Weakness of the Predators, and a Baltic View on the Russian Threat
The autocratic aggressors are showing us who they are, giving us valuable information on how to oppose them
Staying Lucid, and staying steady so we are not overcome with despair, is essential to discerning the logic behind policies and actions in a volatile world. The disinformation epidemic means the truth and reality-based discourses are more veiled and obscured than ever, even as the brutality and greed of the autocratic predator-protagonists is being displayed more openly.
They are showing us exactly who they are. That can be frightening, but arrogant people who feel untouchable also make mistakes. And as they expose themselves, they give us valuable knowledge we can use to further oppose them. Think what we have learned from very recent developments of the world’s richest man brought on board by Donald Trump and already acting like an autocrat, attempting to turn the operations of the U.S. government to suit his private business interests.
The genocidal wars, the scorn for human rights, and the accelerated theft and plunder have the feel of a last-ditch desperate campaign among leaders who know that their time is finite. They see their peers falling, as in Syria, and more populations turning out in record numbers to oppose them —look what is happening right now in Georgia and in Serbia. That’s why failing leaders of failing states must draw closer together, Russia and North Korea being the most recent case.
It is a fateful moment, and we must be clear-headed about what is at stake. That’s why I am excerpting a LinkedIn essay by Gabrielè Klimaitė-Želvienė, Minister Plenipotentiary in the Political Section of the Lithuanian Permanent Delegation to NATO. It was likely written to help people understand the mentality of leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, a product of Communism, who is now ramping up his threats to Baltic states such as Lithuania. Its eloquent conclusion reflects a hard-earned knowledge of the social, psychological, and political toll of autocracy:
Russians today are doing what they did before – choosing violence as a solution. They are yet to understand that violating the other does not make you a winner. It makes you a criminal.
Here is the original post, and here are some of its most insightful passages.
“When establishing Soviet Russia, Bolsheviks terrorized & executed their own citizens. Then they annexed & bloodied independent nation-states. 1/3 of Lithuanians were wiped out. Private property & business were abolished. The system of surveillance, control, & subordination was set. The more a state reminds a prison - the better. What happened? A new society was born. People who for decades will be submissive, scared, hypocritical & unable to achieve self-realization. Others- insolent and aggressive. Abuse will dominate. Why?”
“Humiliation of the populace was crucial for the Soviet tyranny. There was no client-manager relation, but a superior-inferior dynamic. ‘Service providers’ always had the upper hand. A clerk, a doctor, a librarian, a woman at the cashier or a shoe-repairing man could scold, dismiss or lecture you, so every day you engaged in a petty struggle of pleasing, begging, bribing or, if nothing worked, of screaming. Once my grandma took me to a ‘posh’ cafe. We got a meatloaf with potatoes & peas. It must come with a sauce but it doesn't. The waitress shrugs it off. My grandma screams: I am an orphan of World War II, a socialist labor champion, bring us a plate with the sauce! I am drowning in shame, suspecting that’s not how dignity works.”
“Independence for Lithuanians not only meant the return to freedom & market economy. It also meant that we, as humans, are of value again. But that value was not restored in Russia. The USSR is gone, but tyranny is in action. With disdain for Western ‘human rights’, freedoms & liberties stifled, domestic violence legal, murder rate 17 times more than the EU, market run by state-mafia, Russians today are doing what they did before – choosing violence as a solution. They are yet to understand that violating the other does not make you a winner. It makes you a criminal.”
To pay tribute to those who suffered through this difficult history, including in Lithuania, and are threatened now, I close this post with a photograph of the “Baltic Way,” the historic cross-border protest of August 23, 1989 in which two million people from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined hands and formed an immense human chain. Held on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that preceded the Soviet occupation of the Baltics, it was the largest protest in USSR history. Six months later, Lithuania became the first republic to declare its independence from the Soviet Union.
“One third of Lithuanians were wiped out”. An entire 1/3 of a country’s population. I’m not sure we Americans really grasp the significance of WW2.
Thank you for highlighting the strength of the Baltic people. My Latvian mother and her family fled the Soviets in 1944. I’ve been inspired lifelong by how they have endured and hope they continue to—despite incoming madness in US.