Another raging scandal about the looming Russian threat in Lithuania and the treacherous Putin administration which supposedly directed all its secret service resources against Vilnius has raised more questions than it has given answers.
The messages on delfi.lt that started the scandal on Thursday are wrought with contradictions as if written in hurry. First the authors said, sourcing the SSD, that “Russian secret services had received a mission to start active search through the archives for information that may compromise men and women who were in service during the USSR days and currently occupy high government positions. Then, almost unbeknownst even to themselves, the journalists changed their opinion and stated that “Russia’s methods will remain the same as usual – disinformation and compromise via unveiling of falsified documents, which are supposedly found in Russia’s State Archives and testimonies of “new-found” witnesses.”
It seems even the omnipresent Lithuanian State Security Department can’t make up their mind whether the ruthless KGB must find dummy witnesses and falsify documents or actually dig through the dusty archives and find the unsightly pages from the biographies of Lithuania’s politicians? And if they do need some “fakes” from the archives, then why send the secret service after it?
But even more surprising is Vilnius’s reaction to the impending “provocation” which turned out to be quite comical. Lithuanian politicians were akin to the characters from the Funtik cartoon, who while hiding the piglet at their place, preemptively tell the detectives “We are not acquainted with the criminal Funtik!” Also Vilnius declared that soon information concerning the president and other Lithuanian politicians’ Soviet past will be uncovered, but it will be all lies and provocations! How can one accuse someone of falsifying information, when it hasn’t been released yet?
Everyone in Vilnius knows that each and every one of them, especially president Grybauskaite has their own “Funtik” who they now don’t want to be acquainted with.
And apparently, this secret is not that simple, seeing as it causes such anti-Russian hysteria before even being uncovered. And this is when Dalia Grybauskaite already has plenty pages of “soviet biography” which don’t go too well with the image of the protector of independent Lithuania.
So these facts that scare Vilnius must be a lot more interesting than, for example the well-known story that Grybauskaite taught political economics in Vilnius high party school until 1990 and was an active member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
These facts must also be scarier than the information that the father of the current Lithuanian president Polikarp Grybauskas worked in the NKVD. He may have been just a policeman but even that fact was hidden for a long time by Grybauskaite. Because no matter how you look at it, the mere abbreviation NKVD is synonymous to soviet occupation to the Lithuanian elite.
It would appear that these new pages from Moscow archives are more dangerous to Grybauskaite than what the Lithuanians saw on TV-3 in 2012. A little over a year ago, journalist Ruta Janutiene’s show Final echelon was scheduled to air. This show was supposed to tell how the head of Lithuania is presumably of Polish heritage and that when Lithuania was exiting the USSR, Grybauskaite not only didn’t fight for her country’s independence, but didn’t even share the goals of the forming national-oriented elite.
Janutiene was to tell the Lithuanian people that after the split in the Lithuanian Communist Party into those in favor and those against the Union, Grybauskaite remained loyal to Moscow and got a promotion in the party school. And later during the dramatic confrontation with soviet soldiers in Lithuania, she requested the party administration to give her vacation time in Drusininkai.
“What you’re about to hear has had many attempts to be said before”, said the preview for the Final Echelon, “Yet the programs never made it to the broadcast and the articles never reached the pages”. And this show didn’t make it to screens either. It was banned as “unethical” and then TV-3 cancelled its contract with Ruta Janutiene altogether. But the movie did make it to the internet and was available to the public.
But the news Vilnius awaits from the Kremlin, judging by the reactions of Lithuanian politicians are even more shocking.
Maybe it has something to do with how suspiciously long Grybauskaite studied in her university? She enrolled in the economic faculty of the Zhdanov Leningrad State University in 1976 and graduated only in 1983 after seven years. What could have forced the future Lithuanian fighter of everything Soviet and Russian stay the extra time? KGB courses, for example?
Lithuanian State Security Department knows how to keep the people guessing. Were it not for them, nobody would have been pondering over these questions right now. And now the appearance of any compromising archival documents is not even necessary.
Lithuanian secret service did exactly what they accused the Kremlin of doing - they forced everyone to believe in the multitude of skeletons hidden in the closets of the Lithuanian authorities.
Перевод статьи: Павел Шамшиев.
