KÖNIGSBERG TO CHICAGO ANTANAS J. VAN REENAN LITHUANIAN DIASPORA KÖNIGSBERG TO CHICAGO ANTANAS J. VAN REENAN UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA Lanham • N e w York • London Copyright © 1990 by University Press of America®, Inc. 4720 Boston Way Lanham, Maryland 20706 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU England All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Cataloging in Publication Information Available L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van Reenan, Antanas J., 1942- Lithuanian diaspora : Königsberg to Chicago / by Antanas J. Van Reenan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Lithuanian Americans— Illinois— Chicago— Cultural assimilation. 2. Lithuanian Americans— Illinois— Chicago— Ethnic identity. 3. Chicago (III.)— Emigration and immigration— History—20th century. I. Title. F548.9.L7V36 1990 977.3110049192— dc20 90-39383 CIP ISBN 0-8191-7867-5 (alk. paper) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of @ ™ American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. TO M j WIFE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I acknowledge the assistance of many individuals, institutions and teachers. The support and encouragement o f my family proved invaluable. My wife, Lilija Nastonas Adomenas, helped with the manuscript from start to finish. Her valuable suggestions and editing greatly improved the manuscript Our two-year-old daughter, Audra, attached an importance to my work by including the word “dissertation” within her Lithuanian vocabulary. My mother, Elena Lizaite-Jurkenas, typed a myriad of “drafts” while my late stepfather, Juozas Jurkenas, used his draftsman skills in preparing charts. Many individuals and institutions gave of their time and help. In addition to the numerous individuals who were helpful and gracious in making themselves available for interviews, I wish to add the following: Vincentas Liulevicius provided original documents on the DP camp school system from his private library; Robertas Vitas made himself and the archives of the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center available to me at all hours o f the day and night; Shirley Berton, senior archivist o f the National Archives and Records Administration in Chicago, put me on the track o f statistical data I might otherwise have missed; Stanley Balzekas, Jr., president o f the Balzekas Museum o f Lithuanian Culture, provided photographs; Ceslovas Grincevicius, archivist at the World Lithuanian Community Archives, assisted in locating materials on Kazys Pakstas; Rev. Dr. Juozas Prunskis o f the Lithuanian American Council made that organization’s records available for my research; Youth leader Daiva Barsketis gave invaluable assistance in gathering statistical data on teens who attended Camp Dainava', the directors, teachers, staff and students o f the Lithuanian Saturday School Systems in Chicago and Lemont, the Lithuanian Scouts and the Ateitis Federation graciously participated in my survey questionnaire; Sisters Peipetua and Anna Marie Rakauskas gave me access to rare books at the library o f the Sisters o f St. Casimir, and John C. Kavaliunas, information specialist at the U.S. Department o f Commerce Bureau o f the Census in v VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Washington, D.C., provided supplementary reports on the 1980 Census. Thanks to Joan Hives for her technical assistance, and to Deborah J. Pfeiffer who acted as proofreader. My interest on the subject began with my graduate studies. Therefore, I would also like to thank my teachers at the University o f Chicago: Arthur Mann, Leonard Krieger, Jeffrey Brooks, Kathleen N. Conzen, Edward Cook and Franco Venturi. Arthur Mann’s book, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, aroused my interest in ethnic “isolated fortresses,” which triggered reflections on first principles o f nationality. Leonard Krieger*s European intellectual history seminars created conditions to explore a sense o f peoplehood based on a mind frame counter to “universal paternity.” Independent studies in Russian intellectual history with Jeffrey Brooks provided clues on Lithuanians who, like their neighboring Russians, were neither wholly Eastern nor Western. Kathleen N. Conzen exposed me to works on ethnic history that I may not otherwise have encountered. Edward Cook’s stimulating insights into the formative era of American history provided a background in which to formulate my own thesis. Franco Venturi, professor o f modem history at the University o f Turin (Italy) and the University of Chicago and one-time Italian Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, made me aware o f the similarity between the East Prussian (Lithuania Minor) role in developing a national consciousness in Lithuania Major and that of the birth o f a Greek national feeling and its geographic proximity to the Island o f Corfu, in non-Turkish territory, at the dawn o f the modem era. Thus, from the standpoint o f American immigration history, the work not only adds to the body o f literature on ethnic groups but also lends itself to an interdisciplinary approach. The interdisciplinary approach, available Lithuanian sources published in Soviet Lithuania and abroad, interviews with prominent exiles, and statistical data about the diaspora community formed the basis for the conclusions reached in this work. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................ v LIST OF F I G U R E S ..................................................................................... ix LIST OF PLATES ..................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................... xiii INTRO DUCTIO N ........................................................................................ xv 1. OLD WORLD ROOTS .................................................................... 1 Nationality as a Condition o f Mind ........................................ 1 East Prussian R o o t s .................................................................... 9 The Impact o f P h i l o l o g y ............................................................ 20 The Consequences o f Polanization-Russification .................... 29 2. EMERGENCE OF A LITHUANIAN COMMUNITY IN C H IC A G O ........................................................................................ 41 First Settlements ........................................................................ 44 Earning a Living ......................................................................... 52 P o lit ic s ............................................................................................ 66 Relations with the Old W o r l d .................................................... 72 3. A NEW WAVE OF EMIGRATION IN THE MAKING . . . . 83 Vyriausias Lietuvos Komitetas-Tautos Taryba (Supreme Lithuanian Committee-National C o u n c il) ........................ 83 Repatriation F e a r s ......................................................................... 86 Displaced Persons Organizations and E d u c a tio n .................... 96 LAC Activity to Aid Displaced Persons: The Creation of the United Lithuanian R elief Fund o f A m erica ..................... 104 4. EXILES NOT IMMIGRANTS ............................................................. 113 Lithuanianism Inseparable from C a th o lic is m ............................. 113 The Lithuanian Mission ................................................................. 129 Early F orm ulation ............................................................................. 132 The World Lithuanian C h arter......................................................... 141 5. ESTABLISHMENT OF INSTITUTIONS TO DEFLECT A S S IM IL A T IO N ..................................................................................... 149 The World Lithuanian Engineers and Architects in the Diaspora ......................................................................... 150 The Lithuanian Scouts in E x i l e ..................................................... 152 The World Lithuanian Community in the United States 158 The World Lithuanian Community F o u n d a tio n ......................... 166 The World Lithuanian Youth A ssociation ..................................... 171 v i i TABLE OF CONTENTS The World Lithuanian Community School System in the United States ..................................................................... 177 The Kristijonas Donelaitis S c h o o l ................................. 181 The Darius and Girenas S c h o o l ..................................... 185 The Maironis S c h o o l ........................... 185 The Diaspora Schools in Relation to Lithuanian Scouts 187 The Creation o f an Endowed Chair of Lithuanian Studies 190 6. A CATHOLIC ID E N T IT Y .....................................................................205 The Creation o f Camp D c d n a v a ................................................ 207 Dainava Within the Structure o f the Ateitis Federation 212 “Bridging the Gap”: The Ateitis Federation, the World Lithuanian Community and the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Federation of A m erica .........................224 7. LITHUANIAN INVOLVEMENT IN ORGANIZED POLITICAL A C T I O N .................................................................................................... 241 The Lithuanian-American Council T o d a y ..................................... 242 Lithuanians and the Republican Party .........................................246 8. C O N C L U S IO N .........................................................................................251 Appendices 1. VINCENT AS LIULEVICIUS, UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENT OF STATISTICS ON LITHUANIAN DISPLACED PERSONS’ SCHOOLS FROM 1945 TO 1949 ............................................................................................ 257 2. MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH HONDURAS AND THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MENNONITE CHURCHES OF CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO ................................. 261 3. GEOGRAPHICAL DISPERSION OF DISPLACED PERSONS’ SCHOOLS .................................................................... 263 LIST OF A B B R E V IA T IO N S.........................................................................265 LITHUANIAN SP E L L IN G .............................................................................267 ANNOTATED B IBL IO G R A PH Y ................................................................ 275 PROPER NAME INDEX .............................................................................319 GENERAL INDEX .........................................................................................323 ABOUT THE A U T H O R ................................................................................ 329 v i i i 1. Location o f the Aistian Tribes inthe Thirteenth Century . . . 