What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  Lithuania was formerly the Soviets’ ears to the West. Hidden in the thickly forested countryside, Linksmakalnis—a Soviet snooping station—once tapped into Western European communication systems, although the operation was so clandestine that details are still sketchy even now.

  Lithuanians collectively blew their top at Moscow much more loudly and intensely than their neighbors, and their rebellion hammered some of the final nails in the Soviet coffin. But when Communism fell, Lithuanian society fell apart with it. Crime exploded in the 1990s after Soviet industry pulled out, and unemployment soared. Robberies and car theft were among the most frequent of the 200 or so crimes reported on an average day by the mid 1990s.3 Banking scandals rocked the country—the two biggest banks folded in 1995—and corruption ran almost unabated. But Lithuanians who lived abroad began coming back—including a U.S. government policymaker called Valdus Adamkus, who’d left five decades before; he became president in 1998. And amid a series of political scandals, he was brought back in as president in 2004.

  Unlike Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania didn’t put ethnic Russians through the language hoops. While Lithuanian is the official language, Russians (and pretty much anybody else who wanted it) were immediately granted citizenship in 1991.

  Hot Spots

  Vilnius: Napoleon galloped through here on the way to and from Moscow, and was so taken by the city’s gothic church St. Anne that he longed to take it back to France. Happily, he left the church behind; unhappily, many of his worn troops were left behind too: they still find mass graves of their corpses. A fetching backdrop for movies—HBO filmed a miniseries about virginal British queen Elizabeth I here—Vilnius may go down in history as the place where visiting Vice President Cheney rekindled the Cold War, trashing Russia as a bully when he stopped by in 2006.

  Klaipeda: Lithuania’s major seaport was once the haunt of Teutonic Knights—and in 1939, Nazi Germany demanded it back, marking the first Nazi move into Baltic territory. But that’s old history. Now the lively city, with an intact old town that showcases architecture from the Hanseatic era, is home to jazz festivals and a sea museum where you can hear dolphins sing.

  Curonian Spit: A finger of swirling sand that juts out into a lagoon, the Curonian Spit is a UNESCO World Heritage site, where ancient villages are buried underneath dunes. Formerly a magnet for writers, including Thomas Mann, who wrote The Magic Mountain while gazing out at the choppy waters, her fishing villages are now turned into laid-back resorts, but the place retains a magical feel—although you’d best come soon as the view may soon change. Lukoil is setting up offshore oil rigs.

  Palang: The favored beach town along Lithuania’s Amber Coast, it boasts white sands, a beautiful park, and of course an amber museum, now housed in a palace.

  Borders: Plenty of illegal immigrants, arms, and radioactive materials are smuggled into and out of Lithuania from almost all sides.

  Hotshots

  Algirdas Brazauskas: President, 1993–1998; Prime Minister, 2001–present. The former Communist who dared cut ties with Moscow’s Communist Party headquarters in 1989 doesn’t seem to know what else to do but lead. Continuing as president after Lithuania’s independence, he later jumped from the president’s seat to the prime minister’s.

  Valdus Adamkus: President, 1998–2001 and 2004–present. A former underground resister, Adamkus left Lithuania for the U.S., where he worked for military intelligence and later became an Environmental Protection Agency policy analyst. Returned to Lithuania in the 1990s and was elected president in 1998. In his first meeting with President Putin, Adamkus demanded that Russia compensate Lithuania for five decades of occupation. The atmosphere quickly turned chilly, and Putin refused. Lithuanians voted Adamkus in again in 2004, ensuring a pro-U.S. stance.

  Sajudis “The Movement”: The dissident intellectuals revved up the Lithuanian independence movement, but didn’t keep hold of the steering wheel for long.

  Vytautas Landsbergis: De facto President, 1998–2000; head of parliament, 1996–2000. Round-faced, goateed Landsbergis—Lithuania’s Lech Walesa—led the Sajudis independence movement, urging protesters to guard the TV tower and not to give up when Russia cut off energy supplies. De facto president after the country’s first free election, when he headed parliament, he also served in that role again 1996–2000, but proved to be cantankerous and unbending; after he endorsed a TV censorship board and the practice of spying on journalists, public opinion turned against him.4 The symbol of Lithuania’s independence movement, he is still highly regarded—especially outside his country. Perhaps the gifted pianist and Condi can perform a duet if she too blows through town.

