VšĮ Leidybos idėjų centras Kaunas, 2016

The Editorial Board and its editors express their heartfelt appreciation to those who have contrib-uted to this publication. Above all, we would like to thank the authors of the articles. Our appreciations also go to the edito-rial boards of the “Miškai” magazine and its chief editor, Albertas Žostautas, the “Savivaldybių Žin-ios” and its chief editor, Lina Belevičienė; we are grateful to the CEOs of enterprises who not only contributed to the accomplishments of our country, but also sponsored this publication. The following personalities immensely helped us with their information and advice: Vida Bandis (USA), Gintė Bernadeta Damušis, associated professor Dr. Algis Dobravolskas, Arvydas Karaška, associated professor Dr. Irena Eglė Laumenskaitė, Alvydas Medalinskas, Angelė Nelsienė (USA), Kaunas Archbishop Metropolitan Sigitas Juozas Tamkevičius SJ, Andrius Tučkus, academician, professor, Habil. Dr. Aleksandras Vasiliauskas, and Roma Žakaitienė.A most helpful informational assistance was provided by the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, the press service of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, ministries, other governmental institutions, the officials and employees of municipalities, the Signatories of the Act of Independence of Lithuania, the ELTA news agency team, creative and business associations, archive workers and photographers.

The Reviewers:

Angelė Adomaitienė, Arūnas Antanaitis, Dr. Kastytis Antanaitis, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Algirdas As-trauskas, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dalia Bardauskienė, Prof. Dr. Darijus Beinoravičius, Algirdas Brukas, Dr. Almantas Bružas, Romas Buivydas, Acad. Prof. Habil. Dr. Eugenijus Butkus, Lijana Cibulsk-ienė, Irma Dubovičienė, Valdas Kaminskas, Prof. Dr. Bronislovas Kaulakys, Bronius Kleponis, Rū-ta Klišytė, Dr. Vytautas Petras Knašys, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Irena Eglė Laumenskaitė, Rasa Masiokaitė, Alvydas Medalinskas, Prof. Habil. Dr. Vaclovas Miškinis, Gintaras Nenartavičius, Dr. Ieva Petro-nytė, Dainius Radzevičius, Prof. Dr. Valdas Rakutis, Akvilė Redko, Dr. Algirdas Šakalys, Rima Rut-kauskaitė, Adakras Vincentas Šeštakauskas, Prof. Dr. Milda Vainiutė, Dr. Daiva Vaišnienė, Dr. An-tanas Valionis, Dr. Eglė Vileikienė, Dr. Greta Žygienė.

UDK 94(474.5)„1990/...“ Li578ISBN978-609-95578-7-8

Editorial BoardVida DauderienėVesta JozonienėArnas JozonisValdas Kaminskas

Translation from Lithuanian Dalia Paslauskienė

DesignRūta GurčinienėLayout Design Rasa Vilimienė

© VšĮ Leidybos idėjų centras, 2016This publication or a part thereof shall not be reproduced in any form or way, including photocopy and magnetic or electronic data storage devices, and permanently or temporarily stored in an elec-tronic form without the prior written consent of VšĮ Leidybos idėjų centras, with the exception of the cases, provided by law.

WE DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RESTORATION

OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA AND TO THE MEMORY OF PEROSNALITIES THAT

CREATE LITHUANIA

In 2015, when the original Lithuanian version of this book came out of print, Lithuania commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversa-ry of the day, when on March 11, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania signed a declaration on the restoration of the independent State of Lithuania. That day gave significance to many generations of the fighters for freedom and became the most important day for our nation that is celebrated by all and every Lithuanian around the world. 2015 is the year of the anniversary of our freedom that reminds us of the day when we overthrew the So-viet oppression a quarter of a century ago. This book is an attempt to remember what the road to our freedom was, where did it start, and what kind of Lithuania we have created so far.

The free Lithuania has opened opportunities for everyone to show their talents and gifts, to enjoy our common achieve-ments and victories, it has inspired everyone to create and work. The world has been opened before us: we can live wherever we choose, think whatever is on our minds, do whatever business we like, to work and study in our Homeland or abroad – it is all our choice. Twenty-five years ago we could not even have imag-ined such opportunities. Neither could we have imagined that we would live in Lithuania better than ever before. We have achieved a lot. When Lithuania returned on the map of the world, twice it had to pass serious trials that resulted in its full-fledged membership in the European Union and NATO. Lithuania also joined other major international organizations. On the interna-tional stage, we chose to be what we always wanted to be – those who support and protect freedom and democracy without short-lived profit or material goals.

During that period, we transited from the planned to the free market economy, we consolidated a stable democratic forma-tion with its basic legal system. Lithuanian business overcame all hardships and trials, and its production became competitive on the international market with the continually growing export potential. We almost reached the most economically advanced countries of the West. In their annual reports, various interna-

tional and non-governmental organizations acknowledge the lev-el of democracy, the competitiveness of our economy, conditions for business, the freedoms of press and speech, the well-being of our social life. In almost any respect, Lithuania belongs to the most advanced countries of the world.

The Būtingė oil terminal, which has been operating for 15 years, has proven that our country is capable of implementing big and complex projects. The opening of the liquefied gas terminal in our seaport opened doors for Lithuania to energy independence.

Our universities and colleges offer their students skills and knowledge that are acknowledged globally. Many of Lithuanian scientists and professors work in the most prestigious research institutions and universities worldwide, however, they do not forget Lithuania, where they bring back their accumulated ex-perience and knowledge. Our industries use the most advanced high technologies; we are one of the global leading manufactures of lasers; our science valleys receive hundreds of millions euros for scientific research in the fields of biotechnologies, laser and light technologies, nanotechnologies, future energy, etc. In 2014, we already launched our first Lithuanian satellite, which would accumulate data for our further progress. Lithuania has become one of the leaders in the world in information technologies. We can rightfully be proud of one of the fastest Internet in the world and the most advanced services of mobile communication. The most important thing, though, is that all those technologies are accessible to almost all of the Lithuanian population.

Cultural life in Lithuania has also been increasing apace. Lith-uanian artists continuously participate in the most prestigious cultural festivals and exhibitions, our theater directors present their best works for both Lithuanian and international audiences to admire, our musicians and entertainers perform on the most prestigious stages of the world, our composers work with the most famous orchestras, and our conductors show the unique-ness of their performance. From the very beginning of Indepen-dence, Lithuanian athletes have been winning in Olympic Games

and World and European championships and have continuously reminding the world of what our tricolor flag looks like and what our anthem sounds like.

We are happy to admit that Lithuania is known in the world as a progressive, open, tolerant country with picturesque nature and warm-hearted people. You will learn about all of this as you open the pages of “Lithuania. 25 Years of Independence”. In the process of compiling this book, we have once more realized how much we have achieved over all those years. This book offers 36 reviews on the life of Lithuanian in various spheres, which we have grouped in five main topics.

The Road to Independence chapter tells its readers of our fight for freedom, of the fifty-year-long struggle that all Lithuanians around the world were engaged in and that ended on March 11, 1991 with our victory.

Another chapter will explain its readers about the political sys-tem of Lithuania. It covers not only the principle Lithuania gov-ernmental institutions, their functions and jurisdictions, but also tells the readers about our public life.

The largest chapter of the book is dedicated to the development of our economy. The transition from the state controlled economy to the free market has cost Lithuania much effort and patience from both the Lithuanian leaders and the business community, as well as from the entire society. However, the results are worth it, and that is reflected in the stories of Lithuanian entrepreneurs. We dedicate the major part of this chapter to the companies and enterprises – the flagships of Lithuanian economy – and their significant contributions to the progress of the country.

The Science and Education chapter is dedicated to the develop-ment of the most strategically important spheres of Lithuania. Here you will learn of how Lithuania has shaped its education system, what challenges Lithuanian scientists face, and what achievements they have gained.

The final chapter of the book is dedicated to Lithuanian culture,

its most famous achievements in literature, music, theater, cin-ema, art, architecture, and sports. Also, the readers will find an overview of the development of Lithuanian mass media; will learn about the policy of our language which is one of the oldest in the world, and about the status of religion in Lithuania.

The reviews for the book were written by experts, scientists, for-mer members of the Government, people who had participated in most of the reforms, as well as journalists who had interviewed many of competent specialists.

The book ends with the reference section, where the reader will find, in alphabetical order, all the reviews, included in the book, and their authors, as well as all the organizations and enterpris-es, presented in this publication.

It was not an easy task to cover and assess everyone who has con-tributed to the formation of the independent and democratic so-ciety. Some of us found that living in a free country was not so easy – thousands of people were forced to change their profes-sions or relocate, others had to adapt to the new and challeng-ing circumstances. To create a free society is a complicated and hard work. However, Lithuania managed to overcome the hard-est stage of its new existence, and we can be proud of our country, as were our grandparents and great-grandparents, who immor-talized the development and achievements of a young Lithuanian state that had proclaimed its independence on February 16, 1918, in the inter-war publications, such as “February 16, 1918-1928. Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of Lithuanian Inde-pendence” (editor S.V. Burba, 1928), “The First Decade of Lith-uanian Independence, 1918-1928 (compiled by P. Klimas, K.F. Kemėšis, J. Savickis, M. Yčas, 1930), “Twenty Years. 1918–1938” (R. Mackevičius, 1938), “Lithuania 1918–1938: A Publication to Commemorate the Twenty-Year Anniversary of Lithuanian Independence (chief editor V. Kemežys, 1938). To carry on this beautiful tradition that was born in 1928 and continued in 1938, we present “Lithuania. 25 Years of Independence“” for the read-ers from all over the world to enjoy.

The Editorial Board of Leidybos Idėjų Centras

DaLia GrybauskaitėPresident of the republic of Lithuania

On March 11 twenty five years ago, we turned a fresh page in the his-tory of Lithuania and the world. Having restored Independence we have become the masters of our state and our future.

Today we can be proud of ourselves for the successfully passed exami-nation on sovereignty and for our many significant accomplishments. We are a free, strong, and respected member of the international dem-ocratic community; we belong to the family of the European Union countries; we are protected by NATO. Our name is heard among the world’s most prominent scientists and artists; our tricolor flag deco-rates international sports championships. The independent Lithuania has raised a new generation of freedom loving, active, creative, and hard-working people. Our innovative young people make our country famous in the world IT market.

Freedom should not be taken for granted, it has to be protected dai-ly. Let us be united and strong in the memory of those who died for the Independence of Lithuania. I thank all active citizens who dedicate their hard work and devotion to the creation of secure and prosperous Lithuania.

Let us be worthy of our Homeland and let us be united in our endeav-ors for its sake. Let us be encouraged and inspired by our achieve-ments to continue the success story of Lithuania.

VyTaUTaS LaNDSBERgISPresident of the supreme Council – reconstituent Parliament of Lithuania

Our path from the long-lasting captivity of the 20th century to the dawn of March 11 was paved with our strong belief in truth and free-dom. ‘We want to live differently!’ In the face of trials, we stood unit-ed to overcome them. We restored our political democratic state of Lithuania among other states and we were respected for having done something impossible.

Decades of other, different trials have followed. Will we create broth-erly cooperation, social and spiritual welfare, demanding love for the present and hope for the future in our sacred land of workers, farm-ers, dreamers, martyrs, and villains? There have been so many chang-es in independent Lithuania on so many levels. But after 25 years, do we truly live differently? Completely otherwise? Let us look into our hearts. Let us look around and encourage those who despair.

Probably it is just a beginning. The foundation, although here and there cracked, has been laid for a vibrant, creative, and spiritually beauti-ful Lithuania - the Lithuania we want. She already speaks in the voices of the new generation’s creativity and energy, its worldwide horizons, and joy to work, search, win, and be. Let us continue to build Lithuania as a bright palace on the devastated crossroads, as a home for all her children, willing to live here and always return home. With God’s help, Lithuania shall be.

VaLDaS aDamKUSPresident of the republic of Lithuania

Dear all,

As Lithuania is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Independence, probably many of us reflect on it and ask ourselves the question wheth-er it is a long period of time or not so much. Have we travelled far; have we done everything we could? How do we evaluate the years of our freedom and how do we see them from this perspective?

Like you, I too think about it, ask myself same questions and sometimes fail to find answers. However, I am certain that the state of Lithuania and its people are walking on the right path. There is a saying ‘time proven’: a time-proven person, time-proven values, and time-proven choices..

The twenty five years have also proof tested us as a nation, a state, a community, and as a family. While reflecting on those years I can on-ly rejoice that, although we have not everywhere succeeded nor have always made the right choices, but we have not made crucial mistakes either, there fore we can openly look into one another’s eyes. We have believed in our state, our people, one another; and we have tirelessly worked. This belief and hard work answer the question of what has determined the reality of the present-day Lithuania, why we are as we are, and where our greatest strength is, when we think about the creation of the future.

In people. In personalities. In the souls and expectations, thoughts and endeavors of everyone, who is opening this book. Because the histo-ries of the states are written not by unknown forces, not by nameless nations, but by actual people. Real personalities have accomplished everything that has been created, learned, done or won during those twenty five years. All this has been achieved by our people in culture, science, sports or politics, by our teachers and farmers, by our seniors and youth, by all our citizens, no matter where they live today or what they do, no matter what beliefs or views they profess.

I understand that the purpose of this book is to document all the names of the creators of our history. And to prove that although we are all very different, we are still united in our thoughts and deeds for the future and our being in Lithuania. Those personalities, who have en-tered our history as the symbols of the resistance to the Soviet occupa-tion, risen with the wave of the Movement of National Resurrection, are being replaced with the personalities, born in the already inde-pendent Lithuania. This continuation of historical development and the succession of generations is one of the most satisfactory feelings. Also it is one of the firmest presumptions that the twenty five years are only a beginning; that our history will be continued with meaningful achievements, willful cooperation, and the service of new outstanding personalities to our nation, our state, and our Lithuania.

I sincerely believe in our future together with all goodwill people of Lithuania!

aLgIRDaS myKOLaS BRazaUSKaS(1932–2010)

President of the republic of Lithuania

<...>The history of Lithuania is etched in us; it lies within our spirit. To know your own history is to know yourself. Our history has nurtured our desire for freedom and taught us to value our statehood and fight for it. <...>

In the 20th century, the state of Lithuania resurrected twice. It was a great challenge for a nation under foreign oppression and devastated by wars; however, we have survived and now must be rightfully proud of it. Now, in the end of this century and this millennium, with bright hope we once again lay bricks in the foundation of our state. <...>

<...>A state is, above all, defined by its people; our state is we, the peo-ple of Lithuania. <...> Our state was, is, and will be like us. I firmly as-sert that you, regardless of your ethnicity, gender, the language you speak, your origin, social status, religious beliefs or political views, are all equal citizens of Lithuania, equally valued and needed by your Homeland, because you are Lithuania.

The only measure of patriotism has always been and will be honest work, competence, and creative thought. Love for your Homeland should not be embodied in loud slogans, but rather in hard daily work and true concern with welfare and future of your country.

Throughout the ages, lives of Lithuanians have always been based on three sacred values: the Nation, Motherland, and God. They have united us, they have inspired us to fight, they have preserved the name of Lithuania in the world, and they have helped us to restore our state.

<...> I believe in the wonderful future awaiting Lithuania. <...>

From the inauguration speech of President of the Republic of Lithua-nia Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas, March 25, 1993.

STaTE SymBOLS .................................................................16

SIgNIfIcaNT DaTES aND EVENTS ..............................18

ThE ROaD TO INDEpENDENcE ................................... 20

Introduction ..............................................................................21

Lithuanian Emigrants in the Support of Lithuania: The Overview of the History of Lithuanian Diaspora and its Assistance to Lithuania in the Period of the Statehood Restoration from 1987 through 1993 .....................22

The Restoration of Independence. Dissident Activities ..........33

Sąjūdis .......................................................................................41

The Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania ........................................................ 49

pOLITIcS ...............................................................................52

Introduction ..............................................................................53

The Development of Lithuanian Political System ...................54

The Evolution of the Parliamentary System after the Restoration of Lithuanian Independence ................................56

Presidential Institution ............................................................76

The Government of the Republic of Lithuania ........................78

Courts ....................................................................................... 90

Lithuania in the European Union ........................................... 98

Restoration of the Lithuanian National Defence System, Its Development and Perspectives ...........................102

Lithuanian Foreign Policy in the Years of Independence ..... 112

The Overview of the Legal System .........................................122

The Development of Civil Society ..........................................126

The Development of Lithuanian Municipal Authorities ....... 132

The Development of Internal Affairs and Public Security .....138

Achievements and Development Tendencies of Lithuanian Healthcare ...........................................................144

The Social Security Policy and Development in Lithuania ... 154

EcONOmIcS .......................................................................162

Introduction ............................................................................163

The Rapid Development of Lithuanian Business ..................164

Stories of Prominent Lithuanian Business Enterprises ........ 170

The Ship Called Independence: Challenges of Lithuanian Power Industry ................................................... 250

The Evolution of the Lithuanian Financial System ...............256

The Lithuanian Corridor. The Development of Lithuanian Transport System ............................................... 264

The Overview of Information Technologies.......................... 280

Lithuanian Agriculture: Escape from the Collective Farm ...................................................................... 284

Construction and Architecture: On the Road of Sustainable Development ...................................................... 290

A New Stage in Environmental Protection ........................... 294

Lithuanian Forests and Forestry ........................................... 300

The Overview of the Lithuanian Tourism Economy: Doors Widely Open for Tourists ........................................... 304

Resorts of Lithuania .............................................................. 308

ScIENcE aND EDUcaTION ...........................................316

Introduction ............................................................................ 317

The Development of Lithuanian Education ...........................318

Lithuanian Science and Studies ............................................ 326

Prominent Science Institutions ..............................................314

cULTURE ............................................................................ 346

Introduction ............................................................................347

A Freedom to Create: Lithuanian Culture ............................ 348

Decades of the Language Policy Following the Restoration of Independence ...........................................367

Cultural Instutions .................................................................372

Religion in Lithuania after the Restoration of Independence .................................................................... 380

The Architecture of Independence: Personalities as Trendsetters of the Profession .................... 386

The Development and Achievements of Lithuanian Mass Media ......................................................... 394

Lithuanian Sportsmen as Heralds and Standard-Bearers of the Independence of the State ............. 398

REfERENcES .....................................................................410

INDEx ...................................................................................414

16

THE TRICOLOR FLAG OF THE STATE OF LITHUANIA

The flag of the Republic of Lithuania is called a tricolor flag because it is made of three equal strips of solid fabric in yellow, green, and red colors. The yellow color symbolizes the Sun, the light, and pros-perity; the green color stands for freedom, hope, and nature; and the red color means courage, Motherland, and the blood that has been shed in her defence.On April 25, 1918, the Council of Lithuania approved this flag as the national flag of the Republic of Lithuania and it was used as such during the period of inter-war Independence. On January 1, 1919, the tricolor flag was hoisted above the Gediminas Tower in Vilnius by Lithuanian volunteer soldiers as the symbol of free Lithuania. In 1922, the tricolor flag was recognized by the Constitution of Lithu-ania as the State Flag. During the years of the Soviet occupation, all State symbols, including the flag, were banned by the authorities. However, on March 20, 1989, the tricolor flag once again officially became the State Flag of Lithuania.

VYTIS (THE KNIGHT), THE COAT OF ARMS OF THE STATE OF LITHUANIA

The coat of arms of Lithuania, Vytis – a knight in a silver white ar-mor mounted on a white horse with a sword and a shield in his hands against a red background – is one of the oldest state coat of arms in Europe, counting seven ages. According to historical annals, in 1366 Lithuanian Grand Duke Al-girdas sealed the agreement between the states of Lithuania and Po-land with such a seal. In the beginning of the 16th century, Lithuani-an chronicles offered an explanation of the Lithuanian coat of arms as being a symbol of a mature ruler, capable of defending his lands with a sword in his hand.

Alongside the tricolor flag, Lithuania also recognizes its historical flag: an armored knight mounted on a white horse sitting against a red background. This flag usually flies over the most historically sig-nificant buildings: above the Palace of Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius, on the Trakai Island Castle, in the Garden of Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas, etc.

HOISTING THE FLAGThese are the holidays when the State Flag of Lithuania shall be hoisted on or above all the designated buildings: February 16 –Day of Restoration of the State of Lithuania; March 11 –Day of Re-establishment of the Independ State of

Lithuania; July 6 – Statehood Day (Coronation of King Mindaugas).The flag shall be also hoisted at, on, or above governmental and mu-nicipal buildings (other buildings are optional) on the following ob-servance days: January 1 –Lithuanian Flag Day; January 13 –Freedom Defenders’ Day; February 24 –Day of the Independence of Estonia; March 29 –Day of the Accession of Lithuania to NATO; Mary 1 –Day of the Accession of Lithuania to the European Union; May 9 –Europe Day; June 14 –Day of Mourning and Hope (tied with black ribbon); June 15 –Occupation and Genocide Day (tied with black ribbon); July 15 –Day of the Žalgiris Battle; August 23 –Day of the Black Ribbon (tied with black ribbon); August 31 – Freedom Day; September 23 – Holocaust Memorial Day (tied with black ribbon); October 25 – Constitution Day; November 18 – Independence Day of Latvia; November 23 – Lithuanian Armed Forces Day.

17

NATIONAL HYMN BY VINCAS KUDIRKA AS THE LITHUANIAN ANTHEM

The music and lyrics of the “National Hymn” was written by Doctor Vincas Kudirka. In 1919 the “National Hymn” became the national anthem of Lithuania. In the years of Soviet occupation, it was banned. In 1989 the “National Hymn” was once again officially recognized as the State anthem.On July 6, 2009, while celebrating the Statehood Day (Lithuanian King Mindaugas’ Coronation) and the millennium anniversary of the name of Lithuania, a new tra-dition was born: on every July 6, on the Statehood Day, at 9 PM Lithuanian time, every Lithuanian regardless where they are, have to sing the “National Hymn”. This should be the hour when every Lithuanian expresses pride in their country and its origin not only in Lithuania but in all Lithuanian communities worldwide.

The Anthem of Lithuania

Lithuania, our dear homeland,Land of worthy heroes!

May your sons draw strength and vigourFrom your past experience.

May your children always proudlyChoose the paths of virtue,

May your good and gains of peopleBe the goals they work for.

May the sun of this landScatter all the gloom and dark,Truth and light, shining bright,

Guide our steps forever.

May our love for native landKeep on burning in our hearts,

For the sake of this landWe shall stand together.

18

1990 March 11, 1990 – the Supreme Council – Reconstituent Seimas of Lithuania proclaimed the restoration of the Independence of the Re-public of Lithuania.

June, 1990 – Russia imposed an economic blockade on Lithuania.

Autumn, 1990 – the first Lithuanian information bureau was opened in Oslo, Norway. Later, information bureaus in Brussels, Belgium, and London, UK, became our country’s unofficial rep-resentations.

1991 January 11-13, 1991 – the Soviet Union together with local collabora-tors failed in an attempted coup d’état in Lithuania.

January 13, 1991 – “The Bloody Sunday”: 13 people were killed in a Soviet Army attack on the Television Tower.

January, 1991 – following the January 13 events in Vilnius, a Lith-uanian information office was opened at Č. Okinčic’s initiative in Warsaw, Poland. For some time, the office was the residence of Minister A. Saudargas, who left Lithuania after the January 13 events with the authorization from the Supreme Council of Lithua-nia to form a government in emigration in the event of Lithuania’s occupation by the Soviets.

February 11, 1991 – Iceland was the first to recognize Lithuania.

July, 1991 – the agreement was signed between Lithuania and the Russian Federation which recognized the annexation of Lithuania in 1940. The agreement was signed in Moscow by the Chairman of the Supreme Council – Reconstituent Seimas, V. Landsbergis and the President of the Russian Federation, B. Yeltsin.

August 17, 1991 – the European Community recognized Lithuanian Independence.

September 6, 1991 – Lithuania was recognized by the Russian Feder-ation. Until then, Lithuania had been already recognized by 59 states around the world.

September 10, 1991 – Lithuania became a member of the Organiza-tion of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

September 17, 1991 – Lithuania joined the United Nations Organi-zation (UNO).

December 20, 1991 – the newly founded North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) was immediately joined by Lithuania.

1992 January, 1992 – the Vice-President of the USA, Dan Quayle visited Vilnius where he officially opened the American representation. In his speech before the people gathered in the Independence Square near the Seimas, he said: “Russian soldiers are going home. The great question of our time is settled. Freedom lives, Communism is dead”.

May, 1992 – Minister of National Defence of Lithuania A. Butkeviči-us and Minister of Defence of Russia P. Grachev met in Brussels to agree on the withdrawal of the Russian Army from Lithuania before August 31, 1993. In the same year in Moscow, on August 8, the del-

egation of both parties ratified the schedule of the withdrawal of the army from Lithuania.

October 25, 1992 – the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted by a referendum.

October, 1992 – first free elections to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania were held. The majority of seats was won by the left wing.

1993 February 25, 1993 – the fourth President of the Republic of Lithu-ania and the first President of the Independent Lithuania, Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas, was inaugurated.

May 11, 1993 – Lithuania joined the Council of Europe.

1993 – The European Economic Community decided to support Lithuania through “Phare” program for Central Europe. Officially, Lithuania became a country of Central Europe.

June 25, 1993 – the national currency, the Litas, was introduced.

August 31, 1993 – the last Russian military unit was withdrawn from Lithuania.

September 4-8, 1993– Pope John Paul II visited Lithuania.

1994 January 4, 1994 – President A.M. Brazauskas addressed the NATO Secretary General with an expressed wish for Lithuania to join the Alliance.

1994 – Lithuania joined the Partnership for Peace. This initiative created possibilities for the aspiring countries to start their mutual cooperation with NATO on the priorities of their choice.

1994 – the European Union signed agreements on free trade with the Baltic States.

May 9, 1994 – Lithuania signed the associated agreement with the European Union.

Autumn, 1994 – first joint trainings and exercises with NATO and the Partnership for Peace countries were conducted.

1996 October 20, 1996 – the elections to the Seimas were won by the rightist parties.

1997 1997 – Presidents A.M. Brazauskas and B. Yeltsin signed inter-state agreements on the Lithuanian-Russian Border and the Lithuani-an-Russian Readmission.

February, 1997 – Sweden was the first to lift the visa regime for the citizens of Lithuania.

Spring, 1997 – at the agreement of Speaker of the Seimas V. Lands-bergis with the leadership of the Polish Parliament, a strategic part-nership was initiated and the following joint Lithuanian-Polish in-stitutions were established: the Presidential Consulting Committee, the Parliamentarian Assembly, and the Governmental Cooperation Council.

19

1998February 26, 1998 – Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus was in-augurated.

1999April, 1999 – the NATO summit in Washington, DC, declared the open door policy, leaving a possibility of membership for new Eu-ropean democracies, and announced the NATO Membership Action Plan. The NATO integration process started.

2000February 15, 2000 – Lithuania started the official negotiations of the accession to the EU.

2001January, 2001 – all Lithuanian political powers reached an agree-ment on the integration to the European Union and the completion of the negotiations with the first group of applicants.

May 27-31, 2001 – Vilnius hosted the spring session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

2002 November, 2002 – the USA President, George Bush was the only US leader so far to visit Lithuania. “The countries of NATO have opened the doors of our alliance to Lithuania and six other Euro-pean democracies. And I have the honor of sharing this message with you: We proudly invite Lithuania to join us in NATO, the great Atlantic alliance”, said President Bush to the crowd gathered in the Town Hall Square in Vilnius. “The long night of fear, uncertain-ty and loneliness is over. You are joining the strong and growing family of NATO. Our alliance has made a solemn pledge of protec-tion, and anyone who would choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an enemy of the United States of America”. These words are carved in a plaque on the Town Hall in Vilnius.

November 21, 2002 – in Prague, the seven NATO candidates: Bul-garia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slove-nia, were invited to start the negotiations on the membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

December 8, 2002 – in Geneva, Switzerland, President V. Adamkus signed the agreement on the membership of Lithuania in the World Trade Organization.

December, 2002 – in Copenhagen, Denmark, Lithuania successfully finalized the negotiations on the accession to the EU.

2003 February 26, 2003 – President Rolandas Paksas was inaugurated.

April 16, 2003 – the agreement on Lithuania’s accession to the Eu-ropean Union was signed in Athens, Greece.

May 10-11, 2003 – the referendum in Lithuania on the member-ship of our country in the EU was attended by over 63 percent of el-igible voters. 91.07 percent of the referendum participants said yes.

May-June, 2003 – the Russian Duma ratified the 1997 inter-state agreements on the Lithuanian-Russian Border and the Lithuani-an-Russian Readmission. Until then, Russia had no signed readmis-sion agreement with any world state. Lithuania was the first.

2004March 29, 2004 – Lithuania joined NATO as a member state.

April 2, 2004 – the Lithuanian flag was hoisted at the NATO head-quarters in Brussels.

April 6, 2004 – President Rolandas Paksas was impeached by the Seimas. He became the first European and Lithuanian leader to be removed from office after an impeachment.

2004 – since that year, the NATO Baltic air policing mission has been performed on the three-month rotation principle by pilots from Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, USA, Poland, Turkey, Spain, and other NATO countries.

May 1, 2004 – Lithuania joined the European Union as a member state.

July 12, 2004 – President Valdas Adamkus was inaugurated for his second term in office.

September 5, 2004 – the Wales Summit ruled that the NATO part-ners could deploy their forces in any Alliance member state with-out restrictions. This enabled the Baltic States to have reinforced rotational forces of the US and other allied countries in the air, land, and sea. Lithuania was ready to receive up to 800 allied sol-diers.

2006May, 2006 – Vilnius hosted the Baltic and Black Sea confer-ence participated by nine state presidents. The speech of the US Vice-President, Dich Cheney, is regarded as an example of the harshest discourse against dictatorship in Russia, uttered by the G.W. Bush administration.

2007End of 2007 – Lithuania joined the Schengen Area.

2009July 12, 2009 – President Dalia Grybauskaitė was inaugurated.

2013June-December, 2013 – Lithuania presided over the Council of the European Union.

2014July 12, 2014 – President Dalia Grybauskaitė was elected for her sec-ond term in office.

December 3, 2014 – a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal start-ed functioning in Klaipeda. The LNG terminal represents a 450 me-ter embankment, an 18 kilometer connecting pipeline, and a float-ing LNG storage, FSRU Independence, with the storing capacity of 170,000 cubic meters. The LNG terminal gave Lithuania independ-ence from Russia, the only supplier of natural gas, as it created the market of natural gas in Lithuania.

2015January, 2015 – Lithuania became a member of the Eurozone.

2015 – from January 1, Lithuania started a one year presidency over the Baltic Assembly and the Baltic Council of Ministers.

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Today, people of Lithuania can fully enjoy the many advantages of a free, democratic, and independent state. All this was not easily achieved, therefore we want to remind our read-ers of the challenges at the end of the 20th century that Lithuania had to overcome on its road to freedom. In this article, we will remember all the events of the fight for Independ-ence and pay tribute to its participants, who, with courage and self-sacrifice, led us to In-dependence that we had so dreamed about.

A great contribution to the cause of our Independence was paid by Lithuanian diaspora, dissidents, and the Lithuanian Reform Movement, Sąjūdis that was born from their joint efforts. It would be hard to imagine Lithuania without their self-sacrifice and a relent-less desire for Independence. Therefore, this chapter of the book offers four overviews: “Lithuanian Emigrants in the Support of Lithuania: The Overview of the History of Lithu-anian Diaspora and its Assistance to Lithuania in the Period of the Statehood Restoration from 1987 through 1993”, “Lithuanian Freedom Movement: Dissident Activities”, Sąjūdis about the Lithuanian Reform Movement, and “The Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania”.

These articles were written exclusively for this book by historian Arūnas Antanaitis, the director of the President Valdas Adamkus Library, a doctoral student at the Emigration Institute of Vytautas Magnus University, by Kastytis Antanaitis, PhD in humanities, an associate professor at Vytautas Magnus University, and by Alvydas Medalinskas, an ex-pert in political sciences, one of the initiators of the Lithuanian Reform Movement and its active participant, a member of the Sąjūdis Seimas, a lecturer at Mykolas Romeris Uni-versity. Article “The Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania” was based on the information of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania and a book, “The Road to Independence. Lithuanian Sąjūdis 1988–1991”

We have consulted and cooperated with Lithuanian diaspora, the Department of Emi-gration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, participants of Sąjūdis and dissidents. We are very grateful for their pho-tographs, as well as for their advice and support that they graciously offered us in our search for photographs and the people that could best remember the stories behind those photographs.

We hope that in those reviews, we managed to revive many interesting although forgotten or almost unknown facts of our recent history.

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In our history, the second half of the 19th and the entire 20th centu-ry are associated with Lithuanians who left abroad and settled in for-eign countries. Not accidentally, Lithuanians are called the nation of emigration: we have been a leading country in emigration in Europe for decades. The history of Lithuanian emigration is much longer and wider, but, unfortunately, not very well known publicly. Howev-er, we can firmly maintain that Lithuanians and their communities, scattered around the world, have much contributed to the cultural, scientific, and economic life of the nation. Particularly, their concern was being felt during the years of Lithuania’s liberation and the for-mation of the statehood, both in 1918-1922 during the formation of the First Lithuanian Republic, and later, in the years of liberation from the Soviet Union in 1987-1933.

The latter episode in history, namely the activities of Lithuanian di-aspora in 1987-1993, will be the focal subject of the present article. Besides, we will give a short overview of the history of the Lithuanian emigration and its main characteristics.

Traditionally, the first known Lithuanian emigrant is considered to be Alexander Carolus Curtius who immigrated to Northern America to escape religious persecution of Reformats, and established the first Latin school in New Amsterdam, present day New York. The partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth determined the emigration of part of the nobility to the Western European countries. However, mass emigration of Lithuanians started in the second half of the 19th century.

Traditionally, historiography defines three waves of Lithuanian emi-gration:

The first wave of Lithuanian emigration of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries;

The second wave of the post-war emigration caused by Soviet re-pressions;

The third wave of Lithuanian emigration after 1987.

The “Greenhorn” Lithuanian Immigrants of the Second Half of the 19th Century

In the second half of the 19th century, Lithuanians mostly emigrat-ed to the United Sates. There, along with other immigrants from Eastern Europe, they used to do the dirtiest, most dangerous, and

least paid jobs. The name Grynoriai, the mispronounced word “green horns”- meaning “newcomers” - had stuck to this genera-tion of immigrants and had in part described the living conditions of those people in the USA. For a few reasons it is hard to estimate the number of Lithuanians who chose to emigrate in the given period. Firstly, the US immigra-tion centres would register people from Lithuania as Russians, as they came from the Russian Empire, or as Poles, as they were of Catholic faith, which was associated with Poland. Only in 1899, the US authorities started registering Lithuanians as a nation. Even then, however, it was hard to keep track of the number of Lithuanians who immigrated to the States. Historians give differ-ent estimates; however, they all prove a truly large scale of the Lithu-anian emigration of those times. It has been estimated that in the period from the middle of the 19th century to 1918, number of emi-grants from Lithuania could have reached from 300 to 600 thousand.First Lithuanian colonies in the USA settled in the coal-mining towns of Pennsylvania. One of them, Shenandoah was even called the “Lithuanian capital” – “stalica Lietuvos” in the mixture of Rus-sian and Lithuanian; the majority of the town mayors were Ameri-cans of Lithuanian origin. The immigrants of New England used to

Lithuanians’ walk at the World Expo. New York, 1939 (photo from Vytautas Magnus University Lithuanian Emigration Institute archive)

LITHUANIAN EMIGRANTS IN THE SUPPORT OF LITHUANIA: THE OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF LITHUANIAN DIASPORA AND ITS ASSISTANCE TO LITHUANIA IN THE PERIOD OF THE STATEHOOD RESTORATION FROM 1987 THROUGH 1993

Arūnas Antanaitis, Director of the Valdas Adamkus Presidential Library, Historian at Vytautas Magnus University

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work in the textile industry or the slaughter houses of Chicago and Lithuanians slavering there were masterfully described in the novel “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. The majority of those people came from lower classes of society, poorly educated and mostly illiterate. Despite that and the hard liv-ing conditions, the “greenhorns” soon began feeling their identity differences from other ethnic groups and started organizing their own communal life. Lithuanian immigrants built churches and es-tablished parishes, which played not only spiritual role, but also became centres of Lithuanian ethnical communities. Immigrants founded mutual aid funds as well as social and political organiza-tions. Cultural life was also active. In 1879, Lithuanian Americans published their first periodical “Gazieta lietuviška” (“The Lithuani-an Newspaper”), while in Lithuania, the first newspaper, “Aušra” (“The Dawn”) was published only in 1883. “Draugas” (“The Friend”), which started circulating in 1909, and is still active, is the longest consecutively circulating newspaper. Due to certain circumstances, Lithuanian ethnicity in emigration started manifesting itself earlier than in Lithuania itself. Conditions in the USA were more favourable as life in Lithuania was full of Czarist bans and prohibitions. Naturally, Lithuanian immigrants felt sentiments for their home-land. The majority of them had hoped to live in the States only tem-porarily, make a fortune and come home. About one fifth of them succeeded in doing so. Lithuanian Americans strongly supported the newly independent Lithuania both politically in its quest for the recognition of Independence and economically by transferring their businesses into the independent homeland; although later, the ma-jority of the re-immigrated businessmen went bankrupt. In the period from 1918 through 1940, another 100 thousand peo-ple left the country. The absolute majority of them emigrated for economic reasons, having chosen the USA, later Canada and Lat-in America as their places of residence. However, the latter offered the harshest living and working conditions. In 1932, the “Society for the Support of Lithuanians Abroad” (DURL) was founded as the an-swer to the Lithuanian State’s concern about the hardships of immi-grants’ life. Main tasks of the Society were to unify all Lithuanians abroad, help them maintain Lithuanian spirit, and found Lithuanian schools in the emigration. The Society, supported by the Govern-ment, allocated certain funds to maintain schools, print periodicals, and pay priests’ salaries. The beginning of World War II put an end to the activities of the Society.

Lithuanian Organizations in the Emigration from the 1950ties to the 1980ties

The second emigration wave left Lithuania in the years of World War II. Trying to escape Soviet repressions Lithuanians moved to Ger-many, to the so-called Displaced Persons or DP camps. Later, around 1950, almost 60 thousand people emigrated from Germany to the countries, which had offered shelter. Around 30 thousand people found homes in the USA, others went to Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and France; part of them stayed in Germany. Known as DPs, those people were different from economic emigrants. Educated in-telligentsia, governmental servants, university professors, medical doctors, teachers, and priests were leaving Lithuania not in the search of better life, but rather to escape the Soviet terror. Due to this cir-cumstance, this wave of emigration lead very active social, cultural, and professional lives. Not only individual people and their families from Lithuania via DP camps were scattering around the world; they were bringing Lithuanian organizations along. Immigrants gathered into numerous smaller groups or founded bigger and more ambitious organizations alongside the old ones. They published newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets; broadcasted radio programs, staged the-atre performances, published books, held scientific conferences, and organized concerts and festivals. From the fifties through the eight-ies, Lithuanians in the emigration founded or revived a number of historically important Lithuanian organizations.

The US First lady Mrs. Betty Ford at a Song Festival sitting next to a US senator and our future President, Valdas Adamkus, 1976 (photo from VMU Lithuanian Emigration Institute archive)

Alongside the above-mentioned cultural and social activities, Lithu-anian emigration was also living an active political life. Both, indi-viduals and organizations were following the so-called “Lithuanian Freedom Cause”. In the process that lasted from the beginning of the occupation until the restoration of Independence, Lithuanians in the emigration attempted to prevent the politicians of their respective host countries from acknowledging the occupation of Lithuania and to inform the world community about the situation in Lithuania and the violations of human rights, and to uncover other criminal acts of the Soviet Union. This especially applied to Lithuanian communities in the USA, Cana-da, and Australia. A few successful campaigns of the Lithuanian Free-dom Cause should be mentioned here. In 1975, the efforts of Lithu-anian Australians were fruitful: a Baltic Resolution was adopted, the occupation of the Baltic countries condemned, and the recognition of the occupation revoked. Lithuanian Canadians especially succeeded in lobbying; having acquired considerable influence over Canadian politicians, they affected the foreign policy of the relations between Canada and the Soviet Union. Lithuanians in other countries were also active in politics; however, because their communities were less numerous, they could not reach such political scale. Benefits from the relations between Lithuanian Americans and the local politicians resulted in the popularity of Lithuanian Song Festivals, which were participated by first ladies of the country and, due to their visits, cov-ered in American mass media on a national level. Lithuanian communities and organizations together with the Lithu-anian diplomatic service represented Lithuania in the West. Those

Any form of activity was good enough for demanding Lithuania’s freedom. The 1970s in the USA. (Photo from VMU Lithuanian Emigration Institute archive).

