A Postwar Social Crisis: The Flood of Beggars into Lithuania in 1944–1947

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of events in Lithuania in the years 1944 to 1947, when the Soviet authorities were forced to stem the large numbers of beggars, both children and adults, flooding into the country. The scale of the social problem is examined, as well as the reasons, the routes taken by beggars of various nationalities (Russian-speakers, Germans, Roma (Gypsies) and the local population), and the efforts taken by government institutions to use deportation as a way of managing the crisis associated with the spread of typhus. The author reviews the stereotypes, well established in historiography, alleging that only German children begged after the war, and that members of the Lithuanian population who took them in were therefore subject to repressions.