HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Norbertas Černiauskas, 1940. Lithuania’s Last Summer (1940. Paskutinė Lietuvos vasara), Vilnius: Aukso žuvys, 2021, 259 pp.

On 15 June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, thus upending the existence of the modern Lithuanian Republic (1918–1940). Its zenith in early 1940 is the focus of Norbertas Černiauskas’s exploration, in which he reconstructs, from rich and abundant sources, the ordinary, personal, social, political, and civic, life in the Lithuania of the day. Discussing the most prominent issues of the 1940s, the author reveals the process of state-building that took place not only in the corridors of power, but also in communities and in everyday life, which was being increasingly impacted by World War II, which had just started, and the premonitions of imminent catastrophe. The author turns the final fifteen days of the still-free June and still-free Lithuania into fifteen chapters, in which he shows people and the state – still autonomous, but already being pulled deep into the vortex of history’s hardships.

Norbertas Černiauskas is a historian and lecturer at the University of Vilnius, co-author of several research publications. Published in June 2021, his study entitled “1940. Paskutinė Lietuvos vasara” (1940. Lithuania’s Last Summer) at once became a Lithuanian non-fiction best-seller and received the Book of the Year Award in the non-fiction and documentary category. It remains one of the most influential non-fiction books of the past decade.

Awards

2021: The Best Non-fiction Book of the Year (Lithuania)

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