Russia's foreign policy establishment is undertaking a profound review of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This is not necessarily new - some level of internal debate and apportioning of blame has persisted for 24 years now - but recent Russian actions in Ukraine have emboldened those in the Kremlin who wish to "right the wrongs" of the fateful events of 1991.
Starting in January 1991, and pressured by unrest in its constituent republics, the Soviet Union began to break apart. Lithuania is considered by many to have catalyzed that process. Peaceful civilian protests at the Vilnius Radio and Television headquarters and at the city's television transmission tower on Jan. 13, 1991, prompted heavy-handed suppression by the Soviet military. This in turn triggered more resistance by ethnic Lithuanians. All told, the clashes left 14 civilians dead and almost 1,000 more injured.
Russia's post-Soviet narrative
Turning back to the present: Russia has turned up the pressure on on the Baltics, and there is widespread fear throughout the region that Moscow's threatening rhetoric matches the words that preceded its actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Among other moves, Moscow has placed Lithuania's commercial exports on its anti-EU sanctions list.
Against this backdrop, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily this week interviewed author Vladislav Shved, whose book, roughly translated into English as "Lithuania against Russia and Alpha," recounts the fateful events of early 1991.
The sentiments expressed in the interview are a good barometer of how Lithuania's anti-Soviet resistance is seen in Russian policy circles - and what that could mean as Russia contemplates future actions in the post-Soviet space.
Shved recalls the rise of anti-Russian sentiment in Lithuania in the lead-up to 1991, drawing parallels with the attitudes of the Ukrainians who gathered at Maidan Square in Kiev at the end of 2013.
"(Then Soviet premiere) Gorbachev thought that he would be accepted into the European house after he let go of the Baltics, and he turned a blind eye to what was happening there. He was a dilettante and did not know Russia's history. Tsarist Russia was hounded as much (by the West) as today Russia is!"
The author alludes to the actions of the Soviet elite military detachments sent to pacify Lithuanians in 1991, and he notes ongoing Lithuanian parliamentary proceedings against former Soviet leaders:
"Following instructions from Washington - and Lithuania is accustomed to working with such instructions - today's Lithuanian parliamentarians have decided that is is necessary to finish Russia off. Namely, it is necessary to prove that Russia is the successor of a criminal state. And when 79 former Soviet - and now Russian - citizens are judged and found to be war criminals (for their actions in storming the afore-mentioned TV tower), Lithuania will then be able to claim that Russia is the successor state to a criminal entity and must be held morally and financially responsible."
Shved hints that Lithuanian leaders orchestrated the actions that culminated in the storming of the tower:
"A hastily conducted independence referendum gathered less then 40 percent of support across Lithuania in 1991...The separatists tried to accelerate the course of events, because they knew that they wouldn't get two-thirds of the vote in an official referendum. They then staged a tragedy at the TV tower in order to assure Lithuanians that the Soviet regime is criminal. Events in January 1991 had to unfold in such a way as to come off as bloody as possible..."
Shved, who was part of the ruling Communist Party government in Lithuania until 1991, then outlines a list of territorial concessions granted Lithuania in the Soviet era. Noting with particular sharpness that Vilnius, the country's capital, was among those concessions, the author accuses contemporary Lithuanians of being ungrateful for their country's post-WWII reality.
Such rhetoric is hardly new, but in the context of rising tensions between Russian and Lithuania it is rather worrisome. The three Baltic nations are NATO and EU members, but Russia may have considerable leverage over Latvia and Estonia - in both countries, more than 25 percent of the population is ethnically Russian. The same cannot be said of Lithuania, which has a very small ethnic Russian minority, though it maintains extensive commercial contacts with the Russian Federation. In order to increase pressure on this small country, Russia has to establish a narrative that discredits Lithuania's post-independence achievements.
The Shved interview offers a glimpse at how Russia plans to do this: He points out the Soviet pasts of officials including Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis, who, Shved points out, was a KGB informant before he was a Russophobe.
"Now the Lithuanian leadership is trying to completely neutralize its Soviet past, presenting it in dark colors in order to demonstrate its heroic role in breaking free of Soviet slavery."
This book could have come and gone, as have sundry similar litanies by former Soviet apparatchiks who wish 1991 never happened. But in 2014, the agitations of former Soviet officials such as Shved warrant a closer look. Elections in neighboring Latvia, for instance, recently brought to power a pro-Russian political party, and Balts are now left wondering whether their political future truly lies with the West, or will instead be sketched around an accommodation with Russia - however uncomfortable that may be.
