A Lithuanian compares Communism & Capitalism
http://www.efn.org/~rolanda/discovering/intro.html
Discovering America As It Is
Valdas Anelauskas
Atlanta: Clarity Press, Inc., 1999
{p. 1} Introduction
My Journey to the Land of Misery & Plutocracy
... There are thousands, perhaps even millions of naive people around the world who still dream about coming to live in America. It remains the destination of choice for those who wish to emigrate from their own countries. America is still like a mysterious enchantress to many. This is one of the main reasons why I have written this book. I want to tell the truth to others who, like myself ten years ago, are either ill-informed and know next to nothing about this country, or whose knowledge is distorted by propaganda. + + +
{p. 2} Both my original positive views on America and on capitalism as well as the subsequent evolution of my world outlook, had their roots in my experiences in my native Lithuania. I grew up opposed to the Soviet communist regime that ruled my homeland. The slogan "question authority" well describes my attitude toward all that I usually refer to as "the System" -- any system. As a result, when I came to the United States, I still maintained a relatively skeptical attitude toward everything I saw here or was told. I wanted to find out for myself before coming to a final conclusion. My increasing alienation from the American system was not the disillusionment of someone whose personal plans and ambitions have gone awry; rather, it resulted from my intellectual predisposition to probe and test the generally accepted (and officially endorsed) version of reality, to see to what extent it accorded with truth. I have always preferred to see with my own eyes, and to think with my own brain.
The Soviet Union also had its own conventional view (maybe it would be better to say "official view") of the world according to which, for example, the Red Army "liberated" Lithuania ... Liberated us from what? While the Soviets may well have viewed themselves as liberating the Lithuanian peasants and working class from their domination by landlords and capitalists, from the perspective of Lithuanians, who rightly felt their historic national identity to have paramount meaning and value, such "liberation" coincided with simply eliminating our country from the map of the world.
To be honest, perhaps I wouldn't have had much against even that Soviet-style mock-communism if it hadn't been forced upon us, but freely chosen by our nation from multiple choices within our independent Lithuanian state -- in other words, through democratic free elections. But the Soviets forced their communist system upon us with terribly brutal violence. More than 100,000 people from Lithuania (including many of my relatives) were deported to Siberia and thousands died or were killed there. This is how we were introduced to communism.
Perhaps I might use the analogy of rape: even if the process did not destroy the body, it was repugnant and abhorrent to the spirit. Even if the communist system itself could be presumed not to have brought about socio-economic harm for most people, in spiritual terms, it was nonetheless the rape of a whole nation. ...
So, this is the most important reason why an absolute majority of Lithuanians weren't satisfied with the imposition of Soviet communism. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed because it was like a prison of nations. Even many Russians felt that way. The huge Soviet empire had been created artificially and by brutal force, much of it from before rise of communism. ...
{p. 3} The Lithuanian people have very deep nationalistic feelings, just as do all the ancient homogeneous nations in other European countries and elsewhere. Our ethnic identity is a very important part of our mentality and way of life. We are not into multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism, when it is incorrectly defined as losing one's own culture to become assimilated into some supposedly universal culture -- which usually in reality is the culture of the largest or dominating component. Russian communists tried to turn us into a "Soviet people" with no national feelings or attachments.
Ironically, the Soviets may have thought that national identity had little lasting meaning for people, and could be eradicated without much pain, given equal and more or less fair socio-economic situations. The late twentieth century has certainly proved how mistaken that view is. Yet was this not the supposition on which America was built -- the multicultural "melting pot?" The American melting pot is different from the Soviet one, however. It's not accomplished by brute force. They don't force anyone here to jump into this pot and melt in it. The people who do that do so because most of them deliberately want to melt and become Americans. I mean new immigrants, of course, and not the Native or African Americans, who never had the choice and have always struggled to retain their ethnic identity in America.
