You think Greece has problems?

Try Latvia or Lithuania 

The following is an article by Prof. Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term

Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Research Professor of Economics at the

University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Prof. Jeff Sommers, co-director of the Baltic Research

Group at ISLET and visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.

While most of the world’s press focuses on Greece (and also Spain, Ireland and Portugal) as the most troubled euro-areas, the much more severe, more devastating and downright deadly crisis in the post-Soviet economies scheduled to join the Eurozone somehow has escaped widespread notice.

No doubt that is because their experience is an indictment of the destructive horror of neoliberalism – and of Europe’s policy of treating these countries not as promised, not as helping them develop along Western European lines, but as areas to be colonized as export markets and bank markets, stripped of their economic surpluses, their skilled labor and indeed, working-age labor generally, their real estate and buildings, and whatever was inherited from the Soviet era.

What also was inherited, of course, was an extreme reaction against centralized Soviet planning. The result was the political equivalent of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. As a victim of Soviet ideology, Latvia did not say farewell to ideologies as such, but rather swung to the opposite extreme. After the Soviet collapse it felt compelled to adopted the neoliberal ideology.

But this is twenty years later now. For reasons beyond comprehension, the country now sticks to that ideology which has just devastated the Western economies. Latvia itself is experiencing one of the world’s worst economic crises – indeed, demographic as well as economic. Its 25.5 percent plunge in
GDP over just the past two years (almost 20 percent in this past year alone) is already the worst two-year drop on record.  The IMF’s own rosy forecasts anticipate a further drop of 4 percent, which would place the Latvian economic collapse ahead of the United States’ Great Depression The bad news does not end there, however. The IMF projects that 2009 will see a total capital and financial account deficit of 4.2 billion euros, with an additional 1.5 billion euros, or 9 percent of GDP, leaving the country in 2010.

Moreover, the Latvian government is rapidly accumulating debt. From just 7.9 percent of GDP in 2007, Latvia’s debt is projected to be 74 percent of GDP for this year, supposedly stabilizing at 89 percent in 2014 in the best-case IMF scenario.  This would place it far outside the debt Maastricht debt limits for adopting the euro. Yet achieving entry into the eurozone has been the chief pretext of the Latvia’s Central Bank for the painful austerity measures necessary to keep its currency peg. Maintaining that peg has burned through mountains of currency reserves that otherwise could have been invested in its domestic economy.

Yet nobody in the West is asking why Latvia has suffered this fate, so typical of the Baltics and other post-Soviet economies but only slightly more extreme. Nearly twenty years since these countries achieved freedom from the old USSR in 1991, the Soviet system hardly can be blamed as the sole cause of their problems. Not even corruption alone can be blamed – a legacy of the late Soviet period’s dissolution, to be sure, but magnified, intensified and even encouraged in the kleptocratic form that has provided such rich pickings for Western bankers and investors. It was Western neoliberals who financialized these economies with the “business friendly reforms” so loudly applauded by the World Bank, Washington and Brussels.

Far lower levels of corruption obviously are to be desired (but whom else would the West trust, if not the kleptocrats?), but dramatically reducing it would perhaps only improve matters up to the level of Estonia’s road into euro-debt peonage. These neighboring Baltic counties likewise have suffered dramatic unemployment, reduced growth, declining health standards and emigration, in sharp contrast to Scandinavia and Finland.

Joseph Stiglitz and other economists in the West’s public eye have began to explain that there is something radically wrong with the financialized order imported by Western ideological salesmen in the wake of the Soviet collapse. Neoliberal economics certainly was not the road that Western Europe took
after World War II. It was a new experiment, whose dress rehearsal was imposed initially at gunpoint by the Chicago Boys in Chile. In Latvia, the advisors were from Georgetown, but the ideology was the same: dismantle the government and turn it over to political insiders.

For the post-Soviet application of this cruel experiment, the idea was to give Western banks, financial investors, and ostensibly “free market” economists (so-called because they gave away public property freely, untaxed it, and gave new meaning to the term “free lunch”) were given a free hand in much of the Soviet bloc to design entire economies. And as matters turned out, every design was the same. The names of individuals were different, but most were linked to and financed by Washington, the World Bank and European Union. And sponsored by the West’s financial institutions, one hardly should be surprised that they came up with a design in their own financial interest.  

It was a plan that no democratic government in the West could have passed. Public enterprises were doled out to individuals trusted to sell out quickly to Western investors and local oligarchs who would move their money safely offshore into the Western havens. To cap matters, local tax systems were created that left the traditional two major Western bank customers – real estate and natural infra-structure monopolies – nearly tax free. This left their rents and monopoly pricing “free” to be paid to Western banks as interest rather than used as the domestic tax base to help reconstruct these economies.

There were almost no commercial banks in the Soviet Union. Rather than helping these countries create banks of their own, Western Europe encouraged its own banks to create credit and load down these economies with interest charges – in euros and other hard currencies for the banks’ protection. This violated a prime axiom of finance: never denominate your debts in hard currency when your revenue is denominated in a softer one. But as in the case of Iceland, Europe promised to help these countries join the Euro by suitably helpful policies. The “reforms” consisted in showing them how to shift taxes off business and real estate (the prime bank customers) onto labor, not only as a flat income tax but a flat “social service” tax, so as to pay Social Security and health care as a user fee by labor rather than funded out of the general budget largely by the higher tax brackets.

Unlike the West, there was no significant property tax. This obliged governments to tax labor and industry. But unlike the West, there was no progressive income or wealth tax. Latvia had the equivalent of a 59 percent flat tax on labor in many cases. (American Congressional committee heads and their lobbyists can only dream of so punitive a tax on labor, so free a lunch for their main campaign contributors!) With a tax like this, European countries had nothing to fear from economies that emerged tax free with no property charges to burden their labor with taxes, low housing costs, low debt costs. These economies were poisoned from the outset. That is what made them so “free market” and “business friendly” from the vantage point of today’s Western economic orthodoxy.

Lacking the power to tax real estate and other property – or even to impose progressive taxation on the higher income brackets – governments were obliged to tax labor and industry. This trickle-down fiscal philosophy sharply increased the price of labor and capital, making industry and agriculture in neo-liberalized economies so high-cost as to be uncompetitive with “Old Europe.” In effect the post-Soviet economies were turned into export zones for Old Europe’s industry and banking services.

Western Europe had developed by protecting its industry and labor, and taxing away the land rent and other revenue that had no counterpart in a necessary cost of production. The post-Soviet economies “freed” this revenue to be paid to Western European banks. These economies – debt-free in 1991 – were loaded down with debt, denominated in hard currencies, not their own. Western bank loans were not used to upgrade their capital investment, public investment and living standards. The great bulk of these loans were extended mainly against assets already in place, inherited from the Soviet period.
New real estate construction did indeed take off, but the great bulk of it has now sunk into negative equity. And the Western banks are demanding that Latvia and the Baltics pay by squeezing out even more of an economic surplus with even more neoliberal “reforms” that threaten to drive even more of their labor abroad as their economies shrink and poverty spreads.

The pattern of a ruling kleptocracy at the top and an indebted work force – non- or weakly unionized, with few workplace protections – was applauded as a business-friendly model for the rest of the world to emulate. The post-Soviet economies were thoroughly “underdeveloped,” rendered hopelessly high-cost and generally unable to compete on anywhere near equal terms with their Western neighbors.

The result has been an economic experiment seemingly gone mad, a dystopia whose victims are now being blamed. Neoliberal trickle-down ideology – apparently being prepared for application to Europe and North America with an equally optimistic rhetoric – was so economically destructive that it is almost as if these nations were invaded militarily. So it is indeed time to start worrying about whether the Baltics may be a dress rehearsal for what we are about to see in the United States.

The word “reform” is now taking on a negative connotation in the Baltics, as it has in Russia. It has come to signify retrogression back to feudal dependency. But whereas feudal lords from Sweden and Germany ruled their Latvian manors by the power of landownership, they now control the Baltics by their foreign-currency mortgage loans against the region’s real estate. Debt peonage has replaced outright serfdom. Mortgages far in excess of actual market values, which have plunged by 50-70 percent in the past year
(depending on housing type), also are far in excess of the ability of Latvian homeowners to pay. The volume of foreign-currency debt is far beyond what these countries can earn by exporting the products of their labor, industry and agriculture to Europe (which hardly wants any imports) or other regions of the world in which democratic governments are pledged to protect their labor force, not sell it out and subject it to unprecedented austerity programs – all in the name of “free markets.”

Two decades have passed since the neoliberal order was introduced, and the results are disastrous, if not almost a crime against humanity. Economic growth has not occurred. Soviet-era assets have simply been loaded down with debt. This is not how Western Europe developed after World War II, or earlier for the matter – or China most recently. These countries pursued the classical path of protection of domestic industry, public infrastructure spending, progressive taxation, public health and workplace safety
regulations, legal prohibitions against insider dealing and looting – all anathema to neoliberal free-market ideology.

What is starkly at issue are the underlying assumptions of the world’s economic order. At the core of today’s crisis of economic theory and policy are the all but forgotten premises and guiding concepts of classical political economy. George Soros, Professor Stiglitz and others describe a global casino economy (which Soros certainly enriched himself by playing) in which finance has become detached from the process of wealth creation. The financial sector makes increasingly steep, even unpayably high claims on the real economy of goods and services.

