Standing Up to a Bear

VILNIUS, Lithuania - Sunday is not usually a day for serious journalism in Lithuania.

This week the main paper, Lietuvos Rytas, was filled with stories about an upcoming local election (a pop star known as Pyscho and a forest hermit nicknamed Tarzan are running for seats), and the introduction of the Euro in Slovakia. But even flipping through the Lithuanian-language paper without a translation, one picture stands out. Buried deep inside is a picture of Russian President Vladmir Putin dressed in a suit but holding a handgun, with two masked men standing behind him, dressed like Chechnyan rebels.

The headline referred to Putin's Power Pyramid, a pyramid apparently controlled by thugs. The text of the article expanded on the provocative photograph, detailing spy agency plots and connecting him to the still-unsolved death of a Putin-critic in London several years ago.

Translating the article for me was Jonas, a 22-year-old student of political science at Vilnius University, the best school in the country. As he read, it became clear how serious an issue he thought this to be.

I'm not too strong on Lithuanian history. I vaguely remember some kind of Polish-Lithuania state lurking to the west of Prussia on maps during a Western European history course. I decided to have Jonas fill me in. Was Lithuania independent between the Two World Wars?

Jonas' answer started 998 years ago, at the first mention of Lithuania in a book. In the 13th century Vilnius was founded by the man who became its first and only king after a dream during a hunting trip. After his death the area became a duchy, and at one point ruled from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. (Maps of this large Lithuanian Empire hang inside several Vilnius bars.) The duchy joined with next-door neighbor Poland through marriage, but by the 18th century the combined state was threatened by Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1795 the Third Partion of Poland wiped Lithuania off the map. Independence came in 1918, but the Russians, then the Germans, then the Russians again occupied the country for 80 years.

What happened in 1990 was not independence, Jonas said, but a reaffirmation of what happened nearly a century earlier.

Here, Russia isn't a new democracy, but a former imperial power ready to snatch power back in the country.

Jonas talked about a trip this summer, when he travelled to Iceland for a conference on political studies in small European states. He thought there would be hysterical talk of the Russian bear, threatening to overtake Europe. Instead he was horrified to find Russia to be a non-issue among the delegates, who came from Nordic, Baltic and even former Warsaw Pact nations.

'This is crazy. They are a real threat.'

He talked about how Russia cut off the gas lines six months ago to Lithuania. The official explanation was 'technical problems' but Jonas and other international observers believe it is punishment for the country's pro-European Union policies.

How is a nation of less than four million supposed to oppose the world's largest country? Consider this. Lithuanian guerrilla fighters held out for nine years against the Soviets after World War II, the longest in Eastern Europe. In a war of words, I'd give them a long time.