KRAŽIAI: NYKSTANTYS AR ATGYJANTYS? ISTORIJA, DABARTIS, PERSPEKTYVOS.

The paper deals with the problem of unpopularity of small towns and rural areas. Our society has to accept a new image of non-urbanized areas. By the well known report, named as strategic study "Towards a New Urban Rural Partnership in Europe", directed by Flavio Boscacci, we have to realize, that "rural is no longer synonymous with the agricultural economy, but an area with a diversified economy, including industrial and services activities. These new ac-tivities have now overtaken agriculture in terms of their capacity to generate revenue and work opportunities. This process has facilitated the improvement of infrastructure, providing new transport routes and better accessibility, as well as new forms of communication (e.g. the information technologies)." The second part of the paper is designed for the pre-sentation of Kražiai people's approach to the development of the current situation ofKraziai and its perspectives. The main purpose of our research is to find out how to improve the strategy of this small town, well known in the past as the important centre of culture and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]