This was the concern of the classical economists when they focused on the problem of rentiers, owners of property and special privilege whose revenues (with no counterpart in any necessary cost of production) led to a de facto tax on the economy – in this case, by imposing debt on it. Classical economists recognized the need to subordinate finance to the needs of the real economy. This concern was the philosophy that guided U.S. banking regulation in the 1930’s, and which West Europe and Japan followed from the 1950s through the 1970s to promote investment in manufacturing. Instead of checking the financial sector’s ability to engage in speculative excess, the United States overturned these regulations in the 1980s. From a bit below 5 percent of total U.S. profits in 1982, the financial sector’s after-tax profits rose to an unprecedented 41 per cent in 2007. In effect this zero-sum activity was an overhead “tax” on the economy.

Along with financial restructuring, the main item in the classical tool-kit was tax policy. The aim was to reward work and wealth creation, and to collect the “free lunch” resulting from “external” social economies as the natural tax base. This tax policy had the virtue of reducing the burden on earned income (wages and profits). Land was seen as supplied by nature without a labor-cost of production (and hence without cost value). But instead of making it the natural tax base, governments have permitted banks to load it down with debt, turning the rise in land’s rental value into interest charges. The result, in classical terminology, is a financial tax on society – revenue that society was supposed to collect as the tax base to invest in economic and social infrastructure to make society richer. The alternative has been to tax land, monopolies and asset-price gains. And what tax collectors have relinquished, banks now collect in the form of a rising price for land sites – a price for which buyers pay mortgage interest.

Classical economics could have predicted Latvia’s problems. With no curbs on finance or regulation of monopoly pricing, no industrial protection, privatization of the public domain to create “tollbooth economies,” and a tax policy that impoverishes labor and even industrial capital while rewarding speculators, Latvia’s economy has seen little economic development. What it has achieved – and what has won it such loud applause from the West – has been its willingness to rack up huge debts to subsidize its economic disaster. Latvia has too little industry, too little agricultural modernization, but over 9 billion lati in private debt – now at risk of being shifted onto the government’s balance sheet, just as has
occurred with the U.S. bank bailouts.

If this credit had been extended productively to build Latvia’s economy, it would have been acceptable. But it was mostly unproductive, extended to fuel land-price inflation and luxury consumption, reducing Latvia to a state of near debt serfdom. In what Sarah Palin would call a “hopey-change thing,” the Bank of Latvia suggests that the bottom of the crisis has been reached. Exports finally have begun to pick up, but the economy is still in desperate straits. If current trends continue there will be no more Latvians left to inherit any economic revival. Unemployment still stands at more than 22 percent. Tens of thousands have left the country, and tens of thousands more have decided not to have children. This is a natural response to saddling the country with billions of lats (Latvia’s currency) in public and private debt. Latvia is not on a trajectory toward Western levels of affluence, and there is no way out of its current regressive tax policy and anti-labor, anti-industry and anti-agriculture neoliberalism being imposed so coercively by Brussels as a condition for bailing out Latvia’s central bank so that it can pay Swedish banks that have made such unproductive and parasitic loans.

An statement often attributed to Albert Einstein quips that “insanity [is] doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Latvia has employed the same self-destructive anti-government, anti-labor, anti-industrial, anti-agricultural “pro-Western” Washington Consensus for almost 20 years, and the results have become worse and worse. The task at hand now is to liberate Latvia’ economy from its neoliberal road to neo-serfdom. One would think that the path selected would be the one charted by the classical 19th-century economists that guided the prosperity we see in the West and now also in East Asia. But this will require a change of economic philosophy – and that will require a change of government.

The question is, how will Europe and the West respond. Will it admit its error? Or will it brazen it out? Signs today are not promising. The West says that labor has not been impoverished enough, industry has not been starved enough, and economic the patient has not been bled enough.

If this is what Washington and Brussels are saying to the Baltics, imagine what they are about to do to their own domestic populations!

Lithuania’s Prime Minister, Andrius Kubilius.

Arrogance and ignorance are not particularly positive characteristics of anyone, and I understand it well if some of our VilNews' readers, who see that I use these words together with a picture of our Prime Minister, predict that I will now be criticising him. So let me hurry to say that these two words are meant for all questionable behaviours seen performed by our governing forces since 1990, not solely for Mr. Kubilius.

I must admit that I over the past 20 years have seen a few Lithuanian leaders whose arrogance and belief in their own excellence in some cases have prevented progression and good development for Lithuania. Still today I miss leaders who are good at listening to their own Lithuanian people, wherever in the world they live, and I miss leaders able to inspire and be unifying figures and good examples for the nation they are appointed to serve. Leaders able to lead, not only manage.

I have also very much been missing to see our leaders seek advice from other countries; to learn from mistakes and experiences these nations went through during the years when Lithuania was still under Soviet rule. Instead, time after time, we have seen Lithuanian leaders trying to reinvent the wheel..

Being a Norwegian, I believe Norway and the other Scandinavian countries would have been willing to stretch to great lengths to provide help and advice for the crisis-hit Lithuania and the two other Baltic States. But they had to be asked.

Our Lithuanian leaders should refrain from arrogance and avoid ignorance by seeking advice where good help and advice is to find, domestic and internationally. Can they do that, there is every reason to foresee a bright future for this nation.

The Lithuanian people deserve exactly that. They have suffered enough.

THE AIRPORT COMPARISON

Vilnius Airport’s terminal building from 1954 was built during Stalin’s last years

and still remains the airport’s main face towards Vilnius City. 

To make my above point more understandable, I will in the following compare post-war Lithuania to Vilnius Airport. Why?  Well, they have more in common than you may think; metaphorically, symbolically and representatively for what has been going on here from WWII till today. 

The old airport terminal was built in the years after the war, in typical Stalin style characterised by robust constructions and materials very hard to remove. The building was completed a year after his death, in 1954. After that, the airport remained more or less unchanged through the following 40 years, with Soviet Aeroflot as the sole operator until Lithuania's independence in 1990/91.

The airport was extended in the 1990s. This is the ‘monster’ that for many

years greeted (scared) airline passengers who came to visit independent Lithuania…  

In the early 1990s, the airport was starving for total renewal. A public face and symbol of the now free, independent and internationally oriented Lithuania was urgently needed. The new airport should become the pride of the new democracy and an important hub for international airlines that one thought would bring hordes of visitors to the country.  Not least was it estimated that the majority of the many who had emigrated to America, Australia and other countries now would move back to their homeland and contribute actively to the country’s reconstruction.

It was therefore not long before the airport management and the transport ministry chose a group of architects and other experts to travel around the world to look at leading international airports. The airport in Vilnius should be designed on a top global level. Back in Vilnius the architects drew day and night on what would become the country's new pride, and a couple of years later the 'masterpiece' was completed.

The 'airport monster' in Vilnius emerged not as a glorious example of a great country developing well, as it had been planned, rather as a symbol of a country where arrogance and ignorance prevented them from learning important lessons from other countries.

And it's probably just here we find the most obvious similarity between the past twenty years’ development of the airport and the country's authorities; this that those at the helm have been so convinced of their own excellence that they haven’t cared to seek advice from others.

This can, of course, to a certain extent be understood, as this country through so many years was imposed to 'advices' from others that they no longer wished to accept any outside help when the new times came. Probably that was why we in the 1990s got a parody of an airport. Perhaps this is also a contributing factor why this country's population now suffers so much from excessive and unfair tightening measures rather than enjoying stimulus packages of the kind that have led people in other countries through the crisis along a far more smooth path?

In 2007 a new extension stood ready. The previous ‘monster’ was hidden

behind modern materials and design. Lithuania’s face to the world had finally

reached a level of maturity, hiding many of the old sins, but only artificially.

So, what characterises Vilnius Airport now in 2010?

A) The core element is still a building in Stalin Style. It is also this old building's façade that appears towards the side of Lithuania and it is on this side that the taxi drivers still do their best to cheat naïve foreigners and others.

B) On the side facing the runway and the international world, there was in the 1990s conducted an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to make a building that both functionally and symbolically should be a showcase of the proud new democracy. 

C) In the 2000s, the building from the 1990s was tucked away between the Stalin building and a new extension that was much better adapted to modern requirements and design ideas. But also this new building is just to a certain degree characterised by measures necessary to make the airport functional and representative of modern times. To mix old and new can often be complicated. To hide old sins behind new façades is more artificial than a sign of real improvements.

The essential question then, is obviously what is now needed to achieve real change? My opinion is that there as soon as possible should be built a new airport where neither Stalin nor the monsters of the 1990s are given space or influence. We need a solid world-class airport as a proud new symbol of a progressive country - with outstanding leaders and project managers in charge – leaders accepting neither arrogance nor ignorance, neither during the planning and construction phase nor during the operation period.

My comparison between the airport and the nation is still valid. Perhaps, now, the idea of openness and transparency, plus the ability and willingness to listen and learn from others, would not be too bad?

Aage Myhre

Editor

ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE OR…?

AIRPORT TAXES 2009 - 2010

When Kubilius' government took over in late 2008 they decided to keep the country’s airport charges at a very high level, and to triple the VAT for hotel accommodation. The result was that several international airlines dropped Lithuania as a destination and the number of travellers and hotel stays fell dramatically. Tens of thousands lost their jobs, and the country lost much needed tax dollars. 