What was going on in Lithuania was a legitimate nationalist struggle. Everybody in Lithuania (except perhaps only small Russian and Polish minorities) wanted to remain Lithuanian and dreamed that Lithuania would become an independent country again. Before 1918, Lithuania had been ruled by the Russian czar for over 120 years. Descended from a tribe of defiantly independent Aryan knights, Lithuanians had hated and fought against Russian domination then -- and did so again when the "new" communist Russia invaded us, sweeping us under the red flag. ...
While my family -- the Anelauskas family -- had been wealthy landowners during the short period between two World Wars when Lithuania was independent, my own early predisposition against the Soviet regime in Lithuania had nothing to do with the fact that my grandparents were wealthy or that my parents weren't collaborationists, but rather reflected a feeling of anger and resentment at the Russian conquest common among all Lithuanians. Our family retained an historic hatred of Russian imperialism, so in some senses it was hardly surprising that it should be directed as well at its modern version of enforced communism. After the Soviet Red Army occupied Lithuania again in 1940, my grandparents !ost all their property. Worse, the
{p. 4} Soviets deported them to Siberia as "enemies of the people." My father fought in the guerrilla resistance against the Russian invaders. When he was captured, the KGB special tribunal, the so-called "troika," sentenced him to death. While on death row, his sentence was suddenly changed to twenty-five years in the Siberian GULag. He spent nearly ten years -- more than the famous Solzhenitsyn -- in various prison camps in Russia's far North. Only in 1959, after Nikita Khruschev granted amnesty to most political prisoners, did he return home to Lithuarlia. I was born the next year.
I think my father's spirit was cowed during that lost decade during which he was incarcerated and under threat of death. Evideny, those ten years of torment he endured in the Soviet GULag were enough for him. He didn't want to drop salt on a bleeding wound. He wanted to live a quiet, low-profile life, and he also wanted me, his son, to have a quiet life and not to get in trouble because of political activism. This is why my father never encouraged me in any way to become a rebel against the existing state of affairs. While my parents never acquiesced to what happened to our county, they also never expressed their discontent openly. They kept it inside, hoping to prevent me or my sister from being inspired by their negative opinions. After returning home from Siberia, my father refused to take any further part in the resistance movement, preferring instead to pursue a quiet career as a scientist. He went along, more or less, as did the majority of mainstream Lithuanians at that time. But he never joined the Communist Party, nor did he pursue any kind of opportunistic career within the Soviet "nomenclatura." ...
Despite general resentment among Lithuanians to foreign domination, there were certain benefits to conformity. Economic hardship wasn't a major feature of the post-war Soviet communist system. The most important and worst thing for our family (just as for most Lithuanians) was that our beloved motherland wasn't an independent state and that it was occupied and controlled by a foreign power. It was a moral issue. I could, of course, say that it was a political issue, but this would eliminate the true depth of the
{p. 5} feeling. I use the word "moral" because it means something bigger, something beyond politics. It would be similar to calling slavery a political issue. One feels morally humiliated by being enslaved, by being oppressed, victimized. There were many people who were more or less satisfied with the economic situation or even the political situation in occupied Lithuania, but none, even Lithuanian communists and collaborationists, could escape the feeling of moral humiliation.
In addition to moral abasement of our nation, there was a certain lack of political and economic freedom as well. People weren't allowed to do many things -- to read dissident literature, for example -- though admittedly the majority of Lithuanians simply weren't much interested in doing those forbidden things. As in America, most people did not go out of their way to read dissident literature. Most, no doubt, were primarily interested in how to buy a new car or furniture, how to be promoted on their job, or in spending their summer vacation on the beautiful beaches of the Baltic Sea. They were simple people immersed in a simple life's cares; they preferred a simple life's pleasures. They kept their mouths shut and weren't looking for trouble. So, for them, the lack of freedom to read what you wanted -- or even to say what you wanted -- wasn't a major inconvenience at all. Such people, who perhaps make up the silent majority in any society, aren't much concerned about freedom of speech or the press, or to what extent the official party line interfered with one's understanding of life in part or as a whole. As they had neither personal sophistication, nor were compelled by a spirit of intellectual inquiry, some of the Soviet regime's more crude understandings of the arts and social sciences were barely discernible, let alone distasteful to them.
