So the gas is out

There is not a single gas stove in Visaginas, Lithuania. “We are a city of nuclear scientists,” Alikas Milko, head of the local mayor's office, says proudly. “Where there was a dense forest, the pipes of the INPP shot up!” This lyrical work of Soviet physicists still hangs as an epigraph on the city website. And the walls of the city hall are decorated with calendars for 2008 and 2009 with views of the red and white pipes of the Ignalina nuclear power plant against the idyllic backdrop of picturesque lakes and pine groves of independent Lithuania. The calendars were issued to remind: if nothing is done, the Ignalina nuclear power plant, which supplies electricity to 70% of the country, will be finally stopped on December 31, 2009.

On October 12, elections to the Seimas and a referendum against the shutdown of the nuclear power plant, initiated by the Lithuanian right, were held simultaneously. At the end of perestroika, supporters of Lithuanian independence demanded that the USSR close the station. Now the Europeans are demanding this, and almost all Lithuanian politicians, including the local "greens", are in favor of extending the life of the old nuclear power plant, but the ruling conservatives and social democrats, opponents of rapprochement with Russia, are more desperate than others: there will be no nuclear power plant - only Russian gas will remain.

A city without a single gas stove is the dream of current Lithuanian President Valdis Adamkus, one of the most implacable critics of Russian politics. Almost all of Lithuania's gas comes from Russia, and Adamkus, a former environmental activist, has announced that shutting down Ignalina would make the country completely energy dependent. But there is nowhere to go: stopping the nuclear power plant was one of the conditions under which Lithuania signed when joining the EU. The moment of full energy dependence is approaching, and political parties are coming to power in Lithuania that advocate a calmer tone and sober calculation in relations with Russia. After their victory, they will elect a new president to replace Adamkus, who shares their views. Anticipating the outcome of Sunday's elections, Lithuanian conservatives have already called them "an occupation scheduled for October 12."

LEAKED FRIENDSHIP

This turn in policy is happening naturally, without direct pressure from Russia. Unless, of course, we do not count as pressure the shutdown of the suddenly rusted Druzhba oil pipeline two years ago and the gas price - the highest in Europe - $500 per thousand cubic meters.

“Russia is our neighbor, but we pay more for Russian gas than Germany. Why are we being punished? Good neighbors don't do that!" Rimantas Vaitkus, former Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Social Democrat, wondered in a conversation with Newsweek. A day later, on October 7, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitekunas repeated his words almost verbatim. "The price of gas has no economic justification, and I don't really understand why Russia is punishing us." However, at the end of his speech, he added: “We need a reasonable balance between values ​​and pragmatics.”

In recent years, Lithuania has never become the main enemy of the Kremlin, which Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia and Georgia have been in turn. But Moscow is clearly offended. It was Adamkus, together with Viktor Yushchenko and Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who flew to Tbilisi in August as part of Saakashvili's support group. At the emergency EU summit dedicated to the war in Georgia, Lithuania was louder than others in demanding economic sanctions against Russia, and in the spring of 2008 it vetoed the start of negotiations on a new basic agreement between Russia and the EU. In June, the Lithuanian Seimas banned Soviet symbols, equating them with fascist ones. And in the summer, when Poland bargained with the United States in the negotiations on missile defense, information appeared that Lithuania was also ready to accept American anti-missiles.

Conservative MP Audronius Ažubalis agrees that all this is costing the country dearly. “Two years ago, the Druzhba oil pipeline suddenly leaked - it was simply closed for Lithuania. Now we get the same Russian oil, but not directly through the pipeline, but through the seaport, and this increases its cost, ”he tells Newsweek.

AMBER DEMOCRACY

“Here are Shakespeare's plays in Yiddish, this is Krylov, and this is Lermontov. Would you like me to show you “Capital” in Yiddish?” - 86-year-old Fanya Brantsovskaya carefully removes rare volumes from the top shelf. Brantsovskaya works as a librarian at the Yiddish Institute of Vilnius University, but now her head is not occupied with books at all. Fanya is one of three Soviet partisans accused by the Lithuanian Prosecutor General of war crimes. Brantsovskaya is sure that this is a pre-election action of the right, who are playing the national and communist card.