2009 was the year when Lithuania celebrated the 1000-year anniversary of its name. It was also the year when Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture. Despite those positive incentives, the number of visitors to Lithuania became far lower in 2009 than in 2008, primarily due to the government's decisions described above. This year, however, the airport fees are reduced considerably and the airlines are finally returning, one year late. But what a sad story isn’t this, for a whole industry and the country.

WHAT AUSTERITY LOOKS LIKE

The New York Times wrote about Lithuania last week. The article presents a good and balanced analysis of what's happening in our crisis-ridden country. It says that Kubilius' comprehensive savings measures now appear to give results as the decline in the economy has stopped, but the article also tells of a nation where the people are suffering more and more because of these measures:

“Faced with rising deficits that threatened to bankrupt the country, Lithuania cut public spending by 30 percent — including slashing public sector wages 20 to 30 percent and reducing pensions by as much as 11 percent. Even the Prime Minister, Andrius Kubilius, took a pay cut of 45 percent.”

“The psychological toll has been immense. Suicides have increased in a country where the suicide rate of 35 per 100,000 is already one of the world’s highest, local experts say.”

The NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/business/global/02austerity.html

 EASTER MAGIC

Easter Sunday 1991 represents one of the most magical moments I've ever experienced in my life. The date was the 31^st of March, and I wandered through the Old Town of Vilnius together with the one who would later become my wife. A couple of months earlier I stood together with Professor Vytautas Landsbergis in the Lithuanian Parliament building and looked out at the Soviet military forces and the tens of thousands of Lithuanians who were there with their bonfires and primitive tools to protect the Parliament. I had seen the coffins of the thirteen brave individuals standing outside the Cathedral in Vilnius, and I had seen how a whole people gathered in grief and despair over the USSR's new assault on this small nation and the innocent civilians who so bravely sacrificed their lives for their home country.

What made the strongest impression on me while we walked around in the Old Town this Easter day in 1991 was the fact that the Lithuanian people again had gathered in large flocks in and outside the city's many Churches. There was far from room enough for all indoors, so the Churches had hung out loudspeakers for the congregations and audiences to follow the church services even from a distance. Grief was still noticeable, but now it was the renewed hope and faith in an independent Lithuania that first and foremost characterized the mood. It was just fantastic to see so many people gather to listen to sermons and sing hymns, but first of all unite in joint prayers for a new future for their beloved homeland.

I wish you all a Happy Easter!

Aage Myhre

Editor

Vin Karnila

Associate Editor

LITHUANIA’S VELYKOS (EASTER) TRADITIONS

At the conclusion of the liturgy in Church, the people hurried home. In fact, all large and small roads, every path was the scene of races: whoever arrived home first would be successful all year and would complete all work on time. Even persons walking tried to pass those ahead and reach home first. It is not surprising that accidents happened during such races. Perhaps that is why it was said that a woman met on the road brings disaster (someone had to be blamed!).

At home, Easter breakfast was eaten. The meal began when the homemaker peeled a blest Easter egg, cut it and gave a piece to every member of the family. This was done so that peace and love would always reign within the family and everyone would live in harmony. Afterward, a variety of other dishes were consumed: meat, sausages, and cakes. On Easter it was necessary to eat well and to satiety, to "recover from Lent" because of the fast all through Lent. If the area had poor families with no Easter food, their neighbours shared what they had and brought the disadvantaged families everything they need to be satisfied and happy.

Some smart alecks devised an "unbreakable" egg. It was made this way: a raw egg's shell is pricked at both ends. A thin straw is inserted into one end and used to blow out the contents through the opposite end. Another straw with one end shaped as a funnel is then placed into the hole and melted pine or fir sap is poured until the egg is full. If the sap does not flow smoothly, a helper inserts a straw into the opposite hole and draws the air out of the egg. After the egg is filled with sap, the holes are carefully concealed and the egg is then tinted along with others. It weighs about the same as a real boiled egg. Sometimes the empty shell was filled with melted sugar, but it was much heavier and the sugar hardened unevenly making it more difficult to play. Of course, if caught, the cheat was punished. The direst penalty was to eat the "Easter egg."

Everyone who arrives to extend Easter greetings must be served. It was considered very impolite for the guest to refuse refreshment. Everything had to be at least sampled and the cook praised, else she would feel insulted.

• If he wishes to avoid seeing snakes all summer, he must avoid seeing a needle the first day of Easter.
• If an accident or calamity occurs on Easter, things will go wrong all year, the year will be unlucky.
• We've already mentioned the races home from church on Easter morning: anyone who arrives home first will be first to complete all work, everything will go well for him (especially work in the fields).
• Prayers are said to be really heard on Easter, it is therefore necessary to pray a great deal.
• If Easter morning is sunny and beautiful, the summer will be fair and the weather good; if it rains (or snows) bad weather is to be expected. The worst sign is to hear thunder on the first day of Easter but even this evil may be found to have a "silver lining." If thunder rumbles before leaves have sprouted (trees very rarely had leaves in Lithuania at Eastertime), thieves will have a difficult time plying their trade that year.
• If the sunset is very red, dangerous thunderstorms may be expected that summer. 

http://lithuanian-american.org/educate/tradicijos/velykos.html 

EASTER EGGS – MARGUČIAI

1 APRIL IS UŽUPIS’ INDEPENDENCE DAY!

On Maundy Thursday this week it’s again set for party and celebration of the independent Republic Užupis in Vilnius. Thirteen years have passed since this centrally located city district declared secession and independence from the Republic of Lithuania, and 1 April 1997 is now celebrated every year as the very Constitutional Date of this fascinating bohemian republic right on the other side of the river Vilnia. It takes no more than five minutes to walk there from the old town of Vilnius, so on Thursday afternoon, all of you, dear VilNews readers, are warmly welcome to participate in the spring's biggest and most colourful festival here in Vilnius!

The name Užupis means simply 'the other side of the river'. There are several bridges over the river, but I recommend you to use the Užupis Bridge. This almost 20-meter long bridge, built in 1901, is a piece of art in itself, also characterized by the many padlocks attached to the wrought iron rails, hung there by hundreds of newly married couples confirming their wedlock promises. Use the left sidewalk when you cross the river, and when you are well up on the bridge, you should stop and look down and left. For there she sits, the little bronze mermaid guarding the entrance to Užupis. She sits there in a niche in the brick wall, only a few feet above the river that runs rough and powerful now in these times of spring, studying the many guests at the outdoor deck of the Užupis Cafe already well underway with springtime foaming beer mugs filled to the brim with amber-golden beverages imported from the neighbouring Republic of Lithuania.

It is not unlikely that you must be equipped with a visa to enter Užupis on this very special day. But both passport and customs control tend to go quickly, so no reason to despair. Even the 12-man army seems to be more concerned with getting people inside the borders than to defend the Republic against intruders. Well within the Republic's external border, you soon realize that you've come to the land of smiles. During the walk up to the angel square that forms the centrepiece of the Republic you have to expect crowds of happy people who are here to celebrate this extraordinary national day, and if you're lucky, you will meet at least one person wearing a long red gown . This outfit is reserved for the Republic's leaders, be it the President or one of its ministers, and it may even be that one of them will be willing to accept sharing a small glass of something with you in one of the many bars and restaurants surrounding the Republic's main routes.

But, by all means, stay not only in the main streets, for it is in the courtyards and back streets you'll find many of the galleries, the special 'decorations', the music, scents, mystery and human life that makes Užupis to such a special place on earth.

As dusk slowly comes this Maundy Thursday early evening, I am convinced that you will have already made new acquaintances among the crowds of happy, hugging and colourful individuals from many countries and the Republic itself that all are here now to celebrate the Independence Day. You are probably already a part of the almost southern rhythms that characterize Užupis today, and when you together with your new friends finally reach the angel who stands firmly on its high pedestal in the centre of the main square, you realise that today he is far from the only one who blows the horn. Today he is surrounded by vibrant singers and musicians of many kinds, and when darkness finally falls it is right here tonight's big show takes place in powerful expression of exceptional talent and swinging rhythms.

Užupis is still an urban area characterized by dilapidated buildings, but when the music reverberates over the cobbles this late spring evening, I am convinced that you will have fallen in love - with this unique part of Vilnius city, with the Republic, with the atmosphere and with all the happy people around you. When you at late night again cross the river Vilnia I think you're going to do it with a big smile and renewed appreciation of the exceptionally exciting adventures and stories Lithuania has to offer...

Aage Myhre

Editor

Ambassador of the Republic of Užupis

The Republic of Užupis

Užupis is one of the oldest districts of Vilnius, mentioned in historical sources as far back as the 16^th century. Once it was called the “salt road” to Polock. In olden times it was the suburb where the poor and mainly craftsmen, lived. There were many mills and at one time it was even known as a brothel district.

The district contains the Bernadine Cemetery, one of the oldest in Vilnius. Most of the district's Jewish population vanished during the Holocaust, and later even the old Jewish Cemetery would be destroyed by the Soviets. The houses left empty by the Holocaust were occupied by marginal elements of society, the homeless, and prostitutes.

