About the plans of the restaurant chain Tsarskoye Selo to celebrate the old Russian New Year on 13 January (a national holiday in Lithuania, commemorating tragic events in 1991 when the Soviet military opened fire against civilians in Vilnius).
One would think we are used to such news. The Russian music band Lyube, often singing praise to Chechen-killing commandos, is giving a concert in Lithuania not on just any day, but necessarily on 11 March (Lithuania's Independence Day); chauvinistic Russian comedians are hitting our stage on the day no other than 16 February (Lithuania's another Independence Day). But 13 January? And what is more, Tsarksoye Selo is owned not by some historically illiterate youth but by Visvaldas Matijošaitis, Kaunas Council Member, an elected official.
“A good buck is more important than common decency,” was how Vytautas Landsbergis (Lithuanian MEP and one of the architects of Lithuania's independence) commented on the ball at Tsarskoye Selo on the day that the rest of Lithuania, according to the professor, will be lighting bonfires in commemoration of the tragic events of 13 January.
What are we to do? Condemn our fellow citizens of Russian descent for celebrating the tsarist New Year? Boycott Matijošaitis's restaurants? Demand that the government ban celebrations on a day like that?
Even if any of these worked – which is highly doubtful as no restaurant has ever been closed on 13 January – what good would that do? Would it bring back Loreta Asanavičiūtė and twelve other heroes who died on that day twenty two years ago? Would it make Lithuania's Russian-speaking citizens mourn with the rest of us and love Lithuania more?
But do we ourselves genuinely love her? Is it true that the entire country will spend 13 January in front of a bonfire? At least one fiend keeps insisting that it wasn't the Moscow-ordered soldiers who opened fire against civilians defending the TV Tower but rather our own people. Parliament Speaker Vydas Gedvilas is brown-nosing Russia just days before 13 January, selling the principles of freedom and democracy for cheaper gas.
So is it enough to commemorate people who gave their lives for our freedom by simply throwing annual pious ceremonies – or would it be more stately of us to foster our freedoms (gained as they were through someone's blood) every day, build our state with daily deeds, the most important among these our respect for law?
Would it kill those Russians to have their old New Year on some other day? It would not, but, conversely, would we agree to move Christmas to the New Year's Eve – as we were forced to do for 50 years by the Soviet occupying regime?
And what would your suggestion be to a decent Lithuanian who has his birthday on 13 January? And all those who will be born next Sunday, their parents? Everyone who just happens to have their wedding anniversary on that day, octogenarian birthdays of their parents? Should they mourn? Wouldn't that be asking a little too much?
After all, let's look at our history. 22 May, 14 and 15 June, 21 July, 3 August – days of mass deportations and loss of independence; 31 July – Medininkai Checkpoint massacre. Not to mention the three partitions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, three insurrections brutally crushed by the tsar, Kražiai massacre, entire villages burnt down by SS and NKVD men, thousands of slain resistance fighters?
And what about 23 September 1943, the massacre of Vilnius ghetto Jews – that is, those who survived the mass killings of June, July, and August 1941?
All these sad events of our history have specific dates. Would it be indecent to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries on such days? Add to that All Soul's Day and extended Advent, what are we left with? How are we to lead our lives without offending our gilded national memories that, as it happens, usually refer to mourning? What are we to do in order to be Europeans as well as Lithuanians?
There is no one answer to that. What comes to mind is an essay by a departed dear friend, Liūtas Mockūnas, published in Chicago in 1986, 'Lithuania is in Eastern Europe after all.' Back then, Mockūnas was involved in a debate with leaders of Lithuanian expatriate communities who would start trembling with indignation if anyone as much as unwittingly mentioned that Lithuania was part of Eastern Europe. Some of the points made by Mockūnas are still relevant today.
That nowhere else outside Eastern Europe do women walk arm in arm and people pose for pictures near an open coffin of their deceased relative.
If we were true Westerners, 13 January would be called the Victory Day, we would be celebrating Lithuania's victory against Kremlin communists.
“Who has ever heard of the West celebrating so many anniversaries: 400 years since the first published book; 100 years since the first newspaper; 600 years since adopting Christianity,” wrote Mockūnas, who maintained that “there is a clear difference between the way anniversaries of Baranauskai and Čiurlioniai on the one hand and Shakespeares and Mozarts on the other are celebrated: the former get mentioned on front pages, the latter do not. In the West and the East alike, anniversaries of declarations of independence are national holidays. In the East, however, people attend ceremonies on that day, whereas in the West, or at least in the US, they go to the beach.”
Mockūnas noted back then that for the last forty years all Europe to the east of the river Elbe, including Lithuania, had been referred to as Eastern Europe and that such division had brought fundamental changes in the nations' spiritual constitutions, differences evident even in divided Germany.
If we were true Westerners, 13 January would be called the Victory Day, we would be celebrating Lithuania's victory against Kremlin communists. And Lithuania's Russians would inevitably join in celebrations – some of them concurrently toasting the New Year in a Lithuanian Tsarskoye Selo restaurant. Indeed, it was a victory. 13 January twenty two years ago was when the Lithuanian nation stopped the last aggression from Moscow with their own bodies.
But 13 people died and over 1,000 were injured, some might argue. True, but has there ever been a case in our geopolitical zone of peoples regaining freedom without a single victim? There are no victimless victories even in fairy tales.
That would be a westerner's reasoning. But as we come from Eastern Europe, we do not celebrate on the Victory Day, we mourn. And we get angry that not everyone is mourning along. Particularly melodramatic and even aggressive – also an Eastern trait – mourners are those characters of the Presidential Palace or the Seimas who did not dare set their foot outside their homes on 13 January 1991.
There is no universally satisfying answer to the issue of what to do with Russians who celebrate tsarist New Year on 13 January – and there won't be for another decade. Because Lithuania is not a genuine part of Western Europe yet.
That is a fact. Not only do we have to accept the fact – we might as well be proud of it. As Mockūnas put it, “the East is not a region of inferior class” and “by their history, culture, and lot, Lithuanians are part of Eastern Europe and should be proud of it.”
Unlike in France, where luminaries like Depardieu are fleeing and writing in letters to Putin “Da zdrastvuyet Rossiya!” and “Spasibo”, not a single one of our millionaires – including Viktor Uspaskich himself – has fled to Russia to avoid excessive taxes.
Not even the fiend, who has been smearing the memory of 13 January victims for the last five years, does apply for a Russian passport. Nor do Lithuania's Russian-speaking citizens who want to celebrate their traditional New Year in a Lithuanian restaurant. Let their celebrations happen on 13 January – when the rest of us will be mourning in front of bonfires – as long as they are here, in Lithuania.
We could be prudes about it – but we could also take justified pride in our country. We've achieved a lot over the last 22 years.
