Letter from Kaunas, Lithuania: Springtime for Putin

Abstract

Checking out Russian television this spring, especially after switching from BBC News or French TV, I found it difficult to avoid a sense of déjà vu. Every tidbit of information about Ukraine reminded me of the events that followed January 13, 1991, when troops from the Soviet Union killed 13 peaceful civilians in Vilnius, Lithuania. Lithuania had declared its independence in March 1990, beginning a long and winding road for the first breakaway republic of the former Soviet Union. The Baltic country entered a period of danger, uncertainty, and insecurity, the logical result of the threat it posed for the slowly dying Soviet empire. Eleven months before the dissolution of the USSR, the slaughter of the 13 stripped the empire of its remaining political and moral legitimacy.