Until Lithuania's declaration of independence in 1990, it was one of the most neglected areas in the city, containing many run-down houses, many without utilities.

Today the district houses art galleries, artists' workshops, and popular cafés. On April Fools Day in 1997, the district declared itself an independent republic (The Republic of Užupis), replete with an army of 12 personnel.

Užupis is a unique republic.  A colourful and alive island, separated from the city by the Vilnia River that once gave name to the city itself. Užupis is a recognised district for artists and has won the name of the most mysterious and romantic district of Vilnius. Užupis is the artists’ republic, which has its own constitution (see below), national anthem, calendar and map. The district is often compared to Montmartre in Paris due to its bohemian atmosphere.

Užupis has its own President, Prime Minister, Ambassadors from many countries of the world, military force (consisting of 12 people), a bishop, two churches, the Bernardino cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in Vilnius, seven bridges and a wonderful patron saint– the bronze Užupis Angel erected in its main square…

Užupis has its honorary citizens. They are such famous people as his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, former President of the Republic of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, artist Jonas Mekas and many others. Užupis has its own holidays – the Day of Užupio Independence, the Day of the Fish, the Day of Traps, the Day of White Tablecloths, etc., as well as its own traditional way of celebrating these holidays.

If you walk along the banks of the Vilnia River, you will be sure to come across artists working there. Passers-by are invited to have a try at the various kinds of art, like photography and painting, or to take part in an evening of summer cinema or exhibitions. 

Everyone can find interesting places and corners in Užupis. One of them is the Užupis Bridge where lovers hang padlocks with their names engraved on them. The padlock is believed to tie and strengthen the hearts of two young people in love. 

Užupis is one of the oldest districts of Vilnius, mentioned in the historical sources as far back as the 16^th  century. Once it was called the “salt road” to Polock. In olden times it was the suburb where the poor and mainly craftsmen, lived. There were many mills and at one time it was even known as a brothel district.

The district contains the Bernadine Cemetery, one of the oldest in Vilnius. Most of the district's Jewish population vanished during the Holocaust, and later even the old Jewish Cemetery would be destroyed by the Soviets. The houses left empty by the Holocaust were occupied by marginal elements of society, the homeless, and prostitutes.

Until Lithuania's declaration of independence in 1990, it was one of the most neglected areas in the city, containing many run-down houses, many without utilities.

Today the district houses art galleries, artists' workshops, and popular cafés. On April Fools Day in 1997, the district declared itself an independent republic (The Republic of Užupis), replete with an army of 12 personnel.

Užupis is a unique republic.  A colourful and alive island, separated from the city by the Vilnia River that once gave name to the city itself. Užupis is a recognised district for artists and has won the name of the most mysterious and romantic district of Vilnius. Užupis is the artists’ republic, which has its own constitution (see below), national anthem, calendar and map. The district is often compared to Montmartre in Paris due to its bohemian atmosphere.

Užupis has its own President, Prime Minister, Ambassadors from many countries of the world, military force (consisting of 12 people), a bishop, two churches, the Bernardino cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in Vilnius, seven bridges and a wonderful patron saint– the bronze Užupis Angel erected in its main square…

Užupis has its honorary citizens. They are such famous people as his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, former President of the Republic of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, artist Jonas Mekas and many others. Užupis has its own holidays – the Day of Užupio Independence, the Day of the Fish, the Day of Traps, the Day of White Tablecloths, etc., as well as its own traditional way of celebrating these holidays.

If you walk along the banks of the Vilnia River, you will be sure to come across artists working there. Passers-by are invited to have a try at the various kinds of art, like photography and painting, or to take part in an evening of summer cinema or exhibitions. 

Everyone can find interesting places and corners in Užupis. One of them is the Užupis Bridge where lovers hang padlocks with their names engraved on them. The padlock is believed to tie and strengthen the hearts of two young people in love. 

Some works of art have become symbols of Užupis:

The Užupis Constitution

WOLLONGONG

REFLECTIONS

Gintautas Kaminskas lives in Wollongong, Australia.  Throughout his life, since his teenage years, his dream and hope was to settle in an independent Lithuania, the country his parents fled during the Second World War. He kept the dream of his ancestors' country alive through many post-war years and in 2008 his dream finally came through; Gintautas moved to Lithuania. Towards the end of 2009 he returned to Australia, disillusioned and sad to have experienced a country totally different from what he had imagined and hoped for. I asked him to explain why.

Hello Aage

I usually don’t like to talk about my family’s story, because most people don’t understand.  But I can tell from what you write that you are an idealist and you are trying to understand Lithuania and Lithuanians so I will tell you my story, briefly.

I will start by mentioning that I have a friend in Iceland and I tell him (probably ad nauseam!) that he should be ever so grateful that he was born in his own normal (unoccupied) homeland and therefore automatically grew up speaking his native language in his home, at school at work, and automatically married a woman of his own nationality and therefore naturally spoke his native language at home with his wife and children and now grandchildren.  I had none of those privileges.

When I think back, I wish my parents had been able to stay in Germany; at least I would have grown up European, close to the languages and countries that are my passion.  But no such luck.  All the displaced persons had to go elsewhere.  Almost all wanted to go to USA, but that was not possible.  You had to go where you were sent.  We were sent to Canada.  Things were OK in Canada I guess, apart from the climate.  (We were in place a lot colder than Toronto, where most of the Lithuanians were.)  In 1959, when I was 11, my father decided we would move to New Zealand for a better climate ... and better fishing!  Ironically, it was this move that made me appreciate my Lithuanian identity and to cling to it like never before.  I was teased by the NZ kids for speaking English with a Canadian accent.  I hated that.  I started telling myself that as soon as I was old enough I would go back to Canada.  But after a few years (we were in NZ five years) I started to realise that I was cherishing a silly hope, because I wasn’t really Canadian anyway.  So I became very Europe-focused, studying my native language, insisting that my parents speak it with me, and also studying Spanish all on my own from a little textbook.  Since Lithuania was blocked to me, my dream became to live in Spain for a while.  (Which I did do eventually and enjoyed it immensely.)

Eventually (1964) my sister met an Australian and followed him to Australia, so my parents decided to join them.  We settled in Adelaide and it was there that I finished high school and did my B.A. Hons. degree (majoring in Spanish and French).  I was a lot happier in Australia because there were more Lithuanians there and I participated heavily in Lithuanian cultural and even sporting activities (basketball).  I got a scholarship to do an M.A. in Melbourne (in Spanish/Linguistics) so I left home in February 1970 (the day after I turned 22) and went to Melbourne.  It was there that I got married to my first wife, an Australian, at age 22.  We were married for 32 years.  We lived in Canberra (I was a Public Servant) and we brought up three sons.  The highlight of my career was 1979-82 when I was posted to Australian Embassies in Europe, first Rome (I also speak Italian), then Madrid.  I wanted to go on more postings but my wife didn’t.  As I approached early retirement age (55) I realised that I was never going to feel fulfilled unless I went to live in Europe again, so sadly, I got divorced and left Australia.

My plan had been to take early retirement in 2003 and go straight to Lithuania.  As it happens, I took a detour to Montréal, Québec, first.  After five years in Québec, I left and went to Lithuania in February 2008 to join my dad who had returned to Lithuania in 2007.  I did not live with him because he moved in with a lady friend, but I saw him a lot, and toward the end I was helping the lady nurse him full time.  (He died in August 2009.)  At first it was wonderful being in Lithuania and speaking my beloved native language all the time, with everyone.  But then I started to notice how unhappy so many people are, and how much dishonesty there is among crooked businessmen and tradesman and landlords who don’t pay taxes, bribe-taking public servants, policemen and doctors, people falsely claiming invalid pensions, etc.  At a higher level some major scandals have shown that even some judges and Cabinet Ministers are not beyond taking a bribe.  The Seimas members are notorious for their greed and many have been exposed as corrupt.

It is mainly my experience with the Lithuanian health system, doctors and hospitals that has caused my greatest disillusionment with Lithuania and has in fact made me too frightened to live there myself.  We could not leave my dad alone in hospital.  We had to be with him 24 hours a day.  We had to bring him food (you would die of malnutrition if you depended entirely on the inadequate meals  the hospital gives you), we had to be there to bribe the doctor every few days (the amount of attention they paid to my dad dropped off noticeably if  a new bribe was not received every few days), we had to be there to help him go to the toilet and in the end phase to change his nappy, we had to be there to make sure he got his medicine.  The hospitals were disgusting.  One single toilet on the whole floor for 50 patients!  No toilet seat! No paper!  No soap!  No fly screens on the windows – in a hospital!  No lock on the toilet door – men come in and smoke while you are using the toilet – despite the “No Smoking” signs! No facilities for the patients to have a shower or somehow wash themselves. Cold in winter and hot in summer.  Hygiene very dubious.  An absolute nightmare and disgrace.  When my dad died we even had to bribe the cemetery officials to get a decent burial site that wasn’t down in the gully where a big puddle forms and the ground goes boggy every spring.  (They deliberately offer you the lousy places to make sure they get a bribe.)

