Still looking at Tolerance in Lithuania

July 16, 2010

Pictures from a seminar talk on Tolerance Education in Lithuania, July 14, 2010, hosted by the Jewish Community of Lithuania. Moderated by Dovid Katz. Photos by Richard Scofield www.richardscofieldphotography.com

The 2009 Eurobarometer Survey on Discrimination in the EU revealed that Lithuanians thought their country was the most tolerant country in the European Union. Results showed that only 4% of respondents in Lithuania reported ever having seen anyone in Lithuania discriminated against based on their ethnic background, and while 26% said they believed that discrimination existed in Lithuania, it was the lowest number reported in all 27 EU countries. So, if Lithuanians are indeed the least discriminatory country in the EU then what has caused international media from the European Parliament to Amnesty International to paint a very different picture of “tolerance” in Lithuania, a country seemingly riddled with acts of anti-Semitism, homophobia, and racism that speak much louder than the self-reported results on the Eurobarometer? Is it that Lithuania is too homogenous to produce intolerance because everyone there really is so ethnically and culturally similar? Is it that Lithuanians, like many Americans in the age of political correctness, have learned what not to say even if it isn’t an accurate depiction of the situation there? Or is there something else going on?

It is important to note that the situation in Lithuania is more complicated than can be adequately addressed here, and there have been positive outcomes to reforms intended to promote democratic ideals and human rights, such as the Tolerance Education Centers that have been created in over 50 schools, as well as initiatives from other groups, such as the Tolerant Youth Association and many universities around the country. Still, it is intolerance that has come to mark Lithuania’s public image. Some of the events that have garnered the most international attention were the canceling of the 2010 Baltic Pride March (which was eventually allowed to take place with international pressure), the indictments of two Lithuanian Parliamentarians (Petras Grazulis and Kazimiras Uoka) who attacked police officers securing the protection of Baltic Pride Marchers; the recent legal decision to “reclaim” the swastika as a Lithuanian historic symbol; racist comments made in 2009 by the president of the Lithuanian Basketball Federation (Vladas Garastas) about black players; the 2009 amendment to the Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effects of Public Information outlawing any mention of alternative lifestyles (homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual) in places where minors frequent; the violent 2008 attack on Lithuanian Pop singer Berneen Čereška (originally from South Africa); the 2007 mayoral prohibition (by Juozas Imbrasas) of the EU sponsored anti-discrimination truck tour making stops in 19 cities as part of the 2007 EU Year for Equal Opportunities; and the controversial removal of gay rights ad in 2007 from Kaunas trolley buses because drivers refused to take these buses out on public streets.

With such a long list of intolerant events taking place in Lithuania (and there are others), what explains the perceived gap between perceptions of total tolerance by many Lithuanian citizens and the rise in intolerant acts chronicled by an international audience? Is it possible that the country has changed overnight? Is it a case of confusion about what constitutes acts of tolerance? Could it be that that the international media is guilty of sensationalism, only focusing on negative stories rather than the lives of ordinary individuals? Or is it that the rising trend of more narrowly defined categories of belonging in Lithuania represents a larger issue of power and control, such as concerns over increased EU oversight, western controlled post-Soviet reforms, and external mandates over acceptable representations of culture? While one can never be certain about what “causes” complex individuals with multilayered personalities do anything, there are certain conditions that can be understood as contributing to the way individuals understand and chose to react to social, political, and economic transformation in Lithuania.

Many scholars, from Gordon Allport to Theodor Adorno have attempted to explain the roots of prejudice and intolerance, and others, such as Rogers Brubaker, Anthony Smith, and Will Kymlicka have famously debated the boundaries of multiculturalism and nationalism in the political construction of a nation; and while it is impossible to summarize those myriad philosophical debates here, it important to note that the situation in Lithuania is part of a much larger international discussion about the way that political, cultural, and economic elites or dominant groups influence the shaping of norms and behavior deemed “acceptable” in each society. Though a rather simplistic way to look at it, questions of exclusion and hate can often be understood as situations where power and material resources are perceived by individuals and elites as a “zero sum game” where there isn’t enough to “go around” for everyone. Powerful elites (which could be politicians or just members of the dominant cultural group) use certain “regulating technologies” like policy, discourse, and even social custom to train citizens to approximate what they deem to be the accepted behaviors for individuals in that society. Essentially, these kinds of normative rules are things people in societies all over the world take for granted as just being “the way things are,” but when individuals look more closely at who benefits from such rules and why, it becomes clear that these are not “naturally” occurring codes of conduct, but are created by people in power who must then find ways for them to be accepted by others in order to retain their hold on power.