36 2 . Locations o f Displaced Persons Camps in West Germany in 1948 ................................................................................................. 109 3. Lithuanian Scouts Association, Inc., General Chart of Administration ..................................................................................... 195 4. Structure of the Ateitis F e d e r a tio n .....................................................231 5. Ethnic Identity of An A m e r ic a n .........................................................232 LIST OF FIGURES IX LIST OF PLATES Jonas Šliupas (1861-1944) and Jonas Basanavičius (1851-1927), Editors o f Aušra and Founders o f Lithuanianism, ca. 1913 37 The Future Founder o f Czechoslovakia, Thomas Masaryk with Jonas Šliupas at the Conference o f Delegates from the Subjugated Peoples o f Europe on the Steps of Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, 1 9 1 6 ............................................................................ 37 Antanas Staniukynas, Founder o f the Sisters o f S t Casimir Congregation, Posing with Fellow Doctoral Students from the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1 9 0 1 ........................ 38 First Wave Chicago Immigrant Businessman Stanley Balzekas, Sr., in Front o f his Meat Market in the Bridgeport Section o f Chicago, 1916 39 Two Students from Vytautas the Great University in Front o f the Darius-Girenas Memorial and Grave, in Kaunas, 1935 76 Antanina Liorentaite, First Lithuanian Woman Pilot and Sky- diver, with her de Havilland "Tiger-Moth" Airplane, 1936 76 Fifth Infantry Regiment Members in Class at Kaunas in the Fall o f 1937 77 The N ew ly Organized Lithuanian American Council Meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on October 15,1940, in the White House ......................................................................... 78 Using Horse Power, Antanas M askeliūnas and Family Ready Themselves to Leave Their Home and Farm, on August 9, 1944, as Soviet Armed Forces Invade L ith u a n ia ............................. 110 Three Lithuanians in Ethnic Costumes, Posing in Front o f an UNRRA Vehicle, in Wurzburg, 1947 110 Wurzburg, Block 4 Displaced Persons’ Camp, 1947, Depicting Lithuanian National Symbols Flanked by Empty Artillery Casings ................................................................................................. I l l XI BALF Chairman, Rev. Dr. J. B. Končius, with Lithuanians at the Oldenburg DP Camp, ca. 1948 ................................................ I l l Stasys Šalkauskis (1886-1941), Cultural Philosopher Who Articulated an Ideology for Lithuanianism ................................ 147 Ateitis Juris Prudence Women Students group Fideles Justiciaat Vytautas the Great University, Kaunas 1938 . 147 Kazys Pakštas (1893-1960), Visionary Who Championed a Reserve L ith u a n ia ................................................................................. 148 Mykolas Krupavičius (1885-1970) Addressing Diaspora Lithuanians in the United States, ca. 1952 ................................ 148 Kristijonas Donelaitis Saturday School Kindergarten Class at the Awards Ceremony, in Chicago, Illinois, June 1988 . . . . 196 Lithuanian Dance Group “Vytis” Performing at the Lithuanian Youth Center in Chicago, Illinois, 1983 .................................... 197 Darnusis Barracks at Camp D a i n a v a .................................................233 Jubilee, Commemorating Sixty-Five Years o f Ateitis Existence, at Camp Dainava, 1975 ................................................ 233 xii LIST OF PLATES LIST OF TABLES 1. A Comparative Table o f Lithuanians Who Arrived in the Major Lithuanian Centers of Immigration in the United States, 1899-1914 ................................................................................ 79 2 . Number o f Lithuanian Immigrants Entering the United States, 1899-1914 80 3. Addition o f Lithuanian Schools to Chicago P a r is h e s ................ 81 4. The Assimilation V a r ia b le s............................................................. 82 5. Lithuanian Scouts and Community Schools: Donelaitis, Maironis, Darius and G ir e n a s ..................................................... 198 6. Lithuanian Foundation Growth, Profits, and Disbursements . 202 7. The Growth o f the Lithuanian Foundation, 1978-1984 . . . . 203 8. Ateitis Federation Moksleiviai (High School A g e ) ......................... 234 9. What is M ost Important for M oksleiviai? .........................................239 10. Distribution o f Lithuanians in the United States During 1980 Census .........................................................................................240 xiii Conception of the crowning of Mindaugas (1251), founder of the Lithuanian state, by emigre artist Adomas Varnas (1879-1979), in Chicago in 1953 (photo by Jonas Adomenas). INTRODUCTION This work presents a picture o f an East European people aimed with an ideology enabling them to engage in a non-violent confrontation with the first principles o f American nationality. The Lithuanians who settled in Chicago after World War II arrived with a diaspora mentality. How their diaspora mentality fared is my theme. The work analyzes their ideological struggle against assimilation into English-speaking Americans with a Roman Catholic identity. It is neither a history o f Lithuania nor a definitive study on either o f the two Lithuanian inmigration waves— the economic immigrants (1867-1914) followed by a second wave o f exiles (1948- 1952). Rather, the work uses the two wave format, preceded by an inquiry into nationality as a condition of mind, as a vehicle to unravel their sense o f peoplehood and the raison d’etre o f ethnic “isolated fortresses.” 