I am still an idealist, but now, belatedly, also a realist.  I understand that I will be unlikely to see much of an improvement in my lifetime, and therefore I will not be able to end my days in Lithuania, as I had hoped.  But the flame of hope burns brightly in my heart that the past sacrifices of brave Lithuanians for the homeland have not been in vain and that one day there will be a living standard in Lithuania not far behind that of the Scandinavian and leading Western European countries.  I hope I can make some contribution to the process, no matter how minor.  I value your work as a journalist, keep it up!   That’s why I have taken the time today to tell you a little about one Lithuanian’s life as an exile.

Gintautas Kaminskas
Wollongong, Australia

SPRING IN LITHUANIA!

I drove from Vilnius to the coast today. The distance is not more than 300 km, and the great four-lane highway makes it a quick and easy drive. But it's not long before I start slowing down. The sensation of the Lithuanian spring suddenly begins to penetrate into the car and who could then remain unaffected? 

There are still patches of snow around the undulating landscape of yellow-brown fields, but the smell of wet evaporation which lies like an invisible blanket over the soil, says very clearly that the long and cold winter now seriously is coming to its end.

The many groves, which in a few weeks are going to appear as green and lush, still stand dark and seriously gloomy. The bare branches of the clusters of the birch trees dare as yet not quite believe that winter is over. In the larger forested areas there is a haze at the ground, under the heavy branches of thousands of majestic trees that in the autumn dropped their needles and leaves which now lie there like a wet and brownish carpet over the damp forest floor. 

The ice on the larger ponds has a damp blue boundary along the land. Only the middle course of the ice is still nearly white, but it is no longer ice fishermen to see out there. Danger signals of unsafe ice is clear, but the fishermen know that it's not long before they can fish with a rod from shore or by boat, so they hardly despair. 

There are neither tractors nor farm animals to see in the fields. The ground and the soil is still too wet. The silence and tranquillity that characterizes this beautiful Lithuanian spring landscape is thus even more obvious and intrusive. Almost melancholy in spite of the spring that is in the making. 

I stop at a rest area. A narrow dirt road leads into the woods nearby, and suddenly I attentively see that the road leads to a rather derelict cottage there in the woods. It is obvious that this was once a beautiful wooden house, but now the peeling green paint and wooden cladding is in poor condition. The little barn on the other side of the small yard is in an even worse situation. Then the door of the house opens, and an elderly woman with heavy clothing comes out. She carries with her two dented tin cans. The plastic age has still not reached out here. I stand there and almost insolently observe this woman. I hear the chickens, possibly also some geese, cackle from inside the outhouse, and I see the woman filling up both buckets with water from a well in the courtyard. From the ridge on the old house, there is installed a five-meter high, rusty radio antenna. Maybe the woman and her family after World War II were sitting in this little house listening to broadcast from western radio stations with the hope that Lithuania would be liberated by western nations? 

I approach the coastal town of Klaipeda on my journey to the west. And suddenly I see it fly over the road in front of me, the year’s first stork. It's back! It has once again chosen to leave the fertile lands south of the Sahara to the benefit of Lithuania's northern fields. Yes, spring is here!

The ice on the Baltic Sea has this year been thicker and more extensive than in many, many years. That is still evident along the seashores north of Klaipeda. But the light, the amazingly strange shifting Lithuanian light, is carrying clear signs that spring is here. The sea breeze is still fresh, but still provides a renewed spirit and volume to my lungs which otherwise mostly breathe the Vilnius city air. The Lithuanian coast is at least as attractive now in the spring as it is when the summer sun and the long sandy beaches soon will draw tens of thousands of longing sun and sea visitors out here. 

The sun is about to go down over the Baltic Sea’s slow waves when I again sit in the car. This time to drive back to Vilnius. The music I play as I head back east, I have received from Danute Z. in Canada. So also to give you the right spring mood, dear reader, I suggest you get comfortable in your seat next to me and enjoy the trip and this amazing tribute to Lithuania, performed by singer Mickey Michael:

A new spring has come to Lithuania ...

Aage Myhre

Editor

25 March is Lithuania’s stork day! 

The white stork (gandras) is usually felt to be the national bird of Lithuania. Lithuanians believe that storks bring harmony to the families on whose property they nest; they have also kept up the tradition of telling their children that storks bring babies. Stork Day is celebrated on 25 March with various archaic rituals: gifts for children, attributed to the storks, such as fruits, chocolates, pencils, and dyed eggs, which are hung on tree branches and fences; snakes are caught, killed and buried under the doorstep; straw fires are lit.

Notably, Lithuania is a beneficial and important habitat for these birds: it has the highest known nesting density in the world!

“YOU FOREIGNERS ARE EXTREMELY NAÏVE”

"You think that a word is a word, that a deal is a deal. You think that things here are going straight as in the West. You believe that what you hear is what is said, and you trust that people you meet really want and mean to do what is good, honest and correct. Therefore, it doesn’t take much before you open up your cards and often reveal business secrets and other things that you should never have disclosed without first having secured your situation with contracts and local supporters, i.e. lawyers. We Lithuanians are experts in taking advantage of such situations, and we never cease to wonder how gullible people from the West often are. Even within international companies and organisations I am sometimes surprised to see how unaware western professionals are about what goes on behind their backs," said my friend.

I asked him if this mentality also means that people here do not care much about their own country, doing good for the society in addition to earning a living for themselves. "Only to a small degree," replied my friend. "It is such a difficult situation for most here that there is no additional capacity or desire to also care about the nation. Even our leading politicians do not. Most of them are much more concerned with their own interests than of the nation, and they are normally bad role models for the rest of us. So why should we do more than them?" 

"I was born in this country. I fought for this country. I gave everything I

could, both while I lived here and after I was forced to flee to the United

States. I moved back here when Lithuania was again free, and have since

continued to do my best for this country, including through my years as

President. Yet I must admit that I feel like an outsider in my own country."

The sadness in the voice of former President Valdas Adamkus was

unmistakable as he stood and looked towards the Vilnius city through

the windows of his Presidential Palace.

"You know, Aage, I was born in this country. I fought for this country. I gave everything I could, both while I lived here and after I was forced to flee to the United States at the end of World War II. I moved back here when Lithuania again was free, and I have since continued to do my best for this nation, including through my years as President. Yet I must admit that I feel like an outsider in my own country."

The sadness in the voice of former President Valdas Adamkus was unmistakable as he stood and looked towards the Vilnius city centre through the windows of his Presidential Palace.

Aage Myhre

Editor

Connecting Lithuania- related people around the globe, giving them a say

More and more Lithuanians turn their backs to their home country. The wave of residents who have left or want to leave from here is growing day by day. The bright spots in economics and business are very few.

Parents with children in primary school are looking desperately for opportunities of further education abroad as the Lithuanian school system does not provide a satisfactory basis for future jobs. Health Service is also struggling with serious problems. Pessimism is spreading rapidly, and there are not many signs that the country's politicians are able to tidy up and clean the 'Lithuanian House' where dirt and dust from the Soviet times still lie in every corner. 

Fewer and fewer see a future for themselves and their children in this once proud country, and there is no indication that those who have already moved to the West will come back. Many descendants of those who emigrated in connection with World War II have not even been visiting their ancestral country. The national feeling among young Lithuanians around the world fades each day that passes. 

- Is there then nothing that can be done to reverse this negative trend? I think there is. 

But first we need to get back optimism and faith in the nation called Lithuania. The Lithuanian people must once again begin to believe that joint efforts with common goals are not useless, and that the future will be far brighter if we all are working together to reach concrete goals. 

One important step would be if Lithuania's political leaders began to consider absolutely all of Lithuanian background, wherever in the world they live, as full and equal citizens. The country's diasporas represent invaluable brain-power and should be invited 'back to the family'. An extensive bridge-building should be undertaken without any further hesitation.

'Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,' said President Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961. Such a speech should also President Grybauskaitė make, but first she should proclaim that Lithuania’s leaders will be the ones taking the first step; showing the good example, cleaning the ‘Lithuanian House’ and start demonstrating that they are ready to do their very best for Lithuanians around the globe.

Still, the politicians can not really do much more than to facilitate.  The real action must come from the Lithuanians themselves. 

My little contribution to renewed optimism, bridge building and constructive criticism of the negligent sins that still characterize this nation, is the publication you are now reading. In VilNews of 16 March I invited you, our readers, to participate as shareholders in a further development of this venture. My wish would be that VilNews should be developed as a permanent web page with the aim of better linking Lithuanian groups in every corner of the globe to each other and their home country Lithuania. 

Algis Ratnikas describes this well in his above letter.

For VilNews to get the necessary position and recognition as an international, interactive meeting place and an honest, professional media for Lithuania-related issues, there must in my opinion be a broad and solid group of shareholders from around the world standing behind it. Then we can, together and with weight, be pointing out issues we believe should be addressed in this country and for Lithuanian nationals around the globe. I believe we this way, in joint spirit, slowly could begin to rebuild the optimism that the country now so desperately needs.

If you, your company, or your circle of friends and acquaintances wish to consider becoming co-owners of VilNews, I ask you to contact me so that I can explain more in detail how I think we best can develop it as a publication and a mouthpiece for Lithuanians and Lithuanian related issues worldwide.

I appreciate very much the letters of interest I already have received from some of you, and I hope we together, already over the next few weeks can reach the initial goal of having around 50 Lithuania-related shareholders from around the world investing $2000 each.