In Lithuania, as in the Soviet Union in general, there were many more people who were concemed and unhappy about restrictions on traveling abroad, for example, than about forbidden books or political discussions. Soviet citizens were deprived of the freedom to travel abroad where they wanted and when they wanted - especially to Western capitalist countries. And nobody, except Jews, was allowed to emigrate from the USSR. But, as I think now, for the majority of people in the Soviet Union, this also wasn't a very annoying limitation, because many people, I believe, were fairly satisfied with the possibilities of travel afforded inside the USSR. It was a huge empire, after all. Now, after its collapse, everyone is permitted to travel abroad as much as they might wish, but only a very few can afford to do that. Indeed, what use is such freedom if you cannot afford to take advantage of it? Now most people can't even afford to travel within Russia or to spend their summer vacations on those same beaches of the Baltic Sea the way, twenty years ago, virtually everyone could.
I could perhaps list here many prohibitions in the former Soviet Union that were very annoying to me personally at that time, but as I see it now, most of those things were very relative. For example, boys weren't allowed to have long hair while in school. At the time -- the 1970s -- I wasn't happy about it, because we all wanted to copy American hippies. However today I can clearly see that it was rather a very good policy that we weren't allowed to look like all these punks look, here. A cultural behavior that is adopted for the
{p. 6} purpose of outraging the others seems to me to have little grounding in true value, nor is it defensible on the lines of historic ethnic practice. I see no violation of human rights at all if people are not allowed to chew and spit gum -- as they are not in Singapore -- or make tattoos on their foreheads or to have hair dyed in all colors of rainbow or wear metal rings in their noses. Many such things that were forbidden in the former Soviet Union, as I see it now, weren't human rights, but simply some unnecessary excesses -- over-indulgences -- that could be harmful either to the person concerned or even to the entire society. Moreover, in my opinion, most people - in any society, under any system—aren't interested in such things and simply don't care whether it is forbidden or allowed.
What was, for many, more serious than these, was the fact that there was also no economic freedom for those who wanted to live "like in America." People who wanted to satisfy their greed by owning more than they actually needed were restrained by the communist state. Soviet citizens weren't permitted to make money off the labor of others. In the Soviet Union, all the economic activities were limited to enterprises under total state control. All employees, including bosses, were regarded as working for the "workers' state" and were also paid by that state. Though big industrial enterprises were formally considered as publicly-owned, they still were under strict government control. There weren't any small private businesses allowed at all. Therefore, no individual could take advantage of other people's work; no one could exploit others. While the Soviet state itself did exploit working people, it assuredly didn't do so to the same extreme extent as people here, in the so- called "free market" system, are exploited by private capitalists. As a result, there wasn't such inequality in the USSR; there simply weren't favorable conditions for anyone to accumulate considerably more wealth than others. The appearance of undue wealth would only create suspicions in others and, of course, primarily in the authorities.
Some professionals, scientists, famous authors or entertainers did have considerably more wealth than the majority of Soviet citizens, but nobody objected to that because these people weren't exploiting others. They simply were exceptionally talented. Of course, even the wealthiest Soviet citizens weren't as distant from the majority of the population asAmerican millionaires or billionaires are. The upper stratum of Soviet "nomenclatura," Communist Party bosses, too, had considerable wealth, but nothing to even compare to that of the American ruling class. There were also many people in the Soviet Union who were simply stealing various things from enterprises they worked in and profiteering from it. This wasn't a very risky business, so many took advantage. There were also all kinds of speculators buying things cheaper and re-selling for profit. Many ended in jail. Personally, I don't think that such people were victims of an unjust and oppressive Soviet system. They rather were victims of their own greed. On the other hand, for those ordinary folks who preferred to live modestly, the Soviet system wasn't so bad. Most people had enough to satisfy all their basic needs.
