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This study examines how the memory of the Lithuanian armed resistance of 1944–1953 is produced, represented, and used within contemporary institutional memory culture in Lithuania. The focus is placed on museums, memorial sites, monuments, and commemorative environments connected to the so-called Forest Brothers and the anti-Soviet partisan movement. The study investigates how these institutions organize historical narratives through thematic, visual, spatial, and material structures, and which contemporary social and political functions these representations fulfil.

The thesis is based on a qualitative and interpretive methodological approach, drawing on fieldwork conducted in Lithuania during 2025. The empirical material consists of museum exhibitions, memorial environments, ritual spaces, visual artefacts, and exhibition texts. The analysis combines theories of cultural memory, narrative, lieux de mémoire, semiotics, ritualization, discourse, and uses of history, primarily inspired by Jan Assmann, Paul Ricœur, Pierre Nora, Roland Barthes, Norman Fairclough, and Peter Aronsson.

The study demonstrates that the institutional memory production surrounding the Lithuanian resistance is structured through a limited number of recurring memory figures: suffering, heroism, nature, ritualization, enemy imagery, and politicization. Together, these themes create a coherent and morally oriented narrative in which resistance is framed as ethically necessary, nationally legitimate, and historically continuous.

The analysis further shows that memory is not communicated solely through text or historical information, but through embodied and emotional experiences created by architecture, objects, lighting, spatial movement, and symbolic environments. Museums and memorial sites function as lieux de mémoire in which visitors are encouraged to physically and emotionally experience repression, sacrifice, vigilance, and national continuity.

Finally, the thesis argues that the institutional memory of the Lithuanian armed resistance serves important existential, moral, and political-pedagogical purposes in contemporary Lithuania. The memory culture contributes to shaping national identity, reinforcing moral distinctions between victims and perpetrators, and connecting historical experiences of occupation to present-day concerns regarding security, sovereignty, and societal resilience. The study concludes that memory functions not merely as a representation of the past, but as an active and normative cultural practice that influences how the present and future are understood.