Live from the New Europe: Reporting from Lithuania

netWMD (netwmd.com) ^ | June 23, 2003 | Andrew Jaffee

[forty_years]

Live from the New Europe: Reporting from Lithuania By Andrew L. Jaffee, June 23, 2003	Home   Search   Forum   Terms

I've haven't been back to Lithuania in seventeen years. Lithuania: my mother's homeland. In typical American fashion, Lithuania is only one of my ancestral ties. But I'm so glad it is one of those ties. It has given me great strength and helped me to appreciate the great gift that is the United States.

After getting off the plane last Wednesday in Vilnius, the capital city, two things struck me. First of all, there are no more Russian/Soviet soldiers patrolling the streets. Second, the are no more statues of Lenin and no more communist propaganda billboards. In Soviet times, these massive, red billboards were everywhere. They were there to remind the Lithuanian people who was boss: the Russian communists. And if you didn't like it, there were plenty of Russian troops to convince you otherwise. KGB (Soviet secret police) headquarters was situated in the city center, as a not-so-subtle reminder to anyone who believed in Lithuanian self-determination.

Russians poured into Lithuanian under Soviet occupation in an attempt to ethnically dilute or overwhelm the indigenous population. They came not only because the Russian/Soviet government subsidized their emigration, but because life was better in the Baltic because Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians worked so hard, and had tasted democracy briefly from 1918 to 1940. Political decisions were made in Moscow or by trusted Lithuanian collaborators installed by their Russian/Soviet patrons. Dissent against Russian rule was punishable by death or expulsion to Siberian gulags. There was no free press and no free political system.

Sound familiar? Apartheid? The Third Reich? The British Raj in India? American dislocation of Indians during early U.S. expansion? Where were all the "Liberals" when Russians were squashing the self-determination of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Moldavians, Kazaks, Turkens, Armenians, etc? Were "Liberals" espousing what the pigs did in Orwell's Animal Farm?--i.e., "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.". Sounds like discrimination to me.

The Russian occupiers have been thrown out. No more statues of Lenin. They were all torn down by jubilant but peaceful Lithuanian crowds (remind you of... Saddam?). No more communist billboards. All gone.

Now you only hear Russian spoken infrequently (and kids aren't forced to learn it in school). When you hear it, it is spoken by Russians who live here by choice or by Russian tourists who travel here by choice. And they are welcome because Lithuanians are a civilized people who have chosen to govern themselves through democracy. Notice I'm emphasizing concepts of free will in boldface.

Just yesterday, my Lithuanian relatives and I returned from Nida, a beautiful vacation resort on the Baltic Sea. While there, we enjoyed a Lithuanian folk festival held in celebration of the summer solstice. While there were many traditional Lithuanian folk performances, the festival organizers also invited Russian folk groups to participate. I thought it was mighty tolerant of Lithuanians to invite Russians to participate, especially knowing the history of Russian tsarist and communist aggression against their country.

There is a lesson in this for all peoples. The Lithuanian struggle against oppression was a peaceful one. Their democratic revolution in the late 80's and early 90's was fought with the pen, with meetings, with peaceful demonstrations, and with politics--even though the Russians responded with violence. Lithuanians didn't blow up buses full of Russian civilians. They fought the good fight.

Just think. Palestinians would've had a homeland a long time ago if they would've used their minds and not bombs. And they have been fighting a sympathetic and democratic "enemy." You know why that is? It is because Palestinian leadership (and unfortunately many Palestinian civilians) are not democratic nor are they interested in democracy. When will they learn?

I will try to continue reporting from Lithuania as best I can. Please check back to netWMD for further commentary.

[1rudeboy]

Gosh, I'd better not let you know I'm Catholic. That would really set you off . . . I'd be blamed for the Inquisition.

[Destro]

This article was written in search of (or justification for) an agenda.

Suddenly nations in which we have had no long term relationship with are written about as alternatives to the existing order...why? Is the old order dead? Do some want to kill off the old alliance system and substitue in a new one made up of pliant client states?

What groups are funding the publication of said articles-giving them a forum?

[1rudeboy]

This article was written in search of (or justification for) an agenda.

That is non-sensical. Either there is an agenda, or there is not. Or it's an American-Lithuanian Jew writing about his recent trip to Lithuania.

[Destro]

Which makes his none mention of the issue of contention all the more puzzling...

