West,
perished
in battle against the invaders, or were
imprisoned or deported to Siberia. According
to different data, however, in the 1950s–1960s
there were still some 280,000 to 380,000
farmsteads in Lithuania, or approximately six
to seven farmsteads per 100 hectares of
farmland that impeded the implementation of
the Soviet land reclamation (Murauskas 1970:
53–54; Kavoliutė 2015: 50; cf. Rupas,
Vaitekūnas 1980: 60). Deprived of land
ownership, people cherished their remaining
property – their houses and surrounding plots
23
of land (that amounted to 60 ares – i.e. 6,000
square meters).
In 1966, a drama started that was only
publicly (and honestly) discussed several
decades later: numerous farmstead hosts failed
to accept the process of land reclamation. This
resulted in the relocation or demolition of
houses and farmsteads were converted into
farmlands or pastures – the people resisted,
insisting on their attitudes and beliefs over
policy. While authorities offered compensation
for downed fruit trees and demolished
buildings, the conflict was not extinguished. A
1978 to 1979 survey of the rural population of
seven Lithuanian districts showed that 70% to
80% of survey respondents
4
were unwilling to
leave their homes in the reclaimed lands
(Grabauskas 1983: 1) (Figures 2 & 3).
Figure 3. “The woman got a room somewhere at a
neighbours’ place, yet she would come back to her own
kitchen stove and make pancakes… and later her stove
was completely destroyed.” (Photo by Stasys
Padalevičius, 1970s. After Matulevičienė 2015: 62.)
Thus, the last resident of Baranaučizna in
Radviliškis District repeated: “You will only
carry me out in a coffin.” He died at home at
the age of 97 and was carried out of his home
in a coffin by relatives (field research data,
January 2013). The owner of the demolished
Mėdginai farmstead in the Joniškis District,
Pranas Povilaitis, hanged himself in grief (field
research data, January 2015), while a
farmstead in Buivydžiai (Joniškis District) was
defended by its owner, Ms. Mačiulytė with
enviable persistence. Mačiulytė was commonly
referred to as a witch and her neighbours still
believe that she was helped by her spells (for
details, see Vaitkevičius 2016: 48–49).
Under occupation, farmstead destruction
became a tool with which occupiers could
disrupt human connection to the land and the
past. Occupiers could change the identity of the
occupied and eventually overcome the local
population’s resistance, whether they were
armed or unarmed. During Soviet occupation,
owners of surviving farmsteads demonstrated
will and patience, referred to influential
patrons, or simply bought themselves off.
The similarity between the historical pro-
cesses of the second half of the 16
th
century and
the second half of the 20
th
century is obvious:
farmers were made to leave their residences,
whether farmsteads, houses or orchards. In the
20
th
century, most of those places turned into
arable or fallow lands or pastures of
kolkhoses
and
sovkhoses (collective farms).
5
All this
happened in the presence of our parents and
grandparents, and frequently with their direct
participation. In turn, their lively and eloquent
testimonies are still available. The former
owners once maintained, and in some cases
continue to maintain, a sensitive, strong and,
most importantly, spiritual relationship with
those places.
In 1990, property – primarily land –
expropriated during Soviet occupation was
returned to the citizens of newly independent
Lithuania. Quite a few took advantage of this
opportunity; having regained the land, some
Lithuanians revived the sites of their former
farmsteads and homes. One can still hear
stories of how firmly people took this step, and
how they received support and
encouragement
from their deceased parents, grandparents, and
other relatives in their dreams. For example:
Monica, that’s my sister, saw Dad in her
dream, who said: “Children, take the land.”
Had I failed to take the land, I would have felt
like I had committed a crime. (Vaitkevičienė
2013: 62.)
When it became possible to regain the land
after the Restoration of Independence, I saw
in my dream through my bedroom window:
Mother’s face could not be seen, just a skirt of
coarse homemade woolen
cloth and bare feet
soiled with earth (...), soiled with rich fertile
earth. And then Vladukas, my brother, arrived
and said (...): “We are getting back the land”.
Thus, through that window, my Mum with
her earth-soiled feet brought me the message
that I shall regain the land. (LTR cd 1380.)
It is important to emphasise that family
relations with ancestors were formed not