None of us are going to get rich on this commitment and investment, but we can together make VilNews a significant tool for optimism, integrity, transparency, professionalism and increased contact to and between Lithuanians and Lithuanian issues around the world. The internet gives us just that opportunity.

Your early feedback would be appreciated…

Aage Myhre

Editor

11 MARCH 1990

THE DAY LITHUANIA WOKE UP

FROM ITS 50 YEAR NIGHTMARE

Here from Pilies Street in Vilnius Old Town .

Dear Professor Landsbergis and all you others who signed

Lithuania's independence declaration act on the 11^th of March 1990,

I can very well imagine that many of you signed the declaration act with trembling pens. You knew what power you challenged, and you were fully aware of what reprisals you and the people you represented could expect from the big bear in the east. The Soviet Union was not a superpower to joke with or irritate, and you knew that you would not be treated with kid gloves if the bear decided to strike back, reacting to the severance requirement you signed that day.

But you signed. You were brave. Without your signatures on the document shown below, it is quite possible that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia still today would be unfree republics under the 'protective' bear paws.

The Declaration of Independence on 11 March 1990 was Lithuania’s second in the 20^th century. The first one was signed on 16 February 1918. Both statements were signed by wise and courageous political leaders who did not want to accept that their beloved homeland would remain occupied.

When Lithuania in 1938 celebrated the 20^th anniversary of the century's first freedom declaration, a united country could proudly say that both politicians and society as a whole had succeeded in recreating a strong and progressive nation in the years that had passed since 1918. I have been told that Lithuania in the middle-war period had the world's fastest growing economy, and I know with certainty that this nation was fully on par with, perhaps even ahead of, its neighbours in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe when World War II so brutally overthrew and destroyed the fine Lithuanian nation which had been redeveloped during the pre-war years.

So now I ask you, ye who on the 11^th of March 1990 signed the document below: Can you honestly say that you are satisfied with the Lithuania that has evolved over the past 20 years? Can you with the same force as the country's pre-war leaders say that you have done a good job of recreating a Lithuania you and the entire nation can be proud of? Are you satisfied with how 'The Lithuanian House' has been cleared and cleaned after the 50-year nightmare under Soviet supremacy came to an end? Is it not true that there still remains the same old kind of Soviet dust in nearly all corners of the House?

Please allow me to doubt if you can claim with conviction that you are satisfied with today’s state of affairs in Lithuania. I admit that I sometimes have been disappointed seeing that you, who so bravely defended a free Lithuania in 1990, have not been more critical to the country’s leading authorities over the latest 20 years, even as Lithuania continues to suffer under 'stupidity curses' such as corruption, greed, selfishness, cheating, distrust and lack of teamwork, mutual respect and honest care. I believe you have seen that far too many of Lithuania’s leaders have been caring more about their personal benefits and positions than about the nation, and I wish you had reacted firmly against such behaviours.

I wish all the best for you and for Lithuania. But I would like to see a thorough clean-up action before I can fully express my joy and pride for this country. You were brave and wise in 1990. Please be that again. I urge you to think about Lithuania's future generations. I ask you to make a new commitment, as important as the one you signed on 11 March 1990. I urge you to stand up as guarantors for a Lithuania without deceit and cheating.

I kindly ask you to once again climb up to the very same barricade top you so proudly stood on in 1990. This time not to be set free, but to be bound – bound to pressure our present day politicians and leaders to accept a commitment to a cleaner and brighter development process in and for Lithuania.

The independence declarations of 1918 and 1990 were signed by wise and courageous political leaders who did not want to accept that their beloved homeland should remain occupied. Today there is a need of a document that declares another but not less important deed – making it perfectly clear that you, the proud signatories of the 11 March act, DO NOT ACCEPT that this country remains corrupted and mismanaged in so many areas.

Please do not let the date 11 March 1990 go down in history with less importance than it deserves…

Aage Myhre

Editor

11 March 1990

11 March 1990 is deemed to be remembered as one of the most important days in Lithuanian history. It was on this day 20 years ago that the Lithuanian parliament declared renewed freedom and independence for Lithuania, after the country had been occupied by the Soviet Union since World War II. 124 Parliament delegates voted for the declaration (copy below), while six were absent. 

The Parliament elected at the same time Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, the leader of the liberation movement Sajūdis, as Parliament President. He won over the Communist Party leader Algirdas Brazauskas with a 91 to 38 vote. 

11 March 1990 became a milestone in Lithuania's history because the Lithuanian politicians that day clearly demonstrated the country’s willingness to again become free and independent. Although it took another 18 months before the international community approved the nation’s independence from the Soviet occupying power, it was the 11 March actions that made it clear to the world that Lithuania no longer accepted to be incorporated into a system and a Commonwealth it had been involuntarily incorporated into when the World War II drew to an end. 

11 March 1990 was in many ways the day when Lithuania’s new freedom began, and we must believe that this country now will remain free and sovereign for all time based on democratic principles and values corresponding to those having been developing in Western Europe after World War II ended in 1945. 

While this March day 20 years ago was the beginning of the new time in and for Lithuania, the day was also symbolising that nearly 200 years of tragedies of and for this country had come to a final end. 

Through more than 500 years, from the 1200s when King Mindaugas declared Lithuania one nation, until it was occupied by the Russian Empire in 1795, Lithuania had been a proud and free nation, through some 300 years also one of the world’s greatest powers, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea (known as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). 

The 123 years of occupation from 1795 to 1918, however, became a long and sad chapter for Lithuania, since much of the good qualities this nation once represented in the world community were attempted to be systematically broken down by the Russian Empire occupants. 

When Lithuania at the end of World War I (1914-1918) on 16 February 1918 again could declare itself a free nation, most Lithuanians probably believed that the newly won freedom would remain, but sadly, the new freedom lasted only for 22 years. Vilnius and the surrounding area was occupied by Poland already in 1920 and remained under Polish rule until the Second World War started in 1940, and  Kaunas was therefore the capital of Lithuania for the years 1920 – 1940.

Nevertheless, Lithuania grew to become a strong nation during the interwar years, guided by, among others, the most famous Lithuanian leader of those days, President Antanas Smetona. 

World War II and the years just after became extremely tragic for Lithuania, when the nation was torn apart under alternate German and Russian occupation, and virtually all the large Jewish population was wiped out, and Lithuania thereby lost a population group that had meant so much for this nation since the 1300s. 

Also, during the war, tens of thousands of Lithuanians fled to the west, many who today live in the United States, Australia and other countries. Lithuanians were also exposed to extremely tragic abuse from Stalin's Soviet troops and his secret police (known as the KGB), when more than a hundred thousand Lithuanians were deported to Siberia and other areas in the Soviet Union where many of this country’s great citizens were killed or died during very shameful and cruel conditions. 

Already during the WWII years a strong resistance movement occurred, known as the Forest Brothers, who until the middle of the 1950s fought a heroic struggle against the Soviet power from their hiding places in the Lithuanian forests. It is suggested that around 20,000 Lithuanians and 70,000 soldiers from Stalin's Red Army and the KGB were killed during those post-war years. 

Lithuania became in 1990-1991 the first country that managed to detach itself from the Soviet Union . Latvia and Estonia followed soon after. We should all today be proud that this little country so bravely dared to stand up against the powerful Soviet powers. We should all be extremely happy that this little nation again enjoys freedom and democracy under the principle of equality for all its citizens, and we should be happy about the fact that 11 March 1990 was the day when Lithuania could finally put behind itself nearly 200 years of atrocities and suffering for its people – a people that had deserved so much better due to its proud history. 

The Lithuanian Independence Act from 11 March 1990.

THE WORLD’S BEST OUTDOOR MARKET?

Kaziukas Fair 2010, Friday 5^th – Sunday 7^th of March

Where else in the world can you find an outdoor market and festival that has been going on continuously through 300 years? What other nowadays’ market is a declared plastic-free zone? Where else can you find a single market in which an entire nation's population still participates with enormous enthusiasm? In what other country can one experience what thousands of individuals from the countryside and the cities spend so much of their time through a whole year to produce of genuine artefacts - knitted, crocheted, sewed, carpentry - forged by a people who truly treasure their traditions in handicrafts and folk art?

Every single year in every town throughout Lithuania, March starts off with the Kaziukas Fair, a ritual that marks the coming of spring, dedicated to St. Casimir, the patron saint of Lithuania. The festival originated in the 17^th century, and by the 19^th century it had developed into the fair and festival that is now known internationally. This year’s fair takes place 5^th – 7^th of March and will be celebrated throughout the country for the complete weekend. Check with your travel agent, maybe there still are available tickets!

part of the charm of the annual Kaziukas Fair.

And what would a Kaziukas Fair be if there was no traditional food to try? Here you can sample a cup of beer or a good old Gira, a plate of porridge, a few pretzels, and if you’re lucky you might even get a hold of the traditional potato dumplings, the cepelinai. 

plastic free zone.

In this festival, tradition overpowers the cold and all events will take place outdoors. Before you baulk at the idea of spending time outside in this wintry weather though, consider this: Getting out into the streets in this chilly season, even for a couple of hours, can be a rewarding experience, and with so many nasty cold and flu viruses circulating through the indoor air, it may even be a salvation. And think of all those poor craftsmen, who spend three days from morning till night in the freezing weather, just so you can drop by and be entertained… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPaapxpKbKE

Palm Sunday and later used to decorate the home.

