What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  Hot Spots

  Riga: The liveliest and biggest of the Baltic capitals (population 800,000), riveting Riga rises along the Daugava River, a hodgepodge of styles, colors, and shapes—filled with artists, chic restaurants, and wild bars where the partying carries on late.

  Jurmala: This stunning stretch of white-sand beach on the Baltic Sea is edged with thick pines. Peeking out from the trees are nineteenth-century wooden houses—some regal and towered, some tiny birdhouses—and a valued part of Riga’s architectural legacy. Half of Riga moves here in the summer.

  Cesis: History runs deep all around here, including in the recently excavated tenth-century village that’s now an open-air architectural museum.

  Art nouveau capital Riga is layered in architectural history

  Latvian saying: We don’t have four seasons here, just two winters: white winter and green winter.

  Ventspils: Typically, about one-sixth of Russia’s oil exports run out of this Baltic port; transit fees and related income sometimes contribute about one-sixth of Latvia’s GDP.5 Whenever Russia gets ticked, however, they shut off the pipeline, slamming the local economy.

  Schools: Requirements that ethnic Russian students take several courses in Latvian is making schools a high-pressure zone. Russia recently donated history books to schools; they’re in Russian, of course.

  Hotshots

  Vaira Vike-Freiberga: President, 1999–present. When she was a child, Vike-Freiberga’s family fled incoming Soviets, but while she was a psychology professor in Montreal, she became intrigued with centuries-old Latvian folk songs, called dainas; Latvians have over a million and still sing them. “They’re like a [musical] folk encyclopedia,” she says—with topics ranging from ethics and aesthetics to “herding cattle and harvesting” and “what plants to pick for dying wool.” Becoming a daina expert, she was invited back to Latvia in 1999 to open Riga’s Latvian Institute. Stepping off the plane, she was greeting by the media asking, “We’ve heard you might be a presidential candidate—would you stand?” It was news to her—and she laughed off the rumors that swirled for six months; two days before the election, however, she was indeed asked to run. She won.

  Latvian legend holds that the country would become powerful and prosperous under the guidance of a woman leader. Recently, Latvia’s economy has been expanding at around 10 percent.6

  Aigars Kalvitis: Prime Minister, 2004–present. In the third change of the premier in 2004, the PM chair holds Kalvitis of the People’s Party, whose name there is probably no point in memorizing.

  Alina Lebedeva: Can we say “little troublemaker”? The ethnic Russian teen made Latvia front-page news in 2002, when she slapped British Prince Charles with a carnation—a protest against his pro-Iraq war stance. She made local news again in 2004, when she was suspected of torching the ministry of education for its policy of increasing the number of Latvian classes taught in schools.

  President Vaira Vike-Freiberga: Smart, kind, beloved

  Vladimir Zhirinovsky: Parliamentarian in Russia’s Duma. Russia’s radical right-winger typically wins over 13 percent of Russian votes and is the symbolic manifestation of Russia’s obsession with Latvia. Wants Alaska back, too.

  DRINKING MATTERS

  Concocted since 1725 from a secret recipe of twenty-four herbs, flowers, and roots, black goo Riga Balsams cures even leprosy, Latvians claim; the caraway seed stars in bitter liqueur Kümmel, favored by golfers. Created for then-ruler Peter the Great, Latvians so highly regard their Kümmel that the government ships a case to Queen Elizabeth every year. Nobody knows whether she actually touches it.

  22. LITHUANIA

  (Lietuva)

  The Wild Child

  FAST FACTS

  Country: Republic of Lithuania; Lietuvos Respublika

  Capital: Vilnius

  Government: Parliamentary democracy

  Independence: March 11, 1990 (from Soviet Union)

  Population: 3,586,000 (2006 estimate)

  Head of State: President Valdus Adamkus (2004)

  Head of Government: Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas (2001)

  Elections: President elected by popular vote for five-year term; prime minister appointed by president, approved by parliament

  Name of Parliament: Seima

  Ethnicity: 83% Lithuanian; 6% Russian; 7% Polish; 4% other

  Religion: 79% Roman Catholic; 10% none; 4% Russian Orthodox; 2% Protestant; 5% other

