The Lithuanian encyclopedia published in Boston as a unique cultural phenomenon

• In Event: Diasporic Routes: Lithuanian Communities' Networks Across the Americas

Abstract

The 37-volume Lithuanian encyclopedia [Lietuvių enciklopedija], published in Boston, MA in 1953–1987, is unique in the history of encyclopedias. It is the only known universal encyclopedia of such scope and volume to be published by an ethnic group in an ethnic language in the diaspora. In addition to the usual information found in universal encyclopedias (A-Z), there is a great deal of information about Lithuania and Lithuanians, mostly about the Lithuanian diaspora. The 15th volume was exclusively devoted to Lithuania and was secretly smuggled into Soviet-occupied Lithuania. The initiator and publisher of the encyclopedia, Juozas Kapočius, assembled a large group of section editors (about 80 people) and contributors (about 1,000 people), and published all the volumes in the Lithuanian Encyclopedia Press publishing house that he established in South Boston. The encyclopedia was financed through subscriptions. Almost every displaced person’s family had a set of the encyclopedias in their home.
In the introduction to the first volume, editor-in-chief Vaclovas Biržiška, stated that the goal of the encyclopedia was to be a weapon “… which will help us smash the Iron Curtain, which is now separating Lithuania from the cultured world…” The Boston Lithuanian encyclopedia accomplished its mission in full. It has become the basis for other encyclopedias published in Lithuania today.
This year the archive of the Boston encyclopedia was registered in the Lithuanian National Memory of the World Register, which is part of UNESCO’s International Memory of the World Register program, as documentary cultural heritage of national significance.

Short Bio

I am a Lithuanian-American, museum worker and historian of science specializing in the history of medicine. My Ph.D. is in the history of science from Harvard University (1977). For 32 years I worked as curator of the medical collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, and for 10 years as founding director of the Vilnius University Museum. Currently, I am President of the Lithuanian Association of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the Lithuanian Society for the History of Pharmacy.

Author

• Ramunas Kondratas, University of Vilnius