Reforms coming from the EU are no different, nor are the changes in the political and economic system being enacted by government elites in Lithuania following the end of the communist system. New norms related to neoliberalism and democratic pluralism have replaced norms of communalism and centralization, and individuals can either opt to accept or reject such norms (though often they do both to varying degrees, changing norms a little as they go about their own lives). Tolerance is a case and point here, where acceptance of certain lifestyles or minority groups is regarded as a value from “Western” societies that may or may not have the same appreciation in Lithuania. This is not an excuse for intolerance, but it is important to understand that rejecting tolerance initiatives is also about taking a stand against external dictates of how to run a country or how to behave.

Furthermore, it is important to note that not everyone in Lithuania is intolerant, but there are many flippant applications of the word tolerance in Lithuania (and everywhere for that matter) that miss the essence of what the value is supposed to embody. Tolerance is the very first building block of social stability, but it is not an end unto itself. Tolerance simply posits that whatever group or behavior it is that you dislike, you must chose to let that group or behavior exist unmolested regardless of your personal opinion. Naturally, based on those conceptions, tolerance in Lithuania is often mistakenly equated with anarchy, or the idea that tolerance means accepting anything that anyone, anywhere does from adultery, to stealing, to abuse, to indoctrinating children into cults, which is absolutely not the case. Tolerance campaigns in the EU target categories of groups that are entitled to universal human rights protection, such as gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Debate over the concept and practice of tolerance has existed in Lithuania ever since it toppled the Soviet Union and found itself in full international view as a Republic in transformation. Initially, issues of tolerance were raised in debates about the degree to which Lithuania’s Russian and Polish minorities could claim linguistic and cultural autonomy, but the situation eventually came to encompass not just legal rights, but the very way that Lithuanians spoke and taught about difference in society. To secure EU and NATO membership, one of the key issues that the Lithuanian government was asked to address was the inaccurate portrayals of the Nazi annihilation of Jewish victims during the Holocaust, which some Lithuanians countenanced or even actively participated in. As issues of historical representations were corrected, more surveys (originating both in the EU and in Lithuanian academic institutions) emerged to reveal continued intolerance in Lithuania for ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. Some of the most visible results were the Vilnius University report from 2000 noting that 22% of Lithuanians said they would not live next door to immigrants or Jewish people, or a 2005 European Union Monitoring Commission survey that reported that the Baltic States, including Lithuania, had some of the highest overall rates of intolerance in the entire EU.

One of the main obstacles to tolerance and equality for all groups in Lithuania is the persistent embrace of an ethnic national identity based on language, religion, and other cultural markers that exclude many minority groups or force them to assimilate in order to garner acceptance (a situation also seen in Estonia and Latvia). However, the construction and preservation of “Lithuanianness” is not a new phenomenon. Concerns over the repression of the Lithuanian language and other national symbols have been noted since the early Polonization of the elite during the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth and forced Russification during the Russian Czarist occupation when the Lithuanian language was banned. Most recently, Lithuanian cultural markers and symbols were an integral tool for anti-Soviet independence movements because they could be used to rally individuals with certain linguistic, religious, and ancestral attributes around a common goal of reclaiming Lithuanian soil for its “rightful Lithuanian owners” (though, in fact, many Russians and others also voted for independence from the USSR for a variety of reasons.)

A sort of “hysteria” about the continued obliteration of the Lithuanian “nation” is still in existence, and at times is even being perpetuated by the government (as well as other groups) as a useful political tool. All one has to do is walk down the street long enough to reach a bus shelter and it’s likely that you will find the ad displaying an unraveled knitted tricolor sweater with a lamentation proclaiming:  mes esame tik trys millionai. Further examples of the rhetoric of a disappearing nation can also been seen in the shift in adoption laws forbidding foreign couples from taking Lithuanian orphans out of the country (with a few exceptions), and extensive 2 year maternity benefits (now sensibly being cut) that encourage families to have more children.