  Viktor Uspaskich: Former Minister of Economy. Russian-born Uspaskich moved to Lithuania to build a gas pipeline, linked arms with Russia’s Gazprom, and started a profitable food company. Now worth up to $200 million, Uspaskich renovates Russian Orthodox churches and funds facelifts for long-neglected towns. His good deeds paid off: the Labor Party he started in 2003 now holds nearly a third of parliament’s seats. Uspaskich snagged a cabinet position as minister of the economy, but an ethics committee booted him in 2005, saying he was making decisions based on private gain.

  Music professor Landsbergis struck a chord with calls for independence

  Vilnius Brigade: Syndicate troublemakers headquartered in the capital and linked to Russian and Polish Mafias, they smuggle pretty much anything from art and slaves to stolen cars, arms, and radioactive ingredients for dirty bombs.

  M. K. Ciurlionis (1875–1911): Composer, painter, and amateur hypnotist, Lithuania’s favorite creator was nothing if not intense: he excelled at mesmerizing the masses in both artistic fields, becoming best known for his symphony In the Forest and ethereal paintings before dying at the age of thirty-five.5 A museum is devoted to him in second city Kaunas.

  23. FORMER CZECHOSLOVAKIA

  Czech Republic and Slovak Republic

  Stirring up the ‘Hood

  Overview: The Shared History

  Dead in the middle of Europe and thick with orchards, snowcapped mountains, and handsome cities brimming with dazzling architecture, the crossroads that became Czechoslovakia was key property throughout European history. Metal resources and abundant food made this region crucial to the Austrian Empire—at one point fetching Prague became the imperial capital—and her abundance of beer and liqueurs helped keep generations drunk. The eastern (Slovak) half of the country, home of castle-topped Bratislava, vineyards, and bubbling thermal waters, was so adored by Hungarians that it was once called High Hungary after millions moved in when sixteenth-century Turks invaded Budapest and stayed for 160 years.

  HISTORICAL HOTSHOT: KING RUDY (1552–1612)

  Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, an Austrian Habsburg who moved his kingdom from Vienna to Prague in 1577, wasn’t content with material riches. He sought spiritual wealth as well, and hoped to unlock the keys to the universe. Rudolph kicked off a renaissance in Prague when he invited Europe’s wisest men to move into his castle and uncover the true nature of Godliness and the mysteries of life. They arrived from all corners: magicians and musicians, artists and astrologers, alchemists and architects; respected scientific men—astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and Queen Elizabeth I of England’s personal physician from London—were likewise drawn to the quest in Prague. Between boozy nights and long dinners with Rudy, they all toiled to explain the inexplicable: whether trying to transform lead into gold, calculate celestial movements, decipher ancient texts, or discover the restorative qualities of beer, they attempted to demystify the mysteries, find eternal life, and divine what lay ahead. Hundreds of spiritual seekers were lodged in Prague Castle; the corpses of those cast off as charlatans rotted in the dungeons below.

  The land that held Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, and Ukrainians didn’t actually become the country Czechoslovakia until 1919—and she was never the most stable of countries, since Slovaks and other ethnic minorities were hacked off that Czechs were always top dogs. Wealthy
Germans in Sudetenland were also ticked: the Czechoslovak government hit them with a 20 percent start-up tax on all their riches, and huge tracts of their lands were given to peasants. Twenty years later, Czechoslovakia came unhinged, thanks to Nazi Germany; with the blessing of the Brits and the French (See “United Kingdom,” page 75), Hitler annexed her northwest corner, Sudetenland—and soon invaded the whole country.

