Experiences related to forced deportations of ethnic Lithuanians as part of Stalin’s political genocide were explored in the narratives of six survivors. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was chosen for its idiographic and interpretive focus on the meanings and individual sense-making of lived experiences. Semistructured interviews were conducted, and the data were analyzed for emergent superordinate themes and subthemes. The results revealed three superordinate themes, which reflect three stages of the participants’ experience of Soviet political persecutions: the Existential Shock of Arrest and Deportation, the Angst of Survival and Identity Negotiation during the Exile, and Rebuilding Life and Seeking Meaning after Amnesty. Subthemes highlighted various dimensions of the effects of political repressions as well as coping mechanisms employed by the survivors. Additionally, the results examined how the participants made meaning of their experiences and explored their perceptions of long-term consequences of trauma associated with political repressions. The article provides an existential and liberation/postcolonial theoretical framework for understanding political violence and concludes with implications for clinical practices with survivors of political persecutions perpetuated against ethnic groups around the world.
AfuapeT. (2011). Power, resistance and liberation in counselling and psychotherapy: To have our hearts broken. London, England: Routledge.
2.
Al-KrenawiA. (2013). The psychosocial impact of political violence on Palestinian and Jewish adolescents. In BoutrosN. (Ed.), The international psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences yearbook—2012 (Vol. 2, pp. 283-304). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Biomedical Books.
3.
AnušauskasA. (2012). Teroras. 1940-1958 [Terror. 1940-1958]. Vilnius, Lithuania: Versus Aureus.
4.
AragonaM.CatinoE.PucciD.CarrerS.ColosimoF.LafuenteM.GeraciS. (2010). The relationship between somatization and posttraumatic symptoms among immigrants receiving primary care services. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 23, 615-622. doi:10.1002/jts.20571
5.
BakerK. G.GippenreiterJ. B. (1998). Stalin’s purge and its impact on Russian families: A pilot study. In DanieliY. (Ed.), International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma (pp. 403-434). New York: Plenum Press.
6.
Band-WintersteinT.FeinN. (2014). The experience of forced labor and its meaning for the self: The case of holocaust survivors. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 6, 404-410. doi:10.1037/a0035616
7.
BertauxD.RotkirchA.ThompsonP. (Eds.). (2004). On living through Soviet Russia. New York, NY: Routledge.
8.
BichescuD.SchauerM.SaleptsiE.NeculauA.ElbertT.NeunerF. (2005). Long-term consequences of traumatic experiences: An assessment of former political detainees in Romania. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 1(1), 1-17.
9.
BossM. (1988). Psychotherapy for freedom: The daseinsanalytic way in psychology and psychoanalysis. In CraigE. (Ed.). A special issue of The Humanistic Psychologist, 16(1).
10.
BudrytėD. (2004). “We call it genocide”: Soviet deportations and repressions in the memory of Lithuanians. In FreyR. S. (Ed.), The genocidal temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda, and Beyond (pp. 79-101). New York, NY: University Press of America.
11.
ConquestR. (1986). The harvest of sorrow. Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12.
CrescenziA.KetzerE.Van OmmerenM.PhuntsokK.KomproeI.de JongJ. T. (2002). Effect of political imprisonment and trauma history on recent Tibetan refugees in India. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15, 369-375.
13.
DekelR.Tuval-MashiachR. (2012). Multiple losses of social resources following collective trauma: The case of the forced relocation from Gush Katif. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 4, 56-65. doi:10.1037/a0019912
14.
DenzinN. L.LincolnY. S. (2003). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
15.
DuranE.DuranB. (1995). Native American postcolonial psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
16.
FranklV. (2006). Man’s search for meaning:An introduction to logotherapy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Originally published 1959)
17.
GailienėD. (2008). Ką jie mums padarė. Lietuvos gyvenimas traumų psichologijos atžvilgiu [What they did to us. The life of Lithuania from the perspective of trauma psychology]. Vilnius, Lithuania: Tyto Alba.
18.
GailienėD.KazlauskasE. (2005). Fifty years on: The long term psychological effects of Soviet repression in Lithuania. In GailienėD. (Ed.), The psychology of extreme traumatisation (pp. 67-107). Vilnius, Lithuania: Akreta.
19.
GheithJ. M. (2007). “I never talked”: Enforced silence, non-narrative memory, and the Gulag. Mortality, 12, 159-175.
