Asian-Influenced New Religious Movements and the Media in Early Post-Soviet Lithuania

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union witnessed a rise in alternative new religious communities, inspired by Asian spiritual traditions. Lithuania, a former Soviet country, encountered these movements in the late 1970s, where they functioned as subcultures, fostering alternative belief systems and resistive networks against the Soviet ideology. Due to the strict control of public space and KGB surveillance, these groups were largely operating underground until the late 1980s, when Lithuania’s move towards independence allowed them to emerge into the public sphere, what sparked both public curiosity and increased media coverage in Lithuania. This paper examines media representations of the Asian-influenced alternative religious and spiritual movements during this time of crucial socio-political transformations. The paper argues that the media produced a specific “contact zone” (Pratt 2008), where discourses and debates on free speech, alternative spirituality, Orientalism, and globalization unfolded, shaping the post-independence Lithuanian identity.