[1rudeboy]

Only to you, my friend. I you had bothered follow the link back to the originating website, then you would have discovered that has mentioned it in passing, and promised to delve deeper into the issue in another installment. Poof goes your theory.

But back to the brass tacks. Are you consumed with hatred over the fact that I'm Lithuanian, or Catholic, or both? On what level of sub-humanity do I exist? You're not thinking of bringing in the cattle-cars, are you?

[Destro]

I didn't know you were anything.

[cardinal4]

They love to get russian oil,yet spew hate to russians behind their backs. What is the democracy,when most of ethnic slavs like russians and belorussians have no rights and no citizenship in 3 baltic states? who is practicing an Apartheid? russians? I think not..

I thinks its quite understandable why the Balts hate the Russians; they occupied them for 49 years. And they werent very nice about it, either.

[stevejackson]

puzzling?

So if anyone visits Italy, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Check Rep., Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Germany, etc., etc., then the first thing they have to do when telling people about their trip is the Holocaust? I guess the next time I go to Canada, first thing I'll do when I come back is tell all my friends about how the Anglos kicked out the French.

The writer mentions nothing about replacing any "old order" with a "new" one.

Talk about overly-sensitive politcal correctness.

[Destro]

Actually in Quebec that's all they talk about......

[1rudeboy]

Now we are going in circles. I'm Lithuanian, therefore according to you, I'm a Nazi. I threw in the Catholic part because I remember you getting your frillies in a bunch over a thread that credited the Pope for helping to end the Cold War. In fact, and in the unlikely event that this column is propaganda, I fail to see why you would have a problem with it at all . . . you seem to breathe it.

[stevejackson]

Not if you talk to the Jews, Anglos, Vietnamese, Jamaican's, etc., that live there. And many French have gotten past it too.

[1rudeboy]

So if anyone visits Italy, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Check Rep., Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Germany, etc., etc., then the first thing they have to do when telling people about their trip is the Holocaust?

Not merely tell about it, but assign blame for it to all subsequent generations.

[stevejackson]

Not merely tell about it, but assign blame for it to all subsequent generations.

When I read your post, I thought (almost assumed) it was our common friend here. Nice.

[HISSKGB]

It is sad to see that some think the oppression and deaths of millions is either unimportant or deserved.

[1rudeboy]

I don't think so. But it's getting to the point where I cringe to see "Lithuania" in the title of a thread. I am mystified why every bit of information from this part of the world needs to mashed-down with a hammer. DPB brings-up an interesting notion: are the howls of "Nazi!" meant to diminish, obscure, or distract from the atrocities visited-upon this area of the world by the Soviets?

After all, loading them up and shipping them to the Gulag was no big deal, they were all "Nazis!" Interesting indeed, and plausible.

[DPB101]

As I mentioned, and I am sure you know, 1940 came before 1942-1944. Some do not want to acknowledge that.

This is not apologizing for anything. It is only relating history. My comments are merely a reaction against the knee-jerk "this country killed Jews!"

Liberals who always bring up American Indians and America dropping the bomb on Hiroshima never mention that Indians weren't just minding their own business and the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor.

[stevejackson]

DPB brings-up an interesting notion: are the howls of "Nazi!" meant to diminish, obscure, or distract from the atrocities visited-upon this area of the world by the Soviets?

I think it is two-fold: 1) to diminish Soviet atrocities (because the communists really meant well [so the leftist thinking goes]) and 2) some people think that since the Soviets fought the Nazi's, then they couldn't do any wrong (even though Lenin and Stalin killed more people--numerically--than Hitler did).

And I'm not by any means diminishing the evils of Hitler by saying this.

[stevejackson]

Note that the Russian communists killed more than 300,000 Lithuanians from 1940-1954--about a third of the entire population. The rounding up of victims was arbitrary. If anyone was remotely suspected of anything, they were off'ed. Special attention was given to the educated (the usual criteria of the Khmer Rouge, Maoists, Stalinists, Sendero Luminoso, etc., etc.).

[DPB101]

A pity we even have to say that, isn't it?

The 20th century wasn't pretty. There were enough victims to go around. But, and this is critical, there were no innocent parties in Europe. The murder of the Tsar in 1881 set it all off. Russia responded with the May Laws and had almost 20 years of terrorism after that. Nazi Germany was a response, not something created out of thin air.

[HISSKGB]

According to these jerks, America is evil. All leftist regimes are excused from crimes no matter how many people they murder.