  In 1940, the government let the Germans roll in; Hitler threatened to pummel Prague with the Luftwaffe if they didn’t. As promised, Nazis did not mar Prague’s well-preserved beauty: they wanted Prague as the site for a museum dedicated to Jews—to be called the Museum of an Extinct Race. Slovak priest Jozef Tiso, however, quickly made a deal with Nazis: the Slovak-dominated eastern part of the country would become a Nazi-supporting independent country with Tiso in charge. Surprisingly, Sudetenlanders were Hitler’s first foes, as they made clear in 1939: while marching through Sudetenland, Hitler experienced one of his first assassination attempts, when a German-Czech threw a knife at him. Some Sudetenlanders quickly organized resistance groups (and escape routes for Jews) and Count Joachim von Zedtwitz, a well-to-do German-Czech became a one-man resistance force, transporting Jews out of the country in his sports car; the Nazis assumed that with his Aryan looks and German ethnicity he was on their side.

  Taking over after the war, Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš expelled 3 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and seized their lands, mostly in Sudetenland; 250,000 Hungarians were sent packing as well. The 1945–1946 exodus was as horrifying as the Nazi deportation: 300,000 died along the way, many killed in mass violence.

  The Beneš Decrees, approved by the Allies, are a growing point of contention in Austria, Germany, and Hungary, where former Sudetenlanders are demanding apologies and compensation for lost lands.

  Moscow-backed Communists ejected Beneš from power and took control—installing a puppet government and transforming Czechoslovakia into a Soviet satellite, responsible for arms and munitions.

  ARMS SALE! PRICES SLASHED! COME ON DOWN!

  Under the Communist regime, Czechoslovakia was transformed into weapons-and-explosives central, best known for cheap rifles and Semtex, an explosive favored by guerrillas. (The product is so singularly Czech that Semtex is the name of a popular Czech energy drink.) Czechs and Slovaks had little say in the matter back then, but the arms industry (both legal and illegal) is still thriving today—and arms just have a way of walking out on their own. Czech and Slovak companies have supplied arms to China, Cuba, India, Iran, Vietnam, and Libya1 among others (filling Soviet back orders), and they also produce weapons for assorted questionable governments and radical groups, including those in Yemen, Eritrea, and Sri Lanka.

  Of all the countries locked behind the Iron Curtain, Czechoslovakia was always the most tantalizing to the West, giving just a wisp of an impression of the hidden Communist reality. The world first got a glimpse when grainy and intense Czechoslovak “New Wave” films trickled out in the 1960s—rating international attention and winning prestigious awards.

  Czechoslovakia flickered across American TV screens in 1968 during “Prague Spring,” when the Soviet satellite suddenly opened up. Then came the televised Soviet reprisals of August 1968 and images of crying Czechoslovakians throwing themselves onto incoming Russian tanks, followed by blackness as the communication system was unplugged.

  PRAGUE SPRING

  Czechoslovakia’s economy slumped in 1968, and the Communist Party brought in fresh leadership to boost it. The party’s new head, Alexander Dubcek, unveiled a radical reform plan that lifted more than the economy: Dubcek boosted the Czechoslovak mood. As part of a program dubbed “Socialism with a human face,” he ripped away press censorship, allowed freedom of expression, and gave trade unions new rights. “We shall have to remove everything that strangles artistic and scientific creativeness,” he told shocked Czechoslovakians. The Soviets in Moscow were also dumbfounded, but President Leonid Brezhnev liked Dubcek and did little except call him screaming every day. But Dubcek wasn’t trying to make a break: to Brezhnev’s relief, the reformer kept Czechoslovakia in the Soviet military collective—the Warsaw Pact—and toed most of the Communist Party line. But unlike in other Soviet satellites or republics, that spring—dubbed Prague Spring—Czechoslovakians listened to criticisms of the Soviet regime via radio and TV, read accurate news of the West, published uncensored novels, performed political plays, and said and did pretty much whatever they wished, wherever they wished. But when Dubcek allowed non-Communists into parliament, Brezhnev blew his stack. On August 20, 1968, Czechs awoke to the sight of their dreams being smashed. Tanks of Warsaw Pact troops—Poles, Hungarians, East Germans, Russians, and Bulgarians—rolled into Prague, the soldiers ignoring the pleas of those who climbed atop their tanks begging them to stop. An estimated 120 died over the next two days, including thirteen killed while trying to block troops from taking over the radio station that had become the symbol of freedom. By August 22, it was over. A Soviet-style blackout descended as the free press was shut down, Warsaw Pact troops permanently moved in, and Czechoslovakia transformed from the most open of satellite states to the most repressed. Dubcek, hauled off to Moscow, was soon fired as party head; he survived the ordeal, but spent the rest of his career tending to trees for the Slovak forestry service. More rigid Communists soon took power and ripped away the freedom he had given.