1458 – 1484

died at the age of 25 on the 4^th of March 1484.

The first church named after St. Casimir was built in Lithuania in the middle or the end of the 16^th century near the town Ukmerge. It was built by the Jesuits. At approximately the same time, a church in the saint's honour was built in Vilnius. In Lithuania there are some twelve churches named for St. Casimir.

Baroque church in Vilnius.

Aage Myhre

Editor

A ‘LOVE LETTER’

FROM CALIFORNIA

Amber is Lithuania’s gold.

The Amber Museum is located in Palanga,

the town where Vytautas Sliupas was born in 1931.

* * *

I have received a ‘love letter’ from California. Here it is…

I have done more thorough investigations.

Aage Myhre

Editor

I’ve just discovered a web page that promotes love to Lithuania!

Have a look, and why not register as a member? Here it is:

http://www.ilovelithuania.com/

ANCIENT LITHUANIAN LOVE

From their forefathers who had to wage a hard struggle with the forces of Nature the Lithuanians inherited their industriousness. Hospitality and friendliness are regarded as natural to them since time immemorial. At the same time Lithuanians, like other northern peoples, have always been and still are reserved in manner and speech. Their mentality and world perception are tinged with gentle lyricism which finds reflection particularly in folk art. There are also regional differences in the mode of life, manner and customs. West Lithuanians. e. Zemaiciai (Samogitians), are particularly sedate, reserved and persistent. Rational thinking, thrift and orderliness are characteristic of the majority of Aukstaiciai, particularly their south-western group called Suvalkieciai. Dzukai, living in South-east Lithuania, are cheerful, open-hearted, friendly and hospitable people who have always lived in poverty on their unproductive sandy land.

  LITHUANIA'S

GOOD/EVIL

Lithuanians must be the world's most contrast-embossed peoples. 

On the one hand, this nation brought forth very prominent humanists, thinkers and skilled professionals in many fields; scientists, politicians, businessmen, church leaders and leaders within culture, science and many other areas.

On the other hand, Lithuania is overrepresented among Europe's criminal gangs, and also internally in this country there are many individuals and groups that have given Lithuania an international disgrace spot that will be difficult to wash away, at least in the short term.

I spoke a few days ago with a friend from my home county far up in northern Norway. He told me that five years ago he had become aware of a Lithuanian who had moved to the town where my friend lives. This Lithuanian, my friend told, got a job in a carpentry workshop which had never distinguished themselves with particularly high quality of the products they delivered. But in less than a year all became very different, when the Lithuanian proved to be a very capable carpenter. Not only were the products now supplied of much higher quality and all delivered according to agreed time and price, but also the company itself seemed to undergo a change for the better, all because of a skilled Lithuania that so clearly showed what real quality and work ethics mean for a company.

In the same area in Northern Norway a leading police chief in an interview with a local newspaper asked people to report to the police if they saw cars with Eastern European number plates, and in another Norwegian district, people have already through several years made it a rule that they alert the police as soon as they see a car with Lithuanian registration plates. 

Norwegian and other European prisons are packed full of Lithuanian criminals, and many have asked themselves whether the price of the Schengen Agreement for open borders in Europe is already becoming too high. It is also constantly asked why Lithuania itself does not do much more to crack down on criminal bands in the towns and districts where they originate.

Increased punishment and restriction of freedom does of course not solve a serious problem like this, and I am of the opinion that the authorities, communities and neighbourhoods must be far more actively working in teaching and integrating children and youth from families with potential problems. The many fine people who value honesty and justice high should no longer sit still, but take immediate action to help Lithuania's future generations follow in the footsteps of the good.

One of the first things I experienced when I came to Lithuania 20 years ago, was a private tour of the cellars under the Vilnius Cathedral. My guide was Monsignor Kazimieras Vasiliauskas, who in a truly remarkable manner managed to make come alive Lithuania's proud history while we walked among the graves of the country's former dukes and others who so greatly helped to make Lithuania a world leading country for hundreds of years. The Monsignor told me about his years in, respectively, German and Russian captivity, and I left the Cathedral with a deep sense of respect and admiration for this great country and a cleric who had been forced to so much suffering because he always kept his faith and humanity high. I felt I had been very close to this nation's historical and contemporary pride and goodness for a few minutes, represented by the graves of the country's prominent leaders through the centuries and a man who so clearly had preserved his faith in good, even throughout many years of imposed suffering.

I have never personally met Henrikas Daktaras, the man often referred to as Lithuania's leading criminal authority, but I have through many years seen the results of his and his like-minders' destructive activities both here in Lithuania and also far beyond Lithuania's borders. The admiration and respect I got for Lithuania after the tour with Monsignor Vasiliauskas felt almost like a distant dream as I in the early 1990s started discovering what was going on in this country; with regards to corruption in the corridors of power, of public 'theft' from its own people, as well as acts committed by criminals and half criminals with greed and lack of respect for their fellow man as their leading motives.

Wikipedia states that evil are the acts that are regarded as morally bad, intrinsically corrupt, wantonly destructive, inhumane, selfish, or wicked.

As per another definition, evil is that which is the reverse of good, whatever is censurable, mischievous, or undesirable, morally depraved, bad, wicked, vicious; doing or tending to do harm, hurtful, mischievous, prejudicial, depraved intention or purpose, desire for another's harm, causing discomfort, pain, or trouble, unpleasant, offensive, disagreeable, troublesome, painful.

Lithuania's good people should not let the destructive and selfish powers rule or continue to influence fine people's lives here and abroad. Those who want the best for this nation should as soon as possible start discussing what could be done to take control over and neutralise the nation's destructive forces, no matter where and at what level these now reside.

Lithuania deserves to again be counted among the world's great nations, but it is up to the Lithuanians themselves to fight the evil and the negative forces that still have far too free scope to continue their misdeeds. As long as these forces find fertile ground in the Lithuanian society, this country will remain on a stage of development that should have been left behind long ago.

Aage Myhre

Editor 

 A POLITICAL ERA DRAWS TO AN END  

PHOTO: LARS BRYNE

VILNIUS 7 FEBRUARY: Algirdas Brazauskas, the former president and prime minister of Lithuania is in very serious condition, and is in reanimation of one of Vilnius’ hospitals. Brazauskas has advanced prostate cancer and complications, as well as blood infection. As Gitana Lyatukene, the press secretary of the hospital told

“the patient is in the reanimation as he needs an intensive care.”

* * *

Hopefully, Lithuania's political giant still has many years left to live and prosper. It is however, very probable that his strong influence on Lithuanian politics, politicians and society is now beginning to fade. I've had the pleasure of meeting Brazauskas a few times over the last 20 years, and the meeting I remember most was when I interviewed him for the magazine 'Vilnius Monthly' five years ago in his then prime minister’s office at Gedimino Avenue 11 in Vilnius. I have much positive to say about Brazauskas, not least for his strong and clear leadership style, but there have unfortunately also been factors that have sometimes made me wonder if he has always been keeping his way pure.
 

The 20^th congress of Lithuania’s communist party, Dec 1989 

The most amazing story he told me from those days, was about the 20^th congress of his Lithuanian communist party in December 1989. Here is how he describes  what happened at the congress:

“That late December day, we voted that our Lithuanian communist party should break away from Moscow, and that Lithuania should seek independence. We took big risks, because we knew what force they had at their disposal in Moscow, but because we were responsible for the welfare of so many people we could not confront the Soviet Union, we had to outsmart them.”

Then about the atmosphere among the delegates:

“The mood at the congress was exceptionally fantastic... Naturally, such a positive attitude was not because we were communists, but because we were members of the organisation, which had challenged the Soviet Union and its Communist Party. The community well understood the essence of our decision. This was not the only time, when people understood us and backed us. We, then the leaders, felt their support during the entire autumn of 1989. I had to go to Moscow many times to meetings of the Politburo and Supreme Council, the Congress itself, and so forth. Upon our return home, which was usually at night, people almost always met us with flowers and smiling faces, and sometimes even with tears in their eyes. At no other time in my life I did feel such human warmth and support from my own nationals, which my colleagues and I felt during those days that carried such responsibility for all of Lithuania.” 

All fine, until the telephone rang:

“On the first day of the Congress, I was sitting at the table of the presidium, when I was suddenly called to the telephone about noon. It was a call from Mikhail Gorbachev, which came directly to the Opera and Ballet Theatre in the centre of Vilnius. Our meeting had just started. I picked up the receiver, and heard Gorbachev’s voice, sounding especially stern. Our conversations had been strained earlier, starting from the summer of 1989, when the CPSU Central Committee had issued their warning statement after the Baltic Way. Now Gorbachev was unmistakably threatening. He said, “Have you already passed the resolution on the separation from the Party?” “No, we haven’t passed such a resolution, but we shall pass it,” I replied to the Soviet Union leader. He paused for a while, and then said, “Do you know, how all this might end?” “How?” I asked him, sensing that there were various ways in which it might all end…”

He could have tanks surrounding us:

“And then, right in the Opera and Ballet Theatre, I understood that this was one more warning upon which Gorbachev is determined to act. Maybe he’ll bring in the army; maybe, he will scare us some other way, or he might run everybody out of our Congress? The last version seemed the most realistic. He could have tanks surround the Opera and Ballet Theatre, and chase us away or arrest us. I could sense such a threat from the tone of Gorbachev’s voice…”

Undertake forceful means:

“Our conversation was rather long. Then, Gorbachev told me clearly, “We will immediately summon a Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee to deliberate all the conclusions, relevant to the documents of your 20^th Congress, if you happen to pass them.” I knew that, according to the order of matters during that time, such a Plenum could fully crush us, annul our documents, and undertake forceful means. I could sense the promise in his each word to dispose of us directly.” 

