In the book, the well-known historian publishes texts written over the past six years, so readers will find in them many insights about the difficult challenges of recent times – the threat of war, the world disrupted by the pandemic and the resulting consequences. The book was compiled by journalist and social activist Birutė Garbaravičienė. After “Game with Matches” appeared, we discussed the most interesting points of the book with E. Aleksandravičius.
– In the book, you talk about the subject of memory, which is very much discussed today. How to deal with “uncomfortable” historical questions, to which a part of society seems to need clear answers today. But is it even possible to find such answers? One of the most striking examples of the search for a new name for S. Nėries high school. What do these cases show?
– First of all, the historian should share his surprise that crickets and laces are rising three decades after our liberation from Soviet captivity. why now After all, back then, in the years of euphoria of freedom and great hopes, we did not even observe the bombing of monuments of a better artistic level. A legitimate breakthrough of the revenge of the wronged crowd. Now it’s something else.
How much is the Russian war against Western democracies to blame here, and how much is the fact that a new generation of our people has grown up, who were born in freedom and never saw the passionate Soviet-era Komsomol youth. Could it not be that the activists of this generation do not even know when they become similar to those against whom we raised the flags and slogans of the Movement?
I never get drunk from Nėris’s lyrics or Cvirka’s humor. I understand the giddy and giddy. However, it is not their dramatic and controversial figures that seem to me to be the most supportive of the survival of Soviet customs and feelings. Most offensive is the nature of Russian centralism and administrative behavior that permeates every government institution inherited from those times.
Sovietism unwittingly spreads precisely where the boundless, petty and excessive desire to control, inspect and punish its own citizens prevails. Demonstration of power and disrespect for a person, his privacy, regardless of the Constitutional ideal and official joy. Joy that does not make you happy. It only shows the lack of reflection and our diminishing abilities to protect the gardens of humanity and the creative forces necessary for self-correction and improvement.
– Speaking of history and memory, the example you mentioned in the book stuck. You discuss current issues related to the immortalization of complex personalities and the specific case of Škirpa. And you aptly ask if we can imagine such a memory board: “Such and such a person worked in this house. There was a county chief who contributed to the creation of the Jewish ghetto in July 1941, who switched to the anti-Nazi underground, was imprisoned in Štuthof and was later tortured by the Soviets together with several other Lithuanian patriots.” Is such a historical perspective, capable of accepting all the complexities of history, possible today?
– All the peoples who survived and survived in the “bloody lands”, or, to extend the painful metaphor of Timothy Snyder, in Central Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin, have similar fates. Monochrome heroes of the past and unambiguous ways to survive when one brutal occupier was replaced by another beast were almost non-existent.
The question is, are we capable of cultivating more complex forms of memory, can we erect monuments near the buildings where our or Polish police and courts worked during World War II, after which enkavedists dispersed and tortured patriots, the Gestapo who replaced them, and the Soviet assassins returned again? Could we not tear down the crickets and lace monuments and replace the short notes with long and controversial biographies.
Can we resist the pressure of post-Soviet memory administrators and the new crowd that craves shallow unambiguity, when only headlines and few-sentence info reign in history textbooks or media remnants? Well, more weather forecasts. And also – really qualified reviews of our basketball. I would answer: it is possible, but extremely difficult.
– And why do we need that heterogeneous past? Some would probably say that when guns are rattling on the sidelines, it’s not the time for debate and that’s right – very clear answers are needed.
– I am convinced that the cultivators of complex “why?” hear the sound of guns and understand the threat of war. However, it seems to them that the primitive crowd and the obedience of the silencers only create the illusion of stability and solidity. In such an atmosphere, the cry that “the sky is falling” sounds much louder than, say, in Finland. Without simple courage and independent civic resistance to panic-mongers, whether they are Russian information warfare commandos or self-indulgent cheap sensationalists, our country becomes more vulnerable than it could be.
– You wrote many of the texts published in the book during the pandemic and the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine. So what is the task of the reviewer in the face of such a troubled and uncertain world? Maybe it’s just that some things are becoming more obvious?
– I lie down and get up with such questions. Maybe I’m just suspecting possible answers or conflicting assumptions. I will say with a touch of irony: the whole future is more unknown than we are inclined to believe. And the time of the pandemic and the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine only increased that uncertainty. In the face of internal and external dangers, small and important things begin to change places, and in the public space, instead of deliberation, patient conversation and the search for consensus among those who think differently, propaganda clichés take over and cover the real difficulties of the existence of our people.
Russia’s war against Ukraine also has communication fronts affecting the entire democratic world. Having become fond of the game without rules, Moscow today recklessly supports all those who are dissatisfied with the behavior of the ruling elites. At the same time, the war will allow the reigning magnates of wealth and power to do whatever they want, bringing their citizens to their knees, calling all those who are dissatisfied “Russian servants” or useful idiots. If there is still a patch of public space left for intellectual criticism of life, it should be reserved for the debate of those who think differently and believe differently.
It’s possible that simple jealousy is creeping in here and it’s all about electric cars and Spanish villas profiting from it all. However, a much more serious problem seems to be the inevitable ditch dug by bureaucratic, Russian-centralized authoritarianism between the community of citizens and the state government. A country of social contrasts may create an artificial appearance of joyful smiles, but the depth of reality breathes its own moods. It certainly weakens us, regardless of how much money we spend on agitators and propaganda. Therefore, patient reasoning and lifting the burden of more complex problems is the only logical means to increase the resilience and general immune status of citizens.
– I can’t help but ask the historian about the future, which is so unpredictable and frightening today. “…the greatest resistance to the Moscow Horde is the tireless effort not to give in and not become like them. Down to characteristic details. Stop behaving like Lithuanian-speaking Russians.” Do you see such signs in our society today? How to avoid it?
– If we have our own freedom, it lies inside a person, not in the drawers of offices and institutions. It means that every person can, through self-reflection, introspection exercises, overcome the Russian in himself and never behave as we see them with indignation with their own and conquered people.
– In the book, you keep mentioning the possibility of a miracle, so at the end I would like to ask if you, as a historian, believe in miracles?
– Yes, I believe in the miracles of human existence. Without them, neither the February 16th Republic nor the March 11th Lithuania ideas would have come true. Such a historical miracle is really necessary for free people to live in an independent state of the European Union, freed from the traumas of post-Soviet post-colonialism and the painful complexes of inadequacy. You have to believe in miracles in order to go to a meeting with free Lithuanians, without standing at a bus stop blown by the brisk wind, until some government sends a freedom bus.