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Associate professor of Vytautas Magnum University Kastytis Antanaitis, D. A.

RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE. DISSIDENT ACTIVITIES

The origin of the word dissident comes from Latin and means dis-agreeing or contradicting. In the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, the movement of unarmed resistance started spreading throughout the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its satellite countries in Eastern Europe. The roots of dissident move-ment could be traced back to the so called Khrushchev Thaw pe-riod, which began after Joseph Stalin’s death with political fight for supremacy resulting in the liberalization of Soviet regime and in the policy of destalinization that was announced during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956. When political repressions subsided and the USSR temporar-ily strengthened its political autocracy, Soviet regime met with new challenges: how to balance power between the USSR center and the republics; how to deal with the conflict between religion and official Atheism; how to soften interaction of Russian and national cultures; how to stabilize confrontation between regional econom-ic independence and centralized economy; how to solve the ques-tion of sovereignty of Soviet republics and satellite states; how to treat freedom of individuality in the closed totalitarian society. And again, the regime did not have any clear problem solving tactics. In addition, the regime was not able to define its long-term objec-tives, meanwhile struggling to curb the shortage of simplest neces-sities of everyday life. Although no serious and organized political opposition existed within the Soviet Union, the release of political prisoners as well as the reviewed values of the young post-war gen-eration encouraged by the denunciation of Stalin cult, in part nour-ished oppositional ideas. The USSR found itself on the crossroads of sorts, and part of the creative intelligentsia alongside the aca-demic society started more boldly demanding the rectification of the “deviations from socialist values”. The totalitarian, militaristic, single-party government with the huge repressive machine felt no danger from armed enemies, outside or inside the country; how-ever, it failed to carry on simplest political discussions, let alone win them. Therefore, in the end of the sixties, with the consolidated power in N. Khrushchev’s firm hands, the USSR naturally resumed what it was best at – political repressions and persecution. Numer-ous campaigns that followed one another – the antinational cam-paign of 1958-1960; russification and antireligious campaigns; and the campaign of 1960 which declared that Communism construc-tion should be completed by 1980 – negatively affected both the USSR center and Lithuania, by absolutely disappointing even the greatest of optimists, who still had believed that the more liberal Soviet regime, having shed Stalinism, was more approachable for cooperation and, hopefully, more flexible within. These were the

times that generated a new phenomenon of political activities that could be called the Lithuanian dissident movement. The development of dissident movements was also encouraged by international circumstances. The international law acknowledges the supremacy of interstate agreements over national law, therefore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by the USSR in 1948, in the times of Stalin, was obligatory for all the members of the United Nations Organization to follow. Human rights defense and monitoring became characteristic feature of the dissident activi-ties. People in the Soviet Union could engage in such activities pub-licly because, formally speaking, no citizen could have been pros-ecuted or otherwise persecuted for monitoring adherence to the agreements signed by the USSR. Based on this principle, the first public dissident organization in the Soviet Union – Initiative Group of Human Rights Protection in the USSR - was founded in Moscow

Parades of the Soviet regime. The 1987 festive demonstration: Perestroika was already on its way(photo by A. Sabaliauskas, ELTA)

Parades of the Soviet regime. The 1985

May 1 parade: WWII veterans’, high school

and university students’ participation in the

parades was mandatory (photo by

A. Sabaliauskas, ELTA)

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in 1969, which engaged in making public declarations and sending reports to foreign organizations. Although the KGB had exterminat-ed this organization and imprisoned or deported its members, its legacy lasted in tenths of other dissident organizations lead by the Human Rights Protection Committee, founded in 1970, and associ-ated with A. Sakharov, and the Moscow Helsinki Group founded by A. Sakharov’s supporters and headed by Y. Orlov that became a true symbol of the dissident movement. Soon, similar groups appeared in other Soviet republics as well. The impetus for such activities came from the final report of the Conference on European Security and Cooperation, which was held in Helsinki in 1973-1975, and signed by 35 states. This act consolidated the principles of inviolability of borders, respect for human rights, and the fulfilment in good faith of obligations under international law. Due to the Helsinki Accords, Western countries had lifted trade restrictions and opened their markets to the natural resources of the USSR, while the Soviet lead-ership consented to some of the provisions of peaceful cohabitation.

Sakharov’s surroundings generated an idea to organize social groups for monitoring the implementation of these acts. In 1976 it became known that on November 25 a number of activists – Catholic priest Karolis Garuckas, Viktoras Petkus, Tomas Venclova, Eitan Fin-kelshtein, and Ona Lukauskaitė-Poškienė – had founded the Lithua-nian social group for the support of the Helsinki Accords (the Lithu-anian Helsinki Group). At some point later, 41 people were members of the group and 125 others had become unofficial members or had signed the documents. The group members were supposed to share the principles of the Helsinki Accords, try to contribute to their im-plementation, not to engage in violence and discourage others to make acts of violence; besides, people who had served in German or Soviet repression structures could not join the group.

The task of the Lithuanian Helsinki group was to register human rights violations and make them known internationally: during its active years, the group had publicized tens of documents on human rights violations; however, its true mission was to constantly remind the world of the fact of Lithuania’s occupation and to gradually be-come an unofficial organizational platform of sorts, unifying all dis-sident movements. In order to protect other dissidents from perse-cution or to give them a wider audience and to replace the retired group members, the Helsinki group started gradually involving in

its activities people with different political views and even members of other underground organizations. The group was joined by Bro-nius Laurinavičius, Mečislovas Jurevičius, Algirdas Statkevičius, Vytautas Skuodis, Vytautas Vaičiūnas, Vytautas Bogušis, Gintau-tas Iešmantas, Antanas Terleckas, Nijolė Sadūnaitė, Vladas Šakalys, and other participants of the anti-Soviet movement, who trans-formed the Helsinki group, quite unexpectedly to themselves, into a symbolic organization of Lithuanian dissidents and underground activists, although officially the Lithuanian Helsinki group had nev-er declared such aspirations and had never deliberately pursued such goals. Probably, the most radical and prophetical organization related to the Helsinki group was the Lithuanian Freedom League (LLL), which had stated never to have an organizational structure.

“Every resident of Lithuania can consider themselves a members of the LLL if they fight (according to their own capability) for the goals of the LLL” – such was the unambiguous declaration of 1978, made by this underground organization associated with the activities of Antanas Terleckas, Algirdas Statkevičius, and other dissidents, of its

Lithuanian and Russian dissidents, future members of Moscow and Vilnius Helsinki groups, at the court hearing of Sergei Kovalev, prominent fighter for human rights and democracy in the Soviet Union, 1975, Vilnius. Fifth from left: Yuri Golfand; sixth - Yuri Orlov; seventh – Gema Stanelytė; ninth – Mečislovas Jurevičius; tenth – Mart Niklus; eleventh – Andrei Sakharov; thirteenth – Jefremas Jankelevičius; fourteenth – Eitan Finkelshtein (photo from Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) archive)

The Helsinki group of 1976. In the photo: first on the right is the late Viktoras Petkus, second on the left is Antanas Terleckas (photo from LGGRTC archive)

November 19, 1979. A group of Lithuanian dissidents gathered in Vilnius in the support of human rights activist Romualdas Ragaišis on his trial. In first row from the left kneeling: Algimantas Andreika, Robertas Grigas, Jonas Volungevičius, and Kęstutis Subačius. Standing in second row: priest Jonas Kastytis Matulionis, an unidentified woman, Mečislovas Jurevičius, Sigitas Tamkevičius, Antanas Terleckas, Algirdas Statkevičius, Liutauras Kazakevičius, Leonora Sasnauskaitė, and an unidentified man (photo from LGGRTC archive)

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Alvydas Medalinskas, member of the Initiative Group of Sąjūdis, the Reform Movement of Lithuania; lecturer at Mykolas Romeris University; political science expert and political analyst

SąJŪDIS

The Reform Movement of Lithuania (Sąjūdis further in the text) is a civil movement that was formed in the struggle for the restoration of Lithuania’s statehood and resulted in the act of March 11, 1990. While the Movement can be defined as an attempt for Independ-ence, the program adopted at its Founding Assembly on October 21-22, 1988, did not mention Independence as such. Sąjūdis started to include this ultimate objective in its documents and statements from February 16, 1989, when in Kaunas, the Reform Movement of Lithu-ania adopted its declaration, and each of its members took an oath at the Freedom monument to fight for free Lithuania.

From the beginning, Sąjūdis had used the notions “Nation” and “Lithuania’s”, therefore the movement was also called national and popular, although people from other ethnic groups of Lithuania have participated in the activities of the Sąjūdis Seimas (Parliament) and the Council of Sąjūdis Seimas , naturally, included the Sąjūdis Councils in cities, towns, and regions.

The Birth of Sąjūdis

Sąjūdis was born on March 3, 1988, when approximately 500 civil representatives gathered in the assembly hall of the Academy of Sci-ences of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic to elect an initia-tive group of 35 persons. Mostly, those people were prominent sci-ence and culture figures, although a few young, less publicly known people, the initiators of the meeting, were also included in the group.

After the public meeting of May 27, 1988 with the representative of the Popular Front of Estonia, Ivar Raig in the same assembly hall, those young activists, namely, Z.Vaišvila, A. Skučas, G. Songaila, and A Medalinskas, took initiative to organize, in exactly one week, a meeting of the people from Lithuanian culture and science circles, with the goal of founding the Popular Front of Lithuania.

Had not the meeting with the Estonian representative happened, most probably other circumstances would have prompted to found the Popular Front of Lithuania. In the end of the eighties, every event, abundantly organized in Lithuania and especially in Vilnius, would naturally become a discussion about civil and national re-sponsibility to act rather than to passively get together and talk.

A scheduled meeting, held on June 2 in the Palace of Scientists on a rather neutral subject of how to overcome bureaucracy, could serve as an example of this tendency. R. Ozolas, B. Genzelis, K. Prunskienė, and J. Minkevičius among others took part in the meeting. In the course of discussions, an idea of founding something similar to the Popular

Front was born; however there was no further development for the lack of the action plan. The initiators of the June 3 meeting were also present at the event, and having previously discussed the idea of the Popular Front, suggested that the participants of the event should join the next day‘s meeting at the Academy of Sciences and take part in the foundation of the Popular Front. The participants of the meeting agreed on that suggestion and on June 3, the speakers of the event in the Palace of Scientists became members of Sąjūdis Initiative Group.

The Origin of Sąjūdis

The beginnings of Sąjūdis could be traced back to various infor-mal organizations and clubs that were active in Lithuania from 1987 through 1988. The members of those organizations participated in both events, the May 27 meeting in the Academy of Sciences and the June 2 gathering in the Palace of Scientists.The variety of organizations included the Monument Protection club Talka (chairman Gintaras Songaila), the Youth Ecological club Žemyna (one of the leaders was Zigmas Vaišvila), the philosophers’ club at the Žinijos Draugija association also known as the History and Culture club (founded by R. Ozolas, B. Genzelis, and B. Kuzmickas), and the youth club Zodiakas at the Academy of Science (S. Lapienis was one of the leaders of the club and actively contributed to the June 3 event; however he was accidentally overlooked and not included in the Sąjūdis Initiative Group). Economist K. Prunskienė also was an important contributor to this cause with her innovative ideas not on-ly about the independence of Lithuanian enterprises but of the over-all Lithuanian economy. These clubs as well as many others were the hub of future members of Sąjūdis. Quite a few of them had taken part in the activities of numerous clubs and had established contacts with their activists. Thus, the nucleus of Sąjūdis was formed. Creative organizations that were active at that time in Lithuania, such as unions of writers, artists, architects, composers, cinematographers, etc. as well as the Cultural Foundation, institutes of the Academy of Sciences, universities, the Žinijos Draugija association, and the Palace of Artists had created favorable environment for the birth of Sąjūdis. People there were debating on vital issues of nation’s culture, architec-tural heritage, history, and environmental protection. Future Sąjūdis members also took active part in those discussions.

Sąjūdis Initiative Group

Z. Vaišvila, A. Skučas, G. Songaila, and A. Medalinskas - the organiz-ers of the June 3 meeting, at that point had been known only within

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the narrow circle of their clubs; however the majority of the Sąjūdis Initiative Group were well-known people in Lithuania, members of the above mentioned organizations, which created the circumstanc-es for the birth of Sąjūdis.

The Sąjūdis Initiative Group included five prominent writers: V.Bubnys, S. Geda, A. Maldonis, J. Marcinkevičius, V. Petkevičius, and translator V. Čepaitis; six philosophers: B. Genzelis, B. Kuzmick-as, J. Minkevičius, R. Ozolas, V. Radžvilas, and A. Juozaitis (the lat-ter more known for his February 1988 lecture on political culture in Lithuania that he delivered in the History and Culture club and for his bronze medal in swimming in the Montreal Olympics); three economists: A. Buračas, K. Prunskienė, and R. Rajeckas; three acad-emicians: J. Bulavas, M. Lukšienė, and R. Pakalnis; three musicians: V. Daunoras, J. Juzeliūnas, and V. Landsbergis; two architects: A. Nasvytis and A. Kaušpėdas (the latter more known as the lead of rock group Antis), two artists: B. Leonavičius and A. Šaltenis, actor R. Adomaitis, film director A. Žebriūnas, and the Cultural Founda-tion director Č. Kudaba.

The road for Sąjūdis was also paved by the few brave publications in the Lithuanian mass media of that time, therefore chief editor of the Gimtasis kraštas A. Čekuolis and journalist V. Tomkus were elected to the Sąjūdis Initiative Group, alongside S. Pečiulis for his harsh article criticizing the Soviet approach to the post-war history of Lithuania.

Others, namely R. Rajeckas, A. Buračas, J. Bulavas, and B. Kuzmick-as became members of the Initiative Group as the members of the working group on the draft Constitution of the Lithuanian Soviet So-cialist Republic.

For a venue, where the Popular Front would be founded, the organ-izers chose the assembly hall of the Academy of Sciences of the LSSR. This choice frightened the leadership of the Academy and it decided to ban the event. On June 3, academician E. Vilkas announced the decision to the organizers.

After prolonged discussions with E. Vilkas, it was eventually agreed not to cancel the meeting; however, the academician changed the ob-jective of the gathering and decided that the meeting would be held with the members of the working group on the draft Constitution of

the Lithuanian SSR. Since the assembly of June 3 had been abso-lutely determined, this cunning move did not obstruct their plans to found the Popular Front. All the members of the working group on the draft Constitution of the Lithuanian SSR were offered to join the newly established civil movement. Only E .Vilkas himself refused.An important moment should be mentioned: at the meeting, 36 delegates were elected to the Initiative Group; however, historian I. Lukšaitė refused to be a member. She explained her refusal that mother and daughter (M. Lukšienė was her mother) should not to-gether participate in the group. Therefore, the Sąjūdis Initiative Group as well as the later Sąjūdis Seimas (the Parliament) counted only 35 members. The importance of the input of creative organizations did not limit itself with only the participation of their leaders or representatives in the activities of Sąjūdis. When in 1988 the Lithuanian Govern-ment refused to allocate premises, the Lithuanian Artists’ Associa-tion under the leadership of B. Leonavičius offered the Sąjūdis Ini-tiative Group its premises for meetings. Since October 1988, Sąjūdis used the premises of the Theatre Union headed by R. Adomaitis. The Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR housed only the sessions of the Sąjūdis Seimas .As a matter of fact, the Artists’ Association had shown its principle position even before the dawn of Sąjūdis. When the Soviet Govern-ment had decided to evict one of the core organizations of the na-tional movement revival – History and Culture club – from its prem-ises in the Žinijos Draugija, it had been the Artists’ Association that had offered its grounds for assemblies.

Sąjūdis rather than the Popular Front

Despite the former plans to create the Popular Front similar to Es-tonia, in Lithuania, Sąjūdis was born instead. This was determined by a number of reasons. Firstly, under the pressure from the Acad-emy of Sciences with academician E. Vilkas in the lead, the organiz-ers of the June 3 meeting had promised not to establish the Popular Front. Without this assurance E. Vilkas would not have allowed to use the assembly hall. Therefore, the movement had to acquire a different name. Somebody had proposed Sąjūdis. Some delegates had found

A sitting of the Council of the Sąjūdis Seimas in the assembly hall of the Theater Union, January 17, 1989.

The discussion is held by journalist Vitas Tomkus (centre) and Mečys

Laurinkus (right), minutes kept by Ona Volungevičiūtė.

(photo by A. Petrulevičius).

The Circle of Life protest rally against the Ignalina nuclear power plant organized by Sąjūdis and Lithuanian Greenpeace, September 16-18, 1988 (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

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On February 24, 1990, the first democratic elections to the Su-preme Council were held in Soviet Lithuania. 472 candidates were running for 141 seats. 210 candidates came from the Lithuanian Communist Party, 78 candidates were from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and 139 candidates were independent: they did not belong to any party. The Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis) was not a political party, therefore, it supported the 146 independent candidates, as well as candidates from different par-ties with the exception of the Soviet Communist Party. Their only task was to fulfil the that which was entrusted by the nation as the rebirth of the country, and to proclaim the restoration of the State-hood of Lithuania by legal ways.

The results of the elections and run-off elections, held in the begin-ning of March, showed an overwhelming victory of the candidates, supported by Sąjūdis: 96 percent of the Sąjūdis candidates won the elections to the Supreme Council, as opposing to only 7 seats, won by the Soviet Communists. At the first sitting of the newly elected Supreme Council, the leader of Sąjūdis, Professor Vytautas Lands-bergis was elected the Chairman of the Council. While running for office, Vytautas Landsbergis very clearly expressed the aspiration of the Supreme Council: “This common aspiration can be uttered very simply in one word: Lithuania. This word, as I understand it, in-cludes love, human dignity, and the desire for justice, thus, the de-sire for humanness. Our common goal is to restore our society and our state, and to further build them. Creative force can only be re-vealed by free people in a free country. We shall come to our free land and protect our lives and the lives of our children.”

Vytautas Landsbergis was also in charge of the working group, del-egated to the Supreme Council by Sąjūdis; the group included: Česlovas Vytautas Stankevičius, Romualdas Ozolas, Valdemaras Katkus, Algirdas Saudargas, Kęstutis Lapinskas, Vytenis Andri-ukaitis, and Vytautas Sinkevičus. On March 9, they together with Egidijus Klumbys, who would periodically show up at the sittings of the working group, signed the most significant draft legal acts of March 11, including the essential act on the Re-establishment of the Independent State of Lithuania.

Everybody was getting ready for a sitting of March 11, 1990, which was supposed to be very solemn; therefore, any discussions that could spoil the atmosphere, were most unwelcome. The sitting start-ed with the adoption of parliamentarian authorizations, the change of the name of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Soviet Social-ist Republic into the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, and went on to declaring the power of the parliamentarians to re-store the statehood of Lithuania. A special law on the name of the State and its coat of arms was met with particular attention for its

THE RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

symbolic significance. 133 representatives took part in the voting; all of them said yes to the law.

At around 10 PM, nominal voting on the “Act of the Re-establish-ment of the Independent State of Lithuania” (further in the text “the Act”) was declared. At 10.44 PM the voting results were announced. The Act which stated that “The Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, expressing the will of the nation, decree and solemnly proclaims that the execution of the sovereign power of the State of Lithuania abolished by foreign forces in 1940 is re-established, and henceforth Lithuania is again an independent state“, was supported by124 votes, with 6 voters abstained. The half a century long desire of partisans, resistance to the Soviet regime activists, dissidents, ac-tive diaspora members, and the majority of the Lithuanian popula-tion for freedom and independence was achieved: the Republic of Lithuania became an independent state.

At the same sitting, the parliamentarians also adopted other legal acts on the consolidation of the statehood and wrote an address to the nations of the world: “The Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, having proclaimed the continuation of the independent Lithuanian State and its return to the world community of free na-tions, has faith in the solidarity and support of those nations. Our decision is not directed against any one nation, nor is it against any nationality in Lithuania. This is a path that allows us to guarantee the rights of individuals, citizens and national communities in Lith-uania, to become open to form association, and to offer to contribute our commitment and work to the world of justice and harmony that is now being created.”

In the evening of March 11, 1990, the leader of the Lithuanian Liberty League, Antanas Terleckas covered the coat of arms of Soviet Lithuania over the main entrance to the Supreme Council with a batic tapestry “Vytis”, created by artist K. Balčikonis. (Photo by A. Petrulevičius).

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The Act of March 11, 1990 “On the Re-establishment of the Independent State of Lithuania”, signed by all the

signatories of the Act. (Photo from the Central State Archive).

According to a famous Lithuanian lawyer, Dainius Žalimas, the anal-ysis of the provisions of the March 11 Act proves that the Act consoli-dated the principles of the restoration of Independence that were elaborated in other Lithuanian legal acts, and created legal provi-sions for the actual consolidation of the Independence of the new-ly restored state: in compliance with the provisions of the Act, the Republic of Lithuania completely took control of its territory and excluded its citizens from the jurisdiction of a foreign state. In ad-dition, on the basis of this Act, the Government of Lithuania was rec-

ognized among other states. Since the old international recognition de jure was still valid, the new government had to obtain the ratifica-tion of this recognition. Actually, the first two countries, Iceland and Denmark, having recognized the restoration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania in February 1991, only consolidated the valid-ity of the already existing recognition, that is, they recognized the continuation of and identification with the state that had been cre-ated on the basis of the Act of February 16, 1918. Soon, other coun-tries followed suit.

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53

This chapter is dedicated to the overview of the entire political life of Independent Lith-uania. The chapter covers the issues of what democratic structure we have shaped, what political powers were competing on the political arena of Lithuania, and what political ten-dencies we chose as our priorities.

We begin the chapter with a concise overview of the Lithuanian political arena that should help the reader to better understand the context of Lithuanian political life. Next, we pres-ent the development of our main governmental institutions – the Seimas (our Parliament), the Presidential institution, the Government, and the Judiciary system – during the years of Lithuanian Independence. You will find here many of the dates and events, important to the statehood of Lithuania and its political life. You will also find the names of the people who stood behind those governmental institutions during those years of Independence.

At a first glance, the transition of the political system of Lithuania from the total control of the Soviet Union to a democratic state was rather smooth. Lithuania was fairly soon rec-ognized by the international community, we rather easily mastered the rules of the demo-cratic change of power, it did not take us long to join the system of Western states including the European Union and NATO. We now can enjoy those accomplishments, because from the very beginning we knew what we wanted – and we wanted to become a part of the free and democratic world. We hope you will enjoy the articles of this chapter, written by people who actively participated in those political events, described here.

Alongside the governmental institutions, the society itself also faced the challenges of the transition. For half a century having lived in the grip of the totalitarian regime, we had to learn how to live in freedom where success and happiness depend on your own free will. In this chapter, you will find out how we succeeded

Partially, those developments, described in this chapter, made Lithuania as we see it now.

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The modern Lithuanian political system began to emerge when Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union. On March 11 of that ye-ar, after the declaration of independence, Lithuania started to build a new democratic system of political relations.

The situation then was very complicated, Lithuania was going through the democratic, but dramatic formation of the party system, the development of free and independent state institutions, the se-paration and strengthening of the branches of authorities. All of the-se events were new and necessary for a young state. A high degree of fragmentation reflected the growing processes of political differen-tiation and an increasing range of political interests in the society. At the time, the state was influenced by flawed traditions of the Soviet system, corrupt relations, communist mentality, and a bureaucratic administrative apparatus.

A the same time, the situation was aggravated by the fact that in the second half of 1990 and in the beginning of 1991, Soviet milita-ry movements became particularly active; the aggression, carried out by the Soviets on 13 January 1991, developed into the political diarchy situation when two structures of law enforcement institu-tions functioned simultaneously with two political centres of mili-tary and security systems. The public was deliberately fragmented and antagonised. This situation lasted until the summer of 1991, when a new democratic Russia began to emerge after a failed coup in Moscow.

At the time, the sufficiently clear mechanism of division of po-wers has been settled in Lithuania’s political system. It allowed for the separation of the branches of government, making them inde-pendent and creating the necessary functioning mechanisms, allo-wing them to both function independently and change transparently and legitimately. The separation of powers became a real and reco-gnized principle.

Constitutional Fundamentals of the Republic

A complex discussion on the new model of state management took place in 1990–1992. Two approaches to the basic law emer-ged in the discussions. The right wing saw more opportunities in the Constitution for the presidential republic, while the lefts pre-ferred the parliamentary republic. Such reasons had clear politi-cal overtones: the rights were assured that their leader, Vytautas Landsbergis, could win office during the presidential elections and therefore it should be necessary to establish legal opportunities for him to act more decisively in this post. Meanwhile, the left, per-ceiving this as dangerous, sought to enshrine the principles of a parliamentary republic in the Constitution. The long debate for-ced both sides to acquiesce, and a compromise was reached: the political system was called a parliamentary republic with expan-ded presidential rights of the type of semi-presidential governance. The first presidential election ended with an unexpected result: the victory of the leader of the leftists, former secretary of the Commu-nist Party Algirdas Brazauskas who had separated the Lithuanian communists from the Soviet Communist Party.

Another very important strategic decision, on which a political

ThE DEVELOPMENT OF LIThUANIAN POLITICAL SySTEM FROM 1990 TO 2015

Professor of Vytautas Magnus University Dr. Lauras Bielinis

consensus was reached relatively quickly, was the adoption of the “Constitutional Bill on Non-Accession of the Republic of Lithuania to the Post-Soviet Eastern Alliances”. At that time, there was a high risk that Lithuania could be re-united under the umbrella of post-Soviet states, and therefore this constitutional bill blocked and still blocks any legal opportunity to connect with the countries of the eastern bloc in a political, military, economic or any other union or commonwealth.

The Seimas: In the Kitchen of Political Compromise

Practically during the entire 25-year history of the Lithuanian Parliament, the Seimas, its majority was formed by several factions (only in 1992, the Social Democrats got 42.58 percent of the vote and could form their own government). The composite electoral system did not allow the domination of one political power and was forcing parties to negotiate, make concessions and coalitions, sometimes ideologically opposite. This encouraged the search for compromises and was forcing politicians to coordinate their actions and interests with others.

During the entire 25 years of the Seimas, we could see the proces-ses of intense communication between political forces. All of this is a positive factor in the formation of an open political system, gaining the features of deliberative democracy.

In those 25 years, we could also observe the virtually constant cycle of repetitions, when after each elections the right and the left are turning the tables in the government. Such fluctuation of politi-cal and ideological preferences encouraged the Seimas to act more decisively and to implement its tasks within a short period of time. Thus, tactical goals were implemented rather efficiently while the implementation of long-term strategy targets was less successful. The most essential, vital issues were projects were discussed and adopted on a more representational level than the Seimas: the de-cisions on the accession of Lithuanian to NATO and the European Union were adopted by referendum.

Broad Presidential Powers

The Lithuanian Constitution provides for the type of semi-presi-dential governance with a key feature of the division of executive po-wers between the Government, accountable to the Parliament, and the President. The Constitution also leaves quite a lot of informal powers to the President.

The main role of the President should be associated with the function of the balancing of powers. Using the presidential right of veto and the right to submit draft laws to the Seimas, the President can not only actively perform the functions of the state represen-tation, which the parliamentary republics are limited to, but also act within the country and be active in the formation of the govern-ment, or vetoing laws. Meanwhile, during the changes of govern-ments and the periods of political instability, the President helps maintain the key priorities of the state and pass them to new go-vernments.

On the other hand, the presidential authority is closely monito-

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red. In 2004, the acts of President R. Paksas were qualified as a very rough violation of the Constitution and his oath. And while the poli-tical crisis was resolved in accordance with all the necessary consti-tutional norms and traditions of democratic order, it also sparked a public debate as to whether the presidential system was not a threat to the stability of the political system and whether it should be re-placed with a traditional version of a parliamentary republic. The debate gave everybody a clearer understanding of the need for the balance of powers.

Today, the President remains an active and influential figure of the political system by affecting the political field both through the presidential powers and the high position as well as through the pu-blic support.

How the Government is built

In the 25 years of the Republic of Lithuania, the procedure of how the Government is shaped has become one of the most promi-nent highlights of our political life. The initiative to form the Go-vernment belongs to the prevailing majority of the Seimas. The ru-ling coalition of the Seimas gets involved in prolonged discussions on the division of posts and positions.

The President also can influence the formation of the Govern-ment. According to the Constitution, the President should nominate the Prime Minister to the Seimas, after having discussed with the candidate the composition of the entire cabinet. Therefore, the ins-titution of the President is also involved alongside the parliamen-tarians in the procedure of the formation of the Government for-mation, and the President usually is the key player to determine political forces and the configuration of the ranks of the ruling po-wers. Such configuration of influences and interests was the cause of the government crisis of 2001, when the predominantly right-wing Government was forced to resign and give way to the newly-formed Government of the left and centre coalition.

Political Parties: Leftists, Rightists, and the Populists

Lithuania today is characterized by a multi-party system which is one of the most fundamental institutions of modern democracies. In 25 years, political parties in Lithuania have become not only a key element of political pluralism, but also the backbone of the modern political system, which integrates and represents social, economic, cultural or political interests.

The first parties were established back in the times of the Sąjū-dis movement, and after the declaration of independence in 1990, political organizations of all possible orientations began to esta-blish themselves. year after year, they gained the necessary attri-butes of political organizations: the organizational structure, lea-ders and ideological arguments, conscious drive for power, the aim to gain public support, branches in regions and the sources of fi-nancial support.

Currently the recorded number of political parties is 38. This way, one could say that in a very short period of time, a multi-par-ty system reflecting virtually all ideological interests of the society was formed in Lithuania. On the other hand, the abundance of par-ty organizations is not so much a signal of the maturity and quality of parties but rather the aspirations of the party leaders to occupy a certain step on the ladder of power, which quite often exceed the desire to strengthen organizational and ideological foundations of these parties.

The number of parliamentary parties is limited. Today we have only seven: the TS-LKD (homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian De-mocrats), obviously representing the right political wing, and their allies LLS (Lithuanian Liberal Union); the left wing is represented by the Social Democrats and the centre is occupied by such populist parties as the “Courage Road”, “Order and Justice”, Lithuanian Po-lish Election Campaign, and the Labour Party.

Only the Conservatives, Liberals, and Social Democrats have re-

tained their popularity and remained parliamentary parties virtually through all the 25 years of independence. The centre of the political field, almost from the first Seimas, has been occupied by populist parties replacing each other with every term. The formation of the political parties in the centre can be justified in two ways: on the one hand, this is the result of the searches for the ideological and pro-grammatic identity of different political groups, on the other hand, it is the result of an obvious populist ambition to occupy a political niche in mobilizing politically immature voters.

In 2000, such a populist party was the New Union (Social Libe-rals). however, having no clear ideological position and constructive political programme, and lacking bright politicians, this party lost popularity and its positions within just one term.

In the following election of 2004, the niche of the New Union was occupied by several “one leader” parties: (V. Uspaskich) Labour Party and (R. Paksas) Liberal Democratic Party (“Order and Justi-ce”). In the elections to the Seimas of 2008, we saw the impressive appearance of the openly apolitical party having no affiliation to any ideology: the Nation Resurrection Party, led by an entertainer Arū-nas Valinskas. however, before the end of the term, the party split and began to rapidly decline. After the term was over, its leaders and initiators even failed to organize a clear communication with voters.

Today, we see that the field of political parties remains constantly occupied in the right of systemic parties: Conservatives (TS-LKD); Liberals (LLS), and on the left: Social Democrats (LSDP). These par-ties create active political discourse and generate main state initiati-ves. Competition among these parties is decisive to the development and stability of the state political system of Lithuania.

Strengthening Local Self-Government

The structure of local self-government occupies an important place in the political system, because this level of governance is directly linked with local communities and is bound to deal with particular issues of the community economy and life. The Constitu-tion, adopted in 1992, has changed the internal political situation of the state also at the municipal level. It was then that the sys-tem of relations on the local level was transformed, “by rearranging the public administration system that has retained many features characteristic of the central management, to a democratic public management system with an adequate place for the local self-go-vernment”. Over the years, a number of versions of the Law on Lo-cal Self Governance optimising the functioning of the local govern-ment has been adopted.

The concept of self-governance as a self-governing territorial community of people (i.e. a social structure) was crystallised; also, the territorial background of the organisation – the system of admi-nistrative units of the state’s territory – was improved.

Space for Political Debate

Since the declaration of independence, Lithuania has created a robust legal framework for the functioning of freedom of speech and independent media. Today, the media plays a significant role in the functioning of the political system, supporting communication among all political forces, publicising political events and positions or intentions of politicians or political institutions for the society and organising discussions on substantive issues of the state. At the sa-me time, it creates an opportunity for everyone to discuss and deba-te on topical issues, and becomes a global place of political debate, meaning that the political system is not only the realm of individual groups or personalities.

As a conclusion, we can say that the Lithuanian political system is not an artificial framework of random political parties. Naturally, this is not yet a perfect political system, but the 25-year period of the state development demonstrates its dynamic changes and develo-pment into a normal system, i.e. meeting the standards of western democracy.

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EVOLUTION OF ThE PARLIAMENTARy SySTEM AFTER ThE RESTORATION OF LIThUANIAN INDEPENDENCE

The Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania is a legislative body, rep-resented by the citizens of Lithuania. The functions of the Seimas include debating, adopting, and issuing laws; approving or disap-proving of the candidature of the Prime Minister, nominated by the President; supervising the Government policy; approving the State Budget and supervising its implementation, establishing state taxes; announcing municipal elections; ratifying international treaties of the Republic of Lithuania.The Seimas is composed of 141 members – nation’s representatives – elected by direct secret ballot, based on universal and equal suf-frage, for a four-year term.The principal rights and duties of Seimas members are defined by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, the Seimas Statute, and other laws. The elected Seimas member acquires all rights of a nation’s representative only upon taking an oath in the Seimas sit-ting, to be loyal to the Republic of Lithuania.Sessions of the Seimas. Normally, a session consists of four sit-tings per week: two each Tuesday and Thursday with a recess in ple-nary sittings every three weeks. On the days free from plenary sittings, meetings of the Seimas Board, the Assembly of Elders, Chairs of Po-litical Groups, committees, and commissions are held as scheduled, as well as meetings of Seimas members with their constituencies and municipality representatives, as scheduled by the Seimas Board.The Seimas Speaker presides over the activities of the Sei-mas. The authorizations of the Speaker of the Seimas include the is-suance of decrees. In the absence of the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker has the priority to express his/her opinion or the opinion of the Sei-mas Board on any debatable question at any sitting of the Seimas if he/she does not preside over the sitting. At least once a month, the Seimas Speaker and his/her Deputies are obligated to answer ques-tions on their activities, submitted by the Seimas members in ad-vance in written form. Apart from presiding over the activities of the Seimas, other functions of the Speaker include: • Within 10 days after the adoption of a law, to confirm with his/her signature the authenticity of the law, adopted by the Seimas, and to hand it over to the President of the Republic for signing; within 10 days, to sign the Statute of the Seimas and its amendments; within three days, to sign those laws which are not signed by the President of the Republic in 10 days after the submission and not resubmitted for repeated deliberation, and to officially announce those laws.• Within 10 days, to sign resolutions and other acts, adopted by the Seimas.

• Within 24 hours, to sign the protocols of Seimas sittings, as well as the resolutions of the Seimas Board, if he/she presides over those sittings.

• To temporarily act as the President of the Republic or to tempo-rarily substitute the President of the Republic in the cases, defined by Article 89 of the Constitution.

• To take advantage of the right to summon an unscheduled sit-ting or an extraordinary session of the Seimas in the cases, defined in Part One, Article 89 of the Constitution.

• To present the candidates for Deputy Speakers to the Seimas.

• To present the candidates for Constitutional Justices to the Sei-mas, in compliance with the procedure defined by the Constitution.

• To nominate the candidates for the Seimas Ombudsman and the Head of the Seimas Ombudsman’s Office for the Seimas to appoint or discharge.

• In the cases defined by the Constitution and other laws, to nomi-nate the candidates for the heads and their deputies of governmental institutions for the Seimas to appoint or discharge.

• To preside over the sittings of the Seimas and the Seimas Board, or to delegate one of his/her deputies.

• To present to the Assembly of Elders the programs of sessions, draft agendas of weekly or daily sittings, or delegate one of his/her deputies.

• To present draft agendas of the Seimas Board sittings or to del-egate one of his/her deputies.

• To implement other authorizations, provided for in the Statute.

The Seimas Board presides over the Seimas alongside the Speak-er of the Seimas. The Board obligations are as follows:

• To approve and present to the Ministry of Finance the draft pro-grams and draft estimates of the programs of the Seimas Office.

• At the proposal of the Seimas, to deliberate and sanction busi-ness trips of the Seimas members on written assignments of the Sei-mas, the Seimas Board or Committees; to sanction the reports on business trips.

• At the proposal of Committees or Political groups, to consider and sanction the trips of the Seimas members, occurring during the period of sessions and paid for outside the Seimas.

• If necessary, to deliberate on the session agendas, draft agendas

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of monthly or daily sittings, and to present conclusions to the As-sembly of Elders or to the Seimas. • To summon unscheduled sittings of the Seimas and to set the date thereof. • To approve preliminary schedules of the sittings of the Seimas session.• If necessary, to define the institutions or individuals the main committee shall send a draft law to, for obtaining conclusions.• If necessary, to make the decision to relieve a main committee from the obligations of the main committee, defined in Article 147 of the Statute.• If necessary, to form working groups for drafting bills and imple-menting assignments of the Seimas and the Board.• To help coordinate the activities of committees on the matters that are under the competence of several committees. • To approve the composition of the Seimas Office, as well as the largest permissible number of the staff members of the institutions, accountable to the Seimas, who are employed on the basis of con-tracts and paid from the State budget or State funds.

• To approve regulations and provisions of the Seimas Office.

• When the Seimas is considering the question whether the state of health of the President of the Republic allows him/her to continue to hold office, to ask the Minister of Healthcare to present the candi-dates for the health commission to be approved by the Seimas.

• To coordinate other matters of the Seimas activities that are not appointed by this Statute to any other institutions or officials.

The Assembly of Elders is an establishment of the Seimas that includes the members of the Seimas Board and the representatives of political groups. Every political group is represented in the As-sembly of Elders by one representative for each 10 group members. Each political group sends one additional representative for an in-complete 10 of the group members if the incomplete ten is more than five members of the Seimas. Less numerous political groups delegate one representative each.

The main task of the Assembly of Elders is to consider and ap-prove the programs of the agendas of the Seimas sessions and sittings, as well as to coordinate the work of committees and po-litical groups of the Seimas, and to propose draft solutions on these issues to the Seimas Speaker. The functions of the Assem-bly of Elders are the following:

The new Seimas Plenary Chamber, July 13, 2013 (photo by M. Bialek)

• To consider and coordinate any contradictions, arising from the programs of the sessions.

• To consider and approve the programs of weekly and daily sit-tings.

• To consider and coordinate the proposals on the preliminary date of the deliberation of the main and supplementary draft law on committees.

• To consider and coordinate any other inconsistencies, concern-ing organizational issues.

• To hear the proposals of the committee chairs and leaders of po-litical groups on interrelations among committees and parliamentary political groups, and to propose solutions to the Seimas or its Board.

• To propose recommendations to the Seimas Board on the mat-ters within its competencies.