Ironically though, while mourning the loss of the Lithuanian nation, the government is simultaneously drawing exclusionary boundaries around residents who are not worthy of being considered “real” Lithuanians, most notably gays, immigrants, and “traitors” who have left the country and then seek dual citizenship. The message that such rhetoric conveys is not that the government is concerned about a strong Lithuania, but that the government is more concerned with reclaiming (or more likely inventing) a narrow category of a “pure” Lithuanianness based on attributes that have probably changed over time themselves. However, this discourse has been visibly taken up by many of those marching against lifestyles and cultures that “threaten” this “true” Lithuania (heterosexual, patriarchal, ethnically “pure”, Lithuanian speaking individuals). Now, this is not to say that culture, traditions, language, and historical customs are unimportant. Distinct cultures do exist around the world (and the Soviets did construct a very carefully planned national identity intended to subvert ethnic identities in favor a Russian-centric one), but “culture” should never be used as a justification for hate. Furthermore, all cultures have changed—and continue to change—over time. The perpetuation of fear that the Lithuanian nation must be secured and preserved from an external enemy bent on destroying it fails to realize that the enemy is now coming from within as Lithuanian citizens turn on each other.

Nonetheless, even with the conservative backlash against the acceptance of some values, these reforms have produced long overdue discussions about topics most people have intentionally driven underground—the most significant example of this is sexual orientation. The 2010 Baltic Pride March and the 2009 amendment to the Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effects of Public Information have been the two most visible cases in the battle over the limits of tolerance in Lithuania. Part of the oppression of homosexuality comes from government interpretations of “family,” but another part comes from the influence of the Catholic Church, which continues to defend and accept only traditional marriage and partnership arrangements between a man and a woman. Therefore, accepting homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle has become equated with “liberal Westernness,” and the expectation of its acceptance everywhere is increasingly seen as a demand from “the West” to embrace something that counters values and aims considered important by “locals.” Admittedly, it is quite common for well-intentioned scholars, politicians, and aid workers to attempt reforms in one place by transporting initiatives that worked well in another place, only to find that such “forced fitting” of programs alienates more people than it includes because these transplanted programs fail to grasp the local situation, but Lithuania has taken its demand for sovereignty to the extreme by passing prohibitions on the very democratic goals it claims to value, namely freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

This is seen in the amendment added onto the 2002 Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effects of Public Information, which received international attention for institutionalizing inconsistent attitudes toward talking about different lifestyles in a public setting (discussions that scorn “traditional families” are banned), as well as its potential violation of international human rights guidelines that bar discrimination of people from certain universally accepted categories (especially those that they cannot change, like gender, race, and sexual orientation). The attempt to cancel the Baltic Pride March serves a similar function to silence discussions on matters of sex and sexuality so that the traditional norm of male-female relationships can remain unchallenged. Yet, the result in these attempts to drive discussions of alternative lifestyles underground (many Lithuanians argue that gays can exist in Lithuania as long as they don’t have to see or hear from them) have produced the very public discussions that they are trying to prohibit—which is a good thing.

Overall, recent legal rulings on gay rights (whether it be on marches or discussions) are exemplars of the social attitudes towards difference in Lithuania. There is enormous inconsistency in  tolerance for things that are seen as falling well outside the purview of Lithuanianness—but social intolerance may also represent (though admittedly not in all cases) resistance to perceived influence from a larger, more power political entities (even if they are just imagined) attempting to dictate Lithuanian identity and norms. However, as was seen in the United States during the civil rights movements when the federal government had to send armed National Guard soldiers to forcibly integrate some segregated, racist schools, sometimes there is a need for international intervention to force action on issues of human rights. Yet, to combat intolerance, one must also recognize that it’s not just about hate (though on occasion it is); it is often also a symptom of anxiety and a loss of control, which is an understandable perception in a country that has seen itself occupied three times in the last 200 years. Nonetheless, institutionalizing intolerance is never a victory for anyone, and while some Lithuanians may ask that discussions about issues such as alternative lifestyles be silenced, the only way toward a strong pluralist democracy is to keep talking about the things that sometimes make people the most uncomfortable—and to also accept that a willingness to admit one’s own resistance to tolerance is a form a discourse too.