1 Unlike the American experience, no J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur appeared to pose the question, “What then is the Lithuanian?” when this ancient people joined the list of nation-states in 1918. Consequently, it became a task o f this work to define their “invisible configuration of values,”2 which led to an understanding of the Lithuanian sense o f peoplehood. What emerged was a nationality formed along ethnic lines fired by a linguistic nationalism. The ideas o f the Enlightenment and Romanticism arrived at a time when Lithuanians had no statehood, but shared in an Eastern European awakening o f national consciousness. Of importance in forming a sense o f Lithuanian identity were the intellectuals, both Lithuanian and non-Lithuanian. The work traces the origins o f their sense o f peoplehood to that o f their reaction to Polanization and 1Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity (Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1979), p. 177. 2Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York: The Technology Press o f the Massachusetts Institute o f Technology and John W iley and Sons, Inc., 1953), p. 62. xv XVI INTRODUCTION Russification and the Romantic movement’s influence upon the East Prussian and Russian intellectuals o f the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In turn, educators preached nationalism to their students who, as teachers, writers, clergy, etc., became instrumental in carrying the movement’s message to different segments o f the population. The formal study o f the Lithuanian language by philologists also played a major role in that it caused Lithuanians to elevate their native tongue and to recall the past in an effort to restore a sense o f pride in their people. Because culture and language became the twin pillars o f national identity to the early proponents o f Lithuanianism, the first modem Lithuanian nationalists, like Jonas Basanavicius and Vincas Kudirka, neither saw nor stressed Christianity (or Roman Catholicism) as its core. By developing the notion o f a tribal past as the essence o f nationality, Basanavicius formulated a vision o f nationality akin to a tribal religion. However, this secular view precipitated the clergy becoming instrumental in connecting Lithuanianism to Roman Catholicism. Clerical involvement saw its fruition in the A teitis movement, begun in 1908. Consisting o f university students, clergy and secular priests, the movement formalized the relationship between Lithuanianism and Catholicism. In 1923, the movement’s ideologue and cultural philosopher, Stasys Salkauskis, finalized the connection. The work not only examines the development o f a national identity in the homeland and its effect upon the Lithuanian economic immigrants in the U.S. but also provides a contrast between them and the post-World War II exiles. Exiled from the homeland, the proponents o f Lithuanianism— like Jonas Sliupas, Antanas Milukas, Antanas Kaupas— contributed greatly to developing an ethnic identity within the immigrant community in America through their involvement with the Lithuanian press. Made aware o f their heritage, these immigrants maintained a relationship with the homeland in terms o f economic support. At the same time, economic mobility proved a factor in the rate at which the group became assimilated as did involvement in American politics. The invasion o f the homeland, in 1940, triggered the formation o f the Lithuanian American Council (LAC) as an ethnic political action group with interests in conveying American rights to the homeland and, later, saving Lithuanian refugees in Europe. In turn, it created the relief organization United Lithuanian Relief Fund o f America (B ALF) in an effort to aid the thousands o f INTRODUCTION XVII Lithuanian exiles stranded in post-World War II Europe. While the LAC worked for immigration reform, the émigrés organized themselves under the Lithuanian Exile Community, created an educational system within the camps and, by 1949, drew up the Lithuanian Charter in an effort to preserve Lithuanianism for future generations. Upon immigration to the United States, the LAC allowed the exile community to reorganize itself, in 1952, as the United States World Lithuanian Community (JAVLB). The post-World War II era saw leadership o f the Lithuanian exile community fall to Ateitis members, educated individuals with a strong sense o f Lithuanianism instilled by their ideology. However, failure to pass on an understanding o f their ideology to the following generations, as well as their own failure to understand the first principles o f American nationality, created conditions for the progressive degeneration o f the diaspora into an ethnic group with a Roman Catholic identity. In 1967, the exile community’s failure to understand the dynamics o f assimilation became evident by its entrance into the American political arena. By the summer o f 1972, the foimation o f the World Lithuanian Youth Association (PLJS) indicated the community’s failure to educate its young in terms o f diaspora ideology. In 1974, differences over ideological interpretation o f the Lithuanian Charter resulted in the JAVLB split into two factions. Further diaspora erosion became evident upon the creation o f a Lithuanian Chair o f Studies, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1981. The program based its graduate