• To perform the peacemaking and coordinative duties in the event of principle disagreements on most important issues.

• If necessary, to determine what institutions or individuals the draft law should be sent to for conclusions.

• If necessary, to adopt a resolution on releasing the main commit-tee from the obligations, defined in Article 147 of this Statute.

The Seimas Committees. There are 15 committees in the Sei-mas: Committee on Environment Protection; Committee on Audit; Committee on Budget and Finance; Committee on Economics; Com-mittee on European Affairs; Committee on the Development of In-formation Society; Committee on Rural Affairs; Committee on Na-tional Security and Defence; Committee on Social Affairs and Labor; Committee on health Affairs; Committee on Education, Science, and Culture; Committee on Legal Affairs; Committee on Foreign Affairs; Committee on State Administration and Local Authorities; and Committee on human Rights.

The functions of the main committees of the Seimas within their competencies are the following:

• To consider draft laws; to draw conclusions; to deliberate on the questions, submitted for the committee’s consideration.

• On their own initiative or the Seimas assignment, to prepare draft laws or other draft legal acts; to analyze the necessity of new laws or their amendments.

• To prepare drafts on the coordination of laws, their amendments or the removal of contradictions.

• To deliberate on the Government program; on their own initia-tive or assigned by the Seimas, to consider the programs of the Gov-ernment or other governmental institutions within their competen-cies, and to present conclusions to the Seimas.

• Within their competencies, to consider the candidates for the heads and their deputies of the governmental institutions where the approval of the Seimas is required or where the heads and their dep-uties are appointed or dismissed by the Seimas.

• To consider the preliminary draft law on the approval of financial indicators of the State and municipal budgets and the account of the budget implementation.

• To analyze and control the economic efficiency of the utilization of the State budget means for the current year; to analyze, draw con-clusions, and give proposals on the articles and programs of the draft State budget for the following year, proposed by the Government, as well as on other issues within the competencies of the committee; to rationally help choose programs and allocations of means.

• To consider proposals on establishing or liquidating ministries and other governmental institutions.

• Within the framework of parliamentary control, to hear the

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PRESIDENTIAL INSTITUTION

Presidential institution

When in 1940 Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, the insti-tution of the President of the Republic of Lithuania was abolished. After the Independence was restored, a constitutional referendum was organized on October 25, 1992, alongside the first round of the elections to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. The new-ly adopted Constitution rebuilt and legalized the institution of the Head of the State – the President.

When the first democratic elections were won by the Lithuanian Democrat Labor Party (LDDP), leader of the party Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas was elected Speaker of the Seimas and at the same time, according to Article 89 of the Constitution, became acting President of the Republic of Lithuania.

The first historic campaign of the presidential elections in Lithuania started on January 25, 1993, and lasted until February 14. On that day, more than 2 million citizens took part in the voting and 60.03 percent of them chose A.M. Brazauskas.

In the end of his five-year term, A.M. Brazauskas declared that he would not run for another term. At the general elections of January 5, 1998, Valdas Adamkus was elected fifth President of the Republic of Lithuania. V. Adamkus promoted the idea of the country’s fast modernization and consistently supported its im-plementation.

In 2002, V. Adamkus for office for the second time, however, at the second round of the presidential elections, he lost to Rolandas Paksas, who was inaugurated on February 26, 2003. Later, the Sei-mas removed Rolandas Paksas from the office for the breach of oath. Until the new elections, Speaker of the Seimas Artūras Paulauskas was acting President.

On June 27, 2004, the citizens of Lithuania once more elected Val-das Adamkus President of the Republic of Lithuania for another five-year term.

On February 26, 2009, European Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaitė announced of her decision to participate in the presidential elec-tions. In the first round of the elections of May 17, with huge pub-lic support – 68.21 percent voted for her – she was elected Presi-dent of the Republic of Lithuania and inaugurated on July 12. On May 25, 2014, she was reelected for the second term (2014-2019). D. Grybauskaitė is the first woman President and the only President of the Republic of Lithuania in its history to have been elected for two consecutive terms.

Presidential Competencies

The primary competence of the President is foreign policy. The Pres-ident decides on the most important matters of foreign policy and together with the Government implements the decisions. The presi-dential competencies include: signing international treaties and pre-senting them to the Seimas for ratification; upon the Government’s recommendation, appointing and recalling Lithuanian diplomatic representatives in foreign states and international organizations; accepting credentials of heads of foreign missions; awarding diplo-matic ranks and titles. President plays a significant role in the internal affairs of the State. The President is the chief commander of the armed forces of the State and presides over the Defense Council. Other presidential functions include: awarding the highest military ranks; with the Seimas’ consent, appointing and dismissing the Chief Command-er of the Armed Forces and the Head of the Security Service. The President has the right to initiate legislation in the Seimas and the right to veto the laws adopted by the Seimas. Upon the Seimas’ ap-proval, the President appoints and dismisses the Prime Minister, delegates the latter to form the Government and approves of its composition. The President has the right to appeal to the Constitu-tional Court and in accordance with the Constitution has the right to dismiss the Parliament. The President is an important guarantor of the efficiency of courts: the President nominates the Supreme Court justices and the candi-date to the President of the Supreme court for the Seimas’ approval; appoints judges of the Court of Appeal, the President of the Court of Appeal, as well as judges and chairpersons of district and regional courts; nominates three candidates of the Constitutional Court and the candidate of the President of the Constitutional Court for the Seimas’ approval. The President has the right to grant citizenship, pardon, and state awards.

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Presidents of the Republic of Lithuania

President Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas,February 25, 1993 – February 25, 1998

deceased

President Valdas AdamkusFebruary 26, 1998 – February 25, 2003

July 12, 2004 – July 12, 2009

President Dalia Grybauskaitė July 12, 2009 – July 11, 2014

July 12, 2014 inaugurated for the second termOn July 12, 2014, started her second term

President Rolandas Paksas,discharged after impeachment

February 26, 2003 – April 6, 2004

Artūras Paulauskas,Acting President

April 6, 2004 – July 12, 2004

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The Government of the Republic of Lithuania is the Cabinet of Min-isters. It is composed of its leader, the Prime Minister, and heads of ministries – the ministers. The present Government with Algirdas Butkevičius as Prime Minister, is the sixteenth Government of the Republic of Lithuania.

The procedure of appointing the Government is defined by the State Constitution and the Government Law. The Prime Minister is nomi-nated by the President and approved by the Seimas. When the Presi-dent introduces the prospective Prime Minister to the Seimas, the candidate has up to 30 minutes for the introductory speech, fol-lowed by the session of answering questions. After the introduction, political groups debate, no longer than for two working days, on the candidacy of the Prime Minister.

It cannot take more than one week following the introduction of the candidature of the Prime Minister to convene a sitting of the Sei-mas for the adoption of the candidature. The sitting begins with the listening to the conclusions of political groups, starting with the most numerous political group and finishing with the least numer-ous group. In the end of the following discussion, the candidate has the floor for up to 20 minutes and gets another opportunity to an-swer the questions of the Seimas members, no longer than for 30 minutes. After the question answering session, the parliamentarians vote for the candidature of the Prime Minister.

The members of the Cabinet of Ministers are appointed by the Presi-dent of the State upon their nomination by the Prime Minister. The President has the right to disapprove of the candidates to ministers. In this case, the Prime Minister nominates other candidates.

No later than 15 days after the appointment, the Prime Minister in-troduces to the Seimas the new Government, approved by the Presi-dent, and presents its program for discussion. The members of the new Government participate at the presentation. The Prime Minister has up to 40 minutes for the explanation of the program. The ques-tions answering session can total to an hour and a half. Questions can be addressed to the Prime Minister as well as to the ministers.

The governmental program has to be presented to the members of the Seimas in written form no later than 24 hours prior to the sitting. After its introduction, the governmental program is debated over in political groups and committees; they have the right to summon the Prime Minister or any minister to answer questions about the pro-gram of the Government. Parliamentary committees and political groups are supposed to present their conclusions on the governmen-tal program no later than 10 days from its introduction.

No later than 15 days from its introduction, the Seimas has to con-vene for a sitting to debate over the governmental program. The leader of the opposition is the first to share his or her opinion; later, the Prime Minister and ministers get another opportunity to an-swer questions. When the Prime Minister and ministers answer the questions, the Seimas has to make a decision regarding the govern-mental program, based on the decisions formulated in the conclu-sions of the political groups. If the Seimas rejects the program or asks the Government to im-prove it, the new edition of the governmental program has to be presented to the Seimas within 10 days; the procedure of consid-eration is repeated. The new Government is endorsed to act when the majority of the Seimas members, present in the sitting, vote for the approval of its program. The members of the Government take an oath in the Seimas according to the established procedure. Upon taking their duties, the Prime Minister and the ministers swear to be loyal to the Republic of Lithuania, and to observe the laws and the Constitution. The text of the oath is defined by the Government Law.

Competencies of the Prime Minister:

• The Prime Minister represents the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and supervises its activities.

• In the absence of the Prime Minister or in the event when the Prime Minister cannot fulfil his or her duties, the President of the Republic of Lithuania delegates one of the minsters, nominated by the Prime Minister, to act as Prime Minister for no longer than 60 days. In the absence of such nomination, the President del-egates one of the ministers to act as Prime Minister.

• Ministers are heads of corresponding ministries. They solve questions in the jurisdiction of their ministries and perform oth-er functions, defined by laws.

• A minister can be temporarily replaced only with a member of the Government, nominated by the Prime Minister.

The constitution says that the Prime Minister as well as ministers cannot occupy any other position, be it appointed or elected, engage in business or commercial activities of private institutions or enter-prises, and otherwise receive any financial compensation other than the salary for the work in the Government and creative activities. The Prime Minister and ministers cannot be prosecuted, arrested or otherwise restricted without the prior consent of the Seimas or, in the period between sessions, of the President.

GoveRnMenT of The RePUbLIC of LIThUAnIA

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Functions of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania:

• The Government deals with internal matters, protects territorial integrity of the Republic of Lithuania, guarantees security and public order in the State.

• Implements laws and resolutions of the Seimas on the imple-mentation of laws, as well as presidential decrees.

• Coordinates the activities of ministries and other governmental institutions.

• Prepares the draft budget and presents it in the Seimas, imple-ments the State budget, reports to the Seimas on the implemen-tation of the budget. (The budget of the Republic of Lithuania is a plan of the distribution of state funds to cover the expenses of budg-et establishments and other entities of public administration. The national budget includes the state budget and municipal budgets).

• Prepares and presents bills for the Seimas’ consideration. • establishes diplomatic relations and maintains ties with foreign

states and international organizations.• Takes united responsibility for the Government’s activities be-

fore the Seimas.• At the Seimas request, the Government or individual ministers

report to the Seimas on their activities.

The Government and the Prime Minister are compelled to resign in the following cases:

• When the Seimas does not approve of the new governmental pro-gram twice.

• When half of the total number of parliamentarians, by secret bal-lot, express their distrust of the Prime Minister.

• When more than half of the ministers are replaced (in this case, the Government has to seek new endorsement from the Seimas).

• When the Prime Minister resigns or passes away. • When a new Government is formed following the new elections

to the Seimas.• After the presidential elections or re-elections.Apart from ministries, other governmental institutions and estab-lishments are accountable to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania.

Governmental institutions:

• Civil Service Department;• Department of Physical Education and Sports at the Government

of the Republic of Lithuania;• Drug, Tobacco, and Alcohol Control Department;• Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania;• State Data Protection Inspectorate;• State Food and Veterinary Service;• Statistics Lithuania.

State institutions and establishments accountable to the Government:

• Commission on Tax Disputes under the Government of the Re-public of Lithuania;

• The Chief Administrative Disputes Commission;• The Communications Regulatory Authority;• Public Procurement Office;• State Enterprise State Property Fund;• State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate.

THE FIRST GOVERNMENT OF THE INDEPENDENT LITHUANIA

(March 17, 1990 – January 10, 1991)

Still under the conditions of the severe Soviet blockade, the Govern-ment had to start reorganizing Lithuanian economy.On April 12, 1990 in Vilnius, Prime Minister of the Soviet Latvian Republic v. bresis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania K.D. Prunskienė, and Leader of the Government of Soviet Estonia signed first interstate documents: a communique and an agreement on economic cooperation.On January 4, 1991, the Government decided to raise purchase pric-es of agricultural produce and retail prices of food products, effective from January 7. On January 8, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania revoked the Government resolution on the increase of retail prices of food products. The Government resigned on the same day.

First Government of the Republic of Lithuania. Prime Minister – K.D. Prunskienė, April 12, 1990, Vilnius (photo by V. Gulevičius, ELTA)

The Government under the leadership of K.D. Prunskienė (on the left) and Minister of National Defence A. Butkevičius (on the right) in the procedure of resignation in the Seimas

(photo of the Seimas archive)

Prime MinisterKazimira Danutė Prunskienė Deputy Prime MinistersAlgirdas Mykolas Brazauskas Romualdas ozolas MinistersMinister of Agriculture – Vytautas KnašysMinister of Communication – Kostas birulis Minister of Construction and Urban Development – Algimantas Nasvytis

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One of the most important day in our history is October 25, 1992, when by voting in a referendum, our nation adopted the new Constitution which is the principal law, exercising the highest legal power and de-fining political, legal, and economic foundations of our state. The Con-stitution consolidates the democratic system, governmental institu-tions, and the separation of powers. The Constitution is the document that consolidates the principles of the judicial system acknowledged by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Conven-tion for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the recommendations of the European Council, above all includ-ing the independence of judges, courts and the entire court system.

Lithuanian Judicial System

A court is an institution established in accordance with laws to ad-ministrate justice. To avoid outside influence over court decisions and to assure that they are always fair and impartial, the Constitution and Court Law have established that courts in administrating justice, shall be independent from any governmental or administrative insti-tutions, officials, political parties, organizations, or other individuals. Interference with court activities shall be prosecuted.Court decisions can be revised only by the courts of higher instance and only in accordance with the legal procedures.The system of courts, their competence, the system of court organi-sation, activities, administration, as well as the system of autonomy of courts, also the status of judges, their appointment, career, liabil-ity and other issues related to the judicial activities are regulated by the Constitution, the Law on Courts and other legal acts. The Con-stitution of the Republic of Lithuania establishes a four-level court system that includes courts of general jurisdiction and courts of spe-cial jurisdiction.

Courts of general jurisdiction are: district courts (49), regional courts (5), the Court of Appeal (1), and the Supreme Court (1). They deal with civil and criminal cases. District courts also hear cases of administrative offences. Regional courts, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court have Civil Division and Criminal Division. A district court is a court of first instance for criminal, civil cases and cases of administrative offences (assigned to its jurisdiction by law), cases assigned to the jurisdiction of mortgage judges, as well as cases relating to the enforcement of decisions and sentences. Judges of a district court also perform the functions of a pre-trial judge, an enforcement judge, as well as other functions assigned to a district court by law.A regional court is a first instance court for criminal and civil cases assigned to its jurisdiction by law, and an appeal instance for judge-ments, decisions, rulings and orders of district courts. The Chairper-son of a regional court organises and controls the administrative ac-tivities of district courts and their judges within the territory of his activities in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law.The Court of Appeal of Lithuania is an appeal instance for the cases heard by regional courts as courts of first instance. It also hears requests for the recognition of the decisions of foreign or interna-tional courts and foreign or international arbitration decisions and their enforcement in the Republic of Lithuania, as well as performs other functions, assigned to the jurisdiction of this court by law. The Chairperson of the Court of Appeal organises and controls the ad-ministrative activities of regional courts and judges.The Supreme Court of Lithuania is the only court of cassa-tion instance for reviewing effective judgements, decisions, rul-ings, and orders of the courts of general jurisdiction. It develops a uniform court practice in the interpretation and application of laws and other legal acts.Courts of special jurisdiction are: regional administrative courts (5) and the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (1). These courts hear cases of administrative disputes arising from ad-ministrative legal relations. A regional administrative court is the court of special juris-diction, established for hearing complaints (petitions) in respect of administrative acts and acts of commission or omission (failure to perform duties) by entities of public and internal administration. Regional administrative courts hear disputes in the field of public administration, deal with issues relating to the lawfulness of regula-tory administrative acts, tax disputes, etc. Before applying to an ad-

Themis, the goddess of justice and order, belongs to the Greek Pantheon. Themis is usually shown blind-folded which symbolizes impartiality, with a sword, symbolizing fair retribution, in one hand, and with scales, symbolizing fairness and temperance, in the other. With her scales, she weighs good and evil deeds of mortals. The posthumous much depends on which side of the scales is tipped. The double-bladed sword means that the law not only punishes but also gives a warning. Lawyers and judges are the prophets of Themis

CouRTS

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ministrative court, individual legal acts or actions taken by entities of public administration provided by law may be disputed in the pre-trial procedure. Regional administration courts in first instance al-so hear complaints (petitions) regarding the decisions of municipal and regional administrative dispute commissions, as well as other institutions provided by law, made in the pre-litigation out-of-court procedure. Vilnius regional administrative court in first instance al-so hears complaints (petitions) regarding the Supreme Administra-tive Dispute Commission, the Tax Dispute Commission, and in cases provided by law, regarding the decisions made by other institutions in the pre-litigation out-of-court procedure. The Supreme Administrative Court is the first and final in-stance for administrative cases assigned to its jurisdiction by law, and an appeal instance for the cases concerning decisions, rulings and orders of regional administrative courts, as well as for the cases involving administrative offences from decisions of district courts as courts of first instance. In the cases provided by law, it also performs hearing of petitions on the reopening of completed administrative cases. The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania develops a uniform practice of administrative courts in the interpretation and application of laws and other legal acts.

Judicial Council

The Judicial Council is an executive body of the autonomy of courts ensuring the independence of courts and judges. A judge whose period of service is less than five years or whom disciplinary penalty has been imposed on, cannot not be elected a member of the Judicial Council. The term of the office is four years. Today, the Ju-dicial Council is composed of 23 members.

MeMberS of The JudiCiAL CounCiL

Chairperson of the Judicial Council: Judge of the Civil Cases Division of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Egidijus LaužikasVice-Chairperson of the Judicial Council: Chairperson of the Criminal Cases Division of Klaipėda Regional Court Zigmas PociusThe secretary of the Judicial Council: Judge of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania Ramūnas GadliauskasPresident of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Rimvydas NorkusChairperson of the Court of Appeal of Lithuania Egidijus ŽironasChairperson of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania Ričardas Piličiauskas Judge of the Civil Cases Division of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Sigitas GurevičiusJudge of the Criminal Cases Division of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Tomas ŠeškauskasJudge of the Civil Cases Division of the Court of Appeal of Lithuania Vigintas VišinskisJudge of the Civil Cases Division of the Court of Appeal of Lithuania Gintaras PečiulisJudge of the Criminal Cases Division of the Court of Appeal of Lithuania Laima GarnelienėJudge of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania Artūras DrigotasJudge of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania Laimutis AlechnavičiusChairperson of the Vilnius Regional Court Vytautas ZeliankaChairperson of the Kaunas Regional Court nerijus MeilutisChairperson of the Šiauliai Regional Court boleslovas KalainisChairperson of the Panevėžys Regional Court Valdas Petras MeidusJudge of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court Rūta Miliuvienė

Judge of the Kaunas District Court Diana LabokaitėJudge of the Vilnius District Court Pavel BorkovskiChairperson of the Klaipėda District Court Audronė GaižutienėChairperson of the Šiauliai District Court Gema JanušienėJudge of the District Court of Utena Region Laima Dumskienė

The Judicial Court of honor

The Judicial Court of honor is an autonomic authority of courts for hearing judicial disciplinary cases and petitions of judges for de-fense of honor of the judge. The Court of Honor is composed of ten members for the period of the commission of the Judicial Council. Two candidates to the members of the Court of Honor are appointed by the President of the Republic of Lithuania, two candidates – by the Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, and six can-didates – by the Judicial Council. The President of the Republic of Lithuania and the Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithu-ania appoint public representatives as members of the Court of Hon-or. The members of the Court of Honor are elected by the Judicial Council: one member each from the Supreme Court of Lithuania, the Court of Appeal of Lithuania, and the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, three members from the judges of all regional courts, regional administrative courts, and district courts. The Chairperson of the Judicial Court of Honor is elected by the Judicial Council from the members of the Judicial Court of Honor.

The Judicial ethics and discipline Commission

The Judicial Ethics and Discipline Commission is an institution of the autonomy of courts resolving the matters of instituting disciplinary actions against judges. The Judicial Ethics and Discipline Commis-sion is composed of seven members. Two candidates for the members in this commission are appointed by the President of the Republic of Lithuania, one candidate is appointed by the Speaker of the Seimas, and four candidates by the Judicial Council. The President of the Re-public of Lithuania and the Speaker of the Seimas appoint their can-didates from public representatives. The Chairperson of the Judicial Ethics and Discipline Commission is appointed by the Judicial Coun-cil from the Commission members.

A disciplinary action may be brought against a judge:

• for an action, demeaning the judicial office, i.e. an act incompat-ible with the judge’s honor and in conflict with the requirements of the Code of Ethics of Judges, when the office of the judge is discredited and the authority of the court is undermined. Any misconduct in office - negligent performance of any specific duty of a judge or omission to act without a cause – also is considered as an act, demeaning the office of a judge.

• for the violation of other requirements of the Code of Ethics of Judges;

• for non-compliance with the limitations on the work and political activities of judges provided by law.

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LITHUANIA IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political part-nership of 28 European countries with almost 500 million people speaking 24 official languages. The area of all these countries taken together covers the bigger part of the continent. The European Un-ion is a family of democratic states working together for the benefit of peace and wellbeing. The European Union has not been created as a new state to replace the existing, however, it has not been made as just an organization for international cooperation either – its member states have es-tablished common institutions that have been entrusted with par-tial sovereignty to be able to democratically solve certain matters of common interest on the European level.

Three main institutions prepare legal acts of the European Union:

The European Parliament, representing citizens of the European Union and directly elected by them;

The Council of the European Union, representing individual states. Every 6 months, a different EU state rotates to preside over the Council of the European Union; Lithuania was its Presi-dent in the second half of 2013;

The European Commission, representing interests of the entire European Union.

The essential principle is as follows: the European Commission proposes new legal acts, and the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopt them. Afterwards, mem-ber states and the European Commission implement legal acts, meanwhile the latter also supervises the adequate adherence to and implementation of the acts.

The European Council determines general guidelines of the EU policy, however it is not entrusted with legislation. It consists of state or government leaders of the EU member states and the Presi-dent of the European Commission; meetings are held at least twice in half a year for up to several days.

The building of the European Parliament ( photo from webpage www.european-council.europa.eu)

The European Union was founded after World War II in order to promote economic cooperation. In 1952, the General Assembly of European Coal and Steel Community was founded and later, in 1958 renamed to the European Parliamentary Assembly that in 1962 be-came the European Parliament. First direct elections were held in 1979. Since then, the vast common market is being further expand-ed. In 1993, the name was changed to the European Union.

The activities of the European Union are based on the principles of a constitutional state: any move of the European Union is regulated by Agreements which are democratically and in good will signed by all member states.

The European Council, August 30, 2014, Brussels. The state leaders discussed the measures of strengthening energy security and the EU policy on climate and

energy. Herman Van Rompuy was President of the European Council (photo from webpage www.european-council.europa.eu)

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The leader of the European Council is appointed by the heads of the states or governments of the EU member states for a term of 2.5 years. At present, the President of the European Union is Donald Tusk. In cooperation with the European Commission, he presides over the activities of the Council in defining general guidelines of policy and priorities, promotes cohesion and consensus.

The European Commission is an executive institution of the Eu-ropean Union designated to ensure that all European decisions are equally significant to all member states. It has an exclusive right to propose European legislation and supervises the adequate imple-mentation of the European Union decisions. The European Com-mission is composed of one representative from all member states each, 28 at present. The Commission has its representations in each state of the European Union that are coordinated by the Communi-cation Subdivision. When Lithuania became a full-fledged members of the European Union on May 1, 2004, the representation of the Eu-ropean Commission was also opened in our country.

The European Commission has subdivisions – general directo-rates that carry out functions similar to those of ministries. Each of them is responsible for specific policy, for instance, trade, environ-ment, etc.; each Director General of the subdivision is accountable to a member of the European Commission. Approximately 33,000 people work for the European Commission. The Commission Presi-dent is proposed by the European Council and elected by the Euro-pean Parliament. Currently, the President of the European Com-mission is Jean-Claude Juncker. The President proposes political guide-lines to the European Commission, summons sittings of the panel of and presides over them, leads the activities of the Com-mission, and participates in the meetings of the Great Seven and discussions in the European Parliament, as well as takes part in the meetings with heads of states in the Council of the European Union.

Lithuania participates in the activities of all the principal institutions of the European Union. Lithuania has seven votes in the Council of the European Union that is composed of the ministers delegated from the governments of member states. The Council sits every four months. The executive institution – the European Commission – is composed of 28 commissioners, one for each state. From 2004 to 2009, Lithuania was represented by Dalia Grybauskaitė, the Com-missioner for financial programming and the budget. After the presi-dential elections, from July 1, 2009, she was replaced by Algirdas Ge-diminas Šemeta, who later became the Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud (until November 1, 2014). In the period of 2014-2019, Lithuania is represented by Vytenis Povi-las Andriukaitis, the Commissioner for health and food safety.

Approximately 7,650 people work for the General Secretariat of the European Parliament and its political groups. Besides, there are the members of the European Parliament and their employees. The Gen-eral Secretariat of the Council of the European Union employs ap-proximately 3,500 people. The European Parliament is elected for the term of five years by all citizens of the European Union in the gen-eral direct elections. From 2009, the European Parliament consists of 736 members (before 2009 it had 785 parliamentarians); Lithu-ania is represented by 12 parliamentarian (13 before 2009).

The President of the European Parliament is elected for the term of 2.5 years by the members of the Parliament. Currently, the Presi-dent of the European Parliament is Martin Schulz. The President supervises the implementation of parliamentary procedures and the activities of Parliamentary Committees and the sphere of inter-national affairs, as well as gives the final approval of the European Union budget.

Two institutions perform very important roles in the Eu-ropean Union: the Court of Justice of the European Union, which ensures that the law is observed, and the European Court of Auditors, which inspects the financial situation of the European Union.

There are a number of other specialized institutions and establish-ments in the European Union: The European External Action Service assists the High

Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who is the Chairperson of the Council of the EU Foreign ministers, supervises the general EU policy on foreign affairs and security, as well as coordinates consecutiveness of external ac-tivities of the European Union;

The European Central Bank is responsible for the European monetary policy;

The Economic and Social Committee represents civil soci-ety, employers and employees;

The Committee of the Regions represents institutions of re-gional and local governments;

The European Investment Bank finances the European Un-ion’s investment projects and through the European Investment Fund helps small enterprises;

The European Ombudsmen deals with citizens’ complaints against the Union’s institutions;

European Data Protection Supervisor ensures respect for citizens’ privacy rights in relation to data processing;

The Publications Office publishes and distributes official publications from the European Union bodies;

The European Personnel Selection Office is a recruitment body that organizes competitions for posts within the EU institu-tions;

The European Administrative School provides specific training for the staff of the EU institutions.

Numerous specialized agencies are responsible for various techni-cal, scientific, and managerial tasks.

The Assembly Hall of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France (photo from webpage www.europarl.europa.eu)

President of the European Parliament of 2014–2017 Martin Schulz (photo from webpage www.europarl.europa.eu)

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Today, the Department of National Defence has grown into a full-fledged system of national defence with almost 15,000 professional servicemen, volunteers, and civilians. So far, Lithuanian system of na-tional defence has already had seven Defence Ministers and five chiefs of the Armed Forces. The beginning was extremely difficult: this gov-ernmental institution had to be created virtually from nothing.

The Beginning: How the Department of National Defense was Founded

The actual formation of the Armed Forces of Lithuania began in 1990, after Independence was restored. Those were not easy times that demanded strong political will, determination, effort, and much physical strength. When the Act of March 11 was adopted, first steps to be taken in consolidating Independence were in the field of over-all national security and border control. Discussions on the future system of security defence in the early days of our new statehood could not even compare to the today’s system of national security of Lithuania, based on unanimous agreement of corresponding au-thorities. Back then, many delegates of the Supreme Council were skeptical about the decision to create the Armed Forces of our own. And it is only understandable: the Soviet Army had made a huge negative imprint in the consciousness of our people, and therefore any army could not have meant anything good and desirable. Most people at that time were nursing the idea of a neutral state without any military organizations. However, the cold war initiated by the Soviet Union, the economic blockade, which was started in the at-tempt to intimidate people and to cause mistrust of the population in the institutions of the young Republic of Lithuania, called for defi-nite actions from the very start.The initial approach shifted: first volunteers were registered for the protection of the most strategically significant buildings, such as the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, the Government, the Trade Union building, the telegraph and the Radio and Television building, the Television Tower, the Central Telephone Station, and the Press Palace. A pre-war military organization, the Lithuanian Ri-flemen’s Union, revived its activities. The idea of the Armed Forc-es started taking shape. On April 25, 1990, after prolonged debates, the Department of National Defence was finally founded. This day marks the official beginning of the restoration of the system of na-tional defence in Lithuania. The first Director General of the Defence Department was a member of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, Audrius Butkevičius.

RESTORATION OF THE LITHUANIAN NATIONAL DEFENCE SYSTEM, ITS DEVELOPMENT AND PERSPECTIVES

Lijana Cibulskienė, war correspondent, long-time journalist of military magazine “Karys”

The newly established Department had much to do: to build the sys-tem of national defence from scratch, basically, to form the concept of the state protection. Those challenges were a novelty, and there-fore intimidating. The resolution, adopted at the governmental sit-ting of May 17, 1990, defined the detailed plan of the creation of the system of national defence. The Department was authorized to give proposals to the Government concerning the issues of national de-fence, as well as foreign and home policy, and to prepare draft laws and other legal acts. The Department was also put in charge of su-pervising international obligations related to national defence, estab-lishing all the necessary institutions, implementing resolutions of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania on national defence, as well as dealing with the issues of mobilization and military service, personnel training, educating the population in the spirit of patriot-ism and civil responsibility, supervising sports organizations, collect-ing and processing information on national defence, caring for war veterans, soldiers, and their families, and supervising the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from the territory of the Republic of Lithuania. The last provisions of the Department of National Defence were rati-fied only after the 1991 putsch in Moscow, on September 27, 1991. Early days for the new Department employees were not easy: no-body had any experience, most of the solutions had to be impro-vised, sometimes laws had to be bended, and sometimes there were no laws whatsoever. And still, work was being done, tasks were being performed. Much help came from the Retired Officers Union: Jonas Paužolis created the first structure of the Department of National Defence and the officer training program; Antanas Pakalka created the classification of material supplies, and Romualdas Malinauskas made samples of military uniforms. The formation of the Department began with its organizational structure. On May 24, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania appointed Algimantas Vaitkaitis deputy director general of the Department; in July he was authorized to supervise the activi-ties and expenses of the Commission of Youth Military Service Af-fairs. The central apparatus of the Department was subdivided into seven sections: the Mobilization Division (J. Paužolis as the head of the division), the Division of Information and Intelligence (head of the division Alfonsas Bajoras), the Specialist Training and Alert Division (head of the division Algirdas Kairys), the Division of Mili-tary Rear (A. Pakalka), the Division of Border Control (Virginijus Česnulevičius), and the Divisions of Informatics and Engineering Services. In addition, there were two more sections: the Section of

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Financial Accounting (headed by Franciška Žinienė) and the Per-sonnel Section. Eight sections in eight zones in Lithuania – in Aly-tus, Kaunas, Klaipeda, Marijampolė, Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Utena, and Vilnius – were responsible for the military service and related is-sues: supplies, accountancy, and distribution.

Rudiments of the Army

The situation of that time called for immediate actions: the creation of the rudiments of future army. The new country had to be protect-ed. However, open formation of the Armed forces was not possible at that time, therefore, on May 31, 1990, the Director of the Department of National Defence issued an order to establish a Military Technical Sports Club with affiliated branches in the regions. The task of the club was to train young men for the defence of the country. Chairman of the Kaunas City Council, lawyer Gintaras Pukas was authorized to put together the provisions of the club. In August 1990, under the leadership of Česlovas Jezerskas, about 200 people, mostly sports-men from Vilnius, Kaunas, and other parts of Lithuania, joined the club. These men were the nucleus of the future defence detachment. As early as August 21, 1990, the Protection Service was established. A first military unit, the Special Protection Company, was formed out of the members of the Military Technical Sports Club. Their duty was to protect various buildings of state importance and the leader-ship of the country. On November 23, 1990, these men in black uni-forms were the first to be sworn in at the first ceremony in the garden of the Vytautas Magnus War Museum in Kaunas. On September 10,

1990, the Department of National Defence founded the Border Pro-tection Service. A representational unit – the Guards of Honor – was established later, after the January 1991 events.

The first military units of the Armed Forces of Lithuania were rec-reated under very complicated conditions. The Special Protection Company, for one, had no established structure or staff require-ments; therefore the soldiers of the unit were paid only for the pro-tection of the buildings and for the time on duty. Meanwhile, the So-viet Army enhanced the display of its military superiority: tanks and other machinery were rolling on the streets and roads all over Lithu-ania. In November and December of 1990, information was passed about a possible attack on strategical buildings: therefore the protec-tion of the Supreme Council had to be promptly fortified.

On August 16, 1990, a Collegiate Council with a deliberative vote was founded to expedite the regulation of the activities of first mil-itary units. The Candidate Selection Commission was also estab-lished at the Department of National Defence with A. Vaitkaitis as its chairperson. The responsibility of the commission was to assess the knowledge, competencies, and experience of the candidates to the officers of the Armed Forces of Lithuania. Most of those candi-dates formerly had served in the Soviet Army. The training of new officers for the Lithuanian Army only started after January 3, 1991; although, the facilities (Director B. Vizbaras) for the training were available from December 20, 1990. On January, 1991, the training started with 72 people, later joined by many more. Two classes, a to-tal of 194 officers, graduated in 1991.

The events of January 13 not only discouraged us from creating the Armed Forces of Lithuania, but accelerated the process. Follow-ing that fateful night, on January 17, the National Defence Volun-teer Service (SKAT) was formed. The headquarters of the Supreme Council Defence unit actually became also the headquarters of the SKAT. This service solved an important question of how to involve civil society in the defence of the country on legal basis.

On February 22, 1991, the Guards of Honor were made together with the Special Protection Company into a Training Unit. It also took over the duties of the Protection Service of the Department of Na-tional Defence that later became part of the SKAT system, actually subject to its leadership. Č. Jezerskas was appointed the head of the Training Unit. The 300 volunteers of the unit were the basis of the Lithuanian Land Force. The Training Unit had many objectives, one of them was to train non-commissioned officers, as well as to help the SKAT to protect the buildings of the Supreme Council and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania.

With the expansion of services and the managerial apparatus of the Department of National Defence, the reorganization of May 20, 1991 made many changes in the structure and the staff of the department. On June 1, 1991, the Immunity Service of the Department of Nation-al Defence started its activities with its main task of collecting infor-mation for the leadership of the Department. Later, when the Min-istry of National Defence of the Republic of Lithuania was founded, no one could join the system of national defence without the autho-rization of the head of the above mentioned service.

The putsch of August 19, 1991 in Moscow had a great impact on Lithuania. In those days, the Department and its subdivisions (the SKAT, the Training Unit, and the Border Protection Service) were keeping watch in the buildings of the Supreme Council and the Gov-ernment of the Republic of Lithuania. By the resolution of the Pro-visional Defence Leadership, the Director General of the Depart-ment of National Defence summoned the armed defence of the buildings of the Supreme Council and the Government of the Re-public of Lithuania; in the worst case scenario of the occupation of the buildings by the Soviet troops, he ordered to organize civil un-armed resistance in the entire country.

The situation changed when the putsch failed. Although the Soviet

November 23, 1990, Lithuanian military parade in Kaunas (photo by unknown author, Ministry of National Defence archive)

Restoration of Lithuanian Army. A block-post on the Vilnius–Druskininkai road, 1991 (photo by unknown author, Ministry of National Defence archive.)

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Political Situation at the Dawn of Independence

For Lithuania, as well as the other Baltic States and the countries of the Eastern European Communist Block, the 1980ties did not of-fer any slightest hope of liberation from the totalitarian regime. On the eve of World War II, the two aggressors, Germany and Russia, signed the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact, a year later resulting in the an-nexation of Lithuania, which had persistently built and strengthened its statehood for the last two decades. Western democracies did not manage to defend Lithuania and the other two Baltic countries in the subsequent Teheran, Yalta, or Potsdam Conferences. On the V–Day in 1945, the enormous Soviet Army was standing in the very heart of the devastated Europe, ready to reach any capital of the war ex-hausted continent. Neither the Truman Doctrine, nor the Marshall Plan could rescue Lithuania from the Iron Curtain, which crashed on us with the last words of Churchill’s speech at Fulton College and hid us from the rest of the democratic world for more than four decades.

The Lithuanian diplomatic service in exile, which functioned until September 6, 1991, was a tiny island of freedom to speak out on be-half of the occupied country.

When on July 21, 1940, the puppet People’s Seimas voted for Lithu-ania to join the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, fur-ther in the text), Lithuanian envoys presented notes of protest to the Governments of their countries of accreditation. In the begin-ning, five representations and four consulates, two of them consu-lates general, were functioning outside Lithuania; later, the repre-sentations in Argentina and Switzerland were closed and only the representations in Washington, London, and Vatican were left func-tioning. Officially, the Lithuanian representation in Paris was closed, however, the Foreign Ministry of France did not refuse to issue cer-tificates for Lithuanian diplomats. The head of the diplomatic ser-vice was Stasys Lozoraitis, and after his death in 1983, the position was taken by Stasys Antanas Bačkis.

The Lithuanian diplomatic service had no official authorizations, could not enter into negotiations or sign international agreements. Its principal task was to keep Lithuania in the political conscious-ness of the free world so that the matter of Lithuania’s freedom and Independence did not die; our diplomats met with other diplomats and politicians, issued memorandums on the non-recognition of Lithuania’s occupation, made declarations on the right of our coun-

LITHUANIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE YEARS OF INDEPENDECE

Antanas Valionis, PhD in political sciences; politician; diplomat; 2000–2006 Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania; 2001–2004 Head of the negotiation delegation on the membership to the

European Union; 2000–2005 Chairman of the Coordinating Commission for the Integration to NATO under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania

try for freedom and Independence. Another significant role was to help and assist Lithuanian people, scattered around the Western world by the whirlpool of war.

The balance of fear, created by the nuclear menace, prevented from igniting an all-consuming global conflict; however, any attempt of the enslaved nations to break free would be ruthlessly suppressed: it hap-pened in Budapest in 1956; it happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the two nations of Czechs and Slovaks tried to liberalize the re-gime by creating “Communism with a human face”, and were brutal-ly crushed by tanks. Socialism could never have a “human face”. Not much help, if only moral support, came from the Helsinki Accords of 1975 on the rights of people and nations. The Soviet Army’s invasion in Afghanistan in 1979, and the repressions of 1981 over “Solidarity”, an independent Polish Trade Union, were not stopped.

Seemingly, nothing changed in the socialist block. However, the So-viet economic situation was approaching a precipice. As Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in his book, only a few people knew the real eco-nomic situation and the real figures of the state budget. The growth rate of military expenses many times exceeded the growth rate of na-tional income; however, the Political Bureau of the Central Commit-

In February, 1992, Lithuanian Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to the USA Stasys Lozoraitis and his wife Daniela Lozoraitis arrived in Vilnius (photo by V. Gulevičius, ELTA)

113

tee of the Soviet Union Communist Party preferred to keep silence. The Soviet economy was disastrous. M. Gorbachev admitted that the Soviet Union was spending on military needs per capita 2.5 times more that the United States.