In an atmosphere of dangerous threats:

“I hung up and went back to the auditorium. The Congress was going on; people were speaking. After consulting with my closest colleagues, I told them, “We must speed up our decision-making. We have to pass the resolution under deliberation. We cannot drag things out.” I forwarded this idea to all the participants. They all felt a great responsibility, and we worked late into the night, passing documents on self-reliance at a rapid pace. This was our victory, the result of our determination. It was a great event in an atmosphere of dangerous threats…” 

The text of the Lithuanian Communist Party’s resolution that December in 1989 was as follows:

“The most important basic goal of the party is an independent, democratic Lithuanian State, implementation of humanistic, socialism ideals – human freedom and social justice – and formation of conditions for the historical continuation of the Lithuanian nation and all residents of Lithuania.”

I left my meeting with Brazauskas with the clear feeling that in his opinion he and his party had contributed at least as much to the saving and liberation of Lithuania as Landsbergis, the freedom movement Sajudis and the masses of Lithuanian people who surrounded the parliament in January 1991. But I also felt that he had been sincere in his explanations and descriptions on how he had lived through and experienced the events of those days.

In January 1990, just a few days after the dramatic events

at the 20^th Communist Congress, Mikhail Gorbachev came to

Vilnius for a final attempt to convince Brazauskas

to change his mind, but in vain.  

Brazauskas and Landsbergis 

One of my questions in my interview with Brazauskas in 2005, was how he experienced the difference between him and Landsbergis during the liberation years. This he replied:

“I became answerable to both Moscow and Vilnius and had to keep both sides happy. There was a real danger of bloody intervention from Moscow, while at home the calls for independence were getting ever louder. Vytautas Landsbergis could say whatever he wanted, and he was a better speaker than me, but I had to be more careful. That was the big difference between us.”

I have also had the opportunity to meet Landsbergis a number of times, interviewed him as well, and I have asked him about his main concerns when it comes to Brazauskas. This is how he summarises their relationship:

“My rivalry, as you say, with Brazauskas was evident even before 1990, and though we have cooperated on some issues, we clearly disagree on our major choices. I still think he is too appeasing towards Russia.”

Music professor Vytautas Landsbergis and Brazauskas have been the post-Soviet

era's most prominent opponents and personalities in Lithuanian politics. 

Nomenclature tendencies and corruption

In the winter of 1993, privatisation was officially resumed but never came any closer to regaining its pre-election character and momentum due to a shortage of political will from the highest echelons of power. According to some assessments, privatisation stopped altogether, especially land restitution in agriculture which used to be of the farmer-type in the interwar period of independence.  

However, this also meant that the country's political élite remained almost intact, with the consequence that independent Lithuania inherited the soviet political culture to a greater extent than other republics. The nomenclature was again in power.

I can obviously never get confirmed the veracity of the following story, but this is what a local businessman told me in 1993 as an example on how the late-communism corruption had been re-adopted by the then newly elected parliament, government and president. This is what the man told me:

"When we walk into the office of Brazauskas to discuss a privatisation project or similar, we usually bring with us a briefcase filled with about 100,000 U.S. dollars. We put the briefcase on his desk, he opens it and calls for his closest co-workers to come to the room, each getting a stack of notes. Afterwards he closes the briefcase and puts it on the floor under the table. The conversation can begin."

one of Brazauskas’ sharpest critics.

Retired General Jonas Kronkaitis, who was Lithuania’s vice minister of national defence and Commander of the country’s armed forces for the period 1999-2004, has been one of Brazauskas’ harshest critics. Here is what he told me in an interview some years ago, when Brazauskas still was Lithuania’s Prime Minister and Adamkus the President:

“Many of our Lithuanian politicians, civil servants, judges, the court system and the prosecutor’s office are still the children of the old Soviet nomenclature, and there is a great need for fresh blood and new thinking in order for Lithuania to catch up with Western Europe”. 

I then asked Gen. Kronkaitis what in his view is wrong in and within today’s Lithuania, and he answered: 

“Very much the leadership. One of the main principles of leadership is that “you lead by example”, and when the very top leaders set a bad example, then they infect the whole country. When the very top is corrupt, such behavior is pyramided throughout the bureaucracy, tends to be tolerated and becomes normal. That was the soviet system; no one questioned it. It was expected that nomenclature has privileges, which others do not.  Many people in this country are angry and unhappy about such a system, few because they don’t get their share, but luckily most because they believe it is wrong and are working to bring about necessary changes.”

In the interview Kronkaitis also went back to the early years of regained freedom for Lithuania, saying:

“When Lithuania regained its independence a law was passed to return property to their rightful owners.  The process was complicated for a variety of reasons; in some cases it was not possible to return the same land to its owner because something was built on it, so the people could chose either financial compensation, or land somewhere else.  In some cases land was simply taken away from the rightful owner to give it to someone else who wanted it as compensation. This process created hundreds, if not thousands, of morally unjustified acts of land takeovers by public officials, or administrators. In one of those cases, two blind people, a father and son, lost land in a very desirable location that belonged to them to Prime Minister Brazauskas. The blind man wanted only to provide for his son’s future from the sale of the valuable land. His pleas were disregarded.  These most vulnerable people, who should expect protection from their government, were left to fend for themselves.”

Failed Euro zone adoption, little interest in foreign investments

Today many say that if Lithuania would have had the euro instead of the litas, the painful measures currently being taken by the Kubilius government would not have been necessary. Three years ago Lithuania was very close to the adoption of the euro, but the effort became a victim of the strict adherence of the so-called euro convergence criteria by the European Central Bank and the lack of performance by the Brazauskas and Kirkilas governments and their ‘Commission for the Coordination of the Adoption of the Euro’.

The same banker also told me that they in each meeting with Brazauskas tried to convince him to do more to attract foreign investments to Lithuania, but always got the same answer: “We have money enough in Lithuania, we don’t need foreign investors here.”

The conclusion the bankers had drawn from this statement and the general attitude of Brazauskas, was that he, together with a certain group of people in this country, had stronger interest in protecting their own interest than to help the Lithuanian economy grow quicker.

Brazauskas, Kirkilas and new social-democratic leaders

The appointment of Gediminas Kirkilas as Prime Minister in 2006 ended a lengthy political crisis in Lithuania after first the Social Liberals and then the Labour Party left the Brazauskas-led coalition government, making the PM's position almost impossible. The Labour Party was also under police investigation on suspicion of having received economic backing from Russian interests and for embezzlement of EU-funds. The Labour Party chairman, Viktor Uspaskich, who had gone into exile in Russia, then resigned the leadership of his party. One of the key scandal factors was the fight for control over the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery, which strong Russian interests were keen on buying.

potential crown princes, was probably suffering under the lack of authority.

The fact that Brazauskas over the last 20 years has been the undisputed and dominant leader of his own party, has made it difficult for the younger forces to find room for their own development. Kirkilas was to a certain degree a victim of just that, and I will assume that the party is now eagerly under way to coach leaders who can fill the void Brazauskas inevitably will leave behind.

Brazauskas and Adamkus

I have heard people speculate that Brazauskas decided to support Adamkus in 2004 in return of an agreement allowing him to participate in decision-making processes with regard to the selection of advisors and also other decisions the President wanted to make. It is probably too far stretched to suggest that Adamkus was a kind of puppet-President for the last five years of his rule, but it is certainly remarkable that Brazauskas' criticism against Adamkus died down so suddenly in 2004, and one can rightly ask if this was due to that Brazauskas had got what he wanted, and actually sat with even greater force than what is portrayed officially. But maybe this is too much speculation and fantasy ride?

private covenant, which is not known to the public?  

And now?

In the interview with him five years ago, I asked him why he had remained popular among so much of the Lithuanian population for so many years. His answer was:

“If you are good to people then people pay you back with goodness. I have always had a connection with ordinary people and I listen to what they have to say and, and wherever I can, I help them. My generation of politicians were valued by what they achieved, and it just happened that my twenty odd year career coincided with the most important events for the country. In the old government and in the new I was concerned mainly with economic and social problems, people’s living problems. I am not telling you any secrets – people have confidence in those that work for them.”

Editor

 Algirdas Brazauskas biography

 BŪKIME KARTU

(LET’S BE TOGETHER) 

PHOTO: AAGE MYHRE 

every single year from the participating orphans, since it all began in 2001.

It’s good for them, but maybe also for you? The day to keep in mind is Saturday the 15^th of May… 

BELOW: This is the event where the international community in Lithuania, together with the national police, army and fire brigade,  shows its very best and warmest efforts and attitudes to those who need it most.  

ALL PHOTOS: AAGE MYHRE