  Language: 82% Lithuanian (official); 8% Russian; 6% Polish

  Literacy: 99%

  Famous Exports: Fictional captain Marko Ramius (Hunt for Red October), Maury Povich’s grandparents; assorted NBA players, including Darius Songaila (Chicago Bulls) and Arvydas Sabonis (ex–Portland Trail Blazer)

  Economic Big Boy: Mazeikiu Nafta (petrochemical); 2003 revenues: €1.54 billion (about $1.9 billion)1

  Per Capita GDP: $13,900 (2005)

  Unemployment: 6.9% (January 2006 Eurostat figure)

  EU Status: Entered May 2004

  Currency: Lithuanian litas

  Quick Tour

  Lietuva looks deceptively sleepy—starting with mellow Vilnius and her pretty Baroque buildings and Catholic churches, where the religious line up for blessings with juniper twigs that sweep evil spirits away. Mud spas are set deep in pine forests, time ticks away slowly in Klaipeda’s Clock Museum, the stunning castle complex on an island at Trakai looks as mighty as it did when built in the fifteenth century, and little happens along the curious Curonian Spit, a sixty-mile pine-dotted sand bar that stretches between lagoon and sea—except that it’s slowly disappearing. Appearances to the contrary, Lithuanians are the most passionate—some might say headstrong—of the Balts. And they never get the credit they deserve for yanking on the thread that unwove the tapestry of the Soviet Union. Except, that is, from Russian parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who condemned Lithuania as “the republic from which comes the disease that destroyed.”

  THE REVOLUTIONARY LEADERS: SAJUDIS

  Lithuanians were the nerviest dissenters this side of Solidarity—perhaps nervier. Unlike Poland’s union, they had neither large numbers nor huge international support behind them—and their country wasn’t a satellite, but a Soviet republic, whose supplies Moscow could turn off with a phone call. Early on, Lithuanians dramatically showed their disdain: in 1972, student Romas Kalanta registered his protest by setting himself ablaze. His dramatic death by fire led to a rebellion in the streets that took the army to quell. An underground current of dissidence carried on, encouraged by the Catholic Church. And when Gorbachev announced his reform ideas in 1985, Lithuanians saw a slender crack that they could rip apart.

  Led by music professor Vytautas Landsbergis, the Lithuanian independence movement, Sajudis, first grew from writers, professors, and scholars who loudly condemned the repressive force of the Soviet Union. Sajudis demanded that Soviets admit to the mass deportations to gulags and to signing the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—both taboo topics. Sajudis denounced the Russian occupation during World War II and announced that Soviets had no claim to Lithuania since their forced annexation was illegal. The Lithuanian parliament proclaimed that Lithuania’s laws took precedence over Moscow’s, and in 1990 the local Communist Party severed itself from party headquarters in Moscow—allowing other political entities to run. Sajudis won in a landslide. In March 1990, Landsbergis, as parliament’s chairman, did what no other leader of a Soviet republic dared: he declared Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union. Furious, Gorbachev cut off oil supplies; even shipments of paper were banned—as if eliminating the press would eliminate Moscow’s problem. It didn’t: demands for independence grew louder. In January 1991, the Soviet army rolled in, targeting Vilnius’s TV station and broadcasting tower. Tens of thousands of Lithuanians blocked the way; some were beaten back with rifle butts, some were crushed by tanks. The Soviet army killed thirteen and injured hundreds in the only violent confrontation of the Singing Revolution. Even when Soviets seized the communi
cation tower, Lithuanians wouldn’t give up: instead they went to the polls. In February 1991, Lithuanians voted for independence. Parliament again announced that Lithuania was a free sovereign independent country. Six months later, Moscow (and the rest of the world) came to the same conclusion.

  Lithuanians are considered the friendliest Balts, Lithuanian men are the most dashing, and the landscapes—golden dunes swirling around fishing villages for instance—are the most dramatic, as are Lithuania’s problems. The things that Lithuania most stands out for these days are the two that are most scary: her creepy Ignalina plant—a Soviet-made ticking time bomb of a nuclear reactor—and the organized crime that is always lurking about. Politically, too, the country is shaky: impeachments, bribery, and corruption—and presidents who refuse to step down after being ousted—are just part of the terrain.