Therefore, when in spring 1985, M. Gorbachev became the Secre-tary General of the Soviet Communist Party, he attempted to impose “from above” at least minimal reforms of the stale authoritarian po-litical system and the centralized planned economy, which essential-ly created the deficiency of almost everything, causing great social problems. M. Gorbachev’s reforms, widely known as “perestroika”, tried to limit the power of the nomenclature and allowed some el-ements of political pluralism. The partial democratization “from above” could happen as long as the central power was strong and the opposition weak. The limited modernization of the totalitarian system aroused higher expectations for reforms and increased the number of democratically minded reform supporters and the oppo-nents of the Establishment. The ruling clan lost its power not only over its own country, but over the entire Communist block as well; meanwhile, the process continued to progress “from below”.

Poles were first to react. Back in the summer of 1989, the Polish Com-munist Party (Polish United Workers Party) agreed together with the “Solidarity” Trade Union on organizing parliamentary elections to the so-called Contract Sejm: 65 seats were won by Communists and 35 seats went to the representatives of “Solidarity”. The inde-pendent Senate elections were won by “Solidarity”: they received 99 seats out of 100. In autumn, the Berlin wall fell, bringing down the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe. On November 28 in the Bundestag, Chancellor of the German Federative Republic Helmut Kohl presented a ten-point plan for “Overcoming of the divi-sion of Germany and Europe”. On December 3, 1989, M. Gorbachev and G. Bush during their meeting in Malta announced to the world that the cold war was over.

After almost five decades of oppression, Lithuanians were cautious enough not to believe too fast in the possibility of democracy. In Au-gust 1987, an unsanctioned rally against the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was held by the dissident organizations, the Lithuanian Liberty League and the Lithuanian Helsinki group; in June 1988, five hun-dred most active members of intelligentsia founded the Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis); its initiative group declared that the goal of their activities was publicity, democracy, and sovereignty. Sąjūdis was cautious not to provoke Moscow and therefore did not mention Independence; however, by using the word sovereignty, Sąjūdis made it clear that it was up to the people to decide on the essential questions of political and governmental system. Shortly af-terwards, the Lithuanian Communist Party raised the slogan: “Lith-uania without sovereignty is Lithuania with future”. However, by the

On February 9, 1996, Stasys Antanas Bačkis on the occasion of his 90th anniversary received the Grand Duke Gediminas Order of First Degree from President A. M. Brazauskas for his longtime impeccable work for the State of Lithuania and his role in the re-establishment of Independence. From left: A. J. Bačkis, O. Bačkienė, S. A. Bačkis, A. M. Brazauskas, R. Bačkis, and R. Pavilionis (photo by G. Mačiulis, ELTA)

beginning of 1989, Sąjūdis had already clearly expressed its aspira-tion for the Independence of Lithuania, while the Communist Party was still carefully talking of economic sovereignty. The relations between Sąjūdis and the Lithuanian Communist Party were relatively easy, as there was no brutal pressure either from the side of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) or from the Government of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR). The pressure was rather felt from Soviet political and military structures, which called for unity. In December 1989, the Lithuanian part of the Communist Party distanced itself from the CPSU; soon afterwards, Sąjūdis in cooperation with the already Lithuanian Communist Par-ty (LCP) created preconditions for the declaration of Independence. The possibility of free elections occurred on September 28, 1989, when the Supreme Council of the LSSR changed the Constitution and adopted a new law on elections. Thus the conditions for free and democratic elections to a people’s parliament were created.

From Declaration of Independence to International Recognition

First free elections to the Supreme Council of the LSSR on February 24, 1990, were overwhelmingly won by Sąjūdis. For the first time in the LSSR, people’s representatives received the authorization for the restoration of Independence of Lithuania. Therefore, on March 11, 1990, Lithuania was proclaimed a free and independent State. Tim-ing was crucial, because the USSR Supreme Council was about to adopt a new Union Agreement, which would establish new, stronger ties with Moscow and would complicate the liberalization process. On March 17, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania ap-pointed Kazimira Prunskienė as the Prime Minister and Algirdas Saudargas as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Naturally, Lithuania became neither sovereign nor independent just because Independence was proclaimed. Foreign army was still lo-cated on its territory; the borders were guarded not only by Lithu-anian border patrol, but by Soviet guards as well; Soviet militia ar-rested Lithuanian residents and Soviet troops occupied buildings. Political factors, certainly, influenced the reluctance of the world to recognize Lithuania’s Independence. The greatest political leaders in the USA and Europe were afraid of causing problems to the disar-mament process and harming M. Gorbachev with the recognition of Independence, which might disturb the process of democratization, unite hardline Communists, military and KGB reactionary forces (this actually eventually happened), and jeopardize the unification of Germany; therefore, the world leaders based their reluctance to rec-ognize us on formally valid and convenient excuses. Lithuania was left alone to negotiate with the Soviet Union and explain to the world

On January 11, 1990, President of the USSR M. Gorbachev visited Vilnius. In the photo: M. Gorbachev and A.M. Brazauskas in the Lukiškės Square. M. Gorbachev did not have the nerve to meet people in the Cathedral Square but rather chose a short stop in the Lukiškės Square; later he met with workers from Soviet-controlled factories (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

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After the restoration of independence, the Republic of Lithuania be-gan to build its legal system and chose the path of its evolution. This meant that the foreign social, economic, and cultural environment, which had been implemented in the country for the past fifty years of occupation, was gradually replaced with the legislation that would re-turn our country to the values of Western civilization that had consist-ently crystallised over centuries. Twenty-five years of independence today allows us to take a fresh glance and evaluate the work done. 1992 was the most critical year in the creation of the Lithuanian legal system after the restoration of independence, because in that year, on October 25, the legal system of our State was consolidated in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania adopted by the Lithuanian nation at a referendum. In a year, in December 1993, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a legal act “On the Outline of the Legal System Reform and its Implementation”.

Returning to the Essence of the Law

Undoubtedly, the basis of the legal reform was a completely new paradigm of the legal thought. Having regained its independence, Lithuania, first of all, had to understand the essence of the law in order to be able to start consolidating its own legal system free from political dictatorship and oriented towards the need of a democratic society for legal regulations. Statism that dominated in the Soviet le-gal system treated any imperative of the government as a law, turn-ing it into a binding rule of conduct. Volitional orders of political structures would determine what the law was and what law the po-litical regime required. The questions of the essence of the law were erased from jurisprudence. Separated from the authentic concept of the law, jurisprudence in Lithuania became probably one of the most politically and ideologically affected social sciences.Secondly, the transition to a new system of values exposed the lack of legal definitions. And thirdly, affected by statism, any law was considered to be binding. Later came the understanding that any law was only legal if complied with the Constitution and the principles of the law. We realized that without the modern concept of the law, no modern concept of legislation could be created, or the relationship between the law and legislation could be defined.The above mentioned resolution of the Seimas “On the Outline of the Legal System Reform and its Implementation” provided for a

gradual implementation of the legal reform in two stages. The first stage included creating a legal basis for the reform, recruiting and training specialists for the institutions, and generating the neces-sary financial, economic, and material conditions. The second stage was the period when all the reformed and newly created institutions started to operate.

The sculpture of Themis, the goddess of justice, over

the entrance to the Court of Šiauliai; sculptor

H. Orakauskas (photo by unknown author)

JUSTITIA eST FUnDAmenTUm RegnORUm (LAT. JUSTICe IS FUnDAmenTAL TO ReIgn)

OVeRVIeW OF THe LegAL SySTem FROm 1990 TO 2015

Darius Beinoravičius, Doctor of Social Sciences, Milda Vainiutė, Doctor of Social Sciences, Professor

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On June 25, 1998, the Seimas adopted a new edition of the Outline of the Legal System Reform that said: “The second stage of the le-gal system reform has revealed both its advantages and disadvan-tages. The latter includes the inconsistency of the reform”. The new edition also underlined that the further reform of the legal system would be implemented “on the basis of the principles of continu-ity and succession, with the regards to the requirement and recom-mendations of the United nations Organizations, european Union, and european Council”.

The Future Challenge of Curbing the Inflation of the Law

First of all, we should admit that the understanding of the legal system and the existing problems as well as the mistakes and unac-complished undertakings, described in the outline of the legal re-form, were rather superficial and inadequate to the situation. One of the main problems was and still is the structure of the legal sys-tem itself. The Outline simplified this structure down to two types of institutions: rule-making institutions and legal institutions; the Outline almost omitted the doctrine, legal awareness, and the re-quirements of legal culture. Naturally, first came the simplest and most obvious concerns: the creation of new laws and new legal in-stitutions. As fast as possible, the authorities were creating favour-able conditions and an infrastructure for the development of our legal system. However, today we can clearly see that the establish-ment of a legal system always takes more time if consistency and conceptuality are neglected.

When speaking of rule-making, which is an integral part of a legal sys-tem, we should mention that the authors of legal acts do not pay suf-ficient attention to the coordination of laws among each other. One of the main problems of rule-making is the absence of a clear rule-making strategy: instead of creating a strategy and a clear concept of

future reforms, we get involved in routine issues or post factum prob-lems. We do not yet have a complex approach to the regulation of re-lations; do not follow the recommendations of the doctrine that es-tablishes the relation of legislature and the law in the system of legal acts; we pay no due attention to the interrelation among legal acts. For the lack of a clear concept and a precise legislative planning, we adopt more random laws. The concept of the relation between the law and legislature determines the rationality of newly established legal institutions, the quality of newly adopted laws, the efficiency of the implementation, and the situation with the human rights protection.

If we assessed the process of legislation in the legal reform context, we should note that the volume of legislation, even after twenty years of independence, has not declined. And that is an expressive proof not so much of a quality rebirth of our law as of its overtaxed situ-ation and the precedence of quantity over quality in our legislation. Legal acts with the supreme power are very often subject to amend-ments, supplements, and replacements that show the instability of our law and the absence of the clear concept of the adoption of such legal acts. meanwhile, the unstable law, unfortunately, does not help in building a stable society. The abundance of legal acts misleads the society to the point that it cannot, even with the greatest wish, to consistently follow the activities of its parliament; in that case, rep-resentative democracy is inevitably subject to the rift between the parliament and its people.

Undoubtedly, the inflation of laws is a problem in the entire Western legal system, including the European Union. Curbing the inflation of laws would precondition social, economic, and cultural well-being of our society, as favourable living conditions can only be created in a society with predictable rules and a feeling of stability.

meanwhile, many accomplishments were achieved in the period of our young independence: all the necessary law enforcement institu-tions, such as courts and the prosecutor’s office, as well as such legal

On March 20, 2014, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania bid farewell to the judges who had completed their term and welcomed the judges of the new office (photo by M. Ambrazas, ELTA)

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After the restoration of its Independence, Lithuania had to face many challenges: the formation of civil society was going through compli-cated political, economic, and social changes. In fact, the possibility of Independence itself emerged only due to the Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis), which was a true embodiment of civil expec-tations and the courage of our strong and united society. However, later years were followed by a considerably subsided activity, lost in-terest in politics, indifference to political and social life, a shortage of influential organizations, the augmentation of social and political mistrust, alienation, as well disbelief in positive changes and the ca-pacity of the society to influence events. The above said can especial-ly be attributed to the first two decades of Independence.

The Enlargement of the Non-Governmental Sector

In 2011 alone, 22,246 associations, support funds and charity foun-dations, as well as public enterprises were registered in Lithuania: seventeen times more than in the period from 1990 through 1994. In 2011, there were approximately 7.3 public organizations for a thou-sand people. At a glance, after 1990 and especially in 199š-1997, pub-lic organizations of the civil society in Lithuania started their rapid growth and consolidation that could be associated with the new edi-tions of the laws on the regulation of public organizations and their activities; however, a considerable part of these organizations are no longer active, while others have been founded by governmental in-stitutions, and essentially do not meet the requirements of a public

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY: 1990–2015

Ieva Petronytė, PhD, D.Sc, professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Sciencies at Vilnius University, Director of the Civil Society Institute; Lijana Cibulskienė, journalist

organization of civil society. On the other hand, the growth of the number of organizations does not necessarily reflect the growth of the number of people involved in their activities: although the num-ber of organizations has been steadily growing since Independence, the number of their members and supporters has not change much if not decreased. Statistical data show that from 1999 to 2013, one out of ten people in Lithuania were engaged in the activities of public organizations. This number has not significantly changed.

Such a situation could be interpreted in different ways: in many cas-es, the clearly undefined and inconsecutive legal basis has not cre-ated favorable conditions for the steady development of civil organi-zations, although there are no legal restrictions for organizations to act and anyone can join or participate in the activities or the estab-lishment of such organizations. In the end of 2013, the Law on the Development of Non-governmental Organizations of the Republic of Lithuania was finally adopted and the institution for the coop-eration between the government and the non-governmental sector was finally named: the Non-governmental Organizations Council, although it was founded only in the end of 2014. The majority of or-ganizations could be described as weak, low budget, and financially unstable, as well as understaffed, with limited and specific activities, incapable of implementing the tasks of a civil organization. The situ-ation became more urgent after 2005, when most of international foundations left Lithuania and an alternative mechanism of more stable financing was not created.

On the other hand, the non-governmental sector is also limited by the factors determining whether people are willing to join it or not. Various researches have shown that the majority of the population are inactive because of the lack of interest in public life or the lack of time and money, or plainly because nobody has asked them to join. These factors also show the weakness of organizations and their in-adequate actions or skills to draw new members and present their attractive image to the public. This tendency of aloofness could al-so be explained by Soviet mentality. In the period of inter-war cul-ture, Lithuanian people had not been adequately taught the corre-sponding standards of public activity, while in the Soviet times they were forced to join multiple societies and were fed up with collective activities, therefore, when the wave of Sąjūdis, which had led our country towards Independence, subsided, people took advantage of the liberty to stay aside. However, those who hope to meet people and gain skills in public activities or otherwise self-improve, will-ingly join various groups and organizations.

1 pic. The Dynamics of the Number of Non-Governmental Organizations in Lithuania in 1994-2011

1995

1994

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

0

5000

10000

30000

1302 20654136

58447137

8365 942510596

118571203913856

1507316369117159

1819319193

2075122246

15000

20000

25000

From the Center of Registers, compiled by R. Žiliukaitė

127

The number of the people, who had gotten engaged in the activities of public organizations during the first several years of Independ-ence, clearly dropped down. Although many new public organiza-tions of civil society were founded, the number of the people in-volved in them remained unchanged. The current tendency shows that the public sector in Lithuania, although free and independent, more professional and better legally based, still faces the shortage of finances and human resources and is incapable of recruiting new members and presenting its adequate image to the public. Compara-tive studies have proved the institutional situation of the non-gov-ernmental sector in Lithuania being on par with its counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe; however, the willingness of the popula-tion to be involved in associations for many years has been lower or even the lowest not only regionally, but also in the entire European Union. The situation has not changed much, although recently some positive changed have been traced: the lowest positions in this re-spect have been shifted towards Latin America, the Balkan States, Russia, and even in some cases, to Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.

The Years of an Upsurge in Civil Activities as the Reference Point

The beginning of the Independence period was the time when Lithu-ania experienced the highest peak of civil involvement during the entire history of the 20th and 21st centuries. The beginning of civil involvement could be truly attributed to the birth of the Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis) and its initiative group in June 1988. When on August 23 the group organized a rally to commemorate the signing of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered in the Vingis Park in Vilnius. Then, the majority of the people learned about how the Bal-tic States had lost their Independence. On October 22-23, 1988, the Lithuanian Reform Movement held its first founding conference in Vilnius. The newly founded civil force was the initiator and leader of future rallies and campaigns.

The “Baltic Way”, a political demonstration held on August 23, 1989 by the people of the three Baltic countries, surpassed all expecta-tions. In their determination to live independently, over two million people standing hand in hand, formed a 620 kilometers long hu-man chain from the Cathedral Square in Vilnius via the Freedom Monument in Riga to the Toompea Castle in Tallinn. The number of Lithuanians alone almost reached a million. At that point, that event was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest human chain; in 2009, documents recording the “Baltic Way” were added to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. For several years, other similar political demonstrations occurred in the Baltic countries, such as the “Blazing Baltic Way” in 1991, where burning bonfires were symbolizing the undying determination of the peo-ple to maintain freedom and Independence. People truly supported and massively participated in those events. The events of January 13, 1991 wakes at the Parliament Building and the TV Tower united Lithuania for the defence of the rudiments of freedom.

The Role of Individuals in Public Life

People’s involvement in public affairs is an important condition for the development of a strong civil society, capable of fulfilling its functions. However, as seen in Picture 2, the interest of Lithuanian civilians in politics has steadily decreased with years. Although the same tenden-cy can be seen in other countries of Western, Central, and Eastern Eu-rope, it is most acutely felt in Lithuania, probably, due to a very high reference point of the first years of Independence: in 1990, 74 percent of the population were interested in politics and 50 percent admitted that politics was extremely important in their lives. Those numbers were considerably higher than in other countries. On the other hand, despite their obvious indifference to politics as such, seven out of ten people followed news on daily basis. Such a ratio is not too low.One of the forms of civil participation in public and political activities is the participation in elections. As seen in Pictures 3 and 4, people

One of the most famous Sąjūdis’ rallies in the support of the newly reestablished Independence, April 7, 1990, the Vingis Park, Vilnius (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

The night of January 13, 1991 at the Vilnius Television Tower (unknown author, from personal V. Dauderienė‘s archive)

From the European Values Study, compiled by I. Petronytė

2008

1999

1990

0 % 20 % 40 % 60 % 80 % 100 %

Very much interested

Fairly interested Almost disinterested

Totally disinterested

2 pic. Interest in Politics in Lithuania from 1990 to 2008

much more actively participated in the first elections after the res-toration of Independence than in later years. In the following years, public activity dropped down drastically, however, that tendency co-incided with the general tendency in other countries. From 2003 to 2004, the obvious downfall stabilized, and the 2004 elections to the Seimas were more actively participated. Superficially, such dynam-ics could be explained by a natural level of political activity that was reached following the surge of euphoria; however, a deeper insight could show the relation of increased activity with the affiliation to and identification with political parties, as well as participation in politically activities; on the other hand, passiveness could be more related to political alienation and the disbelief in elections as a force, capable of changing the status quo.

However, the decrease of the participation in elections, no mat-ter how unexpected it may be, does not cause any surprise in the world context. Lithuania, as well as other countries of the region, showed peculiarities in another aspect during the first decade of

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In 2014, we commemorated the 95th anniversary of the Law on Local Government. There were two more laws on self-government, adopt-ed in 1929 and 1933. The first document, taken as the basis for the creation of national self-government in November 1918, however, was a legal document, written by an outstanding public figure and statesman, Minister of Interior Petras Leonas in cooperation with his two colleagues, which systemized the jurisdictions of local au-thorities and the institutional structure according to the most demo-cratic example of that time, the British system of self-government.

Historians, sociologists, economists, and political experts have writ-ten many treatises on the local self-government of the inter-war period, however, the period following 1990 has been yet poorly covered. This article offers an overview of this remarkable and sig-nificant period and the past and present events in the life of local municipalities.

About Self-Government after 1990

The period between 1990 and now has been very important for the development of Lithuanian local self-government. At that time, the system of Lithuanian local self-government, after the past fifty years of the status of an inconsequential appendix to the centralized gov-ernment, started its reform after the model of a western, democratic state. The period between 1990 and now could fall into three stages in the aspect of the development of local self-government: from 1990 to 1995, from 1995 to 2000, and from 2000 until the present time.

First Stage

The first stage that lasted from 1990 to 1995 was complex and con-troversial. At that time, the foundation of a western system of local self-government was created without a clear vision or knowledge of the structure thereof; the prevailing approach to the relations be-tween the state and its citizens was heavily burdened with Soviet mentality; the understanding of self-government was slightly dis-torted and artificially juxtaposed with the state government.

There were two tendencies in the process of the self-government de-velopment of the first stage:

• The old, soviet-style system of self-government was abolished and replaced with a new one, based on the provisions of the law on Local Self-Government, adopted on February 12, 1990, before the declaration of Independence on March 11, 1990;

The deveLopMeNT oF LIThuANIAN LocAL SeLF-GoverNMeNT, 1990–2015

Bronius Kleponis, Head of the Office of the Committee on State Administration and Local Government of the Seimas of the Re-public of Lithuania; associated professor Algirdas Astrauskas, doctor of social sciences, advisor of the Office of the

Committee on State Administration and Local Government of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania

• our own mistakes as well as the experience of other countries were analyzed in the search of the most appropriate model of self-government in Lithuania.

The creation of a new democratic self-government system in Lithua-nia was not as successful and smooth as we all had desired. The elec-tive and executive institutions of self-government were still treated as governmental institutions, and such treatment determined their respective subordination. In the middle of 1990, municipalities were obligated to establish certain subdivisions and to appoint heads of those divisions only with the prior consent of the corresponding ministries. In 1992, the Government was already granted the right to require from municipal councils the dismissal of the officials of exec-utive institutions and administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the municipal council, and in the event of the refusal, to dismiss the above mentioned officials upon the decision of the Government.

The system of the administrative territorial units of five types and two levels that was characterized by the abundance of such units and types, was not abolished either. In Lithuania at that time, there were 55 higher level municipalities and 510 lower level municipali-ties. The law on Local Self-Government did not properly define the jurisdiction of local authorities, neither did it establish spheres of re-sponsibilities and activities between the institutions of central pow-er and municipalities.

After the law on Local Self-Government established the dual model of the organizational structure of self-government institutions and introduced the distribution of power between municipal council and executive institutions, the tension between municipal councils with their chairmen and the administrative divisions under their subordi-nation began building up. Such a situation was considered a diarchy that brought about actual negative consequences.

paradoxical as it might seem, but the type of relations based on ver-tical subordination was also applied in the case of 55 higher level and 510 lower level municipalities. It took years to understand that the municipalities of both levels could exist independently and solve the questions of their local jurisdiction while cooperating in common spheres. With time, the relations became similar to those of the So-viet era: the jurisdiction of the lower level municipalities depended on municipal councils of the higher level; the latter establishment would also decide, what institutions and organizations should go under the subordination of the lower level municipalities, how big

133

their budgets should be, and what financial indicators they should present. In addition to that, another form of public understanding, i.e. the municipal property, did not manage to evolve in Lithuania during that period. The budget institutions and enterprises of local self-government managed and used, by the law of trust, the property owned by the State and not by the municipality.

All these factors showed the return to the former times of central-ized governance, when local authorities performed a role of a mere governmental management institution and an implementer of the governmental policy, devised by central governmental institutions. however, the return to the past was abruptly stopped by the consti-tution of the republic of Lithuania, adopted by the national referen-dum on october 5, 1992 and effective as of November 6, 1992. The constitution provided for a democratic and decentralized system of public management with its integral part, local self-government, which was represented in a specific public administration system, directly not subject to any governmental institution. To implement the provisions of the constitution, which back then had already tak-en into consideration the requirements of the european charter for Local Self-Government, the authorities were intensively searching for guidelines, which would help create a new Lithuanian system of local self-government. The Government established two working groups for the preparation of a package of legal acts, necessary for the implementation of the administrative territorial reform of self-government and the creation of a management model of higher ad-ministrative units, i.e. district municipalities. The constitution of the republic of Lithuania empowered the Government to organize the management of district municipalities.

Although a great variety of local self-government models and theo-ries were thoroughly analyzed and discussed, the Government de-cided that at that point it would be best to follow the British model of local self-government, based on the state theory of local govern-ment. Besides, certain elements of French and Scandinavian local self-government were chosen to creatively complement the essential British model.

Lithuanian strategists, most probably, were attracted by the follow-ing characteristics of the British model of local self-government:

• The residents of an administration unit or a municipality of a state are interrelated only by neighborly ties, while the right to self-government is given and belongs to the self-government council, an elective and representational institution, established by way of elec-tions. The self-government council is a nominal legal entity, which serves as a facilitator for the implementation of the self-government right. It is the self-government council that receives the status of a public legal person and its jurisdiction.

• In establishing the jurisdiction of a municipality, the principle of positive law is applied, which says that the only actions allowed are the actions established by the law.

• For the implementation of its policies, the government of a state makes use of the institutions of general jurisdiction or municipal councils, which are responsible for a wide range of activities, as well as of the institutions of specialized jurisdiction, which are respon-sible for a single sphere of activities with no direct subordinates on their territories.

As it has been mentioned above, the decision was made to introduce the following elements of the continental model, i.e. the French and Scandinavian variations:

• dividing the municipal jurisdiction according to the discretion of the decisions into the independent jurisdiction and the jurisdiction, delegated by the state.

• Applying a combination of the proportional system of elections to municipal councils and the monistic structural model of local self-government, which creates a supposition for the party or a coalition

– the winner of the local elections – to form unipersonal and/or col-legiate municipal executive institutions in order to eradicate the sit-uation of diarchy. • replacing the procuratorial supervision with the administrative supervision, performed by a governmental representative with the right to demand of local self-government institutions the implemen-tation of laws and governmental decisions, as well as to give sugges-tions on whether to annul or alter the allegedly illegal decisions of municipalities or their officials, and to file complaints against the institutions of local self-government and their officials in the event of their refusal to obey the requirements.Such is the overview of the first stage of the development of Lithu-anian local self-government.

Second Stage

The second stage of the creation of the local self-government sys-tem started in the spring of 1995, when the new municipal councils, elected in March 1995, started their work and when the law on Local Self-Government, adopted in July 1994, came into effect.1995 was the year of a complex administrative territorial and self-government reform and the creation of the district management. The changes affected the following elements of local self-govern-ment and the following legal acts were implemented: • With the implementation of the law on the Territorial Admin-istrative units of the republic of Lithuania and their Boundaries, which was adopted in July 1994, the system of territorial adminis-trative units was essentially reorganized. • The implementation of the law on Local Self-Government, adopt-ed in July 1994, abolished lower level municipalities. • With the implementation on the law on the elections to Mu-nicipal councils, adopted in July 1994, the system of the elections to municipal councils was reformed. • Municipalities received the material property of a large volume, necessary for the implementation of their functions, by the law on the Assignment and Transfer of part of State property to the owner-ship of Local Governments (Municipalities) of the republic of Lithu-ania, adopted in the end of 1994. • Municipal budgets were formed on the basis of the method of budgeting by establishing the revenue and expenses of municipalities.• The law on the Basic regulations of the Association of Munici-palities of the republic of Lithuania was adopted in 1995 to protect general interests of municipalities and represent them in govern-mental institutions.

Map of Lithuanian districts

138

The DevelopmenT of InTernal affaIrs anD publIc securITy from 1990 Through 2015

Eglė Vileikienė, Doctor of Sociology, expert of the Ministry of Interior, Valdas Kaminskas, journalist

There is hardly any other governmental structure, which has experi-enced such a variety of so much dramatic tension and metamorpho-sis during the past decades as the system of internal affairs, desig-nated to ensure public security of the state. however, it has managed to withstand political whirlpools, criminal ebbs and flows, as well as the gauntlet of reforms, and today proudly stands among the most respected and valued governmental institutions of lithuania.

The Democracy of Political Rallies: Individual Decision-Making

The importance of the system of internal affairs to the political and social processes became extremely clear in 1988, when lithuani-an population increasingly started to express their hope for social freedom, possibilities of the statehood restoration, and the historic opportunity to break away from the ussr. at that point, only bru-tal force and repression could have stopped the people. There were three essential repression structures in lithuania in those days: the Kgb, the soviet army, and the soviet lithuanian ministry of Inter-nal affairs. While the attitude of the Kgb and the soviet army to-wards the liberation process in Lithuania was clearly defined, the position of the police (militia, at that time) and other services of the ministry of Interior was ambiguous. although the system of inter-nal affairs was subject to the commands from moscow, more than 70 percent of the personnel were lithuanians, who were essentially supporting the path chosen by the people.

Petras Liubertas, a former officer of the Soviet Ministry of Interio-rand the first chief of Lithuanian Police, in his recollections of those times has said: “The events of those years were some sort of cross-roads – who are you with? (…) not only the society was falling into layers; every individual was undergoing this process. let us remem-ber that year of 1988: one group of people (the liberation movement – Sąjūdis – activists, participants of the bicycle march, etc.) were openly roaming around Lithuania with the tricolor flags, others were steadily holding portraits of lenin, others yet were patiently waiting for the outcome of the events in order to be able to safely choose the side. The system of internal affairs was the mirror image of the soci-ety, where everybody had to choose their own priorities”.

As former Minister of Interior Stasys Lisauskas has noted, the offic-ers in those days had to work under hard conditions of the “democ-racy of rallies”. according to him, only from august to December of 1988 alone, there were 66 rallies in the country, participated by a to-

tal of 470 thousand people. Officers were receiving persistent orders from moscow and from the local communists to suppress protests, while inside the system, the confrontation was felt between the sup-porters of the old regime and the so-called Sąjūdists (Sąjūdis follow-ers), consisting mostly of law enforcement officers, later joined by the road patrol leaders.

The scales of the internal conflict were tipped on September 28, 1988, when for the first time a peaceful rally in the downtown Vilnius was forcibly dispersed. That day is known in lithuanian history as the day of the “banana ball”, because the protesters were beaten by the inte-rior army soldiers with rubber clubs, called “bananas”. The investiga-tion into who had given orders to beat the people led to the resigna-tion of the hard-liner minister, s. lisauskas, who was replaced with a more liberal and flexible deputy minister, Marijonas Misiukonis. The latter had to face the responsibility of guiding the system of internal affairs through the most dramatic period of 1990-1991.

first signs of the wind of changes in the system of internal affairs could be traced back to 1989, when on august 23, 2.5 million peo-ple formed a human chain stretching from vilnius cathedral square all the way via latvia to the herman Tower in Tallinn, estonia, in what is now world-wide known as the Baltic Way. It was the first peaceful campaign, when lithuanian interior structures did not take actions against the people, but, on the contrary, secured public or-der, regulated traffic, and performed other organizational functions. at that time, very symbolically, the whole system transited to the lithuanian language. before, the universal chancery language had been russian. besides, the ministry initiated a new weekly publi-cation “liaudies sargyboje” (“on guard of the nation”), where the three letters “ssr” were as if by accident omitted, leaving only the “ Weekly newspaper of the ministry of Interior of lithuania”…

The further development in breaking ties with communist ideolo-gy and the moscow rule was steadily acquiring momentum. as early

September 28, 1988, is known in our history as the “banana ball”, when a

militia detachment used rubber clubs, called “bananas” against peaceful

demonstrators (photo by A. Petrulevičius, from Police Department under Lithuanian

Ministry of Interior archive)

139

A critical moment in the January 1991 events: a pro-soviet mob tries to attack the Supreme Council (photo from Police Department under Lithuanian Ministry of Interior archive)

In January1991, officers of the Ministry of Interior alongside Lithuanian citizens stood in the defence of the Supreme Council (photo from Police Department under Lithuanian Ministry of Interior archive)

as in the beginning of 1990, the still soviet parliament of lithuania adopted a resolution, stopping the activities of all political parties – in fact, the communist party – in the entire law enforcement system, which became loyal to the local government, rather than to moscow.

Between the Lines of Fire

after our Independence was restored on march 11, 1990, the new state leaders as well as the society were looking at the system of in-ternal affairs as the only structure of organized power, capable of protecting the newly born republic of lithuania from the attack of pro-imperialistic forces. Within 10 days from the declaration of Inde-pendence, president of the parliament vytautas landsbergis signed an address to the officers of the Ministry of Interior, where they were encouraged to maintain loyalty to the lithuanian state and were as-sured that all their social guarantees would be preserved. In order to maintain stability, marijonas misiukonis was appointed the minister of Interior by the first independent Government of Lithuania.

from the very start, radical politicians expressed their doubts in the loyalty of the minister and his team, as well as publicly and privately made allusions to their careers in the soviet power structures. and yet, due to financial, material, and organizational issues, it was not possible to completely cut ties with the moscow leaders, who in their own turn applied pressure on their lithuanian colleagues to adhere to their orders. besides, the commanders of soviet military troops were finding more frequent excuses to demonstrate their military power on the streets of cities and towns.

frequent threats from moscow ordered “to take care” of lithuanian policemen in case “a single shot would be fired at Soviet soldiers”. meanwhile, hot-shots dealing with delicate situations were in abun-dance. for example, on June 14, 1990, when patriotically minded people of Kaunas started demolishing soviet monuments, only the interference of the officials from the Ministry of Interior and their negotiation skills stopped the imminent clash between the protesters and paratroopers. In Alytus, soldiers were trying to confiscate hunt-ing rifles, but the head of the local militia, Vytautas Grigaravičius in-terfered and was almost arrested himself. “The situation was such that any wrong step could have triggered grave consequences to the future of lithuania and its people”, said anatolijus vilkas, a lieuten-ant colonel of the former ministry of Interior; therefore in most cas-es, the interior officers were acting as negotiators between the two opposing sides, encouraging to calm down both of them.

In 1990, despite the political tension and grave criminal situation, the ministry of Interior decided to start structural reforms, designated to strengthen the strategy defining role of the Ministry, as well as to del-egate executive functions to its departments. In everyday life, the cus-tomary word “militia” was gradually being replaced with “police”. In the same year, the police academy of lithuania was founded with the first 500 students. A number of public organizations related to the ministry of Interior were also established: the union of police sup-porters, the association of the Interior affairs system employees, etc. For the first time, Lithuanian officers had the opportunity to compete in international shooting contests: the first place among women was won by Daina Gudzinavičiūtė, a future Olympic champion and future president of the national olympic committee. other innovations of those days, by today’s standards, might look quite funny, like the at-tempt to form the vilnius university police in 1990, which would be financed from the University budget. The chain of developments was crowned on December 11, 1990, with the law on police.

Lithuanian Police: Born in the Stormy 1991

speaking about the disintegration of the soviet empire, one should mention huge changes in the team of m. gorbachev in the autumn of 1990. reform advocates were pushed aside and replaced with the “old party guardsmen”, one of them being an old latvian com-munist, boris pugo, who had been recently appointed head of the

moscow ministry of Interior. prompt results ensued the changes: lithuanian reactionaries started their attack by occupying civil ad-ministrative buildings and sending soldiers to patrol the streets.The tension culminated on January 8, 1991, when a pro-soviet mob tried to forcibly enter the supreme council. clashes involving the vil-nius military garrison turned to look more like a planned military operation. one after another, important units of telecommunication, the railway station, the airport, as well as buildings of the ministry of Interior were being gradually occupied. part of the special omon troops defected to the soviet side. finally, on the night of January 13, an armored column attacked the vilnius Television Tower and the lithuanian Television and radio building, as well as other gov-ernmental buildings. several truckloads of soldiers approached the central headquarters of the ministry of Interior; however, having un-derstood that the police were resolute to defend it, they retracted. however, other clashes with the soviet paratroopers did not end so

An officer of special unit “Aras” during an operation (photo by M. Ambrazas, ELTA)

144

THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND DEVELOPMENT TENDENCIES OF LITHUANIAN HEALTHCARE IN THE YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

Romas Buivydas, Director of the Health Economics Center

The Situation Analysis

Today, the Lithuanian system of healthcare and wellness is the result of many changes and reforms in the health sphere and the overall so-cial and economic development of the country. After Independence, our country survived privatization, massive legal reforms, enjoyed the development of democracy and the dissemination of the ideas of the liberal society. All these changes affected the reforms of health-care. Thus, the period of our new Independence was full of challeng-es in all the spheres of wellness of the society. To assess the success of reforms in the system is a complicated task, therefore, most often this assessment is limited to the evaluation of the functional effec-tiveness of the system itself, without attaching much importance to or sometimes even avoiding the mentioning of the results or the ef-fect of the reforms on the population.Although the healthcare sector plays a role of the leader in improv-ing health of the population, an important role in this process and especially in the disease prevention, should be given to the political, social, and economic systems of the country. The average life expec-tancy is a statistically reliable criterion, which could help us assess the changes that our health system has undergone in the years of In-dependence since 1990. In the countries of the European Union this index has been steadily increasing during the entire period, while in Lithuania the meaning of this index has been considerably fluctuat-ing. The tendencies of the average life expectancy in Lithuania have shown that the health crisis, which started after 1990 in the post-soviet countries and which was mostly determined not by shortcom-ings in the work of the health sector, but rather by the phenomenon of social stress, caused by political, economic, and social changes, affected Lithuania as well. In 1994, the average life expectancy in Lithuania was the lowest in all those years. From 1995, the situa-tion started improving; the mortality rate, determined by the main death causes of the working age group (up to 65 years old) popula-tion steadily decreased with every year.However, starting with 2000, when the population death rate stead-ily began to grow, the average life expectancy dropped down again and in 2007 reached the level of 1997. This negative change occurred mostly due to premature or early deaths, which in their turn were most probably influenced by excessive alcohol consumption related to the rapid growth of income of the population from 2000 to 2007.Statistically, the average life expectancy is mostly affected by the deaths of young people, and the infant mortality rate above all. The

changes of this indicator show that in 20012, Lithuania with its 3.87 deaths per 1,000 live births exceeded the EU average, which was 4.0 in 2011. This tendency proves that Lithuania obviously should be considered one of the most advanced countries of the world in this respect. In the overall assessment of a country’s social and economic progress, the infant mortality rate is considered to be the equivalent of the progress.

Year

From the World Health Organization, HISIC.

Average life expectancy

1995

1990

1996

1991

1997

1992

1998

1993

1999

1994

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

62

646668

7072

74

76

78

8082 80.33

74.0

EU Lithuania

Doctors are fighting for every infant life.The Infant Intensive Care Unit at Vilnius University Hospital “Santariškių Klinikos”(photo by G. Bartuška, ELTA).

145

On the other hand, the fluctuation of mortality rates is not affected only by the causes related to the health system; deaths can be influ-enced by behavioral or environmental factors. Our country has been dealing with this problem ambiguously. For example, the decrease of the number of road accidents in the period from 2008 to 2009 has obviously shown that the mortality rates can be considerably

improved by taking complex preventive measures for saving human lives on the road, such as increased investments into safety of the roads, considerably larger fines for moving violations, or an exten-sive campaign for safety on the roads, and additional investments into the development of emergency medical assistance. As we can see, the standardized mortality ratio per 100,000 people due to car accidents decreased more than twice from 2007 through 2010, meanwhile mortality caused by exposure to cold has not de-creased but on the contrary, increased since 2001 by more than 17 percent, probably due to the fact that this problem in our society has been neglected. If we compare Lithuania with other countries, we should take into account the part of the GDP countries spend on healthcare. Accord-ing to the 2012 statistics, Lithuania’s 6.7 percent was considerably lower than the European average of 9.6 by the estimate of the WHO. The public expenses on healthcare in Lithuania also constitutes a smaller part of the overall expenses on healthcare than the European average, which was more than 75.8 percent in 2012, while in Lithu-ania it was approximately 70.8 percent. Obviously, the healthcare expenses per capita in Lithuania according to the purchasing power parity, PPP, are one of the lowest in the European Union, which in 2012 was 3300 USD, while in Lithuania it was only 1543 USD. Therefore, the majority of health systems of the EU countries has more possibilities to purchase modern equipment and afford expen-sive treatments. However, we should mention again that one of the most important national health indicators, low mortality of infants under one year of age, in Lithuania, which is a country with modest financial capacities comparing to other EU countries, shows that not only financing can influence the level of health in a country.According to the resources and services of healthcare system in 2012, Lithuania held a comparatively strong position among the EU countries. Most of the service efficiency indicators, such as the aver-age length of stay in hospital, bed occupancy, and outpatient visits, were close to the European average. However, Lithuania exceeded the EU average by such indicators as the number of hospitalized pa-tients and the number of physicians, while the number of certified nurses was lower than the EU average. These figures show that the reforms in the healthcare system, which were implemented in the period from 1990 to 2014 in order to improve the efficiency of the system, were considerably well accomplished; on the other hand, high numbers of hospitalized patients and medical personnel show

EU Lithuania

Source: the World Health Organization, HISIC.

Infant mortality tendencies

1995

1990

1996

1991

1997

1992

1998

1993

1999

1994

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

0

246

810

12

14

16

18

Mor

talit

y pe

r 1,

000

live

birt

hs

3.874.0

Standardized mortality due to automobile accidents (V01-V99) per 100,000 people

Standardized mortality due to natural exposure to cold (X31) per 100,000 people

Source: the World Health Organization, HISIC.

