By Ed Staskus
Ever since the Russians were forced out of Lithuania in the early 1990s, the many signs that they were there for half a century have been cancelled, one after the other. It has been slow but sure. Whenever a Russian statue or display or signage disappears, it is not coming back, unless it is by force of arms. One-time colonized countries rarely if ever welcome their former colonizers back with open arms.
Eight years ago, four Russian statues were removed from the Green Bridge in Vilnius, the capital of the Baltic country. The statues depicted workers, farmers, students, and soldiers in Soviet-era heroic fashion. The soldiers marched with guns and the workers marched with the tools to make the guns. The students marched with their propaganda primers and the farmers looked far afield at grain they believed was theirs to take. Dalia Grybauskaite, the President of Lithuania, said she was “glad they are gone.”
The statues weren’t holiday gifts from Moscow. They were Trojan Horse gifts. They were status symbols and markers of significance. They said in no uncertain terms that Russia was in charge and Lithuanians had to bring up the rear, even if it was their own homeland. The Russians were the boss men. They had the soldiery. They went about their business with the proposition that power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
The mayor of Sovetsk in Kaliningrad, next door to Lithuania, said he was willing to take the statues. “If these sculptures aren’t needed in Vilnius, that means we’ll have them here.” However, his city didn’t have any money to pay for the goods. They were broke. Now that their fiefdoms were free lands, Moscow had gotten stingy. Vilnius’s mayor, Remigijus Simasius, suggested the statues could be exchanged for stolen historical artifacts in Russia’s possession. Lithuania’s Culture Minister Sarunas Birutis was skeptical about Russian cooperation. “We can dream,” he said. “Sometimes dreams come true.”
One-time archaeologist turned entrepreneur Pavelas Puzyna is one Lithuanian who doesn’t think Soviet-era imagery being made to disappear is necessarily a good thing. It’s not that he thinks Russians are good guys and deserve a break. Far from it. “My opinion on the Soviet Union and the Soviet occupation of Lithuania is very bad,” he said. “Russia has been an imperialist invader for centuries. Like Ayn Rand said, ‘Russia is the most ugly country on earth.’ Everybody says that the USA is bad but they never talk about Russia occupying and influencing half of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Baltic countries should have been left alone by Russia.”
The issue he has is he doesn’t believe the baby should be thrown out with the bath water. “Most of the art pieces, murals, and signs being taken down have nothing to do with ideology,” he said. “They are logos. They are shop signs and restaurant signs. They have nothing to with Communism. We should preserve them. They are a memory thing.”
Lithuania is an old country. Its history goes back to settlements founded 10,000-some years ago. The first written record of its name goes back to 1009. It has plenty to remember. “If an older person sees an old sign that’s been restored, he’ll be really glad to see it,” Pavelas said. “He’ll think, that’s where I used to shop when I was young. A teenager might look at a strange logo and wonder, what the hell is that? He gets curious. That kind of thing makes our place more interesting.”
Storefront signs have been around a long time. The Romans got “OPEN” going first thing in the morning thousands of years ago. Their signs were by and large visual, leading the way to eateries and shops on the street and government offices like the Questor’s, who collected taxes. The taxman’s signs were bigger than everybody else’s. The signs were visual because hardly anybody knew how to read. They were hand-carved and featured bright colors. The Industrial Revolution sped up sign making. They could be mass produced instead of being made entirely by hand. When light bulbs were invented in the late 19th century one of their first uses was illuminating displays. When plastic was invented signs could be made even faster and cheaper and before long everybody had their own town crier above the door. Today, signage manufacturers generate more than $50 billion in revenue.
“Say there is a nowhere village somewhere outside of Vilnius, only five or ten residents, and only one or two people ever visit the nowhere village,” Pavelas said. “Nobody wants to go there. How do we make it popular? We could do what a faraway Russian village did. They made up a fairy tale character. It was supposed to be a beautiful woman, although it turned out to be ugly. But it made the silly village popular. Everybody started making up memes about the statue.”
In spite of what Communism say, business rules the roost. China is the biggest communist state, by far. It is also the biggest capitalist state, by far. Russia pretends the socialist ideal is the ideal of their state. Behind the bright shining lie is the fact that in Russia it is every man for himself and God against all, no matter what the Kremlin and Orthodox Church poohbahs say. Karl Marx has been rolling over in his grave for nearly a hundred years. The revolution didn’t work out the way he thought it would.
