ABSTRACT
The First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution brought dramatic political changes to Lithuania. Wayside chapels and shrines are at the heart of the totemic system of Lithuanian folk religion. In the nineteenth-century crucible of occupation, rebellion, and Czarist backlash, wayside shrines and their landscapes obtained new, political meanings for Lithuanians. The prohibition of the Lithuanian press also led to new forms of cultural resistance, which overlapped with the newly political use of wayside shrines in a number of ways. By the time of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Lithuania in 1940 and again in 1944, the Hill of Crosses was a major pilgrimage site. Comprehending its power as a landscape of resistance, Soviet authorities declared the Hill of Crosses a locus non gratis. The craft seminars of the Lithuanian Folk Art Society were held against a background of an intensifying movement toward the restoration of Lithuanian independence.