Comparison of standardized mortality indices

2001 2002 20032004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Stan

dard

ized

mor

talit

y pe

r 10

0,00

0 pe

ople

.

Total expenditure on health per person according to the purchasing power standard in USD

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

3 308.5

1 543.1

Source: the World Health Organization, HISIC

the N

etherl

ands

Luxembourg

Germany

United K

ingdomSpain

Italy

Slovenia

Greece

Cypru

s

Slovakia

Estonia

Latvia

Romania

Poland

Lithuania

Hungary

the C

zech

Rep

ublic

Malta

Portugal

Finland EU

Ireland

Sweden

France

Belgium

Denmark

Austria

154

Social security is a system of social, economic, and organizational measures, provided by corresponding laws, which ensures that a person receives all means and services, related to old age, disabil-ity, death, sickness, maternity or paternity, unemployment, as well as in the cases of income loss or additional expenditures, or when a person or a family is not adequately provided for due to a low labor or other income.The rudiments of social assistance can be traced back to the Roman Empire: poor people were given free soup or free tickets to gladia-tor games. The first law on the rights of the poor was issued in 1601 in England, and from 1795 they started receiving benefits. From the 19th century, social policy has been closely related to the problems of labor and unemployment.A period from 1880 to 1930 was a period of experiments when dif-ferent countries tried to implement different social projects. One of the most outstanding examples would be the social policies of the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The European politician in-troduced three types of allowances: in 1883, he started sickness al-lowances; in 1884, the payment of accident allowances began; and in 1889, old age and disability allowances were introduced. Otto von Bismarck was sure that the state not only could, but should interfere in social affairs to maintain public stability and to improve the situ-ation of hired workers. Many countries followed Germany. In Lithuania, the right to a pen-sion and some other types of social protection are also related to the wages according to Bismarck’s social security tradition.

Angelė Adomaitienė, journalist, member of Lithuanian Journalists’ Association Council

THE SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT IN LITHUANIA, 1990–2015

The Two Blocks

The modern structure of social security in Lithuania is made of two blocks: one is social insurance and the other is social assistance. The first one is based on the principle of benefits and contributions. Those people acquire the right to social insurance benefits who have paid social insurance contributions for a certain time period and in a certain amount according to corresponding laws. Other conditions, such as the income or assets of the receiver, usually are not taken into consideration.

Social assistance is based on the principle of need. This principle guarantees that every person or family, who have no sufficient in-come for living and cannot get the income independently, would re-ceive appropriate assistance. The eligibility of a person to social as-sistance depends on the financial condition of the person: after the financial situation of an applicant is assessed, social assistance is ei-ther approved or rejected.

Everybody Participates in the Social Security System

Essentially, there is not a single person in Lithuania, who would not be a participant of the social system: appropriate child care is guar-anteed by a maternity/paternity leave; students enjoy various privi-leges; the unemployed receive allowances; retired people get pen-sions; employers and employees pay social contributions, etc. We can only discuss, whether the above mentioned system of benefits and contributions is sufficient and whether it answers the needs of all ages and social groups. Social comfort and the capacity to reach it, largely depends on the economy of the country, on its attractive-ness for investing, the stability of international capital markets, and other factors, and finally, on the able society members’ attitude not to live off allowances and benefits.

During the years of Lithuanian Independence, our social security has acquired a relatively sustainable system of administration, al-though further to be improved. The main institution of executive power for the implementation of the social security and labor policy is the Social Security and Labor Ministry of the Republic of Lithu-ania. The State Social Insurance Board under the Ministry of So-cial Security and Labor, “Sodra”, collects social insurance contribu-tions, keeps a registry on the insurers and the insured, and pays the benefits of social insurance pensions, sickness or maternity, insured unemployment, and the insurance from accidents at work and oc-cupational diseases. 50 institutions function under “Sodra’s” subor-dination: 47 territorial offices, the Branch of Military Structures and

Chancellor of German Empire Otto von Bismarck tried to lessen the attractiveness

of Socialism by paying favors to the working class. He started a number of

social reforms which could be considered first European labor laws. In 1988,

the Act on Health Insurance provided for the health insurance of workers,

where the workers paid two thirds of the contributions and the employer paid one third of the total amount. The act on

Accident Insurance appeared in 1884. Germany was the first to adopt the law on

Pensions in 1889. Other laws prohibited women and children labor (phot by

unknown author, from Bundesarchiv)

155

The first Sunday in May is Mother’s Day (photo by G. Savickis, ELTA)

Vilnius Fabijoniškės Home of Social Services

(photo by V. Vervečkaitė, ELTA)

other similar structures, Foreign Benefit Office, and Training Center.The State Health Insurance Fund under the Ministry of Health and five territorial Health Insurance Funds make direct contracts with healthcare providers and pay for the rendered healthcare services, compensate expenses for medication and other medical supplies, as well as cover treatment in sanatoriums and spas and keep the reg-istry of the individuals, covered by the obligatory health insurance. The Lithuanian Labor Exchange takes care of unemployed people: it keeps the registry of those who seek jobs, places them in training courses, and implements other measures of the market policy of the country. The Lithuanian Labor Exchange has 10 territorial labor ex-change offices. The administrational system subdivisions also include municipal so-cial assistance departments. They administer social benefits of the local population and render various social services. Every munici-pality has children homes and assisted living facilities for adults; however, part of social assistances home for children and young adults with disabilities, as well as social assistance homes for adults and seniors, belongs to the Ministry of Social Security and Labor. A number of local social assistance homes, like the Pabradės Children

The Lithuanian social model as seen by experts:Social Security Structure in Lithuania

Social Security

Special Social BenefitsSocial Insurance

Social Assistance

FinancialSocial Assistance

Social Services

General Special

Pension Insurance Allowances: Pensions and Compensations

Information and Consulting

Social Maintenance:Help at home,fostering of social skills, temporary overnight accommodation

Presidential Pension

Sickness and Maternity Insurance

Funeral Allowance, Transportation Allowance for Children, Pensioners, and Disabled

Mediation and Representation

Second Degree Pension of the Republic of Lithuania

Health Insurance Benefits for Children (Allowances for Families)

Socio-Cultural Services Social Care:

Day Care, Temporary Care, Prolonged Care

State Pensions for Victims

State Pensions for

Officers and Soldiers, State pensions for Justices

Unemployment Social Insurance

Social Allowance Transportation Services

Accidents at Work and Professional Diseases Social Insurance

Compensation of Housing and Other Expenses

Services of Food, Clothing, and other Supplies

State pensions for Scientists, State Rent of Signatories, Artists’ Rent

Vilnius Children Home No. 1 (photo by L. Petrauskienė, ELTA)

162

163

This part of the book presents the development of Lithuanian economy after the restora-tion of Lithuania’s Independence, the challenges it had to overcome during those years, and the progress it has made. We offer our readers an overview of the development of our country in business, energy, finances, transport, communication, agriculture, urban development, environmental protection, forestry, and tourism. Those overviews give a general idea of the most important events our country has gone through and the accom-plishments our country has achieved during the twenty-five years of its Independence.

Those twenty-five years in economy could be equaled to a roller coaster – same high speed, sharp turns, and high rises. The beginning of the independent life of our country was extremely hard: we had inherited the model of planned economy from the Soviet Union. We were totally dependent on Russian resources and that dependence was used by the Russian side during the times of the economic blockade, which was supposed to prove that such a small country as Lithuania would never be able to survive on its own. The blockade showed that hot water in your shower or gas in your car could be luxury. However, the desire for freedom was much stronger than the material deprivation.

The transition to the free market economy was not easy either, while the lessons on capi-talism were learned in the times of painful crises. The crash of banks in the middle of the nineties, the Russian crisis in the end of the nineties, the world economic recession of 2008 – all those economic commotions affected Lithuanian economy; however, our soci-ety and business survived all hardships and came out stronger. The principle ‘what does not kill us makes us stronger’ is very true in the case of Lithuanian economy. And we do become stronger. Because of the high speed of our economic growth, world mass media dubbed us the Baltic tigers, while the stability and reliability of our financial system al-lowed us to integrate into the Eurozone, and the recovery of our economy after the world financial recession was one of the fastest in the European Union. We started 1990 as a state-run planned economy, while now we are in the twentieth place in the world by the “Doing Business” Index of the World Bank.

The Baltic tigers is not just another abstract notion, the great Baltic tigers mean busi-nesses, organizations and their leadership that had dragged Lithuanian economy forward without letting it slip on the slippery slopes of that roller-coaster. This chapter tells the success stories of those companies and enterprise that have been well established in the domestic and international markets, which have made an extremely large and significant contribution into the economy of Lithuania. Those stories will give you a close feeling of the pulse of our economy in the twenty-five years of Independence.

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THE RapId dEvELopmEnT of LITHUanIan BUsInEss In 1990–2015

Rima Rutkauskaitė, business reporter

The path of Lithuanian business after the restoration of independ-ence resembles an emotional roller-coaster: the blockade, Russian crisis, economic recession, followed by a period of rapid growth that was called the golden age by entrepreneurs, the global crisis that shook everyone, and the growth again, reaching 74 per cent of the EU average Gdp per capita after 25 years.

Remaining an Industrial Country

After the crisis of 2008, the European Union realised that it was not right to put the emphasis on services and finances in the field of economy, because the industrially strongest countries were least af-fected during the crisis. “The first lesson to be learned from this cri-sis is that industry is the cornerstone of the economy,” said the then vice president of the European Commission Antonio Tajani, respon-sible for industry and entrepreneurship.

Adjusting its economic policy, the European Union has set a target to raise the share of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20 per cent by 2020. Meanwhile, Lithuania was and remains an industrial coun-try – industry here accounts for 21.1 percent of the Gdp.

Traditional manufacturing industry using local raw materials is by far the strongest Lithuanian field, able to safely overcome all economic slopes and gradients. We should distinguish three branches of the manufacturing industry: food industry, wood and furniture industry, and the textile and clothing sector. The first two branches are strong because of local raw materials that make their basis: forest, grain, milk, and meat. The clothing and textile sector weaves, knits and sews using imported raw materials, but its flexibility satisfies customers better than that of the countries producing linen, cotton or silk.

1990–1993: Fast Money

on 11 march 1990, after legalising the status of Lithuania as an inde-pendent state, the transition from the command economy to market economy began. The process, as usual, was accompanied by a con-siderable chaos: inflation skyrocketed to 1,000 percent per year, the economy shrank by about half, and the principles of “fast money” began to prevail in business.

This is how entrepreneur Tadas Karosas described this time in one of his interviews: “You walk through an unlit dark Vilnius to a busi-ness meeting. You carry about a million dollars in a shabby bag. And everything is fine, quiet and ok.” a million U.s. dollars, according to him, could be earned within a year, everything was spinning at a frantic pace and you barely would have time to count your money.

Today, the “Vičiūnai” fish processing enterprise, founded in 1991 in Plungė, a small town in the west of Lithuania, manufactures 300 sorts of fish products; the volume of the production is 60,000 tons per year that is exported to 36 countries in the world. The enterprise employs around 2,000 people; it has two subsidiaries in Estonia and Kaliningrad, Russian Federation (photo by V. Gulevičius, ELTA)

Source: Statistics Lithuania

1995

1994

1990

1996

1991

1997

1992

1998

1993

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

40

Years

Bill

ion

euro

sLithuanian GDP at current prices, billion euros

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Visvaldas Matijošaitis, currently a co-owner of a large group of companies,vičiūnai, and at the beginning of the independence of Lithuania a policeman, had to choose from two options: to climb the career ladder or start his own business. “I decided to dive headlong into an unfamiliar area. Of course, it was scary and risky, but we sur-vived,” says V. Matijošaitis. He set up a company together with a for-mer college friend. They were buying Russian KAMAZ trucks and sell-ing them in China. From China they were bringing batteries to Russia.

Later, at an exhibition in Kaunas, the businessman saw fish fin-gers made in Estonia, and decided to sell them, and later even bought the Estonian company that was overridden with difficulties. V. Matijošaitis today operates one of the largest Lithuanian busi-nesses that controls 70 companies in 17 European countries, pro-ducing 3,000 kinds of food products that are exported to 56 coun-tries around the world.

similarly, the first biotechnology companies “fermentas”, “Biofa”, and “Biocentras” broke away from the then Institute of Biotechnol-ogy. In a couple of decades, they became the backbone of the bio-technological industry in Lithuania.

The President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists, Robertas Dargis says that it would be worthwhile to write a book about that period. “We were released from the Soviet prison and had to learn about things such as private property, private property of the means of production, relationships between shareholders, re-lationships between employers and employees, etc.. Sometimes we had to learn from our own mistakes,” says R. Dargis.

Speaking of Lithuanian businessmen, R. Dargis distinguishes four types. The first type were restless people, who had different ide-as in soviet times and wanted to act, but were squeezed into the “frames”. Any creation of private capital then was subject to crimi-nal liability: as anti-socialist elements, such businessmen were go-ing to jail. When they were permitted to act, they were the first to offer services and goods. This type of an entrepreneur, according to R. Dargis, is best illustrated by Augustinas Rakauskas, the devel-oper of the “Senukai” trade network, now the largest store chain in the Baltic market of construction materials, do-it-yourself stores, and household supplies.

The second type, according to R. Dargis, were the representatives of technical intelligentsia who privatised enterprises and became en-trepreneurs, although previously they had never considered making business. For example, Bronislovas Lubys, a former chief engineer at the Jonava “Azotas” nitrogen factory, later became its CEO and,

May 28, 2014, in the laboratory of “Biotechpharma”, a pharmaceutical centre established in 2004. From the left: Professor Academician K. Strupas, MD, Dr.

Habil., the director general of the Vilnius University hospital “Santariškių Klinikos”; Ambassador A. Vinkus, MD, advisor to the prime minister; Prime Minister of the

Republic of Lithuania A. Butkevičius; Professor Academician V.A. Bumelis, Dr. Habil., the director general of “Biotechpharma” and its Chairman of the Board

(photo by G. Savickis, ELTA)

“BIOK labaratorija” develops beauty nourishment products since 1988. In 2015, the company successfully exports its products to the United Kindom, Italy, Sweden, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Poland.

The “Banginis” shopping centre is home to the biggest chain of stores selling construction materials and household supplies, “Senukai” (photo by T. Černyševas, ELTA)

“During the recent crisis, Lithuanian entrepreneurs learned an important lesson: in order to achieve results, it is necessary to find a common language with employees”, states President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists Robertas Dargis

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The Ship Called independenCe: ChallengeS of liThuanian eneRgY induSTRY fRom 1990 ThRough 2015

Dr.Vaclovas Miškinis, chief researcher of the Lithuanian Energy Institute

after lithuania regained its independence, it took over from the former Soviet union its powerful energy industry that was focused on energy-intensive businesses and large agricultural complexes. during the two and a half decades, the energy industry has become much more adapted to the actual needs of the country’s economy, to much more stable energy supplies and, above all, became much less dependent on Russia. for 25 years the lithuanian energy in-dustry has been accompanied by a continuous political and eco-nomic intrigue associated with the liberation from the Russian in-fluence.

Having Inherited a Gulliver

The energy industry is an integral component of a modern society, and a very complex industry with the huge impact on the economy of the country, its structure, rate of the economic growth, and so-cial and economic well-being. The flow of energy resource is like blood to the human body: it creates favourable conditions for the country’s economic development, the improvement of living condi-tions, creates a diversity of services and quality guarantees. after lithuania regained its independence, it took over the power-ful energy sector from the former Soviet union, focused on energy-intensive industries and agricultural complexes. over the decades, lithuania was building facilities of the high power demand, there-fore, inherited the technical and organizational energy infrastruc-ture that was not suited for a small country with limited natural and energy resources both in terms of the size and geopolitics. The main reason was that primary lithuanian power plants were de-signed with the prospects of the industry growth on the northwest territory of the Soviet union which, contrary to the predictions, was beginning to stagnate in the 1980ties.in 1990, after the restoration of lithuania’s independence, the min-istry of energy established the management and supervision of the energy sector. a new page in the history of energy was opened, and the first of the ministers of energy of Lithuania, L. Ašmantas, was faced with the challenges of guaranteeing the continuous and reli-able performance of the entire sector.

The Economic Blockade of 1990

as soon as lithuania felt the wind of freedom, the country was plunged into an economic blockade. The parliament and the gov-ernment decided not to accept the ultimatum of Soviet president

gorbachev, demanding to restore the Soviet system in two weeks. Then, on april 18, moscow suspended the supply of main raw ma-terials (especially oil and oil products, and partly natural gas), as well as various other resources for more than two months. The economic blockade led Lithuania to a recession. The Mažeikiai oil refinery plant started to operate irregularly, fuel oil supplies were disrupted. most industrial companies running on imported fuel had to significantly reduce their scope of operations. City streets and roads became deserted: there was no petrol to refill car tanks, and the government even had to put restrictions on public trans-portation.in the winters of 1991 and 1992, cities had to live almost without hot water and residential apartment were barely heated. Therefore, one of the key priorities of the ministry of energy was to ensure the supply of primary energy, particularly oil and oil products, and safe and reliable operation of the main power source, the ignalina nu-clear Power Plant. While the local oil resources were insufficient, the Gargždai State Oil Company succeeded in extracting 12 thou-sand tons of oil from three wells and had it processed. That was a major achievement in replenishing fuel reserves of the country at that time.

A Time for Reforms

in the last decade of the twentieth century, favourable conditions for substantial reforms in the power industry of lithuania were created by the restoration of independence that coincided with the beginning of the new energy management principles in Western economies. The experts of the World Bank, the european Bank for Reconstruction and development and the european Commission insistently recommended to replace the vertically integrated mo-nopolies with independent companies of power generation, trans-mission, and distribution, and, wherever possible, create condi-tions for free competition and introduce the principles of modern management. foreign experts alongside lithuanian specialists developed a number of important studies and recommendations for the implementation of the principles of the energy industry re-form, the introduction of modern management techniques, and the replacement of state proprietorship with independent owner-ship where it was appropriate. Based on these studies in 1994, the lithuanian government endorsed the guidelines of the power in-dustry reforms and developed outlines for the organizational and legal framework.

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Incomplete Consignment of the RBMK Reactors

as it was mentioned before, lithuania inherited from the Soviet un-ion the exaggerated capacity of electricity generation, therefore, in the beginning, lithuania was an exporter of electricity, while the ignalina nuclear power plant with the two most powerful reactors in the world for that time, the RBmK-1500, was still operating. unlike other energy producers, this plant was taken over by lithu-ania only in one and a half years, on august 27, 1991, after the failed moscow putsch. until then, the power plant was guarded by the So-viet army and KgB. lithuania, ranking 31 in the world by the use of nuclear fuel for the production of electricity, was committed to operating the ignalina nuclear power plant, its materials and tech-nologies without hazardous effects on people and the environment entirely for peaceful purposes. Today we can be confident that all of those commitments have been fulfilled. The year 2002 was a turning point for both the lithuania’s accession to the european union and its decision on the fate of the ignalina power plant. for lithuania to receive the invitation to join the eu, it had to overcome the scepticism of europe for nuclear energy and in particular the RBmK reactors. during the negotiations for the ac-cession to the eu, lithuania was required to close the nuclear power plant. Thus, in october, 2002, the Seimas adopted the revised na-tional energy Strategy which said: “lithuania commits itself to the closure of reactors, on the understanding that a program, organising additional financial assistance of the EU to the early closure of Unit 1 of the ignalina npp before 2005 and unit 2 in 2009, will be adequate-ly addressed at a later stage of accession negotiations.” Since the start of the operation until its final closure on 31 Decem-ber 2009, the ignalina nuclear power plant generated 307 billion kWh of electricity, which was considerably cheaper than the electric-ity produced in any thermal plant using imported fossil fuels. in fact, the ignalina nuclear power plant generated from 70 to 88 percent of all electricity in the country. This significantly facilitated Lithuania’s transition to the market economy.

Connections for Building the Electricity Market

after the closure of the ignalina nuclear power plant, the “lietuva” power plant in the town of Elektrėnai became the main source of electricity in the country. however, its electricity generated with gas cannot compete on the electricity market (the changes of electricity production and consumption are illustrated in fig. 1 and Table 1). over the past few years, the production of electricity from renew-able energy sources has significantly increased: in 2013 wind pow-er plants produced 602.7 gWh, hydropower plants were responsi-ble for 521.2 gWh, biomass generated 262.7 gWh, and solar power plants accounted for 44.8 gWh. however, the electricity of all the country’s power plants in 2013 amounted to 4,761.5 gWh and on-ly covered 40.7 percent of the electricity demand. Therefore, from 2010, lithuania became an electricity importer: in 2010, it imported 5,989.8 gWh, in 2011 the import reached 6,738.7 gWh, in 2012, the number was 6,618.9 gWh, and in 2013 it reached 6,945.8 gWh.The lithuanian power system has strong links with the systems in neighbouring countries. The total output of existing high-voltage transmission lines to lithuania from latvia is 1,300 mW, from Be-larus 1,300 mW, and from Kaliningrad 600 mW. in addition, the restructuring of the electricity market in the Baltic countries has opened a real opportunity to choose the best independent electricity

The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant once generated from 70 to 88 percent of all electricity in the country. It significantly facilitated Lithuania’s transition to the market economy

The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, control room, 1990

Kruonis hpp

0

30000

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

industrial power plants

Thermal power plants

ignalina npp

hydropower plants

Total consumption

other power plants

fig. 1. Generation and consumption of electricity

Changes of general electricity consumption costs, gWh

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2013industry and construction 5460 2705 2294 2833 2654 2986

agriculture 2697 521 188 193 173 174Transport 212 96 76 104 76 74Service industry 1882 1489 1872 2686 2839 3130

households 1762 1544 1767 2163 2590 2592final consumption 12013 6355 6197 7977 8332 8956

power sector 755 1316 1225 1411 2016 1538power plants for own needs 2110 1541 1385 1201 402 342

Supply losses 1552 2008 1281 1229 990 871general consumption 16430 11220 10088 11818 11738 11707

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Lithuania’s financial system is young and in many respects still de-veloping. It is based on the so-called continental model, in which the main role is played by banks, while secondary roles are left to other market participants: the capital market, insurance market, leasing companies, and credit unions. After the declaration of independence of Lithuania, the initial de-velopment stage of the financial system was also dominated by the banking system. It seemed more credible; the operating principles of the banks were clearer to the public. However, in the long term, the value of the capital market for economy has significantly increased, especially in recent years. Over the past five years, the global finan-cial crisis has forced structural changes on the global financial mar-kets, and it has become obvious that in the future, the increase of funding will be done within the country, based on the local financial system and resources.

Scandinavian Domination

Lithuanian experience in reforming the banking sector was similar to the experience of other countries with their economies in transi-tion. First commercial banks were established in Lithuania in 1989. After four years, in 1993, Lithuania already had 27 banks, however, inconsiderate and unfair operations of bank managers, lack of skills and supervision resulted in the collapse of the banks, and by 1995, their number shrunk to 13. The country also had to establish a bad loans management company. Fortunately, at that time the bank-ing sector was not highly developed, therefore, although the conse-quences of bank bankruptcies were hard, their impact on the coun-try’s economy was not so severe.In the end of 2001, Lithuania had nine countrywide banks, four affiliated branches and two offices of foreign banks. Bank assets amounted to 32 percent of the gross domestic product. The bank-ing sector was characterised by a high degree of concentration: three banks held 79 percent of the total banking assets market. After the privatisation of the Lithuanian Agricultural Bank, the banking sec-tor became dominated by foreign investors. Over the past 10–15 years, the banking sector grew intensively to-gether with the entire country’s economy; since 2001, the bank as-sets have been growing at a yearly rate of 20 percent. This growth particularly intensified after Lithuania’s accession to the European Union: the flourishing economy boosted the expectations of the population and businesses as well as their appetite to borrow.

More than half of the total banking assets is concentrated in the hands of three Scandinavian banks: Swedbank, SEB and DNB

THE EvOLUTIOn OF THE LITHUAnIAn FInAncIAL SySTEm FrOm 1990 THrOUgH 2015: A PLAygrOUnd FOr THE BAnkS

Dr. Gerda Žigienė, professor at Vilnius University, Director of the Lithuanian Financial Markets Institute

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There were years when the credit market would rise by as much as 70 percent. In 2008, this growth was suddenly slowed down by the global economic recession; however, despite the decline of Lithuania’s gdP by almost 15 percent, the banking sector withstood the crisis. The lessons learned after the banking collapse in 1995 and the con-servative credit risk management helped to cope with that challenge. Even the collapse of two banks in two years (in 2011 “Snoras”, and in 2013 “Ūkio Bankas”) did not upset the banking sector. Today, the banking sector remains a key player in the financial sec-tor of Lithuania, and is dominated by the capital of the Scandinavian origin. currently, Lithuania has a total of nine commercial banks licenced by the Bank of Lithuania, eight branches of foreign banks, a financial company controlled by the foreign bank licensed by the European Union, two foreign bank representative offices, the Lithu-anian central credit Union, 68 credit unions, 226 European union banks (which operate in the republic of Lithuania without estab-lishing their branches), and three financial companies controlled by the European Union licensed foreign banks (they operate without establishing a branch in the republic of Lithuania). The majority of the total banking assets is concentrated in the hands of three banks: SEB, “Swedbank”, and dnB. They all are the affiliated branches of the corresponding Scandinavian banks.

In 2010, the then Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius opened a morning trading session of NASDAQ in New York, USA. At the traditional opening ceremony, the prime minister mentioned in his speech that a NASDAQ branch was also operating in Lithuania, as the Vilnius securities market. In the photo: Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius and Robert H. McCooey Jr, the NASDAQ OMX senior vice-president for capital markets (photo from webpage www.lrv.lt)

Let’s go! Opening of the trading session at the Vilnius Stock Exchange,

a member of the global exchange operator, NASDAQ OMX Group

Historically, banks have always been main players in the Lithuanian financial system and they want more. Since 2001, bank assets have been growing at a

rate of 20 percent every year

Building the Capital Market from Scratch

Unlike the banking and insurance sectors with the starting positions already based on the existing state structures, the western type capi-tal market in Lithuania had to be created from scratch within a few years. Although small and still developing, it has all the typical fea-tures of developed markets, the infrastructure, potential, and the di-versity of participants. An important event in the history of the independent Lithuania was the establishment of a stock exchange. The first trading session took place on September 14, 1993. The Lithuanian central securities de-pository was founded along with the stock exchange. Today, vilnius Stock Exchange is a member of the global exchange operator, the nASdAQ OmX group.After Lithuania joined the European Union, the development of the financial market gained a new momentum, and the market partici-pants were offered new perspectives and opportunities. The capi-tal market, like other sectors of the financial system, was rapidly growing before the crisis of 2008. Before 2008, the development of

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The LiThuanian Corridor. The deveLopmenT of LiThuanian Trans-porT sysTem from 1990 To 2015

Dr. Algirdas Šakalys, Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, 1991–2000

From Moscow Subordination to Lithuanian Jurisdiction

To match its needs in the transport sector, the newly restored State first of all had to take over transport companies from the so-called Soviet Union subordination and start managing them in-dependently. For that purpose, the divisions of rail-, water-, and air-transport were established in the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Their executives and specialists had tough ne-gotiations with the relevant structures of the Soviet Union till the August 1991 putsch in Moscow.

The Ministry leaders also attempted to establish and maintain busi-ness relations with the management of Vilnius and Šiauliai railway districts, Klaipėda maritime trade and sea fishing port, as well as ship-ping companies, and the Lithuanian branch of Aeroflot. An attempt was made to appeal to their civic awareness, all the while taking care that the assets of the former Soviet enterprises in the registers of the Soviet Union were not sailed or flown away from Lithuania.

At that time, the central management in Moscow reacted very neg-atively to the communication of the managers of the companies subordinate to the Soviet Union with the independent Lithuanian authorities. Therefore, some of those managers subordinate to the Soviet Union, avoiding trouble, often ignored meeting invitations from the then minister, Jonas Biržiškis.

Step by Step

Negotiations on the railway transport were the most difficult. Mos-cow’s central management flatly opposed the secession of the Lithu-anian railways. It was one of the more conservative Soviet systems, with everything finely regulated and closely bound. Railway connec-tions, the legal framework, marketing, cargo transport documenta-tion were merged into a single, strictly centrally regulated system. Lithuania had to be very cautious and diplomatic, because in case of complete cessation of relations with the centralised Soviet struc-ture, we could use rail to travel only to Latvia and Estonia at best.

During the first years of independence, Lithuania could not even technically link the rail networks with the West because of a differ-ent width of the gauge (1520 mm in the Soviet Union and 1453 mm in continental Europe), as well as different rolling stock, signalling, and communications system parameters and standards. Therefore, the country had to regain its positions in the field of railway trans-

port using a “step-by-step” approach, going to extremes to maintain the rail links with its eastern neighbours beneficial to the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, it was easier to make contacts with the West by sea and air. Even if links with our eastern neighbours in those areas would be temporarily broken, it would have been a lesser loss for Lithuanian economy compared to the railway locomotives and wagons halted at the eastern Lithuanian border.

After the restoration of Lithuanian independence, the transport sit-uation was aggravated by a large number of Lithuanian independ-ence opponents, employed in all levels of the company manage-ment, ranging from top-level executives to ordinary staff members. There have been cases when those people did not limit themselves with accusations against our independence, but would go on strikes against the new Lithuania, paralysing the transport system. On April 27, 1990, in order to disrupt passenger transport, food and fuel supplies, the personnel of Vilnius 3rd and 8th motor compa-nies managed by the pro-Russian “Yedinstvo” movement members, blocked main streets and bridges in Vilnius. “Yedinstvo” was par-ticularly active and arrogant in the situation with railways. On Jan-uary 8–10, 1991, backed by the Soviet military, they took control of Vilnius railway station and stopped the movement of trains. A total of 34 passenger trains with 20 thousand passengers were stuck in the station and its approaches.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications succeeded to quick-ly mobilise buses for the transportation of the train passengers, and supply them with meals. At the same time, Vilnius aviators loyal to Moscow also went on strike. Genadiy Liakhov, in the opinion of strikers, overtly supported Lithuania’s independence and therefore was fired from the chief manager’s office of the Lithuanian Civil Avi-ation Directorate to be replaced with Nazirjev Chusnudinev, a fierce opponent of Lithuanian independence, appointed by Moscow. In ad-dition, the Soviet Union armed forces were deployed in the strike-hit railway and civil aviation structures. It should be noted that the Lithuanian Ministry of Transport and Communications was intoler-ant to the actions of managers who would oppose Lithuanian inde-pendence and dismissed eleven of them in 1990.

Prime Minister Jonas Biržiškis later wrote of that period: “We were quite well prepared for surprises; for example, we had special head-quarters on location to deal with various situations. During the strikes, streets echoed with shots, and people were on duty at the

265

Ministry around the clock. Then we could see who the reliable em-ployees were: the majority of them.”

A Window to Europe

During the drafting of the national transport policy, the primary task of the restored State of Lithuania was to establish strong links with European countries, to promptly take over their best skills in effi-cient transport management and development systems.

Back in 1990, the Baltic Transport Cooperation Council adopted key provisions for mutual cooperation in the field of rail transport and relations with the Ministry of Transport of the Soviet Union. The core aspect of the document was the requirement to provide the Bal-tic countries with the exclusive right to the railway network and the fleet and their management in their territory. It was also required to disband the central Baltic rail system, restoring independent rail-ways of the Baltic countries.

After taking over the water, air and rail transport from the Soviet Union into the jurisdiction of the Republic of Lithuania, their inte-gration into a unified transport system of Lithuania and to the Eu-ropean transport area proceeded quite quickly. In December 1991, Lithuanian Airlines made a maiden international flight to Copenha-gen; cooperation between Polish and Lithuanian railways began in the same year. The Lithuanian National Road Carriers Association, “Linava”, was also established in 1991. It supplied Lithuanian truck-ing companies with permits for international freight transportation. On October 12, 1991, Lithuania joined main conventions of the In-ternational Maritime Organisation and proclaimed itself a member of the International Maritime Community.

On August 26, 1991, the Lithuanian division of Soviet Aeroflot was decentralised and restructured into seven specialized public enter-prises: aviation, airports, and air traffic control services. The frame-work of the transport system that was developed in the beginning of our independence, is still functioning today.

Via Baltica: a Long Way to the Highway

The National Program of Transport Development till 2010 was ap-proved in 1994. The program’s main target included our integration into the European transport network and the transport service sys-tem as a challenge for the strategic transport policy of the Republic of Lithuania.

A favourable environment for the implementation of that task was created by the approval of two priority corridors (out of nine) crossing the territory of Lithuania, in the Pan-European transport conference in Crete, Greece, in 1994. That was the first so-called European transport corridor Tallinn-Riga-Kaunas-Warsaw, and a branch of the ninth corridor Helsinki-Plovdiv, Klaipėda-Vilnius-Minsk-Kiev-Odessa.

The main idea of the first European corridor having two components – the Via Baltica highway and the railway line 0f the same route, later renamed Rail Baltica – was to link the Baltic region with the Visegrad countries and Western Europe via modern highways.

It should be noted that due to financial limitations, the Via Baltica project was in a standstill for quite a long time. To this project, Lith-uania could allocate from 2 to 3 million euros per year, although the first phase of the project in the Lithuanian territory required more than 58 million euros. The financial situation in Estonia and Latvia was no better, if not worse. The situation was further complicated by the underdeveloped infrastructure of border crossing points, im-perfect and imbalanced procedures between the neighbouring coun-tries, causing a negative reaction of international carriers, partially resulting in traffic to be directed to other corridors.

Things started to move when Via Baltica was recognised as a priority project both nationally and internationally, and when a new and ef-

The restoration of highway Kaunas-Klaipėda: the Jakų roundabout junction (photo by ELTA)

The main idea of the “Rail Baltica” project was to link the Baltic region with the Visegrad countries and Western Europe

fective international center for its coordination was established. The so-called High Level Working Group (HLWG) of the Via Baltica pro-ject included representatives from international financial institu-tions, such as European Investment Bank, Nordic Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the gov-ernments of the countries, participating in the Via Baltica project. Thus, the practical problems of border crossings in the region were eventually taken care of. In March 1995, at the meeting of the rep-resentatives of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Fin-land and the European Commission, the issues of harmonising and

280

THE OVERVIEW OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES FROM 1990 TO 2015

Lijana Cibulskienė, journalist

The impact of modern technologies on the today’s world, including Lithuania, is immense: new technologies cause alterations in eco-nomic, social, and cultural spheres of the country, as well as influ-ence management and education, simultaneously offering people broader possibilities of choices in all aspects of everyday life.

The Beginning of the World Wide and Mobile Communication

On October 10, 1991, the internet was born in Lithuania, when the roof of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania was equipped with a station, donated by Norway, which allowed our country to get in-dependently connected to the world wide web. Today, the first com-puter data transmission channel might seem incredibly slow, just 9.6 kilobytes per second.In the same year, “Litnet” was established: a computer network of the science and studies institutions of Lithuania served as a basis for the development of the Lithuanian news web. In 1993, e-mail and other electronic services were already available in 17 science institutions and over 60 governmental and non-profit organiza-tions. Before 1994, only the users of “Litnet” had internet access. Open Society Fund Lithuania offered internet access to other us-ers; all they had to do was to get a computer with a modem and receive the login data from the employees of the fund. Internet remained free of charge until 2000, when “Lietuvos Telekomas”, the former state telecommunication company of Lithuania, started charging for data transmission. Paid internet services were also of-fered by other mobile operators, “Omnitel” and “Bitė”. One should understand that the development of internet in Lithu-ania did not differ from its development in the world, in fact, the two processed were simultaneous. In the beginning, internet log-in was performed by way of dial-up modems and telephone land-lines; initially, the speed was 14 kilobytes per second, later it grew to 33 and, finally, to 57 kilobytes per second; the connection was frequently interrupted, it took a couple of days to send larger files. In 1995, two operators of mobile or cell connection started working in Lithuania: the then “UAB Bitė GSM” and “UAB Omnitel”. For a couple of years, only largest cities had mobile connection and only well-off people could afford cell phones. The price of the subscrip-tion to mobile connection was staggering: it could easily reach from tens to a hundreds of litas, the then currency of Lithuania, while the price per minute could be up to a euro. Mobile phones were large; we usually called them “bricks”.

In three years, both operators introduced new mobile services of ad-vanced payment; they expanded their cell connection stations that covered the majority of the territory of Lithuania. “UAB Tele2”, a new player in the market of mobile connection, made considerable alterations by introducing an advanced payment service of mobile connection, “X-GSM”. The price per minute was reduced down to 1 litas (around 30 eurocents), text messaging was free. These novelties started the price reduction campaign.

2000 as a Breakthrough Year for Information Technologies

Starting with 2000, GDP in Lithuania constantly grew together with export, general investments, and domestic consumption. In 2001, the telecommunication market in Lithuania grew around 30 per-cent. Several reasons were the determining factors of the market ex-pansion. First of all, it was the mobile phone users’ boom: in 2001, the expansion of mobile connection doubled from 13 to 27 percent. Secondly, the GDP growth of 5.7 percent was beyond expectations. All this preconditioned the growth of investments into the IT busi-ness for corporate and private users. Computer and software sales grew by 30 percent. By these indicators, the Lithuanian IT market was expanding much faster than in Latvia and Estonia.The exceptional economic growth of 2003 had positive influence on the labour market: the occupancy was increasing and the unemploy-ment rate was reduced. The rapid economic growth and the use of the EU structural funds also influenced the recovery of our economy. During that period, the IT sector grew even faster than the rest of the economy: it reached the average of 11.8 percent per year. Everybody admitted that from 1998 through 2003, the turnover of the IT sector constantly grew.The biggest share until 2002 came from hardware sales; however, the future expectations were mostly related to software and servic-es. The IT export was also growing. For example, according to “In-fobalt”, the export of IT services grew by almost 9 percent in 2003, comparing to 2002. The major export markets were Germany, Rus-sia, Belarus, Finland, Denmark, and the United States. In 2003, the export of IT services and products grew by 8.7 percent and reached well over 13 million euros. According to Statistics Lithuania, in 2003, 914 enterprises were engaged in the IT sector.

The Growing Income from IT Services

According to Statistics Lithuania, in 2004, a total number of 2,179 enterprises with 35,434 employees covered the entire IT sector.

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Their number, comparing to 2003, grew by 4.6 percent and was responsible for 4.2 percent of the economy. The employee number mostly increased in the enterprises, engaged in the manufactur-ing of electron tubes, television and radio components, and other electronics.In 2005, the income of the largest IT enterprises considerably grew within one year. “Sonex Group”, the largest IT company in the Bal-tic States, grossed 18 percent more in 2005 compared to 2004, and made over 80 million euros. The fastest growth of as much as 44 percent occurred in IT services, such as, programming, system integration, management decision-making, etc. In 2005, “Alna” was the fastest growing information technology company: the increase reached 20 percent, while the gross profit of the business exceeded 50 percent. However, the gross income of “Microlink Group” was much more modest: in half a year it grew just one percent. Meanwhile, the income from IT services in-creased by 25 percent.The growth of income was essentially preconditioned by the fast de-velopment of computers, telecommunications, and the related en-terprises. According to Statistics Lithuania, in 2005, the production of the entire IT sector reached 1830 million euros. The production of computers and its related sector also grew, and in 2005 reached 179.4 million euros. In 2005, the overall surplus value of the IT sec-tor was 106.7 or 0.5 percent from the GDP of the country. According to the statistical data of 2006, the production of the IT sector in comparison with 2005 grew by 5.4 percent. In 2006, the spheres of telecommunication and radio, television, and communi-cation equipment were responsible for the largest growing produc-tion: they covered 56.9 percent of the entire IT market.The income of wholesale IT companies grew by 11.7 percent in 2006, compared to 2005. In 2006, the companies, providing soft-ware and computer network installation and management servic-es grossed the highest income of 70.3 percent of the entire sphere of computer services. In 2006, the export of IT goods, compared to 2005, increased by 10.7 percent, while the import grew by 16.2 percent. In 2006, these goods accounted for 4.8 percent of the en-tire export of Lithuania. In 2006, audio and video equipment cov-ered 33 percent of the entire export; about 6.4 percent of import was IT goods; computers and their accessories were responsible for

33.5 percent of import, and telecommunication equipment covered 23.6 percent.

