Findings of the research of the standardization ideologies

The starting point for any discourse about language policy in the USSR, and thus in Soviet Lithuania, is the demolition of Marr's teaching and Stalin's famous reasoning in "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which had remained fundamentally important to the ideological assessment of language up until late in perestroika. The second important context, particularly in order to understand the situation on the 'language front' at the beginning of the period (from the late fifties to early sixties), is Khrushchev's campaign against 'manifestations of nationalism in the republics'. The third and more academic context, also related with Khrushchev, is the upbringing of the 'Soviet man's' consciousness which among other things was manifested through raising... – yes, the culture of language. And the last important point, which has become crucial since mid-seventies, is the total bureaucratization of all scientific and cultural spheres during which all initiatives were immediately and unwieldily institutionalized, with no exception of the so called places of 'mass scenes'.

Research within such conceptual framework shows that for the Soviet Lithuanian administration the initial and final authority on all (language) issues was Moscow: what had been implemented there, had to be repeated and imitated by bureaucrats, ideologues, and scientists. How and what has been done with the Russian language, had to be applied to Lithuanian – such was the principal party concern. Admittedly, even when involved in the formal regulatory institutions of language, Lithuanian linguists did not rush to adopt this approach and repeatedly turned to defend the boundaries of linguistic competence even without getting into an opposition to the ideology. However, at least at the Soviet Lithuanian Language Commission, administrative rather than scientific work came first and when scientific and ideological arguments collided, usually the latter were decisive.

At the beginning of the period in question, i.e. in the sixties, communist ideologues focused on the systematic fight against perceived or potential 'manifestations of nationalism' (the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania (LKP CK) also did not escape serious (self-)criticism in this sphere; the Latvian CK was even rummaged and cleaned up radically).This also meant that special attention was given to speaking in public and administrative language (the use of language during meetings and in the press was controlled; the use of scientific and administrative terms was inspected). Eventually social control has increased – the concerns of language policy expanded to the language of everyday life, consumption, and leisure. The transposition of the practice of 'correcting language defects' from written texts (in particular literary texts, textbooks, and newspapers) to everyday life can be considered a key turning point in the Soviet period. During the Soviet period, the idea of controlling speech flow and such petty public notices as product labels or restaurant menus turned into an official practice of repression. Proofing 'raids' commenced in Brezhnev's era can be equated with political thought control, the functioning of the police state followed by the direct intrusion into people's everyday life through tracking and - if necessary - prosecuting any member of the society.

The seventies was the decade accompanied by the aspiration to a 'sense of culture' when the purity of language had become associated with a moral (socialist's) obligation and the deviation from it was considered a threat to public order. It should be noted that during the rise of Standard Lithuanian in interwar Lithuania the personal responsibility for the language also had a value of moral obligation, but the authority then was personal rather than institutional and functioned primarily as an example which educated individuals would orientate to. The perception of Soviet moral duty has turned the proposals of language regulation into a tool for the obsessive regulation of public life. It was during the Soviet period when the concept of 'poverty of spirit' was invented and established – it was also applied to those who were not interested in Soviet art, and those who were 'pandering to the rotten West', and those who shunned the practice of correcting language. Over the last 15 years of Soviet rule in Lithuania there was an observable tendency that the issues of language standardization have been raised and addressed according to the principles of the planned state economy, collectivist world-view, and bureaucratic administration.

To the majority of Lithuanian linguists the primary concern was, of course, the rights of the Lithuanian language under coercive conditions. However, it is evident that what was the primary concern when one immersed oneself into the studies of Lithuanian language, eventually would have transformed once one became a professional linguist: the Lithuanian language increasingly began to be treated as a virtue on its own which had to be protected. Pre-war linguists and linguists from 'the free world' share the attitude that linguistic norms are set through the use of language and that language normalisation then takes place by capturing, evaluating, and codifying these norms. Late Soviet Lithuanian and Russian practitioners of language culture had (as if automatically) undergone the shift: there was no norm without codification, no speaking without language defined merely as a social/formal system, set by the linguistic science.

After the restoration of independence, much attention was paid to restore the rights of the Lithuanian language in all areas of use. Also, during this period, the initiatives of language purification – against the influence of both Russian and global English – has become more active. In addition, there were complaints that there was too little language control in the independent country and that too much spontaneous and unregulated public speaking started to emerge. The paradox is that , protecting and nurturing the Lithuanian language and often appealing to the legacy of the 'fathers' of written Lithuanian, the linguists have become those gate-keepers who adopt the same measures of control against the general public as the measures which had been adopted by the Soviet apparatus of re-education and censorship.

From the development of language ideologies from the Soviet times to the present day it becomes clear that the concept of the 'good language' is a political idea used as an instrument of power and control. Purified from unwanted elements and enriched with moral value, the standard language serves ideological purposes. After two decades of independence, no ideological shifts were observed: the idea of state-controlled language has survived to the present day and language variation is still treated as a mutilation of the standard language. The only relatively graspable turning point was when the institute of state control was officially handed to the gatekeepers and the control of public language – tightened even further.