{"id":141,"date":"2013-10-06T08:54:17","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T08:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/?p=141"},"modified":"2013-10-06T09:00:47","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T09:00:47","slug":"lithuania-basketball-as-resistance-against-oppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/lithuania-basketball-as-resistance-against-oppression\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania. Basketball as Resistance against Oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cIn Siberia we built a regulation basketball court. Basketball allowed us to have dignity, to retain our sense of humanity. How did I survive? Basketball. It gave me a lot. They didn\u2019t bury me.\u201d These are the words of Juozas Butrimas, a Siberian Gulag survivor from the 1950s.<\/p>\n

The whole sports club Zalgiris in Kaunas was falsely accused of participating in anti-Soviet, Lithuanian resistance organization and most of them were deported in the Siberian cold.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the Eurobasket final, Lithuania vs. France, let me just recommend once more the 2012 documentary \u201cThe Other Dream Team<\/a>\u201d where director Marius Markevicius documents the Soviet occupation tragedy hooked to the sportive tradition of Lithuanian hoops. All four Baltic stars of the USSR Olympic team from 1988 and pillars of the Barcelona \u201992 bronze medal glory had numerous family members deported.<\/p>\n

The fantastic story of Sarunas Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and Valdemaras Chomicius is not merely culminating with hoping on the podium at the Olympics in Barcelona, but it has a background of a long resistance against communism and Soviet occupation. Whilst in the \u201970s and \u201980s the scene was occupied by the terrible duel between KGB harassed Zalgiris Kaunas, the Baltic \u2018David\u2019, and Spartak Moscow, the Soviet \u2018Goliath\u2019, in the \u201950s the real heroism of basketball is being forged.<\/p>\n

In the heart of the most oppressive empire in history, surrounded by the most unfriendly environment, Lithuanians were also resisting through basketball until they broke away from the red empire triggering its collapse. The story culminates with the image of the bronze medalists in tie-dyed Grateful Dead tee-shirts, however the core of it lies in fighting evil and keeping dignity. As a follow up, the documentary proposes a bright future for the \u201992 born rookie Valanciunas, drafted for the Toronto Raptors and center in today\u2019s Lithuanian national team.<\/p>\n

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Regulation basketball court made by Lithuanians in Siberia<\/p><\/div>\n

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Baltic ball players in Siberia\u2019s 50s<\/p><\/div>\n

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Zalgiris Kaunas. A team of deportees<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn Siberia we built a regulation basketball court. Basketball allowed us to have dignity, to retain our sense of humanity. How did I survive? Basketball. It gave me a lot. They didn\u2019t bury me.\u201d These are the words of Juozas Butrimas, a Siberian Gulag survivor from the 1950s. The whole sports club Zalgiris in Kaunas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,8,11,10,9,7],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-basketball","tag-lithuania","tag-marciulionis","tag-sabonis","tag-ussr","tag-vilnius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2celsius.org\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}