The population of the country was using increasingly more informa-tion technologies. According to Statistics Lithuania, in 2007, 42 per-cent of households had at least one personal computer and 40.3 per-cent had internet access. In 2007, the number of internet users very rapidly grew: 49 percent of the population of the age group from 16 to 74 were internet users. Internet was mostly used for communi-cation, information searches, newspaper and magazine reading. 79 percent of the population had e-mails and used them; 75 percent used internet to shop for goods and services; 50 percent of the popu-lation used internet for reading newspapers and magazines; 55 per-cent downloaded music, videos, films, and games.

From rapid Growth to Stable development

In 2008, the economy growth in Lithuania, having lasted for eight years, came to a stop: that was the beginning of an economic cri-sis that affected all sectors of our economy. However, the IT sector, having made use of the economy growth during the past years, es-sentially became stronger: the markets of information technologies, internet, and telecommunication increased manifold. The exporters of kinescope television sets were replaced with companies engaged in the export of mobile technologies and software services. Inter-national software companies established their affiliated branches in Lithuania. Such companies as “Bentley Systems”, “TietoEnator”, “IBM”, “Microsoft”, “Computer Sciences Corporation”, “Affecto Group”, and “Proact” created hundreds of jobs for programmers in Lithuania.

According to Statistics Lithuania, in 2007, there were 1,777 enter-prises with 25,000 employees. The IT sector was dominated by 82 percent of small enterprises with a maximum of nine employees each. Medium or large enterprises with 50 employees and more, ac-counted for 5 percent of the entire IT sector: however, they had 64 percent of the total number of employees.

One of the main steps in the development of the IT sector of the past years, was the creation of technological parks in Lithuania that joined together IT companies, scientific research institutes, manu-facturing enterprises, and future university graduates into a single team. There were five such parks in Lithuania: Saulėtekis Valley, Vi-soriai IT Park, “Technopolis”, and others.

According to Statistics Lithuania, in Lithuania in 2007, the IT sector was responsible for 3.7 percent of the GDP of the country; the entire IT production reached 1,608 million euros. In 2007, direct foreign investments in the IT sector reached 985.08 million euros. 81.3 per-cent of the investments went to telecommunication enterprises. The top three investors were Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.

The development of the IT trade during the past several years in Lithuania was preconditioned by a number of tendencies. The dra-matic IT wholesale growth – in 2004 this sector grew by 34 percent, in 2005 by 52.4 percent, in 2006 by 18.2 percent, and in 2007 by 17.2 percent – was first of all determined by the intensive credit-ing and tax exemption for the first purchased computer, as well as the rapid creation of new jobs. In one year, the volume of software and IT infrastructure services grew by an average of 25 percent. The telecommunication sector also experienced a stable growth, and so far is the leader in the sphere of sales. During the years of economic growth, the IT import exceeded export. In 2007, the IT export was responsible for 4.4 percent of the entire Lithuanian export, or 552.54 million euros. Meanwhile, the volume of import reached 1,175 mil-lion euros. On the other hand, the export of software services and telecommunication equipment was steadily growing.

In 2007, the biggest Lithuanian IT export partner was Russia with 22.2 percent; next came Latvia with 21 percent and Estonia with 12.9 percent. The biggest import partners were the Netherlands

The number of computer users of all age groups is rapidly growing: over 70 percent of Lithuanians use computers (photo by D. Labutis, ELTA)

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Lithuania was setting itself free from the communist system of col-lective farms for a dramatically long period. The agrarian reform wa-vered in the tidal rhythm for nearly a decade, but ultimately, agricul-ture was set on the EU’s political track. However, today the situation in rural Lithuania is very dynamic and Lithuanian farmers are faced with many external and internal challenges.

Collective Farms: The Show Must Go On

Lithuania, reinstated on 16 February 1918, created a homogenous democratic state, with the key feature – a strong middle class. The successful agricultural activity and the growth of export laid the foun-dation for the industrialization of the country. A pro-active, public-spirited, lively rural community had a favourable attitude toward new cultural traditions and the formation of the Lithuanian intelligentsia.

During the Soviet period, Lithuanian rural areas almost lost the old traditions and the fundamental cultural values. The most diligent, most gifted, able and patriotic farmers, professionals, academicians, luminaries of arts and culture were exiled to the Siberian gulags; farmers were deprived of their land and other property, and, with the use of brutal force, were herded into collective farms.

The collective farm system, difficult to understand from a common sense perspective, characterised by impersonal property and work, was in fact based on state despotism and was unable to survive on its own. 50 to 70 percent of the majority of livestock product pric-es were comprised of state subsidies. Constantly drowning in debt, non-viable socialist farms had to be bailed out by periodically writ-ing off their debts.

Despite the apparent ineffectiveness, the Lithuanian agrarian no-menclature that had formed in the Soviet times believed in its im-portance. Lithuanian agriculture was producing a lot of animal food products compared to the rest of the Soviet Union. 1.5–1.8 million tons of grain imported from the West was delivered to Lithuania an-nually. Not all of this was used by public agricultural farms, much of it was being stolen. True, even snatched feed provided profit for the public economy. Animals, bred by the hardworking rural pop-ulation and their dairy products were sent to processing factories from collective farms that would apply a surcharge from 50 to 100 per cent for mediation. Many farm leaders established a comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their loved ones. Although occasionally they would superficially criticize the collective farm system and even improve it, they did not propose to reform it in substance. Even the

LiTHUANiAN AgriCULTUrE FroM 1990 To 2015: ESCApE FroM THE CoLLECTivE FArM

Dr. Vytautas Petras Knašys, former Minister of Agriculture; Irma Dubovičienė, reporter

leaders of the first government (1990) were convinced that collective farms should exist for no more than another 20 years.

Passion for Land Redistribution

The soviet rural nomenclature, with its influential patrons in the Gov-ernment leadership confronting the parliament, decided to oppose the agricultural reform. in the autumn of 1990 in vilnius, they organ-ised the so-called “congress of the representatives of all rural people”. it was attended mostly by the politicians not supporting the then par-liament’s agrarian policy. The most important provision of this con-gress was: land (and other property located on it) should belong to those who work it. The participants expressed their opposition to the return of the land to its the former owners and restitution ideas.

Meanwhile, the Lithuanian farmers’ movement, representing the re-formist line, in the spring of 1991 brought together like-minded peo-ple in a congress to declare that “the land reform is aimed at returning the land or selling it as private property to citizens, leaving only the farming or homestead lands in the ownership of the state, as well as the areas that the state might use and preserve more appropriately”. it was proposed to grant the right to private property only to the citizens of the republic of Lithuania; to reinstate the ownership of land based on the rational use of land (not necessarily within the limits of land previously in possession); to allow persons who did not inherit any land, or were willing to expand their farm, to buy land in instalments (over a period not exceeding 25 years); to pay compensations in cash to land owners or heirs not establishing any farms or entitle them to acquire any other state assets (an investment allowance).

Peasant Farms: Many Small Farms

The law on the peasant Farm of the Lithuanian SSr that came into force back in 1989, legalized private land ownership (allowed to get from 10 to 50 ha of land for free, for eternal use, with inheritance), but it was only declarative, because it immediately was forbidden to manage it: buy, sell, exchange, mortgage or donate.

Things improved only in 1991 after the adoption of the Law on the procedure and Conditions of the restoration of the rights of owner-ship to the Existing real property.

The Law on the peasant Farm, despite its limitations and shortcom-ings, however, freed the hands of those who were “on a crouch start” long enough, waiting for an opportunity to establish a private farm.

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Some have already purchased or otherwise “organised” various ag-ricultural machinery for themselves, and were growing livestock. Based on this “slanted” law, a total of 5139 farms were set up, with a total area of 86,387 ha (the average farm size was 16.8 ha).

Much land of former collective farms had common agricultural crops and was cultivated centrally. After assigning homestead plots in their permanent locations, a number of people had to become self-sufficient and determine how to cultivate the land or collect har-vest. True, the initial law only allowed for the temporary use of land. However, the political left stubbornly resisted such a division and af-ter taking power in the country, when the reform had already started to move forward toward the restitution, rushed to allow the privati-sation of this land. The privatised homestead land plots, later called the “green zones”, had become a battlefield between the legitimate heirs and their users.

And yet – homestead land plots in Lithuanian villages served as a social “shock absorber” of its time. This practice had gained momen-tum in other post-communist countries as well.

Privatization of Collective Farms: Sometimes it is better that Way

The organisers of the agrarian reform realized that it is impossi-ble to quickly transform collective farms and create peasant farms. it was therefore decided to reorganize them into more democrat-

The “Žemaičių Žemdirbių Grupė” (Samogitian Farmers’ Group),discussing on the reorganization of the agro-industrial complex. Vėžaičiai, Klaipėda region, 1988 (photo from personal V. Ežerinskas archive)

At the time when the Constituent Assembly of the Lithuanian Reform Movement was taking place in Vilnius, on October 22, 1988, farmers, scientists, and the Vėžaičiai residents, rallied by Algirdas Plesevičius, hoisted the Lithuanian tricolor flag in Gargždai, western Lithuania (photo from personal V. Ežerinskas archive)

February 24, 1989, the assembly of the Lithuanian Farmers’ Movement in the Trade Union Palace, Vilnius; the assembly was chaired by the then professor of the Lithuanian Agricultural Academy, A. Baležentis (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

On February 24, 1989, farmers from all over Lithuania, a number of kolkhoz leaders, and scientists from the Lithuanian Agricultural Academy, assembled in Vilnius to found the Lithuanian Farmers’ Movement (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

On January 9, 1990, President of the USSR M. Gorbachev, the leader of the delegation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, visited Lithuania in the attempt of stopping Lithuania from fighting for Independence. On January 11, 1990, First Deputy of the Soviet Supreme Council, Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the Communist Party V. Nikitin (on the right) arrived in the Lithuanian Agricultural Institute in Dotnuva and tried to “bring to senses” Lithuanian scientists and farmers “not to stray away from the path of virtue”. In the photo: Minister of Agriculture of Lithuania Dr. V. Knašys and V. Nikitin in Dotnuva (photo from personal V. Meškauskas‘ archive)

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A new tile factory, “Dvarčionių Keramika” was opened off Vilnius in 1997; in November 2003, the factory opened a most advanced in Europe line of glazed stoneware tiles. The Italian “Sacmi” line was a novelty not only in Lithuania but also in Europe: at that time, a more modern technology did not yet exist. The line was serviced by 47 people in four shifts. The annual productivity of the line was 1.2 million square meters of decorative tiles (photo by A. Sabaliauskas, ELTA)

The Lithuanian architectural, construction and urban development is closely linked to Western Europe. The Lithuanian construction sector in the second half of the twentieth century was dominated by the principles of the Soviet administrative economy. After the resto-ration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990, the prerequisites for the implementation of the national construction and architectural and spatial planning system were finally created.

The history of the construction should begin with the fact that Lithu-ania withdrew from the Soviet Union in this important area only on March 19, 1996. That was the day of adopting the law on Construc-tion of Lithuania, the first law regulating the construction sector in the history of Lithuania. Before the restoration of independence, Lithuania had several hundred legislative acts of the Soviet Union related to construction and similar fields. Lithuania, however, was applying a slightly modified Soviet construction code.

Waves of Construction

Lithuania inherited a sufficiently large manufacturing potential of building and construction materials. In 1990, the country’s con-struction sector employed about 170 thousand people. It had 29 con-tractor construction and assembly trusts and 281 construction and installation companies. In addition, 46 primary reclamation and wa-ter facility construction companies and 234 building cooperative or-ganizations were performing contract work. In 1989, there were 10 design companies.

After the restoration of independence, state-owned construction trusts and associations became independent state-owned enterpris-es and after the privatization, were turned into public limited and private limited liability companies. Those changes took place rap-idly, because the goals of the reform coincided with the companies’ expectations to be completely self-sufficient.

Over the time, construction organization and management principles changed, new technical and process solutions were introduced, and the building materials and construction industry was transformed. In fact, in the course of privatization, companies become smaller, al-though independent. From the large companies, only “AB Kausta”

COnSTrUCTIOn And ArChITECTUrE In 1990–2015: On ThE rOAd OF SUSTAInABLE dEvELOpMEnT

Adakras Šeštakauskas, a long-standing president of the Lithuanian Builders Association, a merited engineer of Lithuania, an honorary member of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, and a member of

the Board of the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of LithuaniaDalia Bardauskienė, doctor of humanities, the founder and member of the assessment board of award

“For Sustainable Development”

(the former Kaunas housing construction factory), “AB Panevėžio Statybos Trestas”, “AB Montuotojas”, and a dozen of others that were important for the construction of large objects, remained.Meantime, a number of problems inherent to all construction organ-izations emerged. There was no one to summarize them and forward to public institutions and authorities. Therefore, in spring 1993, the managers of 24 companies established the Lithuanian Builders’ As-sociation. Its statute stated that its purpose was “to bring togeth-er the efforts of the members of the association in search for the markets of construction, design and building, so that the generated funds were used to purchase material resources.” This paragraph of the statute like no other reflected the major challenges in the con-struction sector of the time: the lack of metal, pipes, electrical ma-terials, as well as the lack of energy, oil, and gas, not to mention companies’ financial capacities. A lot of effort had to be made in the

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According to the investment strategy for 2011–2016 adopted in 2011, the mineral fertilizer factory, “AB Lifosa” is obligated to spend 9 million dollars yearly on the renovation of its equipment and infrastructure. The new spherical containers of “AB Lifosa” for liquid ammonia were built by “AB Montuotojas” (photo by unknown author, from Lithuanian Builders Association archive)

development of the residential construction industry. In ten years after the restoration of independence, the country still builds 4 to 5 times less of apartments by number, and three times less in terms of the total area. The association’s activities also proved to be effective in adopting a solution, friendly to the construction business. At the request of the association in July 1993, the Government prioritised the construc-tion branch and decided to tax the profits from construction and in-stallation at a rate of 20 percent. Later, in 1998, it was decided on the zero tax rate on the profit used for investment. This provision was effective from 1998 to 2002, and had a positive impact on the sector: material investments started to grow already from 2000. That and the improving economic situation of 2008 led to an increase in the construction of dwellings to 11,800 apartments. Unfortunately, after the recession began, these figures dropped three times, and only in recent years showed a moderate growth again. however, the new housing construction has become an important engine of development, encouraging the changes of urban structures and Lithuanian cityscapes, and improving the living conditions of the population. In terms of the achieved indicators and with the re-gard to the Lithuanian housing strategy until 2020 with the plans to

achieve the indicator of 29 sq. m per capita (the EU average is 36 sq. m per capita), it is possible to forecast the housing construction fu-ture, however, without jumps and well thought out.

The year 2008 was absolutely the best for the construction sector of the country, accounting for 10 percent of the Gdp (3.5 billion euros), with the exception of the industry of building materials.For the first time in terms of the contribution to the overall Gdp, the sector could be equalled to the average of the European Union countries. Since 2009, the volume of construction in Lithuania started to decrease, while our companies began to step more actively into foreign mar-kets of the east and west.

Urban Development and the Growth of Cities

It is difficult to describe in a few sentences the scale of changes in the development of architecture and its impact on the well-being of the country; however, one should acknowledge the depth of archi-tectural solutions, the scope of construction in the country,and the innovativeness of ideas and styles. In economic terms, Lithuania has become an urbanized country, with 67 % of the population living in cities and towns and generating the bulk part of Gdp.

Architecture is the best indicator of the change. According to profes-sor rimantas Buivydas, “Contemporary Lithuanian architecture is much more accurate and insightful than any other branch of arts in expressing the country’s or the city’s cultural development during a certain period of time”.

In the Soviet era, Lithuania was dominated by the construction of civil engineering facilities, and urban architecture was dominated by blocks of apartment buildings of a unified style. Aging apart-ment blocks of the Soviet era have become a significant challenge to the State, because of their high energy consumption, expensive maintenance, and surroundings of poor urban environment. Apart-ment owners, not considering themselves the owners of the build-ings, prefer to move away to the suburbs, where the environment is healthier and land and housing are cheaper. On the other hand, new suburban neighbourhoods increase the demand of investing in the public infrastructure, making the use of energy resources less effi-cient, creating traffic jams and increasing car pollution. When some urban residents move out, the rest have to pay more for the devel-oped urban infrastructure, raising the price of the district’s opera-tion and limiting the sustainable development of Lithuanian cities. Compared to the rest of the world, the situation in Lithuania is yet non-threatening, but urban professionals already raise the question

In 2006, “AB Akmenės Cementas”made a decisive innovation by constructing a a new production line of dry clinker treatment with the capacity of 4,500 tons per day. Instead of the wet method of clinker treatment, this 100 million euros project introduced the method of dry treatment of clinker. In October 2013, the contractor, “AB Panevėžio Statybos Trestas” completed the construction and assembly of the production line.Environmental protection is one of the most important spheres of sustainable development for “Akmenės Cementas”: the enterprise’s goal was to replace fifty percent of its basic fuel with alternative by 2015 (photo by unknown author, from Lithuanian Builders Association archive)

Dynamics of residential construction

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2000 2001

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20042005

20062007

20082009 2010

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3003 381533423623

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6900 5600 5624 556241764364 4463

37854470

45306804

5933

7295 9286

11829

9400

1–2 dwelling buildings

36675066 5221

6063

From the Lithuanian Builders Association

dwellings completed (total)

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As provided in the national Environmental protection Strategy for the period until 2030 and the Lithuanian environmental vision for 2050, the clean, healthy, and safe environment and the sustainable growth of the country shall be achieved by the optimal consumption of nature resources, their regeneration and preservation, and by the development of innovative technologies and the green economy so that the fulfilment of our today’s needs does not come at the expense of future generations and the quality of their lives.

during the past two decades, the environment in Lithuania has be-come less polluted; much more attention is given to the quality of the environment and the right of the population to clean and safe surroundings: public services in water supply and waste utilization with each year are more developed and improved in their quality; much attention is paid to the regeneration of Lithuanian forests and their biodiversity. Lithuania is considered to be one of the clean-est countries in the European Union by the amount of heavy met-als in its soil and the quality of air; also, Lithuania is one of the few countries in Europe and the world where people consume only high quality drinking groundwater. Although the country’s economy was constantly growing during the past decades, the level of greenhouse exhaust gases was considerably reduced. Other fields of environ-mental protection were also much improved, especially when Lithu-ania joined the European Union: Lithuania has been implementing the EU instructions as well as benefiting from its support. The clo-sure of the largest nuclear energy unit in the Baltic Sea region – the Ignalina nuclear power plant – considerably helped reduce the haz-ards of water and environmental pollution.

And yet, environmental researches have shown that neither all pollu-tion sources have been eliminated nor have all nature wounds been healed: about 77 percent of municipal waste is disposed of in landfills, although a bigger part of it could be recycled or turned into alternative energy. The Curonian Lagoon, the Baltic Sea coastal area, two thirds of Lithuanian rivers and around one third of the lakes still do not meet the requirements of water quality. The air of our biggest cities – vil-nius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, and Panevėžys – often has an exces-sive concentration of solid particles and benzopyrene. Because of the poor land-use, chaotic urban development, and other factors, many of the regions of our country suffer from degrading landscape and the declining condition of soil, and the deterioration of biodiversity and ecosystems. not always the process of urbanization in Lithuania con-form to the framework of sustainable development.

With the growth of public awareness and the improvement of tech-nologies, the need for innovative measures of environmental protec-

1990–2015: A nEW STAGE In EnvIrOnMEnTAL prOTECTIOn

Angelė Adomaitienė, journalist, member of the Lithuanian Journalists’ Association Council

tion is also increasing, especially in the most urbanized territories and biggest cities, as well as the need for a more effective consump-tion of energy in industrial and transport sectors, apartment build-ings, and public edifices.

Creating a Unified System of Environmental Protection Management

Lithuania has a unified system of environmental protection man-agement. Environmental protection is governed by the Government, the Ministry of Environment, and other related state institutions. Such a system was not spontaneously born after our Independence; it is a result of a reform that was progressing in many stages. Speaking of our past, we should mention the first Nature Protection Committee that was founded in 1957. Its essential jurisdiction in-cluded matters related to hunting, protecting endangered areas and species, and teaching people about ecology; however, it did not con-trol the situation of air and industrial pollution and did not have a basis for monitoring. When in 1988 the functions of several min-istries and institutions were combined, the jurisdiction of the na-

On September 16–18, 1988, the Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis) and Greenpeace activists rallied at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in favor of its closure in a demonstration named “The Ring of Life”. The Chernobyl type RBMK reactors of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant could not be refurbished to meet the required security level: they had to be shut down as hazardous. In the past years the hazardous reactors were shut down in Belarus and Slovakia. Lithuania was obligated to shut down the first reactor before 2005 and the second reactor before 2009. Besides, the protective shell had construction defects therefore could be fatal in the event of a major disaster (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

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ture protection Committee was supplemented with the functions of the use and protection of water, atmosphere, forests, etc. That was the period of an active ecological movement: Greenpeace activists and the leadership of the Lithuanian reform Movement alongside people from all over Lithuania organized protests, rallies, and other campaigns against industrial “monsters”, the Baltic Sea contamina-tions, the use of pesticides in farming, etc.

A new stage in environmental protection started when Lithuania won its freedom. In 1990, the Environmental protection depart-ment was founded under the Supreme Council of the republic of Lithuania. On June 15, 1994, the Seimas adopted the law “On the Implementation of the Law of the Government of the republic of Lithuania” that led to the establishment of the Ministry of Environ-mental protection, later renamed to the Ministry of Environment, which took over the functions of forestry management from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and many of the functions of the Ministry of Construction and Urban development.

The Ministry of Environment has a number of departments, institu-tions, and other organizations under its subordination: eight envi-ronmental protection departments with the regional and municipal inspectorates or agencies, accountable to the departments; the En-vironmental protection Agency; the Environmental projects Man-agement Agency; the State Territorial planning and Construction Inspectorate; the State Environmental protection Service; the Lith-uanian Geological Survey; the State Forests Service; the State Ser-vice for protected Areas; the directorate General of State Forests; the State Forest Management Institute; the Tadas Ivanauskas Zoo-logical Museum in Kaunas; the vaclovas Intas national Stone Mu-seum; the Lithuanian Zoo.

With this wide range of its organizations, the Ministry of Environ-ment and its institutions cover many spheres and perform many func-tions, such as: the implementation of the state strategy on environ-mental protection and the use of natural resources; the preparation of long-term target programs in environmental protection and the use of natural resources, draft laws and draft legal acts on the questions of environmental protection as well as the stand-ards and norms of the use of nat-ural resources. The Ministry and its institutions arrange the draft-ing of specialized documents on territorial planning, establish the limits and conditions of the use of natural resources as well as the procedure of the issuance of permits and licenses, regulate and control the registry of natu-ral resources. Besides, the min-istry and its institutions arrange the management of reserves and other protected territories, make entries and updates in the red Book of endangered species, es-tablish and control the norms and the accounting procedures of the emission of pollutants, including radioactive particles, into the atmosphere, and per-form and coordinate a complex environmental monitoring and other scientific researches. The functions also include informing the community on the condition of the environment, educating

people on environmental issues, training professionals, filing com-plaints, and many more.

Creating a Legal Basis for Environmental Protection

The main regulatory provisions in the sphere of environmental pro-tection have been stated in Articles 53 and 54 of the Constitution of the republic of Lithuania. More details are given in the following laws and other legal acts: the Lithuanian Forestry Law, the Lithu-anian protected Territories Law, the Lithuanian Underground Law, the law on plant protection, the law on Territorial planning, the law on “Construction of Buildings in the Coastal Zone of the republic of Lithuania and Curonian Spit”, special regulations on the land- and forest-use, and many more. In addition, the Seimas of the republic of Lithuania has recently adopted amendments to the law on En-vironmental protection and the law on Environmental Impact As-sessment; draft laws and draft legal acts on the protection of atmos-phere, chemicals, soil, etc. are in progress.

And yet, we do not have a unified system for the legal regulations of environmental protection yet. however, one should notice the in-creased attention towards the coordination of provisions with other laws and legal acts in avoiding contradictions and discrepancies with the EU requirements.

The Strategy of National Environmental Protection and its Priorities

By its resolution of September 25, 1996, the Seimas ratified the State Environmental protection Strategy that covered the most impor-tant environmental problems of the time, priorities and goals, politi-cal principles and the processes of the integration in the EU. Most of the measures of the Strategy have been implemented. Lithuania joined the EU and became a full-fledged implementer of the EU pol-icy on environmental protection. This aspect is essentially impor-tant because, with the growth of environmental pollution and the

Priority Environmental Protection Spheres

Sustainable Use of Natural Resources

and Waste Treatment

Biodiversity and services of ecosystems• underground

natural resources• water resources• forests• fish resources• game

Waste

Environmental Quality

Improvement

Water Landscape

Chemicals

Soil Soil

Urban environment

Ambient air

Radiation conditions

Biodiversity and services of

ecosystems

Surrounding noiseBio safety

Ecosystem Stability

Preservation

Climate Change Reduction and

Adaptation to the Effects of Climate

Change

Structure of Priority Environmental Protection Spheres

From the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania

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LIThUAnIAn FOrESTS And FOrESTrY In TWEnTY-FIvE YEArS OF IndEpEndEnCE

Algirdas Brukas, forester, honorary member of the Forrest Owners Association of Lithuania, Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in 1996-1998

In the course of history, the role of the forest has been continuously changing. Apart from the nature, inner and outer factors of social character have gradually acquired more importance in the lives of people. Some of those factors have been especially relevant for the relations of people with the forests, others have become existentially significant to both parties.Without long discussions, extensive clarifications of reasons and consequences, and without the reminiscences of the half a century of Soviet occupation, let us dwell on the condition of the Lithuanian forest and the results of the forestry policy in the past twenty four years: let us divide the subject into smaller units and bring out the most obvious positive and negative aspects in each separate unit. Let us overview the changes that the forest has undergone in the years of Independence; let us find out what the Lithuanian forest has given

to and taken from the State, the society and its groups, including professional foresters. how has the relation between the forest and people essentially changed?

Nature protection has benefitted from the forest most. Forests have been expansively used for the specialized purposes of nature pro-tection. More than one third of the territory of Lithuanian forests has been included into protected areas with restricted economic and sometimes even social functions of the forest. Apart from the ex-pansion of protected areas, another 262,000 hectares of Lithuanian forests are grown until their natural maturity, whereas before In-dependence such practice was non-existent. Alongside the protect-ed areas, national and regional parks, state and municipal nature reserves, special sections have been designated in the forests with-in the European Union program nATUrA 2000, as well as wood-land key habitats, various protective strips near bodies of water, and many more. Moreover, activities in industrial forests are often sub-ject to restrictions, i.e. the reduction of felling areas, the requirement to leave solitary trees in forest clearings, the promotion of natural re-forestation, etc. In 1998, the management of forests was transferred under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment.

In the twenty five years of Independence, the area of forests has ex-panded by more than 200,000 hectares and now covers one third of the land; considerably more wood timber has been produced; 20 percent of the area of industrial forests are covered with mature ar-boretums. All those facts prove that the parameters of Lithuanian forests have considerably improved and that productivity and the resistance to the exposure to natural elements have improved.

The Lithuanian timber industry and other timber consumers have received and receive twice more timber supplies from state owned and, later on, private forests than in the last Soviet decade. The abundance of timber has ensured the smooth development of the in-dustry in the independent years. Over a quarter of a million of Lithu-anian residents by way of restitution have become owners of private forests. Many of them receive or plan to receive in the future addi-tional income from their property by selling timber and otherwise utilizing the forest. In the years of Independence, the foresters of the State Forest Service use forest resources by trust law without paying the stumpage tax, while keeping all income and retaining the status of a commercial enterprise of the directorate of State Forests. Lithu-ania has never before enjoyed such privileges which are exceptional

The Southeastern part of Lithuania is the richest in forests (photo by G. Barzdžiukaitė, from the magazine “Miškai” (“Forests”) archive)

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in other countries as well. The rest of the population has free access to the absolute majority of state and private forests for recreational purposes, as well as for gathering mushrooms and berries. never before were Lithuanian forests equipped with so many recreational paths, resting areas, and places of rural tourism.

The State has no direct economic benefit from forests, it only accepts indirect and often immaterial benefit, coming from nature protec-tion or some income through the utilization of forests and timber processing by legal entities and natural persons. This sphere has a future potential.

neither governmental experts, nor the foresters of the State Forest Service, nor private owners have fully appreciated the perfect con-ditions offered them by the State. The private sector has not tak-en advantage of the possibility to join into cooperatives, nor has it formed adequate service structures. The sector performs functions of a body of intensive control rather than a developer of the industry; undoubtedly, this tendency is not beneficial to the State. The public

sector, although capable of getting an impressive income, is yet un-able to find means for conducting researches in forestry. Despite of all the nice things said about the development of forestry, the fos-tering of arboretum, and afforestation, and despite of the increased financing, the actual outcome of these endeavors, expressed in hec-tares and cubic kilometers, is steadily decreasing or, in the best case, remains unchanged.

There are many reasons to be proud. On the other hand, there are reasons to feel frustrated. One should regard the forest and forestry from the point of view of a responsible member of a civil society. Forester communities, on the other hand, should show more initia-tive and take advantage of scientific researches.

Forest Proprietorship

Much has been achieved in the sphere of proprietorship in the past twenty five-years. Private ownership together with social justice have been restored. The agrarian reform has preserved an approximately equal ratio of state and private ownership of the forests. In the whirl-pool of complex reforms and social transformations, the basic struc-tures of the State forestry have also been preserved. however, much has to be done in the future. The primarily task would be to expedite the protracted agrarian reform of the forest restitution. Secondly, the restrictions on the usage of private forests by their owners should be lifted. Thirdly, private owners of small properties should be encour-age to form cooperatives or other associations.

Institutional System of the State Management of Forests

during these years, the old structures of governing and managing the forest were preserved and improved, as well as new frameworks have been added, i.e. local forest enterprises, the directorate Gen-eral of State Forests, the State Forest Service, and the State Forest Management Institute.

What should be done to further improve the system? The manage-ment of the private sector could use more support from the author-ities, in the first place. The system, controlling our forest industry should be paying more attention to problem solving rather than to punishing the transgressors. Besides, the representation of the for-estry sector in the Ministry of Environment should be improved so that functions were adequately distributed.

Winter roads in forests are mostly impassable (photo from the magazine “Miškai” archive)

Lithuanian pine forest (photo by G. Barzdžiukaitė, from the magazine “Miškai” archive)

Cladonia coniocraea, the largest species of the moss-like lichen, basic food for elks(photo from the magazine “Miškai” archive)

Forestry as a Science: Professional Training

Fortunately, most of the research facilities have been preserved during those years; specialists perform continuous and efficient forest monitoring; they collect statistical data on forests and or-ganize scientific and experimental researches. In 1995, the Forest research Institutes and Universities from Estonia, Latvia, and Lith-uania began the joint publication of a scientific journal, the “Bal-tic Forestry”. And yet, the financing of researches in forestry leaves

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After the restoration of inde-pendence, the establishment of tourism organizations and as-sociations in Lithuania quickly gained momentum. The first as-sociated tourism organizations were founded in 1991: the Lithu-anian Tourism Association and the Lithuanian Union of Travel-lers. The start-up of new priva-te tourism companies was parti-cularly rapid: as many as three thousand companies that inclu-ded tourism as part of their bu-siness in their statutes were re-gistered in 1992. On the other hand, the number reduced to 352 after the authorities started issuing licenses in 2004.

A legal and institutional fra-mework was created in 1992. The government of the country recognised tourism as a priority area of the economic development, which enabled operators to re-ceive grants, concessional loans, etc. In the same year, the national Tourism Service, currently the State department of Tourism, was founded. Moreover, in the same year the first publication to promote independent Lithuania was released in German and English, “Besu-chen Sie Litauen. Welcome to Lithuania”.

The year 1993 was the year of lively international activities. Agree-ments were signed on co-operation in the field of tourism between Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, between Lithuania and Ukraine, and an informal tourism organization of the Baltic countries was esta-blished. In order to promote the flow of tourists, the focus was made on the German market: Lithuania was for the first time presented in one of the world’s largest international tourism exhibitions ITB in Berlin. In the same year, the first Lithuanian Tourist Information Center in Berlin was founded. Eventually, the network of Lithuanian tourism information centres expanded: tourist information centers were established in Moscow, Warsaw, paris, helsinki, etc.

revenues from international (inbound) tourism to Lithuania in

OvErvIEW OF ThE LIThUAnIAn TOUrISM ECOnOMY FrOM 1990 TO 2015: dOOrS WIdELY OpEn FOr TOUrISTS

Lidija Bajarūnienė, Chief Specialist at the Tourism Policy Division of the Ministry of Economy

The State focuses on the development of the entertainment and leisure tourism

infrastructure, says Vice Minister of Economy Rasa Noreikienė

The Pažaislis Monastery is one of the most visited heritage sites of cultural tourism

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those years grew faster than in other EU countries. however, the overall amount of the revenue remained low: in the estimates of 2001, the EU average was 2.5 times higher than that of Lithuania and as much as 7.9 times higher per capita. One of the main reasons for the low income indicators per capita and per tourist was still an underdeveloped entertainment and leisure infrastructure and an inefficient national tourism marketing. Moreover, tourism agen-cies mainly provided outbound tourism services. Only 20 percent of agencies were engaged in inbound tourism, and only 18 percent were focused on local tourism.however, the industry continued to develop and strengthen its positions. A national Tourism development program until 1998 was approved in 1994. The first international tourism exhibition, vivattur, presenting tourism opportunities of both our and other countries was held in 1995. The Lithuanian resort development concept was prepared at the ini-tiative of the Ministry of Economy in 2000. The next year, the resort status was granted to 4 Lithuanian towns: Birštonas, Druskininkai, neringa, and palanga. Those actions were aimed at preserving the traditions of Lithuanian resorts, engaging in the research of resorts, and transitioning to a new level of providing high quality health tou-rism services and offering more new attractions and entertainment, while coping with the sensitive problem of seasonality in the coun-tries of the Baltic Sea region. In 2003, Lithuania was the first of the Baltic States to join the World Tourism Organization; it also ratified the National Tourism Develo-pment program for the period 2003 –2006 and began to develop the Lithuanian tourism information system.

Membership in the EU: A Space for the New Development

Lithuania’s accession to the European Union in 2004 brought many positive changes in the growth of tourist flows, the development of tourism infrastructure and the dissemination of favourable informa-tion about Lithuania as an attractive travel destination. The mem-bership had a positive impact: it facilitated travelling by simplify-ing border procedures. First low-cost airlines included Lithuania in their routes. With rapidly growing interest in our country, new ser-vices and entertainment were offered to foreign and local tourists.

Many public and private museums were opened; vilnius and drus-kininkai water amusement parks were welcoming visitors; first golf clubs were offering to test the accuracy of your swing and tempting to try out a new type of entertainment; rural tourism homesteads were inviting to have a different look at the countryside. According to Deputy Minister of Economy Rasa Noreikienė, the State has paid much attention to the development of the entertain-ment and leisure tourism infrastructure. Money has been invested in the facilities of cycling, hiking, water trails, beaches, recreation areas, camping, parks, sports and recreational equipment, ski slopes, yacht marinas, and other public sports facilities, stadiums, amusement parks, and spas. recreated heritage objects (manors, water mills, and abandoned buildings) have been converted and adapted for the tourism infrastructure as conference halls, exhibi-tions and craft centres, and information, culture, and recreation fa-cilities. This has created favourable conditions to organize various events in Lithuania, to improve the country’s image and promote tourism.The tourism infrastructure and resorts have developed. high value to the active development of tourism has been added by the Seaside Cycling route of more than 200 kilometres, stretching along the entire Lithuanian seaside from Būtingė in the north to Nida in the south, and along the Curonian Lagoon from Klaipėda to the Rus-nė Island. Special plans of national automotive tourism and water tourism routes have been developed. They contain design, propos-als and priorities for touristic developments with particular focus on tourist routes that are most abundant with the points of attrac-tion of cultural heritage (manors, mills, and others), and the op-portunities to use them for cultural tourism.“during the period of 2007–2013, more projects to promote tour-ism have been funded under the EU structural assistance facilities, receiving a total of 251 million euro. The reconstructed old objects again attract the attention of tourists, and newly opened facilities have created more new opportunities for tourism”, said deputy Min-ister of Economy Rasa Noreikienė.The number of rural tourism homesteads was also growing with ev-ery year. A record rise in the number of rural tourism homesteads – 33.4 per cent – was marked in 2006. It was a result of 21 million euros, granted for the development of rural tourism in 2004 –2006.

In 2012, Lithuania was the second in Europe in terms of the growth of the number of foreign tourists

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The foundation of any promising society lies in its science and education. Therefore, although this chapter of the book is the smallest, it is by no means the least important.

We begin this chapter with an overview of the development of the student education sys-tem that extensively analyzes the most important stages of the transformations of our ed-ucational system. Truly, we had many changes, because the system that we had inherited for the Soviet Union was too much unified, did not encourage free thinking nor self-ex-pression and creativity. The education system was also much affected by the demographic problems that Lithuania encountered. The decreased reproduction, vast scopes of emi-gration, and the intensified urbanization determined the fact that many schools in remote areas were left without students. Therefore, the education system of Lithuania had to be subject to thorough reforms that, unfortunately, came too often.

However, any change in the system of education becomes obvious and gives results only with time, in a decade or two. Therefore, the effect of a number of the already ac-complished strategic changes we will be able to assess only in the future. However, the retrospective approach to the development of Lithuanian education system might be quite useful not only to Lithuania itself, but also to many countries world-wide that face similar challenges.

The second topic of the chapter is a continuation of the first one: the system of studies and research in Lithuania is also abundant with protracted transformations. Likewise, the transition of universities and scientific research institutions from a total state control to an autonomous organization in a free society could be nothing but rocky and endless. And yet, this transformation does not interfere with the accomplishments of Lithuanian scientists on the highest level of their scientific spheres. We can only be proud of the con-vergence of our business and science, of our newly established science valleys that create space for business and science to work together and achieve results that are beneficiary to our society.

This part of the book also presents the most significant science organizations of Lithuania that contribute to the fast development of our science community with their globally rec-ognized innovations and researches that change our everyday lives.

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Akvilė Redko, consultant at business consulting company “Civitta”

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITHUANIAN EDUCATION, 1990–2015

“Education only then will manage to play its role when its develop-ment will exceed the overall development of the society”, Lithuani-an education concept, 1992.

Most countries consider the development and improvement of educa-tion to be one of the most important parts of the sustainable develop-ment of the country’s economy and culture. The competitiveness and entrepreneurship of a country, its innovativeness and future poten-tials in the global market largely depend on the today’s students and the ability of their teachers to get them ready for future challenges.

Having restored its Independence in 1990, Lithuania essentially inherited the education system of those days, including education programs, textbooks, teachers, and the network of educational insti-tutions, as well as certain traditions and beliefs. The Soviet educa-tion system was strongly centralized and unified; general education meant a certain assortment of knowledge and skills, obligatory for everyone; individual needs and differences were not taken into ac-count; the freedom of choice was non-existent; creativity was not encouraged, neither was the freedom of thought.

The initial and basic ideas of the educational reform, born on the eve of our Independence, should be mostly related to an outstand-ing Lithuania educator, Meilė Lukšienė, the creator of the Concept of a National School. Later on, those principle educational values were established in the Concept of Lithuanian Education which had stayed relevant in the contemporary world of today. The vision of the Lith-uanian society and education was created by a group of education professionals who shared common views on the future educational model for Lithuania, based on its distinctive national culture. Later, educational models of other countries, such as Scotland, Great Brit-ain, the Netherlands, or Finland, were considered as examples worth following; Lithuanian experts tried to adapt the most successful for-eign models to our system. However, the so-called good examples not always proved to be applicable in Lithuania and yield the expected results: either our mentality was too different, or the process of ad-aptation was too lengthy, therefore, in the long run, some of the most progressive aspects turned out to be irrelevant and outdated.