20.
GilbertJ. (2006). Cultural imperialism revisited: Counselling and globalization. International Journal of Critical Psychology, 17, 10-28.
21.
GoldmanW. (2005). Stalinist terror and democracy: The 1937 union campaign. American Historical Review, 110, 1427-1453.
22.
HarffB.GurrT. R. (1988). Toward empirical theory of genocides and politicides: Identification and measurement of cases since 1945. International Studies Quarterly, 32, 359-371.
23.
HollanderP. (Ed.). (2006). From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal accounts of political violence and repression in Communist studies. Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
24.
IakovlevA. N. (2002). A century of violence in Soviet Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
25.
KuodytėD. (2005). Traumatising history. In GailienėD. (Ed.), The psychology of extreme traumatisation (pp. 13-25). Vilnius, Lithuania: Akreta.
26.
KuwertP.BraehlerE.FreybergerH. J.GlaesmerH. (2012). More than 60 years later: The mediating role of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder for the association of forced displacement in World War II with somatization in old age. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 200, 911-914. doi:10.1097/NMD.0b013e31826ba129
27.
LarkinM.WattsS.CliftonE. (2006). Giving voice and making sense in interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 102-120. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp062oa
28.
LindyJ. D.LiftonR. J. (Eds.). (2001). Beyond invisible walls: The psychological legacy of Soviet trauma, East European therapists and their patients. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
29.
MaceJ. E. (1997). Soviet man-made famine in Ukraine. In TottenS.ParsonsW.CharnyI. (Eds.), Century of genocide: Eyewitness accounts and critical views (pp. 78-112). New York, NY: Garland.
30.
MälksooL. (2001). Soviet genocide? Communist mass deportations in the Baltic States and international law. Leiden Journal of International Law, 14, 757-787.
31.
MaslowA. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Oxford, England: Harpers.
32.
MayR (2009). Man’s search for himself. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
33.
MertelsmannO.Rahi-TammA. (2009). Soviet mass violence in Estonia revisited. Journal of Genocide Research, 11, 307-322.
34.
MisiūnasR. J.TaageperaR. (1993). The Baltic States. Years of dependence, 1940-1990. Berkley: University of California Press.
35.
MollicaR. F.CuiX.MclnnesK.MassagliM. P. (2002). Science-based policy for psychosocial interventions in refugee camps. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 190, 158-166.
36.
PedersenD. (2002). Political violence, ethnic conflict, and contemporary wars: Broad implications for health and social well-being. Social Science & Medicine, 55, 175-190.
37.
PopovV. P.WessellN. H. (1994). State terror in Soviet Russia, 1923-1953. Russian Social Science Review, 35, 1061-1428.
38.
RankO. (1930/2003). Psychology and the soul. Baltimore, MD: Hopkins.
39.
RummelR. J. (1990). Lethal politics: Soviet genocides and mass murders since 1917. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
40.
ShmotkinD.BlumsteinT.ModanB. (2003). Tracing long-term effects of early trauma: A broad-scope view of Holocaust survivors in late life. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71, 223-234. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.71.2.223
41.
ShulmanH.WatkinsM. (2008). Toward psychologies of liberation. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
SmithJ. A.OsbornM. (2008). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In SmithJ. A. (Ed.), Qualitative psychology. A practical guide to research methods (pp.53-80). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
44.
StaubE. (2011). Overcoming evil: Genocide, violent conflict, and terrorism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
45.
VaškelienėI.KazlauskasE.GailienėD.Domanskaitė-GotaV. (2011). Komunikacija apie patirtas politines represijas šeimoje: tarpgeneracinis aspektas [Communication about political oppression: second generation study]. Tarptautinis psichologijos žurnalas, 9, 91-104.
46.
WatkinsM.ShulmanH. (2008). Toward psychologies of liberation. Houndsmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
47.
WisemanH.BarberJ. P.RazA.YamI.FoltzC.Livne-SnirS. (2002). Parental communication of Holocaust experiences and interpersonal patterns in offspring of Holocaust survivors. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 371-381. doi:10.1080/01650250143000346
48.
YakushkoO. (2008). Impact of social and political changes on survivors of political persecutions in rural Russia and Ukraine. Political Psychology, 29, 119-130.
49.
YalomI. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York, NY: Basic Book.