The newspaper Lietuvos Rytas announced that the first prime minister of independent Lithuania, the head of the Peasants' Party, Kazimira Prunskienė, was a KGB agent. The journalists drew this conclusion from an interview where Prunskene tells how difficult it was for her to get permission to travel to the GDR in the early 1980s. “These are all bearded topics,” says Justinas Karosas, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Sejm. “One of the opponents in my single-mandate constituency undertook to prove that my last name is actually Karasik and that I am Russian.”

The rightists say that a pro-Russian fifth column is about to seize power in Lithuania. It includes the leader of one of the major parties - "Order and Justice" - the ex-president of Lithuania Rolandas Paksas. In 2003, he won the presidential election, and a year later, the Seimas impeached him. Then the Department of State Security unearthed that during the presidential campaign Paksas received help from Russian businessmen.

Viktor Uspaskikh, the leader of another major party, Trudovoy, is generally Russian. “There is something of an adventure novel in his biography,” says Vladas Gaidis, director of the public opinion research center Vilmorus. “A welder from the Arkhangelsk region has become a millionaire in Lithuania and, although he speaks Lithuanian with an accent and gets into various dark stories, he is very popular with the people.” The walls of Uspaski's residence in the center of Kėdainiai are decorated with amber paintings depicting views of his homeland. After the Sejm banned street campaigns and tours with the participation of artists in June, for the sake of the purity of the elections, Uspaskikh himself learned to tap dance and went on a tour of the rural hinterland with this number.

There are no non-citizens in Lithuania, and the Russian minority is only 6.3% - this is a fundamental difference from Latvia and Estonia with their huge and problematic Russian communities. Russians in Lithuania even less than in other Baltic countries vote for their national parties. Valery Tretyakov, editor of Lithuania's largest Russian-language newspaper, Lithuanian Courier, says he doesn't see a single truly pro-Russian party at all. “Now there is not a single force that would like to incorporate Lithuania into Russia,” Vladas Gaydis, head of Vilmorus, confirms.

In the center of Vilnius, German and Dutch schoolchildren are noisy everywhere - during lunch they occupy all restaurants and coffee houses. For them, Vilnius is already like a home. Lithuania has long been a part of Europe. Sociologists assure: Lithuanians also feel great in the European Union. According to Eurobarometer sociologists, 74% of the population is in favor of European integration. It's not just about moods: once in the European Union, Lithuanians first of all went to work - in 4 years, almost 0.5 million people left Lithuania abroad.

And the democracy here is the kind that a small European country can afford: 1657 candidates, 16 parties, claimed the 141st seat in the Sejm. Back in the summer, the Lithuanian Peasant Party of former Prime Minister Kazimira Prunskienė entered into an alliance with Viktor Uspaskikh and Rolandas Paksas. This coalition cannot be called pro-Russian, but all three leading politicians said they were ready to unite in order to improve relations with Russia. Now Algirdas Brazauskas can join them.

A veteran of Soviet and Lithuanian politics, former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Republic, former President of Lithuania and head of the Social Democratic Party, Brazauskas ceded his powers in the party to Gediminas Kirkilas, the current Prime Minister, about two years ago and retired. But six months ago, he began to publicly criticize the activities of his successor Kirkilas and President Adamkus, including their harsh anti-Russian course. And then they started talking that Brazauskas had begun consultations with Kazimira Prunskienė on the creation of an electoral alliance.

According to polls conducted after the Russian-Georgian war, 47% of respondents in Lithuania feel threatened by Moscow, but the majority want relations between the countries to improve. There was even a demand for nostalgic moods. Politicians are racing to get Soviet sports veterans to cooperate.

The former captain of the Zalgiris football team (the namesake of the legendary basketball club), and now a candidate from the Frontas party, Rimantas Turskis, admits that he often recalls the warm welcome that he and his friend, basketball player Sabonis, once received in Moscow. “Relations with Russia are not very good now,” admits Turskis. “But my friends and I are against a quarrel with your country.”

Some remember even earlier times. Seimas deputy Audronius Ažubalis recalls how the sons of Grand Duke Gediminas, the founder of Lithuania, married Russian princesses: “Do Putin and Medvedev have daughters? Maybe we should marry yours?”