  NUCLEAR ALARM

  The eerie Ignalina nuclear plant that provided nearly 80 percent of Lithuania’s electricity and employs 5,000 workers was a Soviet idea—which is to say a bad one. The same gas-graphite design as Chernobyl, Ignalina is so shoddy that after the European Union spent a mountain of money trying to fix it, they concluded it was best just to seal it up—pronto. Terrorists also targeted Ignalina. In 1992, an employee intentionally introduced a computer virus, and the cooling system shut down. Two years later, a Lithuanian national demanded $8 million to prevent the plant from being attacked; shortly thereafter, the leader of the Vilnius Brigade—a notorious branch of the Russian-Polish-Lithuanian mob—threatened to bomb the plant if his son, facing the death penalty, was executed. The son was executed, and the plant was temporarily closed and kept under high security for several months, especially after German intelligence called up with info that the threat was quite real. Recently an unexploded grenade was found on the premises. The first reactor was shut down in 2005; the second will be sealed up in 2009. Decommissioning price tag: $2 billion, most of it picked up by the EU. Until then, tick, tick, tick.

  Should you want to get the latest radiation levels, there’s a Geiger counter displayed in the town center, a mile away from the Ignalina plant.

  Latvia and Estonia aren’t much alike, but Lithuania is really the Baltic oddball. Her history is wrapped up with Poland—with whom she once coruled much of Europe—and while Estonians and Latvians are usually Protestant (mostly nonpracticing), Lithuanians are devoutly Catholic. The other two are physically and mentally closer to the relatively wholesome Nordic countries, while Lithuania is in the thick of a black-market undercurrent, including trafficking of Lithuanian girls. With smuggling center Kaliningrad—a Russian enclave—and twisted Belarus as two of her borders, it’s no wonder that, despite occasional crackdowns, the wheels of the country are just hard to scrub squeaky clean: they’re being oiled by Mafia and local thugs who throw their weight around in politics and are known to warn off journalists who take a close look.

  Vitas Lingys, a twenty-seven-year-old writer for Lithuanian paper Respublika, was shot down outside his house in 1993, after publishing a piece about the Vilnius Brigade—and while researching another concerning the Brigade’s arms smuggling. Boris Dekanidze, son of the Brigade’s boss, was found guilty of ordering the hit and executed in 1994.

  Given that this is corruption-prone Lithuania and that the petroleum biz is notoriously dirty, one figures that all isn’t lily-white at Lithuania’s biggest moneymaker, the Mazeikiu oil refinery—which Russia seems intent on latching on to, one way or another.

  STICKY POLITICS

  U.S.-based Williams Holdings bought out the Mazeikiu oil refinery in 1999, fueling a huge flap. The prime minister stormed out of office in protest (the Baltic News reported that he was actually pushed out for alleged bribery) and Russia, which runs the pipelines to the refinery, halted crude oil supplies and effectively shut down the operation. After Williams hooked up with Russian oil company Yukos, the spigots were turned back on, and Yukos bought out Williams in 2002. However, Yukos declared bankruptcy in early 2006—and now Lithuania wants to sell off most of the company. Russia’s state-controlled petrol company Lukoil is predicted to become a major stakeholder, which means that, in boardrooms at least, Russia will continue to run much of the Lithuanian show. Yukos, however, may throw a wrench in that. The company that has had so many problems with the Russian government wants to sell the operation to Poland major refiner Orlen—and keep Moscow out of the oil pot.

  Despite modern woes, there’s still something mysteriously compelling about Lithuania—the most undiscovered and some say the most fascinating of the Baltic States. And what makes her strange are her contrasts: the fervently Catholic country has a pagan foundation, and sites such as the Hill of Witches (filled with wooden sculptures) still dot the land alongside the chilling Hill of Crosses, a symbol of defiance against antireligious Communism. A statue of Frank Zappa—an inspiring voice to dissidents—rises up in Vilnius near the plaque commemorating a 2002 visit from President George W. Bush. And while the KGB Museum keeps memories of the Soviet occupation painfully vivid—former inmates give the tour past padded cells that not long ago muffled screams—Stalin World, Lithuania’s warped amusement park, plays up the absurd. “Disney meets the Gulag” is how Stalin World’s owner, a mushroom mogul, describes his theme park of wire fences and watchtowers, where propaganda blares from loudspeakers and actors dressed as Lenin and Stalin bark orders to comrades. At least Stalin World provides a home for six dozen toppled Soviet statues, now very passé, but some are concerned about the park’s future plans to transport tourists here in cattle wagons to offer the full deportation experience.

