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LITHUANIA IS STILL NOT FREE

Written by admin · 1 min read

With no anti-Soviet lustration (KGB and CPSU Party School are still the best qualifications in LT), the former Soviet communist nomenklatura returned to power in LT in 1992. They started running a “tight Soviet ship” (LT needs experience in government, they argued; and we know what kind of “experience” communists had) and no Western “contaminated” professionals needed to apply for government, academia or even business

positions; same story to this day!. For just one example of the communist purge: with no notice or explanation, I was thrown out of a scholarly reviewer function at LT Science Fund (Mokslo ir studiju fondas) when a Brazauskas comrade found out that I had such a “bad” anti-Soviet past. 

At the 1994 international conference at Vilnius University, Mr. A. Brazauskas lectured the international body of economists and management specialists that the Soviet system was an equally good alternative to any Western market economy and the Soviet system brought obviously great achievements to the LT people. I left that conference early not being able to cope with my shame (as a Lithuanian) before my distinguished international colleagues! 

Under the unrelenting nomenklatura propaganda, that is how Western Lithuanians started started to be disliked by LT people. I personally know most of those in diaspora who tried to do something good for LT in LT in the last over 20 years; almost all of them left LT in disgust and returned to their Western countries!

Don’t Come Back to LT! You will Steal my Job!

As a Soviet legacy, most LT people subscribe to the communist “lump of labor” fallacy, as the economic jargon has it: allegedly there is a limited and unchangeable number of jobs in the economy and you have to fight others to get your job in this zero sum game. 

If you, a Lithuanian, come from abroad (either in physical or digital way or both), you will steal at least part of my job, so I will do everything that you do not come from abroad to work for LT. Stretching this “Soviet logic” to the very end, the last man to leave LT is in the best situation: all jobs are available to him/her. The trouble is that this job is very specialized: turning off all the lights in LT:) 

As a Soviet legacy, most LT people do not yet understand that most jobs are created not via the communist party or other official agency decree but via the interaction of people in innovative processes in both the private and public sectors, the more diverse and intensive the interaction, the better the job creation, in LT for LT people! 

To continue the Soviet-style thinking, is to lose LT as a country. Nobody will wait for change much longer. 

Tertium non datur (lot. -trečio neduodama arba – viena iš dviejų – red. papild.)

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