studies on Lithuanian literature, without a historical continuity that would connect it to the past in order to create a future for itself. What began as a split in ideology among the adult exile community became a stepping stone for the younger Tnembers o f the group to accelerate assimilation into the host society. iThe decline o f Lithuanianism as a cultural identity barely thirty-eight years after the inception o f the diaspora was further borne out by ¡empirical data gathered through a survey conducted in 1983. Of ■¡interest to American civilization is the fact that, upon emigration to the "■United States, that same leadership, in an attempt to continue the ¡feeling o f peoplehood, created a diaspora based on linguistic J nationalism that challenged the first principles of American nationality. It is important to recognize that cultural distinctiveness is limited to a minority o f intellectuals who do not adhere to popular culture, which is the milieu o f the blue- and white-collar ethnic. As INTRODUCTION long as the superiority complex is strong, thinking is done in terms of a collective group. The superiority complex is only operative, however, if a counter tradition is intellectually reconstructed outside the mental parameters o f the dominant culture. The first wave Lithuanian immigrants, largely a blue- and white-collar class, did not have this option for it was permeated by dominant norms rooted in individuality. Since it moved in a world of popular culture without a high culture of its own, it was a transient group in the latter stage o f assimilation via intermarriage and language transfer. In contrast, diaspora Lithuanians were able to operate as an autonomous group because of an intelligentsia with high motivational levels to reconstruct a parallel mental system that would operate outside the dominant construct. By opposing the ideological definition of an American as an individualist and a universalist, their ideology formulated a parallel mental system based on a superiority complex operative in high culture, thereby creating conditions for the subsociety to avoid assimilation. Salkauskian ideology called into being a particularistic cultural history in support of nature and religion. By enthroning linguistic nationalism, it placed a tribal base on par with religion and, in the process of harmonizing the particularistic culture with a universal faith, it changed the universalist religion into a national religion. Consequently, Salkauskian ideology rested on culture that elevated nature and religion, which, in turn, elevated it. This religion was not open to question because it was “natural” and in harmony with God’s religion. In essence, then Šalkauskis enlisted nature and God in support of an overpowering cultural religion. In the final analysis, Salkauskian ideology gave diaspora Lithuanianism a counter model construct that was at variance with both American and Roman Catholic universalism in the ratified air o f first principles with a ready formula at hand to operate a parallel mental system to the American model complete with a superiority complex potent, since both Lithuanianism and Americanism had the power of bringing people “under the spell of the great national suggestion.”3 Because the leadership within the diaspora did not understand its own ideology, it was incapable o f perpetuating the “spell” o f a xviii 3Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1944), p. 4. INTRODUCTION xix Lithuanian national individuality. By mentally migrating from Salkauskian thought, they created conditions for the gradual weakening of the diaspora. The 1980 and 1983 surveys indicated a breakdown in the superiority complex, which, in turn, suggested a shift in the “natural” cultural religion to the “natural rights” o f the American civic religion in which the definition o f nationality was in harmony with a pluralistic society. With a weakened collectivist approach to the host society, national individuality deteriorated, allowing diaspora Lithuanians to mentally migrate toward the American creed, which was not only individualistic but also universalist and therefore not exclusionary on either racial, religious or language lines. Once individuals internalized the civic religion, they internalized the given definition of “natural,” which then opened the door to loosening linguistic ties, since they entered a “nationality” that was, at base, spiritually individualist and universalist. Confusion over ideology fostered a diminished superiority complex within the exile offspring. In turn, this created conditions that rendered the Lithuanian diaspora helpless in resisting assimilation. As individuals within the diaspora, Ateitis members led the Pasaulio Lietuviu Bendruomene (World Lithuanian Community), the Ateitis Federation, the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Federation of America and the Pasaulio Lietuviu Jaunimo Sajunga (The World Lithuanian Youth Association) into political activities as well as an ethnic orientation by way of a Catholic identity. Formal movement toward bridging the gap between diaspora Lithuanians and ethnic Americans of Lithuanian heritage also encouraged the acceptance o f the American language since it was not perceived as a personal or group threat to those entering a transition stage in transference of both personal and cultural (linguistic) norms o f the host society. Consequently, alienation and the move toward politics and an ethnic orientation via pan-Catholicism only served to weaken the diaspora