  History Review

  Like the other Baltic States, Lithuania was originally an outpost for crusading Germanic knights. But unlike the other two, Lithuania was later a partner in an evolved kingdom that ruled much of Central Europe. She’s since had a stormy relationship with Poland, her historical sibling and friend.

  WELL, THANKS NEIGHBOR!

  Lithuania and Poland were once ruled by the same family. The Lithuanian king wed the Polish princess in the fourteenth century, their union launching a three-centuries-long golden period for both: their lands stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the place was thick with thinkers and creative types, and they had a powerful parliament that elected the king. Even after their kingdom fell apart, the Poles and Lithuanians remained close friends, living side by side in Vilnius, which in 1895 was grabbed by Russia. The Poles, however, forgot all about the warm gushy feelings at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. When lobbying for Poland’s new boundaries, Polish diplomats tried to snatch Lithuania back, explaining that Lithuanians were an insignificant little tribe that really belonged to Poland.2 The cartographers didn’t fully buy it, but Lithuanians were furious—all the more so when Polish leader Pilsudski militarily claimed the capital Vilnius and environs. (To be fair, Poles made up half of Vilnius’s residents—and wanted to join with Poland.) Lithuanians did get their own country from the Paris cartographers—but it was a small patch of their original land. (They promptly snatched some of Germany.) For years they fumed over the matter, slamming shut the border between the two countries, severing all diplomatic relations, and naming Vilnius as their capital even if she wasn’t in their borders; nevertheless, most Lithuanians refused to fight the Poles when ordered to do so by the Germans in the Second World War. For the Lithuanians, World War II had but one good result: it brought back Vilnius and environs. (Unfortunately, Russia, who returned the lost lands to Lithuania after taking Poland, was also included in the package.) Another sore point: Poland waited until the U.S. gave the okay before recognizing Lithuanian independence in 1991.

  The religious tolerance of the former kingdom brought Jews from all corners to Vilnius, starting in the fourteenth century. So many arrived that Vilnius was dubbed “the Jerusalem of the North.” Almost the entire group was killed or fled during the Nazi occupation, and Jews say that Lithuanians, many of whom were complicit with the Germans, turned them in—a source of lingering vitriol. Whil
e Nazis targeted Jews, the Lithuanians were hounded by Soviets, who didn’t tolerate their authority-questioning attitude. Between 1940 and 1958, some 200,000 Lithuanians were imprisoned or sent to work camps—some run by Nazis, others by Soviets who pulled Lithuania into the Soviet Union after World War II.

  During the 1800s, when Russia imposed Russian as the sole language, valiant Bishop Valancius kept the Lithuanian language alive by having Lithuanian books printed in Germany and smuggling them in. He also started secret schools, since nineteenth-century Russians weren’t keen on educating the masses.

  As in Poland, Lithuania’s devotion to Catholicism helped offset Communistic brainwashing. Lithuanians were spirited resisters against Soviet occupation in the 1940s, but Russians shipped off most intellectuals and protesters to the gulag. Secret stashes of arms had mostly been uncovered by Soviets by the 1950s. But dissidence lived on, thanks to small printing presses that Soviets could never completely root out. One publication that egged on resistance: the secret journal of the local Catholic Church.

  Hill of Crosses, a symbol of Lithuanian resistance

  HILL OF CROSSES (KRYZIU KALNAS)

  The spirit (and perhaps spirits) of feisty Lithuanians are embedded in this holy hill covered by a thick jungle of crosses. Over 50,000 crosses stand here—the earliest dating back to the 1300s. Many, however, appeared during the Soviet era as metaphors of anti-Russian protest and anger. Soviets kept steamrolling them down and they mysteriously kept popping back up. Even today the hill is surreal: it can induce shivers when the many crosses rattle about in the wind.