After the commission’s conclusion, the municipalities begin to change the names of S. Nėries streets

Some have already started the exchange procedures, while others are still waiting for official letters.

The De-Sovietization Commission, which evaluates the public inscriptions and symbols left over from the Soviet era, decided at the end of February that the streets named after the writer S. Nėries in Lithuania promote the totalitarian regime and must therefore be renamed.

She recommended changing the streets named after S. Nėries in Vilnius, Klaipėda, Molėtai, Pakruojė, Rumšiškės, Simno and Žagare.

LGGRTC director Arūnas Bubnys also supported this decision of the commission. He made a decision that in certain municipalities the public names where the name of S. Nėries is mentioned must be changed. Such a decision was outraged by a group of scientists who urged the commission to reconsider the issue by ordering an objective scientific expertise of qualified researchers, historians and literary experts.

“We will ask the opinion of the residents”

Kamilė Šėraitė-Gogelienė, chairperson of the Historical Memory Commission of the Vilnius City Municipality, told BNS that the capital city will change the name of S. Nėries Street in the Fabijoniškių micro-district.

According to the representative of the municipality, residents will soon be asked to suggest new names.

“We will do the same as with Liudos Gira street: we will ask the opinion of the residents, we will offer them to submit variants of the names and then we will return with those variants to the commission”, said K. Šēraitė-Gogelienė.

“We will definitely engage the residents to have a say in what the options might be,” she added.

According to K. Šēraitė-Gogelienė, the process of changing the name of the street will accelerate in the near future.

Awaiting official letter

At that time, the municipalities of Klaipėda city, Pakruoj, Alytus district are waiting to receive an official letter from LGGRTC.

The municipality of Kaišiadorių district is also waiting for an official letter from the center. She has already received such a letter regarding the names of Petros Cvirkas streets in Kaišiadorys and Rumšiškės, Liuda Gira street in Kaišiadorys, Yurijaus Gagarins street in Žiežmarii.

According to the municipality, residents will be offered one to three new street names to choose from.

“If a decision is made to change the name of S. Neries, we will apply a similar procedure to the change of this street as well – the Historical Memory Commission will submit new name proposals, present them to the residents and seek consensus at the same time,” reads the municipality’s comment.

Joniškis district municipality informed BNS that regarding the name change of S. Nėries street in Žagare, the municipality administration is currently preparing a draft decision and intends to submit it to the council next month.

The municipality of Molėtai district also assured that it will change the name of S. Nėries, currently a new name is being discussed.

More municipalities are waiting for a decision

More municipalities, one of them – Marijampolė, applied to the so-called De-Sovietization Commission regarding the streets named after S. Nėries. The commission considered her appeal at the March 13 meeting

“We are eagerly waiting for the official decision of this commission, which will become the basis for discussion and decision-making in the Marijampole municipal council,” Marijampole vice mayor Artūras Visockis told BNS before the meeting.

However, the commission has not yet made a decision regarding the street in Marijampolė.

Last week, a part of the country’s scientific community urged the de-Sovietization commission to reconsider the issue of the use of S. Nėries’ name in the names of public objects and to order an objective scientific expertise of qualified researchers, historians and literary experts.

Vitas Karčiauskas, chairman of the De-Sovietization Commission, told BNS that although the decisions made earlier will not be revoked, the commission will take into account the comments made by scientists when examining specific cases.

The first such case was at the meeting on March 13, when deciding on the application of Marijampolė municipality.

According to him, the commission made a break in examining this issue and asked for a certificate whether S. Nėris studied at the Marijampolė girls’ gymnasium.

“We need to look at Salomėja Nėris in Marijampole a little differently. We asked for a certificate where her biography would be clearly laid out until 1940”, said V. Karčiauskas.

Residents did not approve

According to V. Karčiauskas, the commission will note in all cases that S. Nėris worked in the occupation-political structures and the central structures of the occupation government and actively participated in making decisions that had an impact on consolidating the Soviet occupation.

However, if the public object is related to S. Nėris, as a poet, according to V. Karčiauskas, the commission will not undertake to make a recommendation regarding the name change.

“In certain cases, even in the case of Salomea Nėris, we will recommend to leave what is related to her as a poet. Because many streets in Lithuania are named after places that have nothing to do with her biography or with her as a poet, they are named because she brought back “Stalin’s sun”, the chairman of the commission said.

There is also S. Nėries street in Šiauliai, but as the municipality informed BNS, the commission considering the issues of names of streets and objects is not going to attend a meeting in the near future. Later, if the issue is raised, it is intended to take into account the position of the De-Sovietization Commission and the LGGRTC.

The question regarding the name of S. Nėries street was discussed in the city four years ago. Then, after conducting a survey of residents and applying to the Šiauliai branch of the Union of Lithuanian Political Prisoners and Deportees, it was decided not to change the name.

Together with other writers, S. Nėris created poetry and prose praising the Soviet government. In 1940, as a delegate of the People’s Seimas, she went to Moscow with a request to accept Lithuania into the Soviet Union.

At that time, some literary experts and other scientists emphasized the significance of S. Nėries’s work for Lithuanian literature and collective memory, her later repentance for cooperation with the Soviet authorities.

The ban on the promotion of totalitarian, authoritarian regimes and their ideologies has been in effect in Lithuania since May last year. According to him, symbols of totalitarianism and authoritarianism must be removed from public spaces – monuments, names of streets, squares and other public objects, other symbols.