Day of Mourning and Hope: Why the Memory of Soviet Repressions Is Once Again Becoming Part of European Politics

On Monday morning, diplomats, writers, historians, and relatives of the victims of Stalinist terror gathered at a school in Baku named after the repressed Azerbaijani poet Mikhail Mushfig. The occasion was a joint Azerbaijani-Lithuanian event dedicated to the memory of victims of political repression. At first glance, the discussion concerned events that had taken place nearly a century ago. Yet the atmosphere of the meeting suggested something different: history continues to remain an important element of contemporary politics, national identity, and international relations.

Lithuanian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Kęstutis Vaškelevičius reminded those present that Lithuania and Azerbaijan are connected not only by diplomatic relations and their place within the post-Soviet space. Both countries experienced large-scale repression during the Soviet era, lost outstanding representatives of their intelligentsia, clergy, political leadership, and thousands of ordinary citizens. According to the diplomat, their only “crime” was often their national consciousness, commitment to their own culture, or aspiration for freedom.

A special place in the speeches was devoted to the fate of Mikhail Mushfig, one of the brightest representatives of twentieth-century Azerbaijani literature. His name has become a symbol of the tragedy of an entire generation of intellectuals destroyed during the Great Terror. Alongside him, Ahmad Javad and Huseyn Javid were also remembered—men whose works today form part of the cultural foundation of modern Azerbaijan, yet who themselves became victims of a system that feared independent thought.

However, the significance of the event extended far beyond literary remembrance.

Just days after the meeting in Baku, Lithuania will once again mark two dates that occupy a special place in its national calendar. On June 14, the country commemorates the Day of Mourning and Hope, dedicated to the memory of the mass deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia. The following day, June 15, Lithuania observes the Day of Occupation and Genocide, associated with the entry of Soviet troops into Lithuania in 1940.

For most Europeans, June is associated with the beginning of summer. For Lithuanians, however, the middle of the month remains a time of national mourning and reflection on the past. These dates are not mere formalities. They have become part of state ideology, the education system, and public memory.

On the night of June 13–14, 1941, the first major wave of deportations from Lithuania began. Civil servants, military officers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and members of the intelligentsia, together with their families, were sent to Siberia, the Altai region, and other remote areas of the Soviet Union. Men were often separated from their wives and children and dispatched to Gulag labor camps. According to Lithuanian historians, approximately 130,000 residents of the country were deported between 1941 and the early 1950s.

For a state whose population at that time was less than three million people, it was a demographic and cultural catastrophe.

This is precisely why Lithuania’s memory of repression differs from many other European historical narratives. It is built not only around the victims but also around resistance.

After the Second World War, one of Eastern Europe’s largest anti-Soviet partisan movements emerged in Lithuania. The so-called “Forest Brothers” continued armed resistance against Soviet rule until the early 1950s. Although the movement was ultimately suppressed, its participants are regarded in contemporary Lithuania as symbols of the struggle for independence and the preservation of national dignity.

For Azerbaijan, this experience is of particular interest.

Unlike the Baltic states, Azerbaijan did not develop a separate state policy of memory dedicated specifically to Soviet repression. At the official level, remembrance of victims of political terror has traditionally been associated primarily with the World Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression, observed on October 30. On that day, tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis who suffered during the period from the 1920s to the 1950s are remembered, including Mikhail Mushfig, Ahmad Javad, Huseyn Javid, and many other representatives of the national intelligentsia.

Nevertheless, interest in this subject is gradually growing.

This is largely because, more than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of the former USSR continue to search for answers to fundamental questions about their own identities. Who are the heroes of national history? Which events should become part of collective memory? How should societies speak about the Soviet legacy?

Today these questions are acquiring new significance not only in the Baltic states and the South Caucasus but throughout Europe.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has once again made historical memory a subject of political debate. For many states of Eastern Europe, the events of the twentieth century are no longer viewed solely as subjects of academic research. Questions of occupation, deportation, repression, and struggles for independence are once again being examined through the lens of contemporary security.

That is why the small ceremony in Baku proved to be a far more significant event than it might have appeared at first glance.

It served as a reminder that the memory of totalitarianism remains one of the few historical experiences equally understood by peoples separated by thousands of kilometers. Azerbaijanis and Lithuanians have different languages, different religions, and different political traditions. Yet both nations have preserved the memory of generations of people who were destroyed or broken by a repressive system.

In this sense, memory becomes not only a tribute to the past but also an instrument for shaping the future.

When the names of Mikhail Mushfig, Ahmad Javad, and Huseyn Javid are spoken in Baku, and when lists of deported families are read aloud in Vilnius, the subject is not merely the tragedies of the last century. It is about understanding how fragile freedom, independence, and human dignity can be.

That is why the Day of Mourning and Hope continues to live not only in Lithuania’s calendar of remembrance but also within a broader European conversation about how the past shapes the present and why forgotten tragedies have a tendency to return to the political agenda of new generations.