  “You may think Czechs behaved like cowards when they did not fight. But you can’t go against tanks with empty hands… The only way you can help us is this: don’t forget Czechoslovakia. Don’t forget Czechoslovakia… even when Czechoslovakia ceases to be news in the paper.”—Unidentified twenty-two-year-old Czech in a radio message to the world on August 23, 1968, as the Prague Spring experiment was collapsing2

  For the next twenty years, Czechoslovakia pretty much dropped out of Western view, her memory kept alive only by writers such as Milan Kundera, who fled to France in 1975 and published The Unbearable Lightness of Being nine years later. Writers such as Vaclav Havel and Ivan Klima kept the questioning spirit alive with samizdat, an underground publishing movement born of typewriters and carbon paper; diplomats often smuggled out the writings to the West, where they were published as books. In general, though, the mood in Czechoslovakia turned gloomy as the new regime erased former rights, and 150,000 Czechs quickly fled the country. Dissidents, such as Havel, were forced to work as janitors and street sweepers, and the arts scene that blossomed during the Prague Spring withered under heavy censorship. In January 1969, student Jan Palach, livid that Czechoslovakia was again wrapped in Soviet chains, set himself on fire, dying in his protest against the Soviet occupation and blackening spirits further. One bright light glimmered on the scene, however, proving to be a source of huge inspiration; oddly enough, it was Frank Zappa.

  FRANK ZAPPA (1940–1993)

  Frank Zappa, the American musician whose experimental music—often long-winded, drugged-out rambles—lodged stinging social criticism and tackled every taboo, helped to launch Czechoslovakia’s anti-Communist movement. The title of his song “Plastic People of the Universe” inspired a 1970s Czech rock band to take that name and write music that struck out at the totalitarian system. Refusing to take the test required of all performing artists—a propaganda quiz asking such trivia as Lenin’s birthday—the group was banned from playing; they gigged around anyway. In 1977, when Plastic People of the Universe members were arrested and thrown into prison, local writers and artists formed a protest group, Charter 77, to fight censorship and promote human rights. Vaclav Havel, known for his biting plays about Communist bureaucrats (and for coining the name “Absurdistan” to describe life in that society), rose up as the dissidents’ leader. Charter 77 became the voice of rebellion, frequently writing letters to Amnesty International and the New York Times publicizing the inhumane acts of the Communists and continually airing the government’s dirty laundry in the Western press. They later became a symbol of the independe
nce movement to shake free of Moscow-backed tyranny.

  In November 1989, Czechoslovakia again blipped across our TV screens, this time with images of Vaclav Havel and Charter 77 leading Czechoslovakian protesters in the streets during the Velvet Revolution.

  THE VELVET REVOLUTION

  When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, a group of protesters took to the streets of Prague, calling for independence. The peaceful march might have been ignored, had not the police roughed up 100 or so: the next day, the country rose en masse and marched through the streets. During the next twenty-four days, hundreds of thousands showed up in Wenceslas Square, rattling key chains, chanting slogans, singing songs, and burning candles as they rallied around playwright Havel, demanding that the Communist government step down and the Soviet troops roll out. Their slogan was corny—“Truth and love will win over hatred and lies”—but it did the trick. In December, the Communist Party stepped down.

  Vaclav Havel called the break with Communism “the Velvet Revolution” because it was soft; while hundreds were injured, nobody was killed.