Despite a few not so successful tries, Lithuania during its twenty-five years of Independence has implemented quite a number of struc-tural changes in the system of education, and has achieved consid-erable results during this short period of time: the reforms included the creation of the concept of a National School and its management model, the diversification of education, the formation of an educa-tion assistance model, the changes in funding, which resulted in in-

troducing the “pupil’s basket” on all the level of education from pri-mary to high schools. We can be proud of our high accessibility of education, which is the highest in the European Union by the num-ber of people with secondary education in the age group from 25 to 64; we are also in the top ten by the level of higher education among young people. Lithuania has fostered many award-winning scien-tists and noted personalities. One should remember that any change in the system of education has no immediate effect; it becomes vis-ible only in a decade or so. Therefore, some of our already accom-plished reforms will yield results only in the future for us to assess.Lithuanian education faces certain challenges. The system of edu-cation is much influenced by outer factors, such as demographic changes, technologies, the cycles of an economic recession and re-covery, the state and values of the society. Under the strain of con-stant changes, all possible scenarios cannot be foreseen, neither can they be preempted or controlled. Instead, educational institutions should be encouraged to exercise flexibility and the willingness to learn and adapt to new changes or even to stimulate them. Another challenge lies in the fact that our students’ achievements in international surveys during the past decade are considerably low and getting lower, and that is a jeopardy to our education system. For example, out of the 65 world countries, participating in the PI-SA survey of 2012, Lithuanian fifteen-year-olds were statistically be-low the average in all the assessed fields: mathematics, reading, and natural sciences. This fact calls for our attention: we should find the reasons and eliminate them. If we do not achieve a break-through in this aspect, in the future we might have negative consequences that would affect the progress of science and innovations, the develop-ment of high technologies, would deprive the country’s economy of its surplus value and the country itself of its competitiveness.

The new Lithuanian education concept,

created by Professor Meilė Lukšienė, was

acknowledged by the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD) as one of the most advanced in the

world. On the photo from the right: M. Lukšienė,

M. Gimbutienė, N. Vėlius, and others, 1986 (photo by lnb.lt)

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education temporarily declined: young people preferred new ways of establishing themselves in the new society and making money, rath-er than studying and seeking university degrees. Vocational schools were mostly affected by the new freedom of choice: from 1992 to 1993, the number of the students of those schools decreased by 41 percent.Lithuanian educators, intellectuals, scientists, and teachers were chal-lenged with a very responsible task of creating a new national educa-tional model, consolidating our values in education, and determining the essential principles of education organization and management.The first vision of our national education was described in the Con-cept of a National School in 1988, on the eve of Lithuanian Inde-pendence, based on the most urgent educational goals of that time: the reestablishment of personal dignity and individual esteem, and the consolidation of humanness, morality, national identity, and na-tional pride. This concept dealt not so much with a school model per se, but with its goals and values: school as a second home, cultural mediator, and a space for spiritual activities. The first strategical document in the sphere of education was the Lithuanian Education Concept, developed in 1992. This concept described the vision of the structure of our education system and presented an educational reform program for the next 5 to 6 years. The concept defined the basic values of the educational reform, the

To answer the question of how to improve the education system and what the future priorities should be, we should retrospectively re-view all the essential changes in the sphere of education from the beginning of our Independence, should recall all lessons we have de-rived from the process, and acknowledge the achievements.

Stages of Education

Our education reviewers suggest that we divide the State education development to this day into three stages: • First stage,1990–1997: the period of liberalization and creativity marked the implementation of the first educational concept. • Second stage, 1998–2002:the period of regulations; in the sec-ond stage of the educational reform a Presidential decree estab-lished a working group for the preparation of the State Strategy on Education to implement the priorities, set in this stage. • Third stage, 2003–2012: the period of measuring and assess-ment involved in the implementation of the State Strategy on Edu-cation.Each of those stages had to deal with its own tasks and different con-texts, as well as its characteristic atmosphere and values. The stages of the educational development were mostly influenced by person-alities, their ideas, and culture. From 2013, the newly developed and adopted State Education Strategy for 2013-2022 has started a new stage in the process. Nobody knows what new changes and challeng-es are awaiting us in the future.

Firststage, 1990–1997 thE pEriod oF libEralization and crEativity

“The education reform is the creation of your State and your demo-cratic society”Meilė Lukšienė

The beginning of our Independence was not an easy time for Lithu-anian education. Although Independence gave us many advantages and freedoms, united us and encouraged initiatives, the new and ide-alistic system of education was full of problems. Due to the change of the state system and the newly born market economy, the role of

the development of lithuanian education

September 1 (the Day of Learning and Knowledge, the first school day in Lithuania) in Vilnius, the Užupis High-School (photo by D. Labutis, ELTA)

• 1992, introducing the Lithuanian education concept.

• Creating the national education vision and model; reorganizing the structure of the education system.

• Creating new textbooks and the new education contents.

• Improving the accessibility and variety of education.

the period of liberalization and creativity,1990–1997

1 the period of regulations, 1998–20022 the period of

outer challenges and the efficiency growth,2003–2012

3 the state education strategy for 2013–2022

4

• 1998–2000, transiting from the obligatory nine-year to the obligatory ten-year education.

• Introducing profiled education.

• Introducing state high-school exit exams (maturity examinations).

• Decentralizing the textbook market and the teachers’ skills improvement system.

• Changing the principles of the general education funding: introducing the “pupil’s basket”.

• Reorganizing the school network.

• Decentralizing management, giving more independence to municipalities and schools.

• The declining prestige of the teacher’s profession.

• Low students’ results in international studies.

• Creating an education monitoring system.

• Performing regular school assessments and outer assessments.

• The newly ratified Strategy of State Education has provided for four improvement tendencies: teachers, education culture, informal education, lifelong learning. The concept of a Good School has been developed.

• The rapid development of technologies.

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LITHUANIAN SCIENCE AND STUDIES, 1990-2015

Professor Bronius Kaulakys, Dr. Ph. Sc. Habil., Chief researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy of Vilnius University, Head of the Department of Processes and Structures

The system of Lithuanian science and studies has undergone a long and complex process of the development and constant transforma-tion during the past twenty-five years of our Independence. The dis-cussions on the contents of science and studies and its role in the development of the country, the dependability of institutions, the improvement of management, and a structural reform have started much earlier, prior to the restoration of Independence of Lithuania. The Lithuanian Scientists’ Union, founded in 1989, chose the search and legalization of the organizational principles of progressive sci-ence and studies as its main objective. Lithuanian scientists together with their foreign colleagues reopened Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, which had been closed down by the Soviets.

At the dawn of Lithuanian Independence, the system of science and studies consisted of twelve university level schools, some of them had continued their activities since the inter-war times, the Acade-my of Sciences with 17 research institutes, i.e. Lithuanian Language, Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Lithuanian History, Culture and Arts, Philosophy, Sociology and Justice, Economics, Mathematics and Informatics, Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Physics, Semi-conductor Physics, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Biochem-istry, Botany, Ecology, Immunology, Geography, and the Institute of Physical and Technical Energy Problems, as well as the Academy of Sciences Library, the Kaunas Botanical Garden, the Departments of Foreign Languages and Philosophy, and additional 30 institutes of the Soviet Union subordination, 32 business institutes, and 10 schools of higher education.

The majority of the institutes were rather large, equipped with ex-perimental factories and design bureaus. Later, some of them were transformed into high technology companies: the Physics Institute had split into 10 enterprises of laser and light technologies; the USSR Institute of Applied Enzymology was turned into two joint-stock companies, “Fermentas” and “Biofa”, which later became “Sicor Bio-tech”; the Laser Research Institute of Vilnius University became a joint-stock company, “Light Conversion Ltd”; the Institute of Math-ematics and Informatics was transformed into a number of IT com-panies. According to the Almanac 2004 of the Ministry of Education and Science “Scientific Researches and Experimental Development in Lithuania”, the system of science and studies which Lithuanian in-herited in 1990 had all the characteristics of the Soviet times: funda-mental and applied researches were mostly concentrated in scientific research institutes and kept apart from schools of higher education. Scientific researches were performed in schools as well, especially in

their institutes, scientific research centers, and laboratories. Most of the applied researches were closely connected to various entities of economy, very often outside Lithuania. In 1991, almost 29,000 scien-tists were engaged in scientific research and experimental develop-ment. At that time, Lithuania with 8 researchers per thousand labor power units was way ahead of the EU average 5. The potential of sci-entific research was very high by the standards of those times.

When the Soviet Union collapsed following the economic and politi-cal crisis and when Lithuanian Independence was reestablished, our country’s economy and science experienced a huge shock. Back in 1989, the Soviet Union reduced its production in Lithuania and cut the research financing. During the first years of Independence, the GDP in Lithuania dropped down almost by half; and only in 2005 it reached the level of 1989, however, of different proportion: the bulk of the GDP was created by the sphere of services.

The percentage of the scientific research and experimental devel-opment funding decreased three times, compared to the GDP. In the period from 1991 to 1996, Lithuanian scientists experienced the shortage of funds for everything: salaries, maintenance of laborato-ries, utilities, means of communication, renewal of equipment, and research materials.

Scientific Publications

Fortunately, in those hard times after the restoration of Independ-ence, Lithuania managed to preserve the main potential of science and studies, although considerably reduced. Around 1995, the num-ber of university students started growing; scientific articles started appearing in prestigious international magazines.

Before 1994, Latvian scientists were more active in international publications. Lithuanians were more concentrating on the Lithu-anian studies in its broadest sense: from the Lithuanian language, literature, and folklore, to botany and geography, to agriculture, wa-ter, food, and ecology. A dictionary of the Lithuanian language in 20 volumes (Volume 1 through 22 published from 1941 to 2002) and its electronic version could serve as an example of such studies. There were many more publications in that period: a number of special-ized multi-lingual dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias, grammar books, maps, books on flora and fauna, monographies, etc.

Besides, Lithuania had a much more developed network of science periodicals. A number of internationally recognized science maga-zines have not ceased to exist until now: series A, B, and C of the

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“Works of the Academy of Science of the LSSR” were published from 1955 to 1989; the “Collection of Lithuanian Physics”, which had been first published in 1961, later was renamed to the “Lithuanian Jour-nal of Physics”; the “Collection of Mathematics” from 1961, later be-came the “Lithuanian Mathematical Journal”; “Baltistica” has been circulating since 1965; “Problemos” since 1968; “Energetika” and “Informatika” have been in circulation since 1990; in 2001 science journals on chemistry “Chemija”, biology “Biologija”, medicine “Ac-ta Medica Lituanica”, geology “Geologija”, geography “Geografija”, Lithuanian language studies “Lituanistica”, agriculture “Žemės ūkio mokslai”, and many more came to existence. At present,almost 30 Lithuanian science journals are included in the prestigious database, the “Web of Science”. Latvia and Estonia have only a couple of science publications which belong in this da-tabase. Those radical changes happened in the first decade of In-dependence in Lithuania with the structural and financial reform, when research institutes were joined with universities, and insti-tutional financing was replaced with competitive financing. In two decades of Independence, Lithuania managed to maintain the big-ger part of its best scientific potential.

the reform of the System of Science and Studies

The first innovative law on Science and Studies, adopted by the Su-preme Council – Reconstituent Seimas on February 12, 1991, had been taken as a basis for the reform of the system of science and studies, and lasted without amendments until 2002. Based on this law, a new united system of science and research was created from the Soviet inheritance of vaguely interrelated schools of higher ed-ucation, the Academy of Sciences, and other institutions. The new

system now includes: universities; research institutes; the Science Council of Lithuania which is an independent administrative insti-tution, solving the questions of organizing and financing research and studies of parliamentary and governmental experts; the Lithu-anian Academy of Sciences; the Lithuanian State Science and Stud-ies Foundation; other research establishments, organizations and groups. One of the most important tasks was the integration of re-search with studies. Before 2002, there were 15 schools of the uni-versity level, 29 state research institutes, and 19 science institutions. In 1990, the Lithuanian Police Academy was founded and in 1997 transformed into the Lithuanian Law Academy, which was further reorganized into Mykolas Romeris University,MRU. In 1991, the Klaipeda University was founded on the joint basis of all the affili-ated branches of other schools of higher education. The General Jo-nas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania was founded in 1994.

In 2002, the Law on Higher Education, which had been adopted in 2000, received a new edition. All institutes retained their consider-able independence and the status of a legal entity. The law has es-tablished a two-level system of doctorate studies similar to that of the US, where doctorate students from the beginning of the studies until the final defence of their thesis,are taken care of not only by their supervisor, but also by a committee prescribed to each student. Such unified system of science and studies has proved to be optimal for Lithuania.

During the first decade of Independence, finances for science and studies would be allocated in one budget line, and, after the delibera-tions of the representatives of such organizations as the Rectors and Directors Conferences and the Lithuanian Science Council above all, the funds would be distributed to individual institutions based on the number of scientists and other criteria. Every year the proce-dure for finding adequate financing would be the same: the Seimas and the Government would receive letters of request for funding; the Ministry of Finance would try to find the funds; the Seimas Educa-tion, Science, and Culture Committee would discuss the possibilities, and the scientific community would actively participate in those pro-cesses. From 75 to 78 percent of the assigned budget financing went to universities; from 16 to 18 percent went to research institutes, and from 6 to 9 percent were allocated to general needs of science and studies. Those 6 to 9 percent were enough to cover the expenses of the Lithuanian Science Council, the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and its library, the Lithuanian State Science and Studies Founda-tion; awards for distinguished scientists and scholarships for young scientists, funding of state programs, publication of and subscrip-tion to periodicals, and many other expenses were also funded from those six to nine percent.

The number of scientific articles of Lithuanian, latvian, and Estonian researchers, referred to in the

“web of Knowledge” database.

1975

1980

1985

1988

1990

1993

1995

1998

2001

2003

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

Lithuania Estonia Latvia

lithuanian State universities in 2015Vilnius UniversityVilnius GediminasTechnical UniversityLithuanian University of Educational Sciences (until 2011, Vilnius PedagogicalUniversity)KaunasUniversity of TechnologyVytautasMagnus UniversityLithuanian University of Health Sciences (until 2011, Kaunas University of Medicine and Lithuanian Veterinary Academy)KlaipėdaUniversityŠiauliaiUniversityAleksandras StulginskisUniversity (until 2011, Lithuanian University of Agriculture)Mykolas RomerisUniversity (until 2004,Law Academy of Lithuania)General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania Lithuanian Sports University (until 2011, Lithuanian Academy of Physical Education)Lithuanian Academy of Music and TheaterVilnius Academy of Arts

The number of first and second level students in lithuanian universities, in thousands.

SF – State Funded, SP – Self Paid

1965

1970

198

0

198

9

1990

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

200

5

200

8

2010

2012

2013

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

SF SP

346

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For half of the 20th century, Lithuanian culture had been turned into an ideological instrument in the grip of the Communist regime. Naturally, not all artists obeyed the of-ficial soviet doctrine; however, persecutions and restrictions of all sorts greatly limited their creative space. And still, the Lithuanian artistic community made a large part of the Lithuanian Reform Movement that led our State towards Independence. It was no acci-dent that the aspiration of Lithuania for Independence was called the Singing Revolution.

Independence brought the freedom to create, to openly express one’s thoughts and ideas, to share art, to search for inspiration anywhere in the world. The first review of this chap-ter will show how the newly acquired freedom transformed the face of Lithuania’s culture and what was accomplished in arts. You will find here facts and reflections on our suc-cesses in literature, art, photography, music, theater and cinema. Also, while analysing the situation with museums and libraries in Lithuania, we will overview our accomplish-ments in the preservation of our cultural heritage.

This part of the book also includes an exclusive overview of our biggest asset – the Lithu-anian language that is the keystone of our culture and identity to us, while to the world it represents one of the oldest Indo-European languages that is seen as a key to the knowl-edge of the roots of the ancient civilisation. The article shows its readers what challenges Lithuania faces in the preserving the purity of the language and how we deal with them.

Religion is another important factor that forms the culture of a country. For centuries, Lithuania was home to the believers of different religions. During the times of Soviet oc-cupation, the Church with its periodicals was the most important cradle of our resistance. Here we have tried to show what role different beliefs play in the Independent Lithuania, and what major events they have gone through.

In this chapter, we also present the most important pieces of architecture built during the years of Independence as well as the architects, who became the trendsetters of their guild. Next, we review the creation and development of free and democratic media in Lithuania. The chapter, as well as the book itself, ends with an overview of the victories and achievements of the early heralds of Lithuania’s Independence – our athletes.

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FREEDOM TO CREATE: LITHUANIAN CULTURE FROM 1990 TO 2015

Alongside its independence, Lithuania regained an opportunity to live a full cultural life and return to the international cultural com-munity which it had been expelled from for 50 years.

The long years of Soviet occupation had imposed on the country’s culture a stiff ideological mantle, restricting and suppressing the freedom of creation, obliterating many spheres of cultural activities, such as religion, modern art and literature. Quite a few daring artists and writers were persecuted for “anti-Soviet activities” or “bourgeois arts”. Although supressed, our culture was resisting with its ingenu-ity and the dissident strength, and was finding ways to survive in an era of lies and dehumanisation without losing faith, its national character, and artistic truth.

LITERATURE

The first buds of literary spring appeared way before Gorbachev’s perestroika, and the literary movement started before the Lithuani-an Reform Movement, Sąjūdis, was born. It showed people’s aspira-tions for freedom and proved that the liberation from totalitarian-ism was primarily a spiritual matter rather than political, and that was very clearly reflected in literature. Many daring literary works without any ideological disguise were published during that period. Such literature as Jonas Mikelinskas’ The Country of Black Spruces, written in 1967, the selection of short stories Singing of Animals by Romualdas Granauskas, created 30 years ago, and the novella Life Under the Maple Tree, published in 1988, were just a few examples of this tendency, as well as another book by Jonas Avyžius, The Time of the Emptying of Homesteads, which previously had been banned.

The new and young generation of poets and novelists would refuse to play by the rules and would speak out loud without restrictions and Soviet clichés. Jurga Ivanauskaitė (The Year Of the Lilies Of the Valley, 1985, How To Grow Fear, 1989), Rolandas Rastauskas (Al-bum, 1987), Aidas Marčėnas (The Water Well, 1988), and Danutė Kalinauskaitė (The Gone Light, 1987), just to mention a few, repre-sented the new generation with their bold approach to the old sub-jects and their artistic speech.

Poets on the Barricades

Literary scholars have named this highly unprecedented liberat-

ing time by many names: the literature of the revival, the beginning of a new literary cycle. That time was a special time when popular writers, at the call of the singing revolution, would leave their stud-ies and libraries and join the rallying crowds on the streets; others got involved in high politics of the time. During the turmoil of the public life, the importance and weight of the spoken word of writ-ers reached unprecedented heights. Poet Justinas Marcinkevičius (1930-2011) was recognised as a true freedom herald.

Emigrant poet Bernardas Brazdžionis assembled crowds in the halls and squares of the country. He came back to Lithuania in 1989. His book of selected works Full Moon of Poetry was published in an un-precedented edition of 100,000 copies. The Lithuanian diaspora writers were coming back home. Library shelves were filled with pre-viously forbidden literature which was generously sent to Lithuania from overseas. The books of such dissident writers as Tomas Venclo-va, Icchok Mer, and Saulius Tomas Kondrotas, who had emigrated to the West, were rehabilitated and widely read and discussed.

Despite the economic blockade imposed on Lithuania by Moscow as a punishment, new books were continuously printed: although in paperback and on poor quality paper, they were in high demand with the readers. An important sign of that time was the legaliza-tion of the exile literature that signified an actual, true return of our compatriots from exile. In 1988, the community was shocked by the memoirs of Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, Lithuanians At the Laptev Sea, published in the Pergalė magazine, and the autobiography of the legendary post-war resistance partisan, Juozas Lukša Dauman-tas. Other testimonies of the eyewitnesses of our nation’s genocide and its fight for freedom were also published at that time. The so-called special funds of archives were suddenly opened to the pub-lic, the classified documentaries were made known publically. More than 500 (!) post-war memoirs of deportees, political prisoners, and resistance fighters were published before 2002. Such publications as the Encyclopaedic Reference Book of the Exile and Prison Sites, an exile poetry collection Homeless (1989), and an anthology Exile’s Lithuania (1990) were eagerly read by people.

Thus, the transformation was a difficult and troubled time with many faces. Literary critic Albertas Zalatorius described the situa-tion in Lithuanian literature in the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury as follows: “... And again the banner of social justice, human rights, and the national moral improvement was raised high. Other values seemed of secondary significance.” However, he also noted that the time of changes was not favourable to literature, because

Rūta Klišytė, reporter, culture reviewer

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a society expecting slogans and action would become indifferent to more subtle and more complex things.

Across the Rough Waters of the Market Economy

Since 1993, the country gradually regained a more or less balanced pace; the writers left the barricades and returned to their studies and libraries.

Unfortunately, the excessive idealism was soon brushed aside by the materialism of wild capitalism, limits for creative freedom were de-marcated by an opened free market, and the patriotic values were re-placed with new prices on books. A high demand for primitive thrill-ers, adventure, and love novels showed that the nation was tired of politicking and preferred a lighter entertainment after a hard day’s work. To meet this demand, book publishers regrouped the genres, putting forward lighter, easy-to-read dramas and love stories, as seri-ous literature was not in demand any longer. The boundaries between genres were increasingly disappearing: poets would become novelists, writers turn into essayists; innovations, such as the new historical novel emerged, along with the journalistic novel and euro-novel. The quality of fiction declined: it seemed that everyone could write and publish a novel, while a feat of creating an essay was a light breeze.

In the Soviet times, poetry was published in abundance: for instance, The Only Land by Justinas Marcinkevičius was published in 50,000 copies. Unfortunately, after the euphoria of the rebirth, Lithuanian writers started painfully experiencing the indifference of their read-ers. This led some writers to speak of the decline of our literature and culture, others urged their fellow writers not to stray away from the path of truth no matter what, and their young colleagues, mean-while, sought strength in common affinities and like-minded groups. The situation in literature was further declining with the loss of the former prestige and popularity of “serious” novelists and poets. The former beloved authors were losing the battle with mass media: peo-ple were not so keen on reading anymore, they preferred television and the increasingly persuasive Internet. As poet Algimantas Bal-takis commented on the surrender to the dictate of mass culture, “Once we, poets, were the stars, now the performers, often singing to our verses, are the stars”.

Modern literary critics agreed that this crisis was rather beneficial to the future of our literature as it forced authors to draw strength not from public attention, patronage or support, but from literature itself, encouraging not to feel nostalgia for the past times of relative

luxury, not to look back to the long-gone traditions, but rather to start changing from within and reassessing their experience.This pe-riod was marked by such prominent works as the novel Tūla by Ju-rgis Kunčinas (1947–2002), focusing on the drama of a free human being in a totalitarian environment, and novels by the Lithuanian Jewish chronicler, Grigory G. Kanovich, And There is no Paradise for Slaves, Do not Look Away from Death, A Kid for Two Pennies, Smile upon Us, Lord. G. Kanovich was born in Jonava; in 1993, he emigrated to Israel and has been living there since. During the times of the fight for independence, he was an active journalist; from 1989 to 1993, he was the president of the Lithuanian Jewish community; he wrote his books in Russian, however, they were relevant not only to the Jews, but also significantly contributed to the development of contemporary Lithuanian literature.

One should mention another prominent phenomenon in our litera-ture, J. Erlickas, a true master of parody, satire, and black humour, who once described a statistical Lithuanian citizen as having “a gray life, a gray suit, and a gray personality”.

Women in Literature

With the proliferation of feminist ideas worldwide, women were gradually invading the overly masculine world of literature, bring-ing relevant and previously undiscussed “feminine” topics. These as-pects were discussed in 2001 by a literary critic, Viktorija Daujotytė, in her article Written by Women. The greatest pioneer in this terri-tory was Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961–2007): a writer, artist, and social activist, she was first noticed for her notorious novel The Witch and The Rain (1993). She artfully balanced on the verge of popular and serious literature, creatively crafting not only books, illustrated by herself, but also a personal legend. The writer who passed away ear-ly in her life walked on the path of spiritual quest sometimes in cir-cles but always with enviable persistence, marking her way with the books Tibetan Mandala, Carried Away by the Dream, The Fortress of Sleeping Butterflies, and others.

Vanda Juknaitė wrote about the troubles of single motherhood and crippled childhood in the persuasive and impressive language of her books: a novella, Glass Country in 1995; a book of essays My Voice Betrays Me, 2002. Another woman author, a master of the short sto-ry, Bitė Vilimaitė, was awarded the National Prize for her book The Sun of Ferns, written in 2002. A young author, Renata Šerelytė re-flected on painful and miserable childhood experiences in her books, The Ice Age Stars, 1999, and The Bluebeard’s Children, 2008.

“The Partisans”, memoires of Juozas Lukša-Daumantas are probably the best book of the type, written about the events of the end of World War 2, when the Soviet Army occupied Lithuania. The author described his first-handed experience of those events: the cruelty of the occupants with the local population, the repressions and arrests, burglaries and thefts, and our armed resistance. The author also was expressly reproaching the West for the promised assistance that never came; on the other hand, he admitted the crucial mistakes of the leadership of the resistance movement and its weak ability to lead

“Silva Rerum” or the “Forest of Things” in Latin, is a book about the chronicles of a noble family which were passed from generation to generation and were very popular in Lithuania in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. The books was critically acclaimed and recognized for its historic accuracy. In 2010, the book was named one of the ten most memorable books of the decade for its captivating diversity of layers and the magical narration about the ambience of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

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DECADES OF THE LANGUAGE POLICY FOLLOWING THE RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Daiva Vaišnienė, PhD, associate professor, Chairperson of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language

The Lithuanian language is the basis of our national and cultural sin-gularity, part of our civil and personal identity, and the corner stone of our statehood. This basic clause of the language policy not only embraces the development and protection of the language itself, but also exercises influence through other spheres of the state policy: sci-ence, education, social protection, and foreign affairs. Symbolically, one of the first steps in the quest for Independence that were taken from the beginning of 1988, was the attempt to return the Lithuanian language to its rightful place in the life of the newly resurrecting state. After the restoration of Independence, other vital actions followed promptly: a legal basis for the policy of the official language was cre-ated and the institutions for planning, organizing, and supervising the system of the language was established. In that period, the under-standing of the society of what the significance of the language to the statehood and civil society should be was much subject to changes, which opened new social and informational media.

The contemporary language policy is manifold: it has to cover many spheres of our lives, regarding the demands of the variable aspects of communication. Today, such topics as the existence of the language in the informational space, the challenges of migration, the chang-es of the language in a foreign environment, the relation between languages and the dissemination of information regarding modern technologies of communication, as well as many others are being raised on an international level. And yet, the new reality of the ex-istence of the language does not overshadow the vital issues of the perception and evaluation of the language: the status of the official language, the relations between the language and its society, the in-terrelation of its and standards.

The linguistic provisions of a society are reflected in the official language policy that is determined by historical, social, and po-litical circumstances. Although Lithuanian can boast of its long and rich history as one of the oldest Indo-European languages, which is included in the curricula of the majority of Baltic stud-ies worldwide, its life as an official state language has been inter-rupted by multiple occupations, and therefore counts only sev-eral decades. After all, the first Lithuanian book was printed in the times, when France published its first legal act on the usage of the official French language, and Italy was already enjoying the full swing of the creation of normative language, which lead to the establishment of the oldest linguistic academy.

In the Republic of Lithuania, the status of the official language was

for the first given to the Lithuanian language only in 1922. The first Constitution of the State of Lithuania, adopted by the Constituent Seimas, read: “The state language is the Lithuanian language”. In the absence of a specific law on the language policy, other legal acts regulated the usage of the language in public spheres: mass media, radio, cultural institutions, and schools. The language was taken care of by ministries and other governmental bodies according to the spheres of their jurisdiction. Especial attention was paid to sci-entific researches on the usage of the language and its sources (place names, dialects, dictionaries, etc.). The principal center of Baltic studies was supposed to become the Antanas Smetona Lithuanian Institute, established in 1939, the precursor of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, established in 1941. In the years of Soviet oc-cupation, Lithuanian had no status of the official language, although was widely used as a native language. However, there were spheres where the Russian language dominated. The loss of the status of the official language was determined by the loss of the statehood; therefore, one of the first steps in the restoration of our Independ-ence was to return the official status to our language. On November, 1988, the resolution of the Constituent Assembly of Sąjūdis on the

“There is no Nation without the Language” – such was one of the slogans of Sąjūdis rallies in 1988

368

recognition of Lithuanian as the official language, supplemented the then existing Constitution and consolidated the usage of Lithuanian in governmental bodies, as well as in cultural, educational, scien-tific, industrial, and other public institutions, enterprises, and or-ganizations. The new status made the Lithuanian language equal to Russian, as the Constitution additionally provided for the “learning and usage of the Russian language as the means of communication among the nations of the USSR”.Following the restoration of Independence on March 11, 1990, the Supreme Council - Reconstituent Seimas of the Republic of Lithu-ania returned the status of the official language to the Lithuanian language on the basis of Article 7 of the Provisional Basic Law of the Republic of Lithuania, and later consolidated it by Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992 which states that “Lithuanian shall be the state language.” On January 31, 1995, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a law on the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania. This law determines the main public spheres where the official lan-guage shall be used, regulates its protection, the control, as well as the legal responsibility for the violation of the law. The Lithuanian language has become the official language of public speaking: it is used in adopting and declaring laws and other acts of the Republic of Lithuania, in judiciary procedures, official events, in the activi-ties of governmental and municipal establishments, health and so-cial protection institutions, in the police and law enforcement es-tablishments, in the retail and customer service enterprises. A very peculiar characteristic of the Lithuanian language policy is that it obligates the mass media – the press, television, radio, etc. – in Lithuania to observe the rules of the language, including publicly displayed signs.

A governmental institution for the questions of the language pol-icy was established following the restoration of Independence: on June 20, 1990, the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Coun-cil of the Republic of Lithuania provided for the establishment of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. On March 27, 1993, a Law on the Status of the State Commission of the Lithuani-an Language was announced. The law obligated the Commission of the Lithuanian Language, which was directly subject to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, to solve the questions of the codifi-cation on the Lithuanian language, its normative usage, and the implementation of the above mentioned law. The law also stated that all enterprises, establishments, organizations, and mass me-dia shall comply with the decisions on the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language.The seventeen members, appointed by the Seimas to the Commis-sion of the Lithuanian Language, represent a parliament of sorts, which is responsible for the implementation of the Commission res-olution. It: Takes care of the legal and administrative protection of the official language: prepares legal acts consolidating the status of the official language and regulating language standards; presents conclusions on laws and other legal acts concerning the usage of the state language. Implements programs dedicated to the development of the offi-cial language: supports linguistic publications and researches on the usage of the language. Establishes language standards: collects and analyses linguistic facts; deliberates on the linguistic phenomena subject to standardi-zation; by way of decisions or recommendations introduces new lin-guistic standards.

A sitting of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language of November 13, 2014, discussing the conclusions of the research on the language, used in school textbooks. The sitting was chaired by Chairperson Daiva Vaišnienė (photo by Z. Gudžinskas)

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While language shapes the cultural perception of the world, religion outlines the aspirations and principles of human existence as the coor-dinates of our thinking and the horizon of the significance of life. They both affect the concept of what we vaguely call the spirit of the na-tion: our mother tongue together with folklore and folk art formulate the world perception of a nation, while religion builds its ideosphere, that is, its worldview and the system of values. Therefore, Christianity and Catholicism in particular, having determined our cultural course, had huge influence on the restoration of the Independence of Lithu-ania. After the underground postwar resistance was exterminated by the Soviets, the Catholic Church was the only official institution left in Lithuania to oppose and resist the occupants and their ideology, sometimes at a high price of freedom of the believers or even the high-est sacrifice of their lives. This is the determining factor of the undying trust of Lithuanian people in the Catholic Church.

The census data on the religious self-identification of Lithuanians proves the fact that Christianity and especially Catholicism is the ba-sis of the historical and cultural identity of Lithuanian people and their values. On the other hand, those data show the significance of other religious denominations and the worldviews they create to the modern society; although, nowadays religion is gradually being pushed towards the sphere of individual practice alongside the offi-cial secularization policy.

The Role and Significance of the Catholic Church

The historically predominant Christian confession with three quar-ters of the population of Lithuania perceiving themselves as Cath-olics, considerably influenced certain priorities on our way of the consolidation of Independence. For example, on November 1988, immediately after the Sąjūdis Assembly, our first step was to legalize our national flag and anthem, the symbols of the statehood of Lithu-ania; meanwhile, Estonia chose to proclaim the supremacy of na-tional laws over the Soviet legislation: Soviet legal acts would come into power in Estonia only when and if the Supreme Council of Es-tonia approved of them. This example proves the difference between the Catholic sensitivity towards symbols and the Protestant orienta-tion towards the lawfulness of social conduct. This difference existed even in the times when only a little over half of the Lithuanian popu-lation considered themselves Catholics, while less than one tenth of Estonians associated themselves with Lutherans. The second day of the Assembly of the newly founded Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sąjūdis) started with the Holy Mass served by Cardinal Vincentas Sladkevičius, a former political prisoner, at the closed door of the

On March 4, 1989, a crowd of 20 thousand people accompanied the procession, carrying the earthly remains of St. Casimir, the much revered patron saint of Vilnius, from the St. Peter and St. Paul Church to the Vilnius Cathedral, to be reburied there in the most magnificent of chapels. (photo by A. Petrulevičius)

RELIGION IN LITHUANIA AFTER THE RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Irena Eglė Laumenskaitė, PhD, associate professor of Vilnius University, sociologist and anthropologist

Vilnius Cathedral, which had not yet been returned to the believers. Over 20 thousand people attended the service. Lithuania was the first of the three Baltic States to decide on the In-dependence of the nation.

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Religious Self-Identification of the Population(2011 census)

Total number of the population – 3 043 429 persons

Religious denominations and religious communities

Number of people Percentage

Christians, among them: 2,534,801 83.29Roman Catholic 2,350,478 77.23Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Catholic 706 0.02Russian Orthodox 125,189 4.11Russian Old Believers 23,330 0.77Protestant Communities, among them: 33,649 1.11

Evangelical Lutheran 18,376 0.60Evangelical Reformed 6,731 0.22Pentecostal 1,852 0.06Baptists and Free Church Christian 1,336 0.04

Christian Fellowship “The Word of Faith” 995 0.03

Charismatic Evangelistic Churches 931 0.03

Seventh Day Adventists 920 0.03The Church of Christ 516 0.02The New Apostolic Church 422 0.01Methodists 364 0.01 Unidentified Evangelists and Protestants 1,206 0.04

Armenian Apostolic Church 138 0.01

Unidentified Christians 1,310 0.04

Sunni Muslim 2,727 0.09Judaists 1,229 0.04Karaites 310 0.01

Non-Christian Communities of Christian Origin, among them:

Jehovah Witness 2,927 0.10Mormon (the Latter Day Saints) 129 0.01

Baltic Faith 5,118 0.17Buddhists 626 0.02Society for Krishna Consciousness 344 0.01 Others 410 0.01Agnostics, Freethinkers, and others 382 0.01Unaffiliated 186,670 6.13n/a 307,757 10.13

for self-governance. In 1991, diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Republic of Lithuania were re-established. A very im-portant decision in overcoming the centuries-long national tension after Lithuania had been baptized at the initiative of King Jogaila, was the decree of 1991 by Pope John Paul II to join the Diocese of Vilnius with the Lithuanian Church Province, established in 1926, thus creating two Archdioceses – the Archdiocese of Vilnius and the Archdiocese of Kaunas. By this decree, the Church consolidated the territorial integrity of Lithuania. The Archbishop of Vilnius was named Audrys Juozas Bačkis, who was nominated Cardinal in 2001. In 1993, Pope John Paul II was the first Pope in the history of the Church to visit the three Baltic States, and in his meetings with thou-sands of believers in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia he witnessed Christian openness and encouraged people to have no fear and be open to Christ in their fight against mistrust, hostility, disunity, and other cause effects of the totalitarian regime. The Concordat, signed between Lithuania and the Holy See in 1927, was abolished by the Soviets; however, legally it could not be de-nounced, therefore in 2000 three agreements between the Republic of Lithuania and the Holy See were signed in its place: 1) on legal as-pects of the relations between the Catholic Church and the State; 2) on pastoral care of the Catholics, serving in the armed structures of the Republic of Lithuania; 3) on cooperation in education and cul-ture. Although the rights to restitution were granted, first, to the Catholic Church and, later, to other traditional religious communi-ties, the question of property still is not an easy issue: it has been aggravated by a number of circumstances which, in their turn, have limited social functions of religious communities.

Legalization and Regulation of the Relations between the Church and the State

In 1995, the Seimas adopted a Law on Religious Communities and Associations of the Republic of Lithuania which, first of all,

The liberalization of the Church, having started in 1988, resulted in the declaration of the Catholic Church Restitution Act in 1990. The campaign for the rehabilitation of the monumental Christ’s Resurrection Church, which started in 1988, reached a nation-wide scope and in 1990 was returned to the believers. In 1992, the cross was re-erected on the top of the tower. In the Soviet times, the Church served as a radio factory(photo by, V. Purys, ELTA)

A today already forgotten event, related to our Catholic identity, happened on the morning of March 11, 1990: before the decision to proclaim Independence was made, the delegates of the newly elected Supreme Council of the Soviet Lithuania arrived in the St. Casimir Chapel to participate in the Holy Mass, served by former political prisoner, priest Kazimieras Vasiliauskas, in order to encourage pol-iticians to make the historic decision. Another significant proof of trust in God was the fact that so many people were firm in their de-cision to stand in the defense of the Seimas on the night of January 13, 1991, when the Soviet tanks had already crushed the most coura-geous defenders at the Television Tower. In 1990, the act on the Catholic Church in Lithuania legalized its position and defined the cooperation of the State and the Church, based on the principle of parity, recognizing the right of the Church

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF INDEPENDENCE: PERSONALITIES AS TRENDSETTERS OF THE PROFESSION

Dr. Almantas Bružas, contemporary architecture critic

The social pragmatism of the recent years has left a deep imprint on the map of our country’s architecture. This might be a reason why we are increasingly lagging behind the Estonians or Slovenians, which at some point earlier turned towards the West. The same tendency can be more and more often traced in the Latvians. Nevertheless, much has been accomplished during the years of Independence. In more than twenty years, while desperately following the well beat-en paths of globalism, we have created no architectural masterpiece of international significance; however, our cities and towns have gradually been shedding Soviet greyness and acquiring contempo-rary features. Lithuanian architects have managed rather quickly to adapt to the construction market based on private commissions and to turn away from the stylistics of post-modern architecture, which had been already forgotten in the West, towards the esthetics of modern architecture. They have created a number of architectur-al solutions, which comply with the quality criteria of modern-day architecture. In the tide of the modernization of architecture that has recently swept through the country, there have been moments of creative break-through in contemporary Lithuanian architecture that should be mentioned more specifically. The restoration of Independence was immediately followed by a wave of enthusiasm that architecturally manifested itself in im-pressive church designs. However, soon the initial spiritual eleva-tion was replaced with more pragmatic worries. The construction of churches met with financial difficulties; meanwhile, architects, having been distanced from religious matters, struggled to find so-lutions of the contemporary model of a church. One of the most im-pressive attempts of such kind is the Holy Mary, Help of Christians Church in Alytus with one tower and three naves, built as a pseu-do-basilica in 1991 (architects K. Kisielius, K. Pempė, G. Ramunis). One of the first successful structures of a more modest volume is the Convent of Sisters of Divine Providence Congregation with a chapel, built in Panevėžys in 1996. This is a simple but rather sensi-tive structure consisting of two monoslope volumes with a spacious hall in their intersection. A noteworthy specimen of early church architecture is the Saint Jo-seph Seminary and Chapel in Vilnius (architects M. Šaliamoras, J. Balkevičius; 1998), very discreetly serving as an extension of the al-ready existing architectural composition. The Church of the Holy Spirit in Šilainiai, Kaunas, which had been designed back in the So-viet times to stand high on the slopes of the Milikoniai hill, after all those years and hundreds of drawings, in 2010 acquired a moder-

ate contemporary shape of a monoslope volume in perfect harmony with the nearby monastery, built by the same team of architects (ar-chitects E. Miliūnas, D. Paulauskienė).

