Vaclovas Aliulis (1921-2015) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest. During Soviet times he participated actively in underground catechisation, and was a lecturer with the Underground Catholic Seminary, which was established to train priests for Catholic parishes in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Twenty priests were prepared in the seminary to serve in Catholic parishes. Knowing that in Soviet times the official training of priests in the Kaunas Seminary suffered from frequent intervention by the government, the activities of the Underground Catholic Seminary were important to the Church and to the community of believers. Unfortunately, for reasons of secrecy, seeking to make the seminary's work safe, no draft or published documents were produced. According to Algirdas Katilius, the author of a book about the Underground Catholic Seminary, the educational process in the seminary was very personalised. Lecturers like Vaclovas Aliulis taught one or small group of seminarians at a time.
The documents in the collection reveal Soviet government policy towards the Catholic Church, the community of believers, and the difficult conditions for priests in providing catechisation to the community. On the other hand, some material shows not only the political struggle between the government and the Catholic Church, but also attempts to find a way of coexistence. There were some grey zones of negotiation and communication between these two, when an understanding of common interests (such as keeping up moral standards in Lithuanian society, or restrictions and fighting against negative tendencies such as alcoholism) led to attempts to come to an agreement in slowing down the anti-religious campaigns by the Soviet government, and limiting the non-Soviet rhetoric from Catholic priests. Nevertheless, these attempts had very limited success, because of Soviet ideology, in which atheism was one of the most important elements. Vaclovas Aliulis was the chair of the Liturgical Commission of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, and was therefore very involved in the religious situation and policy of that time, which is perfectly illustrated by documents in the collection.
Aliulis is the author of a number of books and other publications; during the times of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement), he was an initiator and organiser of the Catholic press. He started to collaborate with the Lithuanian Central State Archives from 2003, transferring files from his private papers to the state archives. We do not know why Aliulis chose the Lithuanian Central State Archives as the place to keep his documents. According to Vaidas Agurkis, an archivist with the Lithuanian Central State Archives, he was very involved in the process of the transfer of documents from his private papers to the state archive. He read every inventory and document in the collection, making suggestions to archivists about them. Some documents have references Aliulis made by hand during the transfer to the archive that explain the origin and meaning of the document, like why a letter was written, and what the answer was. This shows that he was very interested in presenting his activities during Soviet times, and was interested in giving his own interpretation of events of those times.