community— the embodiment of the second and most fundamental step in Salkauskis’ “three steps of life.” The Lithuanian diaspora’s two wave format has its genesis rooted within the tradition established by Louis Wirth’s University of Chicago work “The Ghetto: A Study in Isolation” (1926). Wirth’s insight and treatment of the clash between two distinct waves o f Jews in Chicago provided the conceptual framework for the clash between two waves o f Lithuanians in Chicago. Neither “The Ghetto” nor XX INTRODUCTION Lithuanian Diaspora is intended as definitive work on the Jewish or the Lithuanian experience respectively. Rather, both explore tensions between different mind frames. David S. Landes and Charles Tilly, in “What is History?” observe that: “Ethnic criteria o f the validity o f historical research and teaching are unacceptable because they are anti intellectual. It may well be that some things are knowable only to ‘insiders’; but then there are other things that are especially perceptible to ‘outsiders’ precisely because they are outside. This is one o f the ambiguities o f historical research: the scholar tries to get as close to his subject as possible while maintaining enough distance of space and time to afford him a sense o f context and significance.”4 One o f my mentors at the University o f Chicago, Leonard Krieger, pointed out that “a work should never be viewed as a type ( ‘eine Gattung’) into which we may intrude our own contribution.”5 Professor Krieger’s master, Hajo Halbom, reminds us that “The central problems o f a historical methodology or epistemology hinge upon the fact that an objective knowledge of the past can only be attained through the subjective experience o f the scholar.”6 As an insider/outsider, the “process” o f becoming a Lithuanian or American was not only o f academic interest but also one of personal import. History, therefore, became a prism through which problems o f selfhood on the personal level were resolved. The inner logic o f Citvecoeur’s “What then is the American, this new man?” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s “How are they [Lithuanians or Americans] welded into a people?” entered center stage to fire an integrating theme to unravel mental constructs o f people- hood, adding to the store o f knowledge within the field o f ethnic history. The title o f my work was carefully selected. On first principle grounds, a viable diaspora nationalism must possess and desire to preserve stable ethnic, religious or linguistic traditions markedly 4David S. Landes and Charles Tilly, “What is History?” in History as a Social Science, ed. by David S. Landes and Charles T illy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), pp. 16-17. 5Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning o f History (Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1977), p. 6. 6Fritz Stem, ed., The Varieties of History: FromVoltaire to the Present (New York: Random House, Inc., 1973), p. 25. INTRODUCTION xxi different from the host society. Because the work deals with the phenomena o f ethnicity, minorities and first principles o f nationality and culture, the concept is central to a Lithuanian diaspora in its non violent clash with American ideology in the rarefied air o f first principles o f nationality. Consequently, the term “diaspora” stays true to the concept o f “exile” group since the post-World War II Lithuanians left the homeland with the aim o f preserving themselves and future generations as Lithuanians in a diaspora setting. With the acceptance o f the word, the reader can differentiate a “diaspora” from immigrant groups who have historically wished to be assimilated into the host society within a generation or two. Thus, the difference between “immigrant” and “emigré” is clearly developed within the manuscript. The terms “immigrant” and “em igré” are not interchangeable in Lithuanian Diaspora as each is tied to a peculiar mind frame that determines how people see themselves. The second wave émigrés are seers o f a Lithuanian identity fired by a linguistic nationalism that sees nationality as a “condition o f mind,” not citizenship. Such a mind frame exists at variance not only with American concepts o f peoplehood but also with the Soviet model, since both are seen as alien creeds with their theoretical base rooted in a non-ethnic definition o f citizenship in which a political system, not an ethnic group, is enthroned. The concept o f this dynamic is, therefore, o f import to ethnic studies. The second part o f the title, Königsberg to Chicago , juxtaposes the two centers o f Lithuanianism— Ludwig Rhesa’s eighteenth century Lithuanian studies program at the University o f Königsberg and Bronius Vaskelis’ twentieth century Lithuanian studies program at the University o f Illinois at Chicago. Both Königsberg and Chicago are unique in that they are located beyond Lithuania’s borders and are perceived to have a historical mission. The former’s historical mission is completed, while the latter one— in Chicago— is in process. The work, consequently, links the two centers and provides a vision for Lithuanianism. The term “Lithuanianism” is used in English since an “-ism” denotes an identifiable ideology— that is, a set o f beliefs. As is Catholicism, communism, etc., so Lithuanianism is articulated with its own set o f beliefs and historically evolved traditions or characteristics markedly different from those o f the rest o f the population. As such, it has the potential to question whether biological, cultural and