The oval Church of Holy Virgin Mary, located among the Soviet-style apartment buildings in Šiauliai, is a creation of more conceptual re-ligious architecture (architects D. Jakubauskas, A. Vernys, Ž. Bartu-lis; 2009). Its authors tried to combine strict liturgical canons with a modern architectural expression: its volume acquired the shape of two palms closed in a prayer. The Saint Francis of Assisi Cancer Center in Klaipeda (architects N. Rimmaudo, S. Plungė; 2012) is an interpretation of the symbolically significant Franciscan chapel of the Assisi Porziuncola, built in the fourth century. The composition of the church and the belfry demonstrates a subtle synthesis of me-dieval and contemporary architecture.

The funeral home “Gedulo namai” (the “House of Mourning”) in the historical part of Kėdainiai, designed by architect D. Čiuta in coop-eration with R. Vieštautas and V. Špečkauskas in 2005, should be al-so included in the group of religious buildings. The author managed to feel out the vibes of the surrounding nature and blended the new liturgical building with the wooden folk baroque Church of Saint Jo-seph into one expressive sacred space.

The Exposure of Architectural Democracy and Lithuanian Skyscrapers

The ABCs of the contemporary commercial architecture were obvi-ously much more understandable to our architects. It was commer-cial architecture that first blossomed in the contemporary milieu. The economic boom of the country in the second half of the nineties was embodied in the renovated bank architecture that symbolized both the reassessment of values and the tendency of the society to embrace Western democracy. Banks were the first institutions to demonstrate by ways of their architectural solutions the essential values attributed to the Western society – transparency, approachability, and progress. Grim, enclosed spaces were definitely cast away. Starting with the re-fined forms of the neoclassicist building of the Hermis Bank on Jo-gaila Street in Vilnius (architects K. Pempė, G. Ramunis; 1996), the construction of such buildings soon acquired more democratic forms.

The most innovative in this respect was the Vilnius Bank (the pres-ent day SEB Bank). While one of the first such designs – the recon-struction of the bank on Gediminas Avenue in Vilnius – was limited to a transparent entrance (architects A. Nasvytis, A. Bučas; 1996),

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the later steps on the road to transparency and openness were much bolder. Based on the new principles, the affiliated branches of the bank were designed in Kaunas and Mažeikiai (architects D. and V. Lučinskas) in 1998 and 2000 respectively, and in Kėdainiai by architects G. Natkevičius and R. Adomaitis in 2000. Architects D. Jakubauskas and A. Vernys together with their team designed an especially noteworthy building of an affiliated branch of the Vilnius Bank in downtown Šiauliai characteristic of simple, yet generalized forms and persuasive architecture. This building was one of the first to define the idea of a modern bank. At the turn of the millennia, the Vilnius Bank with its affiliated branches throughout Lithuania in-fected other banking and insurance institutions with this democratic policy of architectural expression. In its own turn, this process could not help influencing other spheres of commercial architecture. The most noticeable input into the architecture of trade centers in Lithuania has been made by the team of architect G. Jurevičius; to-gether with the “VP Market” company they have created a new archi-tectural concept of a shopping mall. Finally, those collective endeav-ors in Lithuania have been crowned by a chain of large trade and entertainment centers “Akropolis” in Vilnius, Klaipeda, and Kaunas.Other noteworthy commercial buildings include: the boldly designed salon “Stiliaus fabrikas” (architects D. Nainys, S. Gricius; 2002) in Žvėrynas, Vilnius; the colorful shopping salon “Iris” on the Sava-norių Avenue in Kaunas (architect A. Karaliaus and team; 2002 m.); the furniture center “Nemunas” of a particularly balanced composi-tion in Klaipeda (architect V. Mureikienė; 2005); the technical BMS shopping mall “Megapolis” (architects A. Ambrasas, R. Ambrasienė; 2003); and a few others. During the years of Independence, quite a number of successful solutions have been found in the architecture of hotels, car shops, and industrial buildings.One can easily understand the architects of the Soviet times, when they could enjoy no freedom of creation or the realization of profes-sional skills and creative talent. They were restricted not only by the firm five-year plans or Soviet-style construction standards, but also by the poor variety of architectural forms, technical solutions, and finishing materials. The dreams of high-rise construction in Lith-uania were yet very vague. Such constructions did not materialize promptly in the independent Lithuania either – the hotel “Lietuva”

remained the highest building in the country until the very middle of the first decade of the new millennium. However, with the new pos-sibilities, private businesses did not wait long to claim their right to reach higher, build larger, faster, and greater.

The most notable architectural changes of the beginning of the 21st century were the skylines of Vilnius and Klaipeda. The pioneer of this metamorphosis was the “AB Hanner” office tower on the Ge-ležinio Vilko Street in Vilnius. Although the so-called “glass pencil”, designed by architect A. Ambrasas and built in 2001 on the bank of the river Neris, is a relatively modest structure by international stan-dards, nevertheless, this 55-meter high building proudly bears the title of the first skyscraper of independent Lithuania. This architec-tural landmark, set amongst the green landscape of Vilnius, symbol-izes the beginning of the era of skyscraper architecture in Lithuania. In a few years, the same architect designed a nearby building for “AB Hanner” – the “Europe” Tower – which so far is the highest sky-scraper in Lithuania and the Baltics. The 148.3 meter high 33-storey tower became the main accent of the left bank of the river Neris. Ar-chitecturally Vilnius has been considerably beautified by the “Swed-bank” Headquarters (architect A. Ambrasas team), as well as the of-fice building “Victoria” on the left bank of the river Neris (architect R. Palekas studio).

In Klaipeda, the majority of skyscrapers have been constructed as apartment buildings with the highest and architecturally most im-pressive 112 meters and 34-storey high “Pilsotas” building (archi-tect D. Rakauskas; 2007). The K and D shaped hotel and apartment building high-rise towers (architects E. Neniškis, A. Liola, R. Liola, and others) also add to the skyline of Klaipeda, intriguingly creating symbolic associations.

Speaking of the construction of administrative buildings, more mod-est volumes are the most interesting: the eye-catching UAB “Lemora” building with its consoles (architects R. Raslavičius; 2004), located in the industrial area of Kaunas; the UAB “Vilbra” office building on the Švitrigaila Street in Vilnius (architect R. Bimba and others; 2004); a very appropriate commercial building on the Kęstutis Street in Žvėrynas, Vilnius (architects A. Ambrasas, V. Adomonytė; 2002).

Basketball Inspired Construction of Sports and Entertainment Arenas

In the years of Independence, sports structures have been mush-rooming throughout entire Lithuania. Most of them are sports cent-ers and gyms. However, sports architecture in Lithuania recently has been mostly associated with the universal sports and entertain-ment arenas of the major Lithuanian cities. The “culprit” of this phenomenon is not the instant desire of Lithuanians for sports and entertainments, but rather the European Basketball Championship, that swept through our country in 2011. The Šiauliai arena, built in 2007 by the design of architects E. Miliūnas, A. Baublys, G. Balčytis, L. Tuleikis, and others, brought Lithuanian sport architecture to a new league. The latter project was sort of training grounds for the group of architects before embarking on a considerably larger project, the construction of the “Žalgiris” arena with 17,500 seats on the Nemunas Island in Kaunas. The largest arena in the Baltic countries was created as a public space of sorts, or even as the “lob-by of the city”; however, this construction captures attention with its well-aligned technological part and functional solutions, which have been admired not only by basketball experts, but by world re-nowned stars of entertainment as well.

The modern “Cido” arena in Panevėžys (2007) and the “Švyturio” arena in Klaipeda (2011), designed by the team of Vilnius native ar-chitect S. Mikštas, have essentially served their purpose. The first one, adapted for cycling, has become an important center of at-traction for sports and entertainment lovers in the capital of the Aukštaitija region; while the latter arena has complemented the Klaipeda skyline with a touch of marinism.“Swedbank” Headquarters in Vilnius. Architect A. Ambrasas team

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Mass media in Lithuania, and especially the press, started their re-birth as early as 1988-1989, when many public spheres in the Soviet Union experienced rapid changes, and journalism alongside other mass media manifested themselves the boldest. By raising most es-sential questions about Lithuanian past, the press had laid a foun-dation for the birth of Sąjūdis, which was instrumental in the crash of the totalitarian regime. The newly adopted Law on the Press and other Mass Media of 1990 ensured freedom of speech and the exis-tence of free and democratic press, therefore became a true impetus for the liberalization process.After the Independence of Lithuania was restored on March 11, 1990, the freedom of mass media and journalists constantly gained strength. However, the Government still was willing to control mass media the old way, especially the Lithuanian State Radio and Televi-sion. This function was delegated to the Press Control Service, which was established in 1990 and abolished when a new Law on the Pro-vision of Information to the Public was adopted in 1996. On January 13, 1991, not only the new budding mass media but the entire coun-try faced a true challenge, when peaceful protesters were massacred and free radio and television were taken over by Soviet troops. On January 16, 1991, a transmitter was installed in the Supreme Coun-cil, so that Lithuanian people could receive coverage of the events by makeshift television and radio. Although the working conditions

were hard, the population had access to the information on the Par-liament activities and resolutions.The first Law on the Provision of Information to the Public, adopted in 1996, later was several times improved. However, from the begin-ning, it created a set of whole new provisions for the development of modern Lithuanian mass media. The law also laid a basis for the formation of self-regulatory institutions, such as the Journalists and Publishers’ Ethics Commission, which followed the guidelines of the Journalists and Publishers’ Ethics Code, adopted in 1996 and revised in 2005. The law also preconditioned the creation of new organizations: the Office of the Inspector of Journalist Ethics and the Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission. In close cooper-ation with journalists’ and publishers’ organizations and non-gov-ernmental institutions, they took an active part in the monitoring and evaluation of the mass media contents. The Ministry of Culture became an authorized institution in the sphere of providing of in-formation to the public on a governmental level. On September 2, 1996, the Press, Radio and Television Support Foundation was created to help prevent the decisions of the gov-ernment and politicians from influencing the direct allocation of finances to the providers of information to the public. The Foun-dation supports cultural and educational projects of public informa-tion providers by way of tenders. The support of those projects have preserved cultural and educational press and have helped regional television to create unique programs.Until the very end of 1996, Lithuanian mass media underwent a se-ries of dramatic events, including the mentioned above murder of the daily newspaper “Respublika” journalist Vitas Lingys and the privatization of the press.After 1996, Lithuanian mass media faced another challenge in the form of foreign investments. For example, in 1998, one of the big-gest Lithuanian dailies, “Kauno diena”, was acquired by “Orkla Press”, an affiliated branch of the Norwegian “Orkla Media”. An-other challenge came from Russia with the first big economic cri-sis, as well as new trials with money and power that started chang-ing the contents of journalist articles: journalism gradually merged with advertisements and propaganda. Later, the traditional jour-nalism was challenged with Internet journalism and its symbol, the news portal DELFI. The expanding Internet journalism made al-terations to the mass media market which caused big problems to national and regional daily publications. Meanwhile, the growing

ThE DEvELOPMENT AND AchIEvEMENTs OF LIThuANIAN MAss MEDIA FROM 1990 TO 2015

Dainius Radzevičius, journalist, President of the Lithuanian Journalists Association

On January 13, 1991, at noon, Soviet soldiers occupied the Press Palace in Vilnius; at 1:50 in the morning, the Lithuanian Radio and Television building alongside the Television Tower fell into the hands of the Soviet army. At 2:00, Lithuanian free broadcasting stopped and was taken over by the Kaunas branch of the Lithuanian Television in Sitkūnai and Juragiai near Kaunas, equipped with a transmitter of moderate capacity. In the photo: Soviet paratroopers at the Lithuanian Radio and Television building (photo by G. Svitojus, ELTA)

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audience of Internet users prompted the creation of a new type of mass media – Internet portals. At present, the biggest news portals in Lithuania are united by the Internet Mass Media Association. Trends and tendencies are set by the main news portal in Lithuania, DELFI, surpassing any oth-er news portal in its quality and size, although recently it has been challenged by other rival portals such as www.15min.lt or www.lry-tas.lt. The history of DELFI started in the autumn of 1999, when the “Microlink As” acquired and merged two companies, “skaitmeninės komunikacijos” and “Taidė”. Part of the business of the latter com-pany was sold elsewhere. The new company was named UAB DELFI. Its main designation at that time was to provide Internet services of communication, station maintenance, and others. On February 3, 2000, a news portal www.delfi.lt was born. In 2007 DELFI was ac-quired by Estonian “Express Group”. When Lithuania joined the European Union in 2004, Lithuanian mass media adopted new standards and new legal obligations. How-ever, the tendencies and development of the market were essentially determined by several specific features: a vast mass media variety and huge competition not only within a segment but also among dif-ferent sorts of mass media. There is one more curious feature: the majority of Lithuanian mass media is controlled by local capital; however, the leaders of the mar-ket are the companies with foreign capital. Around 2003, Lithua-nian mass media underwent a considerable reduction and alteration of the market, including a decrease in the number of publication ti-tles, and the domination of a different type of magazines. For ex-ample, a newspaper-style magazine “savaitė” (“Week”), founded in 2000 by the joint-stock company uAB savaitė, almost inconspicu-ously grew into the sole leader of the market, and by 2014 had the circulation of more than 200 thousand copies.Another publication, the weekly “Žmonės” (“People”) is another ex-clusive product of the market: it did not enjoy much popularity when it was a monthly magazine, but once it became a weekly, it was and still is unparalleled in its segment. The “savaitė” has always been based on local capital, while the “Žmonės” in its peak years belonged to the foreign company “Schibsted”. However, in autumn 2013, the Norwegian “schibsted Media Group” announced the decision to sell its “Eesti Meedia” (EM) to Estonian publishers. Thus, the “schibsted” withdrew from the Baltic countries after 15 years of activities. For a number of years, the joint-stock company uAB “Žurnalų leidy-bos grupė” (ŽLG) is a leader in magazine publishing in Lithuania. At present, it publishes 8 magazines with the total yearly circula-tion of more than 11 million copies and more than 1 million readers.

The ŽLG owns the biggest weekly magazines “Žmonės” (“People”) and “Ji” (“her”), as well as monthly magazines “Laima” and “Edi-ta”, bimonthly magazines “Žmonės. Legendos” (“People. Legends”), “virtuvės paslaptys” (“The secrets of Kitchen”), “Gyvenk sveikiau” (“Live healthy”), and a semi-annual magazine “Laimos stilius”.

In general, the entire Lithuanian mass media has been developing in different stages. After March 11, 1990, Lithuanian mass media essentially split into two groups: the old, Soviet times’ press, which was undergoing reforms or had already reformed, and the new commercial or non-commercial publications, television and radio stations. Since Lithuania had decided to separate governmental in-stitutions from influencing mass media, the former state-run press was privatized; the same thing happened to the state news agency ELTA. In 1990, a new private news agency, BNs was created along-side the already reformed ELTA, based on the journalism princi-ples of quality of contents.

Radio in Lithuania has always been and still is an exclusive phenom-enon with the most loyal audience. Traditionally, strong positions, especially in journalism, are attributed to public radio broadcast-ing. The Lithuanian State Radio and Television offers its listeners high quality programs, alternative to commercial contents, via radio stations “LRT Radijas”, “LRT Klasika”, and “LRT Opus”. However, there is a unique radio station, “M-1”, which started broadcasting at 7 PM, on December 31, 1989. For the first time, Lithuanians heard this strange abbreviation which actually meant “Music 1”. The au-thor of the idea and the creator of this radio station was Hubertas Grušnys (June 19, 1961 – October 21, 2006). Later, “M-1”, spawned into other radio stations, such as “M-1 plius”, “Lietus”, and “Laluna”. “M-1” is broadcast online all over the world. It was the first commer-cial radio station to offer direct video broadcasting.

However, from 8 AM on January 31, 1991, “M-1” acquired a strong

Young journalists at the grave of journalist Vitas Lingys. Twenty years ago in 1993, B. Dekanidze ordered the assassination of journalist Vitas Lingys who had covered the activities of the criminal gang “Vilnius Brigade” in the press. In September 1989, together with his associates he created the daily newspaper “Respublika” and acted as its deputy editor in chief. His main journalistic focus was on the criminal deeds of the gang “Vilnius Brigade” which was very active at that time in Lithuania. (photo by D. Radzevičius, from archives of Lithuanian Journalist Association)

The Lithuanian Telegram Agency

ELTA staff on the eve of its 80th anniversary on March 1, 2000, and

celebrating its 95th anniversary in 2015

(from ELTA archives)

Press conference of Inspector of Journalists Ethics R. Gudaitis at the BNS press center, March 27, 2007 (from BNS archives)

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Lithuanian SportSmen aS heraLdS and Standard-bearerS of the independence of the State

Gintaras Nenartavičius, President of the Lithuanian Sports Journalists Federation, the daily „Lietuvos rytas“ sports editor, sports journalist since 1991

after independence was proclaimed, it took another three years for our country’s sportsmen to win the right to hoist our tricolor on the sports arenas of the world.

the sports achievements of the 1980-ties in the Soviet union were very significant not only as such, but also as involving the spirit of rivalry underlined with national consciousness and accompanied by its main accents: the tricolor flag, the Gediminas Columns, and the historic coat-of-arms, the Vytis.

Vilnius “Žalgiris” footballers or Kaunas “Žalgiris” basketball play-ers, competing with sportsmen of other Soviet republics, together with their Lithuanian spectators always cherished the idea of the in-dependent Lithuanian team, instead of the Soviet anthem, singing our national “Tautinė giesmė”. The peak of our sports achievements within a Soviet team was reached in the Seoul olympics, when our best basketball players won gold medals and strengthened the wish of the nation to be represented on sports arenas independently.

On December 11, 1988, within a couple of months, the Lithuanian National Olympic Committee was re-established in Vilnius. Another 15 months were left until the actual declaration of the independence of Lithuania happened.

At that time, sports was probably the sphere where one could feel the strongest wish to break free from the Soviet Union. Not everything went smoothly; however, the main objective was achieved when Team Lithuania marched under the Lithuanian tricolor flag in the Olympics of Albertville and Barcelona.

in 25 years of independence, Lithuanian sportsmen have won hun-dreds of medals in the World and european championships; howev-er, nothing can emotionally compare with the return of team Lithu-ania into the family of world sports in 1992.

A new epoch in the chronicles of Lithuanian sports was symbolically started in the 2012 Olympics in London by a 15-year old swimmer, Rūta Meilutytė, who was the first gold medal winner of the new gen-eration, born and raised in independent Lithuania.

This review offers glimpses of the most significant days, sporting events, and people in the sports history of modern Lithuania. We are not trying to cover everything and all; it is just a modest attempt to give an understanding of the quarter of a century long development of Lithuanian sports, based on personal experience and emotions.

This is How it All Started

I did not have the privilege to witness Lithuanian sports breaking free from the Soviet Union; however, I remember one detail very clearly.in the last year of my high school, our new and young history teacher tried to encourage us to take more interest in the newest develop-ments in our history, which were unravelling before our eyes, rather than just learning textbook truisms. In December 1988, I had an op-portunity to tell the class about the reestablishment of the Lithuani-an National Olympic Committee, an event which I had read about in the newspaper “Sportas”. That way the echo of the exceptional event reached one of the provincial regions of Lithuania. at that time, i did not know personally anyone from the reestablishing group, howev-er, in twenty five years I had the chances to meet most of them and learn about that historic event first-hand.Indeed, Lithuanian sports declared Independence fifteen months earlier than the country itself, although our politicians often forgot to mention the fact at official celebrations. Let us go back in time and imagine the atmosphere: this happened in 1988, when red flags were flying at every corner and the word “sovereignty” was much more used than the word “independence”. The document of the historic

The first Lithuanian basketball team before the Barcelona Olympic qualifying tournament in 1992: the so-called “another dream team” won bronze medals at the Barcelona Olympics and returned Lithuania into the basketball elite (photo by L. Capazzola, from Š. Marčiulionis‘ personal archive)

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assembly, as well as the memories of its participants leave no doubt: it was a true revolution, although partially blessed by the leadership of the communist party who gave permission for the event. howev-er, sports authorities exceeded their authority by founding the inde-pendent Lithuanian national olympic committee instead of a more neutral formation. “Some people considered us idealists; thought that we were unable to understand the dangers of the situation, and were trying to fly the flag of Independence too early, – wrote Artūras Poviliūnas, the long-term president of the national olympic committee in his monogra-phy “Olympic Lithuania 1918–2008: the Turning Point, its Stages, and World Contexts”. – It was not an easy period: not only had oth-ers considered us trouble-making rebels, but our own people also reprimanded us for having premature dreams of the independence of Lithuanian sports, when the country itself was not yet free. how-ever, our attempts to return to the international olympic movement did not become any easier with the restoration of the Independence of Lithuania. The country itself had to fight for the international rec-ognition. Actions taken by Lithuanian diplomats in the attempt of achieving the essential objective, as well as the endless international negotiations of the olympic activists, were parallel actions compli-menting each other in the fight for freedom from the Soviet empire.” it took the national olympic committee two years to achieve the desired recognition, which had been essentially facilitated by the po-litical drama of august 1991 in moscow, now known as the putsch. Many attempts had been made before to break through the wall, firmly held by President of the International Olympic Committee Juan antonio Samaranch alongside president of the Soviet olym-pic committee Vladimir Smirnov. the Lithuanian national olympic committee wrote letters, asked for audience, and pleaded for recog-nition; however, IOC looked back at Moscow and did not make any move for another entire year. And yet, in December 1989, IOC decided that the representatives of the three Baltic States should be received by the IOC Director Gen-eral, at least out of courtesy. The meeting was held on February 15, 1990, in Lausanne. Lithuanians were so happy to have broken the ice; however, ioc did not think that way: they considered the meet-ing just a consultation. it took another couple of months after the independence restora-tion Act had been proclaimed on March 11, 1990, to get a meeting with J.a. Samaranch himself. however, he listen more to what V. Smirnov was saying, rather than to what the baltic countries had to tell the international olympic committee.In September 1990, the executive committee of IOC finally react-ed to the situation by forming a commission on the Baltic States, which arrived in Lithuania in November. However, in December, IOC turned back to V. Smirnov again.

The bloodshed of January 1991 caused LNOC many additional trou-bles, as the leadership had to decide where to hide the documenta-tion and how to organize the LNOC activities abroad.IOC did not hurry to react: at a Executive Committee sitting in march, the leadership decided to arrange another meeting with the representatives of the baltic States in June. the meeting was held on July 8; J.A. Samaranch finally changed his attitude and admitted that a compromise should be found so that sportsmen did not suffer. however, the ioc commission was scheduled to visit Lithuanian only in November. Nobody knows now what would have happened if the situation had been protracted and the Moscow putsch would not have been overturned. From then, the events started accelerating. When on September 17, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined the United Nations Organization, the next day IOC made a declaration on the return of the baltic countries into the international olympic movement. ioc also took the opportunity to invite the baltic States to participate in the Winter Olympics of 1992 in Albertville. In an-other couple of months, the ioc commission presented ioc with the question on the petition of the three baltic States to recognize their respective National Olympic Committees. On November 11, the case of the recognition was officially solved.

Artūras Poviliūnas: the Genius of Sports Diplomacy

For six terms, a total of 24 years, Artūras Poviliūnas served as the leader of the Lithuanian national olympic committee. from a young reckless adventurer to the veteran of sports diplomacy – such was the road of a young Kaunas native who became the leader of the Lithuanian National Olympic Committee in 37, and after all those years refused to stay in office. Although A. Poviliūnas is publicly best known as a sports movement leader, he himself had been a decent basketball player and a one-time member of the “Žalgiris” basketball team, therefore very well understood the problems of other sportsmen. “The most difficult thing on the road to the LNOC recognition was to watch sportsmen sacrifice their careers for the cause of independ-ence. We were the only ones who refused to participate in Soviet championships, therefore, until our recognition, Lithuanian sports-men did not have opportunities to compete internationally. this de-cision of ours caused a revolution in the world of Soviet sports. i saw how sportsmen suffered; however, nobody complained”, – said the President of LNOC about the hard struggle for recognition. Many times the opponents of A. Poviliūnas painted him red, howev-er, he himself relentlessly went into conflicts with the Soviet Union and Russia. When he became the first president of the newly rees-tablished National Olympic Committee in 1988, the future was un-certain; however, he did not hesitate to take up the responsibility, which he conscientiously carried through all those years. in 2012, in the end of his sixth term, he boldly challenged Russians, when they attempted to “steal” our Olympic athlete Donata Rimšaitė who had been trained in Lithuania, and refused to compromise with them. In both instances, A. Poviliūnas very well knew his opponents and had dealt with them before; however, he refused to make concessions and firmly stood by his principles.

Celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Lithuanian National Olympic Committee in Vilnius Museum of the Applied Arts, 2008. In the photo: members of the working group for the reestablishment of the Olympic Committee (photo by M. Kulbis, “Lietuvos rytas”)

Future President of the International Olympic

Committee Jacques Rogge (on the left), A. Poviliūnas,

and President of the International Olympic

Committee Juan Antonio Samaranch, circa 1993

(photo from the Lithuanian National Olympic

Committee archive)

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An Overview of Information Technologies from 1990 to 2015ab teo Lt, www.teo.lt.

Webpage www.technologijos.lt.

Lithuanian Agriculture from 1990 to 2015: Escape from the Collective FarmAgricultural Policies in Transition Economies: Monitoring and Evaluation, paris: oecd, EBPO publications of different years.

The Agrarian Economies of Central- Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, World bank Working paper, 2001 05 25.

Lietuvos žemės ūkis amžių sandūroje (Lithuanian agriculture at the turn of centuries), The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania, 2005.

Private archives of Dr. Vytautas Knašys.

Swinnen, Johan F. M. & Rozelle, Scott, From Marx and Mao to the Market: The Economics and Politics of Agricultural Transition, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Construction and Architecture in 1990–2015: On the Road of Sustainable DevelopmentPrivate archives of Adakras Šeštakauskas, President of the Lithuanian Builders Association.

information and calculations of the Lithuanian builders association.

buivydas, rimantas, Architektūra: Pozityvai ir Negatyvai (architecture: positive and Negative), Vilnius: UAB “Ex arte”, 2006.

A New Stage in the Environmental ProtectionWebpage of the Environmental Protection Agency, www.gamta.lt.

Webpage of the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania, www.am.lt.

The National Environmental Protection Strategy, the ministry of environment of the Republic of Lithuania.

the State Service for protected areas under the ministry of environment, www.vstt.lt.

Lithuanian Forests and Forestry in Twenty-Five Years of Independencethe magazine Miškai (forests) archive.

brukas, algirdas, Miškai ir miškų ūkis pasitinkant 25-us Nepriklausomybės metus (forests and forestry in the Wake of 25th Anniversary of Independence), www.forest.lt/index.php?707376226 (viewed on 02 02 2015).

brukas, algirdas, Miškai ir Nepriklausomybė (forests and independence), www.technologijos.lt/n/mokslas/gamta_ir_biologija/S-16625/straipsnis/Algirdas-Brukas-Miskai-ir-nepriklausomybe?l=2&p=1 (viewed on 02 02 2015).

The Development of Lithuanian EducationThe Association of Lithuanian Higher Education Institutions for General Admission (Lamabpo) data of 2013.

Eurostat data (1989–2013).

Statistics Lithuania data (1992–2014).

Lithuanian Science and StudiesGontis, Vygintas, Lietuvos mokslas pereinamuoju laikotarpiu: statistinė analizė (Lithuanian Science in transition: Statistical analysis), mokslo Lietuva (Lithuania of Science) 19, 2001.

Gontis, Vygintas, Lithuanian Science in Transition: Statistical Analysis, revue baltique, 2000, 24–32.

Jokubaitis, Alvydas, Universitetas be dvasios, bet su vadyba (University without a Soul but with Management), www.delfi.lt/news/ringas/lit/a-jokubaitis-universitetas-be-dvasios-bet-

413

su-vadyba.d?id=66497514 (viewed on 02 02 015).

Kaulakys, Bronislovas, Lietuvos mokslo planus įgyvendino Estija (the plans of Lithuanian Science, Implemented by Estonia), www.delfi.lt/mokslas/mokslas/lietuvos-mokslo-planus-igyvendino-estija.d?id=64751021 (viewed on 02 02 2015).

Kristapsons, Janis, Martinson, Helle, Dagytė, Ina, Baltic R&D Systems in Transition, riga: Zinatne, 2003.

Lietuvos aukštasis mokslas. Baltoji knyga (Lithuanian higher education. the White Book), Vilnius: the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania, 1999.

Lietuvos galimybės ir būtini darbai siekiant ES Lisabonos strategijoje užsibrėžto tikslo – 2010 metais moksliniams tyrimams finansuoti naudoti iki 3 proc. BVP (Lithuanian Opportunities and Required Actions in Achieving the Objective of the Lisbon Strategy of Using up to Three Percent of the GDP for Scientific Research in 2010), the Research Council of Lithuania, 2005.

Lietuvos mokslininkų laimėjimai (Lithuanian Scientists Achievements), Vilnius: Sapnų sala, 2007.

Lietuvos mokslo ir studijų plėtros strateginės nuostatos – 2000 (Strategic provisions of the Science and Studies Development –2000, Vilnius: the Research Council of Lithuania, 2000.

Lietuvos mokslo ir technologijų baltoji knyga (the White book of Lithuanian Science and technologies). Vilnius: Justitia, 2001.

Moksliniai tyrimai ir eksperimentinė plėtra Lietuvoje (Scientific Research and Experimental Development in Lithuania), Vilnius: Tyliaus grafika, 2004.

Nacionalinis susitarimas siekiant ekonominės ir socialinės pažangos (national agreement on Achieving Economic and Social Progress, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, 2002.

Freedom to Create: Lithuanian Culture from 1990 to 2015Private archives of Dr. Almantas Bružas.

Narušytė, Agnė, Lietuvos fotografija: 1990–2010 (Lithuanian Photography: 1990–2010), Vilnius: baltos lankos, 2011.

religion in Lithuania after the restoration of independence

Arkivyskupas bishop S. Tamkevičius teigia, kad visuomenė yra tapusi kietaširdė ir negailestinga (Archbishop S. Tamkevičius states that the society has become cold-Hearted and ruthless), www.lrytas.lt/-13158205321314650474-arkivyskupas-s-tamkevičius-teigia-kad-visuomenė-yra-tapusi-kietaširdė-ir-negailestinga.htm (viewed on 02 02 2015).

data of the representative quantitative survey of 2013 on the faith and religiousness in Lithuania.

data of the representative sociological survey of 2013 on the faith and religiousness in Lithuania.

The Feast of Divine Mercy in Šiluva, webpage of Vatican Radio, lt.radiovaticana.va/news/2011/09/11/dievo_gailestingumo_šventė_šiluvoje/lit-519675 (viewed on 02 02 2015).

the european Value Study (eVS) data of 1990.

the european Value Study (eVS) data of 1990, 1999, and 2008.

Lithuanian Public Survey on Religious Movements, 2007, www.tm.lt/dok/2007-baltijos-tyrimai-apie-rel-judejimus.pdf .

School and gymnasium rating methodology, presented by the Veidas Magazine in 2014, xneox.com/spauda/veidas-lietuvos-gimnazij-reitingas-2014.php (viewed on 02 02 2015).

The grouping by religions (Christians, Non-Christian communities of Christian Origins) and confessional groups (Protestant groups of the theological tradition) was performed by the author of the review, Dr. I. E. Laumenskaitė, based on the Statistics Lithuania census of 2011, ttp://osp.stat.gov.lt/documents/10180/217110/Gyv_kalba_tikyba.pdf/1d9dac9a-3d45-4798-93f5-941fed00503f.

Webpage of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania www.lrs.lt.

Sources and authors of the photos that were used in the headers of the articles The Road to Independence

Lithuanian Emigrants in the Support of Lithuania: The Overview of the History of Lithuanian Diaspora and its Assistance to Lithuania in the Period of the Statehood Restoration from 1987 through 1993

photo from Vytautas magnus university Lithuanian emigration institute archive

Restoration of Independence. Dissident Activities

Photo from Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre archive

Sąjūdis

Photo by R. Jurgaitis, ELTA

Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania

Photo by V. Gulevičius, ELTA

PoliticsEvolution of the Parliamentary System after the Restoration of Lithuanian Independence

Photo from the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania archive

Presidential InstitutionPhoto by M. Bialek

Government of the Republic of LithuaniaPhoto by A. Pater

CourtsPhoto by D. Labutis, ELTA

Lithuania in the European UnionPhoto from webpage www.europa.eu

Restoration of the Lithuanian National Defence System, Its Development and Perspectivesphoto from ministry of national defence archive

Lithuanian Foreign Policy in the Years of IndependencePhoto by Dž. Barysaitė, from Foreign Ministry archive

Overview of the Legal System from 1990 to 2015Photo by Š. Mažeika

The Development of Civil Society: 1990–2015Photo by D. Labutis, ELTA

The Development of Lithuanian Municipal Authorities, 1990–2015Photo by R. Dačkus, the press service of the President of the Republic of Lithuania

The Development of Internal Affairs and Public Security from 1990 through 2015Photo by I. Sidarevičius, ELTA

Achievements and Development Tendencies of Lithuanian Healthcare in the Years of IndependencePhoto by unknown author, ELTA

Social Security Policy and Development in Lithuania, 1990–2015Photo by G. Savickis, ELTA

EconomicsRapid Development of Lithuanian Business in 1990–2015Photo by D. Labutis, ELTA

The Ship Called Independence: Challenges of Lithuanian Power Industry from 1990 through 2015Photo by D. Labutis, ELTA

The Lithuanian Corridor. The Development of Lithuanian Transport System from 1990 to 2015Photo by D. Labutis, ELTA

Lithuanian Agriculture from 1990 to 2015: Escape from the Collective FarmPhoto by E. Sidaravičiūtė

Construction and Architecture in 1990–2015: On the Road of Sustainable DevelopmentPhoto by V. Purys, ELTA

1990–2015: a New Stage in the Environmental ProtectionPhoto by unknown author, VSTT-ELTA

Lithuanian Forests and Forestry in Twenty-Five Years of IndependencePhoto by unknown author, magazine “Miškai” (“Forests”) archive

Overview of the Lithuanian Tourism Economy from 1990 to 2015: Doors Widely Open for TouristsPhoto by R. Balsienė, ELTA

Science and EducationThe Development of Lithuanian EducationPhoto by D. Labutis, ELTA

Lithuanian Science and StudiesPhoto by E. Kurauskas

CultureFreedom to Create: Lithuanian Culture from 1990 to 2015photo from Lithuanian State Symphony orchestra archive

Religion in Lithuania after the Restoration of IndependencePhoto by V. Kopūstas, ELTA

The Development and Achievements of Lithuanian Mass Media from 1990 to 2015photo from archives of Lithuanian Journalist association

Lithuanian Sportsmen as Heralds and Standard-bearers of the Independence of the StatePhoto by M. Kulbis, “Lietuvos rytas” archive

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Index of the Topicsagriculture 282

architecture 386

arts 350

business 164

cinema 362

civil Society 126

construction 290

courts 90

declaration of independence 49

diaspora and its assistance to Lithuania 22

dissident activities 33

education 318

environmental protection 294

energy industry 250

environmental protection 294

european union 98

finances 256

foreign policy 112

forestry 300

Government 78

healthcare 144

information technology 280

Language 367

Legal System 122

Libraries 364

Literature 348

media 394

municipal authorities 132

museums 363

music 358

national defence System 102

parliament 56

political System 54

religion 380

Sąjūdis 41

Science and Studies 326

Social Security 154

Sports 398

theatre 355

tourism 304

transport System 264

Index of the AuthorsAngelė Adomaitienė 154, 294

Arūnas Antanaitis 22

Kastytis Antanaitis 33

algirdas astrauskas 132

Lijana Bajarūnienė 304

Dalia Bardauskienė 290

Darius Beinoravičius 122

Lauras bielinis 54

algirdas brukas 300

Almantas Bružas 386

romas buivydas 144

Eugenijus Butkus 331

Lijana Cibulskienė 102, 126, 280

Irma Dubovičienė 284

Valdas Kaminskas 138

Bronius Kaulakys 326

Bronius Kleponis 132

Rūta Klišytė 348

Vytautas Petras Knašys 284

Irena Eglė Laumenskaitė 380

alvydas medalinskas 41

Vaclovas Miškinis 250

Gintaras Nenartavičius 398

Ieva Petronytė 126

415

Dainius Radzevičius 394

Valdas rakutis 110

Akvilė Redko 318

Rima Rutkauskaitė 164

algirdas Šakalys 264

Adakras Šeštakauskas 290

Milda Vainiutė 122

Daiva Vaišnienė 367

antanas Valionis 112

Eglė Vileikienė 138

Gerda Žigienė 256

Index of organisations, enterprises and resortsAdax 178

alga 180

alvora 182

Apranga Group 184

Association of Lithuanian Chambers of commerce, industry and crafts 174

aurika 186

azarto technika 188

baltic pack 190

Birštonas 308

biuro pasaulis 192

center for physical Sciences and technology 336

druskininkai 310

durpeta 194

elsis 196

Global BOD Group 198

Klaipėda State Seaport 274

Klasikinė Tekstilė 200

Kodmeda 202

LATGA 372

Lelija 204

Lietpak 206

Lietuvos Geležinkeliai 270

Litexpo 208

Lithuanian academy of Sciences 334

Lithuanian airports 276

Lithuanian business confederation 172

Lithuanian business employers confederation 176

Lithuanian confederation of industrialists 170

Lithuanian energy institute 342

Lithuanian folk culture center 374

Lithuanian Laser association 338

Margūnas 210

marisa 212

Medicinos Projektai 214

Medicinos Technologijos 216

mida Lt 218

National Museum: Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania 378

neringa 312

norvelita 220

Orion Global Pet 224

Oro Navigacija 278

palanga 314

Penki Kontinentai 226

Požeminiai Darbai 228

Precizika Group 230

Selteka 232

Senukai Group 234

Skuba 238

Suslavičius 240

Tautrimo Aštrausko Klinika 242

telekonta 244

Vilniaus duona 246

YIT Kausta 248

Žalgiris Arena 408

“Lithuania. 25 Years of Independence”. Selected ReviewsThis book is an English translation of the first volume of an encyclopaedic publication, “Asmenybės. 1990–2015 m. Lietuvos pasiekimai”. The book is dedicated to the anniver-sary of Independence of Lithuania. The encyclopaedic publication offers an overview of the development and achievements of the re-established State of independent Lithu-ania from 1990 through 2015. the overview includes 36 reviews on the achievements of the State in its social, cultural, and economic development during the past 25 years that cover the most memorable events, the most significant progress and achievements of business companies, as well as the most important institutions, their accomplishments, and the leadership of the time.

PublisherPublic Enterprise Leidybos idėjų centrasGedimino Str. 47-219, LT-44242 KaunasTel. No. +370 687 54699info@leidybosidejos.ltwww.leidybosidejos.ltwww.asmenybes.lt

Director Vesta JozonienėDeputy Director Arvydas KvietkusProject Manager Vida DauderienėPublishing Manager Arnas JozonisLanguage Editor Vaiva MarkevičiūtėInformation collected by Irena Surkovienė, Gediminas Miškinis and Roma MilašienėAccountant Dovilė Čubaraitė

Printed byUAB “BALTO print”Utenos str. 41A, LT-08217 Vilniusedition of 1000 copies