Anything that is a sign of some kind is a signifier. It means they are indicators. They are symbols, images, and sounds that represent an underlying concept or meaning. For example, all linguistic signs are composed of two elements, the sensible sound image, which is the signifier, and the intelligible concept, which is the signified.
“All Soviet ideological monuments and Russian writers who don’t have anything in common with Lithuania should be removed,” Pavelas said. They have no meaning anymore. There is nothing signified anymore. “Those monuments are like a millstone. They are like a rock around our necks that says ‘Russia Was Here.’ Signs and art pieces that don’t have anything to do with Soviet ideology, like old shop signs, brutalist architecture, and folklore art pieces should be left in place.”
After World War Two almost everything for sale in Lithuania had its own shop. If you needed shoes, you went to a shoe store. If you needed milk you went to the milk store. If you needed meat, you went to a butcher shop. If you needed blue jeans you waited for your relatives in North America to send you a pair. “There were some so-called universal shops, but there were no supermarkets,” Pavelas said.
“They all had their own signs. The old signs were fashioned to fit the building and the space around it. They defined their space. The signs were like an art gallery. All the old signs were hand-made. They were made of metal. They had authors. Today they are just stamped out. There are no authors anymore. Everything is made of plastic. Are they going to be worth preserving one day? Not really, is what I think.”
Pavelas is a many-faceted young man. One of his many facets is tour guide. He tends to work in historical areas. He seeks them out. Signs are history, he says. “If we take down all the old signs, the old places become dull and forgotten. Most prewar Polish signs are gone. A lot of Soviet-era signs and art pieces are being destroyed. It’s tragic. I talk to old people all the time. They want to see the signs and murals remain.”
Lithuania is no different than most other Eastern European countries that were taken over by the Soviet Union after World War Two. Forty five years of Russian despotism didn’t make them many friends from the Balkans to the Baltics. The symbols of Soviet occupation had to go after Moscow lost control of the lands they had occupied. It was necessary if not inevitable. Nobody wants to wear the down-presser man’s old clothes.
Statues of Lenin, Stalin, and Dzerzhinsky were the first to go. They started to come down soon after 1991. Monuments of Russian tanks and soldiers were removed. The red star and the hammer and sickle were sent away to the garbage dump. Even some Russian-inflected statues in graveyards were removed. Violeta Davoliute, a professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University, has a different take on how to deal with symbols from the past. “Is it just a wreath or are there other symbols? If they don’t symbolize Soviet military power, then they should be left standing,” she said.
Gvidas Rutkauskas, who is the Chairman of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees, doesn’t agree that everything has to go, despite having been born in Siberia where both of his parents were deported. “After all, it’s part of our history,” he said. He drew a line in the sand, however. “If there is a Soviet tank or symbols with the Soviet star on an important square in a city, then they should be removed,” he said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has sped up the process of Desovietisation. “The Ukraine war has changed everything,” Pavelas said. In December 2022 the Lithuanian Parliament passed a law banning the promotion of “totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies” in public places. The law provides a legal basis for removing “Soviet-era monuments, memorials, street names, and other objects from public spaces.” The law doesn’t apply to libraries and museums. Flea markets still sell Soviet-style memorabilia, from pioneer pins to military antiques.
“It’s sad how everything is disappearing,” Pavelas said. “A nine-story building with three 1970s stylized seagulls on it was recently being renovated. The art piece was non-ideological. When the renovation was done the art piece was gone. When I asked around, nobody seemed to know what had happened to it.” He said it made him angry, although there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“One of my favorite streets in Vilnius is Volunteer St.,” Pavelas said. “There were lots of Soviet-era factories on the street and around the neighborhood. The Elfa factory had a beautiful thunderstorm logo. The Sparta factory was the biggest stocking manufacturer in the Baltics. They had a large mural there from 1965 of three women working at knitting wheels. There was zero Communism in the mural. It was done in a graphite technique by scratching the image into the concrete wall. When you are making it, If you mess it up, there’s no going back.”
The building was slated for demolition. “The demolition men promised to save the mural but it’s difficult to do. I knew it was probably going to be taken down. Even though they promised, the whole wall is disappearing.” Once it disappears there will be no bringing the past back. When it’s gone the present becomes like a tree without roots. It is a sign of the times. “In some ways, Vilnius is getting more and more dull,” Pavelas said.
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.
A New Thriller by Ed Staskus
“Cross Walk”
“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books
“Captures the vibe of mid-century NYC.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction
Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRPSFPKP
Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.
Lithuanian Journal 