Mission Siberia

In 2005, Lithuanian Youth Council (LIJOT) initiated a project "Mission Siberia". Since 2006, expeditions of Lithuanian young people have travelled to 70 locations in Siberia to maintain the cemeteries of Lithuanian deportees who perished in Soviet prisons and forced-labor camps. Misija Sibiras (Mission Siberia) expedition members also visit with Lithuanian deportation survivors and their descendants who still live in these remote regions. Every year 100 presentations of that year's Mission are held in Lithuania and beyond which aim to:

•  foster historical memory and national patriotism among Lithuanian youth;

•  promote intergenerational dialogue and mutual understanding, especially pertaining to contemporary Lithuanian issues;

•  develop a positive image for patriotic and civic-minded Lithuanian youth;

•  remember and honor the dead and victims of the genocide of the Lithuanian population, one of the darkest pages in 20th Century history;

•  remind people, that Siberia, is not only Russian territory, but a very broad concept/metaphor, encompassing the far flung territories of other former Soviet Republics to which people were deported;

•  memorialize those Lithuanians condemned to the Sverdlovsk Region, through the restoration of gravesites of Lithuanian deportees and political prisoners within the Russian Federation;

•  maintain ties with Lithuanians still living in Siberia;

Since 2010, KFF is among the Mission's many sponsors.

For more information in English on the Mission Siberia and the Hope and Spirit series in memory of the Soviet genocide in Lithuania go on the Balzekas Muzeum of Lithuanian Culture website.