Paul Goble
Staunton, July 17 – Because there
are no non-citizens in Lithuania and because the percentage of ethnic Russians
there is miniscule, most discussions about that country’s future ignore the
ethnic issue. But a Rosbalt commentator says that conflicts among Lithuanians,
Poles and Belarusians threaten to become “’a bomb’ under Eastern Europe.”
Russian commentators have often
pointed to the fact that both Belarusians and Poles often view Lithuania’s
capital Vilnius as “theirs” because it was not part of Lithuania until Stalin
made it so, but neither Warsaw nor Minsk has made this an issue. Nonetheless,
Denis Lavinkevich says, there are tensions (rosbalt.ru/world/2017/07/14/1630598.html).
Not only are there
sizeable Polish and Belarusian communities in Lithuania – the former outnumber
the ethnic Russian one there and the latter may be larger than many think, but
Lithuania counts on the contribution these two countries make to its economic
well-being, Belarus by transit arrangements and Belarusians by purchases.
Indeed, the commentator says, “Vilnius
along with Warsaw and Prague is now one of the centers of the new Belarusian
emigration, that is, of those who have ‘run from Lukashenka,’” including the
European Humanities University which relocated from Minsk to the Lithuanian
capital.
Moreover, there is “the religious factor.” Vilnius’ churches are clearly divided into “’Lithuanian,’
‘Polish,’ and ‘Belarusian,’” and there are “almost no Orthodox among Poles and
Lithuanians.” And since 1991, Lavinkevich
says, “a generation of people has grown up in Lithuania, Poland and Belarus
which is convinced that ‘Vilnius is our city.’”
Among Belarusians, Viktor Yevmenenko
of the Belarus Security Blog says, such feeling are especially strong, and
today, he insists, “Vilnius for Belarusians is the very same that Mount Ararat
is for Armenians. Belarus without Vilnius, like Armenia without Ararat is like
someone without a heart.”
According to Lavinkevich, the Polish
and Belarusian communities in Lithuania are strengthening because new arrivals
find it easier to fit into firms that are controlled and dominated by their co-ethnics.
Andzhey Pochobut, a Belarusian
journalist of Polish origin, says that “territorial problems in
Polish-Lithuanian relations don’t exist … [But] at the same time, Vilnius is an
important city for Polish history and in Lithuania lives a Polish minority,
which unfortunately doesn’t have the rights which Lithuanians living in Poland
do.”
He points out that “there are
problems with the writing of Polish names in documents, with bilingualism in
places where Poles live compactly and so on.
All these issues should have been resolved long ago … but they remain a
problem in Lithuania. This seriously hurts reealtions between the countries.”
Indeed, Pochobut says, “there is a
threat that this problem could be used for the unleashing of a conflict between
official Warsaw and Vilnius.” He adds that “it is in the interests of both
states to eliminate the problems of the Polish minority as fast as possible and
resolve all problems in this area.”
Olga Karach, a Belarusian
businesswoman in Vilnius, says there is another problem, what she calls “’the
strange nationality,’ ‘Russian Poles.’” Most of these are “citizens of
Lithuania with Belarusian roots who succeed in ‘masking’ their background: if
needed, then they will ‘recall’ that they are Russians or on the contrary that
they are Poles.”
According to her, “among the Poles, ‘Russian
Poles’ are the city’s second largest nationality group, and there exists a
hidden conflict with the Lithuanians,” one “connected in the first instance
with the language question.”
Karach says that the Lithuanians
have brought this on themselves. After 1991, young Lithuanians did not want to
learn Russian anymore but young Russians did even as they acquired Lithuanian
as well. Now, the bilingual Russians find it easier to get jobs than do
Lithuanians who don’t know Russian.
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