What are the criteria to be honored on the streets of Vilnius?

By Tomas Venclova, Neringa Gališanskytė and Robert van Voren – Vytautas Magnus University

In 2021, the world is commemorating the centenary of the birth of Andrei Sakharov, a scientist, humanist and human rights activist who has been recognised as one of the moral leaders of the 20th century. However, in spite of his merits and a notable visit in Vilnius, the famed Nobel Peace Prize winner has still not received the appropriate recognition in our country.

In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of tourists visiting Vilnius grew quite rapidly in numbers, and it will hopefully not be before too long when droves of tourists will again roam the streets of the Old Town. Some come because their roots are here: they are descendants of Polish or Jewish citizens who used to live in this multi-national city. But there are also tourists from many other countries, who help to give Vilnius back its cosmopolitan character. They do not only come for the many churches and historical buildings, but also to remember the past through statues and plaques dedicated to famous people who lived in the city or visited it.

Some people are remembered on a plaque even after coming here for just one day, like Theodor Herzl, who came to Vilnius in 1903 and mentioned the visit in his diary as one of the most moving experiences of his life. No wonder, because Vilnius was often referred to as “Jerusalem of the North” and had a thriving Jewish community. American President George W. Bush was also in Vilnius for a short time, yet his two-day visit in 2002 was marked by a plaque on the Vilnius Town Hall just a year later. Sixteen years after his visit, in 2018, he was also declared an Honorary Citizen of Vilnius, as a celebration of 100 years of friendly relations between the US and Lithuania. The Polish-born Pope John Paul II visited Vilnius in 1993 also only for a few days, but has no less than four plaques that remember his historic visit.

Let us continue. Composer Eduardas Balsys is remembered in various places, by a plaque on the building in which he lived, by a monumental stone placed on Mickevičiaus street and by having an auditorium named after him in the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

But he is not the only one: the writer and artist Jurga Ivanauskaitė has a plaque as well as a square named after her, together with a monument. Both square and monument cost the Vilnius Municipality some 70,000 euros. Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko has two memorial plaques, a statue and a square named after him, even though he lived in Vilnius for only six months. The monument was created in 2004 and brought to Vilnius by the government of Ukraine; the Vilnius Municipality took care of the square on which it is situated; all to enhance Ukrainian-Lithuanian relations.

Why do we list all these examples? First of all, because we believe that history should not be forgotten and that younger citizens and tourists need to be reminded who came here, lived here, created art here or left their mark otherwise. This makes the city interesting, and the diversity of the ways in which a person is remembered becomes by itself a cultural heritage indicative of the times in which it was placed. Yet when we asked Vilnius Municipality to honor the undisputed leader and symbol of the human rights movement of Soviet times, Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov, with a plaque on the building where he stayed in 1975, the reaction was firmly negative.

Sakharov’s visit was, actually, symbolic in many respects. First of all, he came to Vilnius to attend the trial against his friend Sergei Kovalyov, a Moscow human rights activist who was arrested in 1974 because of his support to Lithuanian dissidents and was sentenced here in Vilnius to ten years in prison and exile. Actually, Sakharov should have been somewhere else, in Oslo, to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, but he was banned from travel abroad and so his wife Yelena Bonner went there in his stead exactly during the very same days.

Finally, Sakharov was an outspoken defender of national self-determination and on many occasions supported Lithuanian political prisoners; in fact, he named several of them in his Nobel Peace Prize speech. And even though his stay was a relatively brief one, Sakharov’s visit to Vilnius was for many Lithuanian dissidents a monumental event. They gathered from all over Lithuania to attend Kovalyov’s trial and to meet the fresh Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“Your noble and self-sacrificing example will inspire many to commit themselves to the struggle for human rights and respect, which is the foundation of lasting peace,” wrote the underground publication “Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania” when congratulating Sakharov on the Nobel Prize. The 21st issue of the Chronicle describes Sakharov’s visit in Vilnius in detail and shows the undeniable impact he had on Lithuanian dissidents, some of whom established the Lithuanian Helsinki Group not long after meeting Sakharov.

While George W. Bush earned his plaque and Honorary Citizenship of Vilnius after spending only two days in Lithuania, Andrei Sakharov, who inspired thousands of Lithuanians to create a newly independent Lithuania, is left with barely any recognition in Vilnius at all. The argumentation that Vilnius municipality used in their denial is the fact that he was here only briefly, and he already has a “Sakharov Square”.

However, this is in fact not a square but a windy corner of empty crossroads in Viršuliškės, where no tourist ever comes and most people try to get on their bus as soon as possible in order to be out of the wind. Is that a rightful place to honor a person who has squares and monuments in many places, and even a bridge in Arnhem, next to the Mandela bridge, even though he never had to fight for the right to self-determination for The Netherlands?

Having a rightful place in memory of the man in whose honor the human rights prize of the European Parliament is named is in our view the minimum that Vilnius could do. It would also contribute to the diversity and culture of the city, which hosted many other dissidents who are now forgotten but are honored in other cities in Europe, even when they never visited them. But they did come to Vilnius, to meet fellow dissidents during the dark days of Soviet occupation.

This year marks the Centenary of Andrei Sakharov, which will even be remembered in Putin’s Russia with a special stamp and a silver coin. Wouldn’t it be time that Vilnius would honor him in this city as a sign of gratitude in recognition of what he did for Lithuania?