Alexander Shtromas

Alexander Shtromas
Alexandras Shtromas speaking on the Fall of the Soviet System, Geneva, Switzerland, August 1985
Born	April 04 1931(1931-04-04) Kaunas, Lithuania
Died	June 12 1999 (aged 68) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	Lithuanian
Fields	Political Science
Institutions	Bradford University Salford University Hillsdale College
Alma mater	Vilnius University Moscow State University
Known for	Human rights activism with participation in dissident movement in the Soviet Union

Alexander Shtromas (Lithuanian: Aleksandras Štromas; April 4, 1931 in Kaunas, Lithuania – June 12, 1999 in Chicago) was a prominent Lithuanian political scientist, dissident, professor, and author. He survived the horror of Nazi imprisonment in a Jewish ghetto and the tyranny of the Soviet regime to have a successful career in academia in Europe and the United States, teaching and publishing in several languages.

A brilliant scholar, he invested greatly in his students, brought invaluable insights to the scholarly world, and is remembered as one of very few political scientists who accurately predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Life

Alexander Shtromas was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. His father, Jurgis Shtromas, served as a diplomat in Berlin and then as an official in Kaunas. His mother, Eugenija Kozin, was a Russian-speaking Jew. His father was killed by the Nazis shortly after the German invasion.

During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania Alexander, along with his mother and sister, was imprisoned in the Kovno Ghetto, later concentration camp, in Vilijampolė. After two years, Alexander and his sister were rescued from the ghetto by Antanas and Marija Macenavicius, a Catholic family who hid them outside the city. However, Alexander would go back into the city to see his mother in the concentration camp until she committed suicide.

After the Russians reoccupied Lithuania, Shtromas was found by Antanas Sniečkus, a Soviet general who had known his father, and who took him in and raised him as his adopted son. Sniečkus became the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania, and Alexander became a faithful believer in Communism.

With the support of Sniečkus, he completed his secondary education in 1947 and studied law at Vilnius University, and then finishing at Moscow State University where he was a classmate of Mikhail Gorbachev. He spent the next years practicing and teaching law, and publishing a number of books and articles.

Until the time of Stalin's death in 1953 he was a staunch believer in Communism. He and his comrades believed that any problems, and they noticed the atrocities and injustices perpetrated by the Soviet regime, were either necessary in order to transform Lithuania into a just socialist society or were the mistakes of individual executioners of the Party's will. He was convinced that Stalin, and Sniečkus in Lithuania, were working toward the most noble human goals.

This changed with Stalin's death, when he recognized that Stalin was the source of the system's evils, not the opportunistic apparatchiks who were acting on his orders. He became anti-Soviet, but held on to his Marxist beliefs for another decade. When the expected socialist revolution which was to free them from Soviet totalitarian control and bring about the true socialist society did not materialize, his belief in Marxism evaporated. Along with other Russian intellectuals who had become dissidents, critical of the Soviet regime, under pressure from the Soviet authorities he was forced to leave the country. He received permission to emigrate and left Moscow on September 5, 1973.

His sister was married to a successful British businessman and living in England, so he moved to the United Kingdom.

There, he was appointed to a position in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford by Adam Curle. He later served as Lecturer in Politics at Salford University, and, until his death, as Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College in the United States.

While living in England he met and married Violeta Rakuskaite, a Lithuanian singer who was also born in Kaunas, who left Soviet-controlled Lithuania in 1975.

Aleksandras Shtromas died of lung cancer on June 12, 1999 aged 68.

Legacy

A book with tributes by fellow dissidents, academic colleagues and former students (mainly in English but also in Lithuanian and Russian) was published in 2008 in Lithuania, edited by Leonidas Donskis (XX A. Zmogus: Aleksandro Stromo Portretai).

Major works in English

• Who are the Soviet Dissidents?. 1979.
• Political Change and Social Development: The Case of the Soviet Union. 1981.
• The Soviet Method of Conquest of the Baltic States: Lessons for the West. 1986.
• The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future with Morton A. Kaplan (eds.). 1988.
• The End of "Isms"?: Reflections on the fate of ideological politics after Communism's collapse (ed.). 1994.
• Totalitarianism and the Prospects for World Order: Closing the Door on the Twentieth Century. 2003.

• Dissent and political change in the Soviet Union Studies in Comparative Communism 12(2/3) (Summer/Autumn 1979): 212-244. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
• To Fight Communism: Why and how? International Journal on World Peace 1(1) (Autumn 1984): 20-44. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
• Dissent, Nationalism and the Soviet Future Studies in Comparative Communism 20(3/4) (Autumn/Winter 1987): 277-286. Retrieved February 17, 2022.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Donskis, Leonidas. Identity and Freedom. Routledge, 2015. ISBN 978-1138874411
• Woodhouse, Tom. Peacemaking in a Troubled World. Berg Pub Ltd, 1991. ISBN 978-0854965946

External links

• Remembering Aleksandras Shtromas Morgan Delp, The Collegian, December 4, 2014.
• Some Memories of Alex Shtromas Gordon Anderson, Professors World Peace Academy, December 18, 2002.
• A Baltic woman ahead of her time by Leonidas Donskis, The Baltic Times, March 23, 2016.

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