The Soviets weren't so straightforward with freedom of religion. No religion was directly forbidden in the USSR, but they all were kept in low
{p. 7} profile. The official Soviet ideology promoted atheism. There was a certain lack of religious rights and there was some religious discrimination in the Soviet Union -- though possibly less than is thought by westerners. For example, if somebody wanted to hold an ideologically important or as it was usually called "ideologically sensitive" job and be active in the church at the same time, it wasn't possible. In such an instance, one had to choose between one's job and the church. Some of the clergymen who were "too zealous" in promoting religion were persecuted by the KGB, too. I don't think there was much difference between the treatment of the Roman Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. In Lithuania, we still had functioning and open catholic churches in every town, even the smallest towns, and everybody could attend them. I think that the communists had closed or destroyed more churches in Russia than they did in Lithuania for in Russia, there were many large cities that had no church at all.
Everybody knew that many high-level Russian Orthodox priests and bishops were collaborating with the KGB. Damaged from inside, the Russian Orthodox Church was becoming somewhat impotent and losing its influence among the common people in Russia. In Lithuania, this wasn't the case. Many Catholic priests were very much involved in resistance to Soviet rule and the Catholic Church had an enormous influence among Lithuanians. It was true that the Jewish religion was persecuted by the Soviet atheist authorities. The same was true with some protestant religious minorities such as, for example, the Jehovah Witnesses or Pentecostals. Many members of these sects were sent to prison camps for their religious activities. Hare Krishnas also were very harshly persecuted in the former Soviet Union.
On the other hand, after having spent quite a few days in American libraries reading the New York Times and other papers from the 1970s and 1980s, I know what the American media were telling Americans and other westerners about us -- that millions of people in the Soviet Union were suffering a great deal without being able to speak their minds freely or read forbidden books, and that even more allegedly wanted to leave the USSR and move to America. This was a wholesale exaggeration. How many people in the Soviet Union were interested in reading forbidden books, such as Hitler's Mein Kampf, for example, or maybe wanted to join the Hare Krishnas or Pentecostals? How many ordinary Soviet citizens at that time dreamt about moving to Brooklyn, New York? Today I can say without any doubt that fewer than American propaganda wanted to convince us, there in the Soviet Union, and to fool people into believing, here in America. There were so few people who were really concerned about the lack of these rights and freedoms that nobody would even have noticed them without activists like myself, who were working hard to find them and publicizethem internationally.
Yes, the Soviet Union was a totalitarian, not a democratic country, and people didn't have many civil or political rights there, but it certainly wasn't as important to the majority of people as all those social and economic rights that they had and took for granted. I also think that the majority of people in
{p. 8} the Soviet Union were sufficiently satisfied with the books, music and movies that were available to them, and with the churches that they could attend, and the places they could travel to. If you ask any Russian or Lithuanian to name American authors and their books that he or she had read, you would hear at least ten times more names and titles than if you asked any American to name Russian or Lithuanian authors and books. (I have tried this experiment many times.)
What did such westem newspapers say conceming the number of people in the former Soviet Union who were satisfied with the right to have a decent job and keep that job without employers having the right to fire you at any moment for nothing? What did they say about the number of people interested in the right to get as much education (excellent education!) as they wanted without having to pay for it, the number concerned with having the right to get medical help for free and with no limitations and so on? Millions, many millions ... How could I have imagined, as a dissident, that all this could have been put in jeopardy by our activities?
The Voice of America wasn't talking to us about these invaluable fundamental rights. No, they were hypnotizing people by telling them about their "inalienable right" to emigrate from the USSR and come to New York where ... dollars grow on evergreen "dollar trees" right in the middle of shining Broadway. . . With naked Playboy girls dancing around and singing "America the Beautiful." This may sound like a joke, but all kinds of such nonsense really was broadcast sometimes by the Voice of America or Radio Liberty when they were talking about our violated rights and how we couldn't see "America the Beautiful" for ourselves because of the despotic Soviet regime holding us trapped in the country as if we were in prison ...
I did not become a dissident because I was categorically opposed to communist ideology, their economics or even the obvious lack of civil liberties or freedom of religion. Since our family wasn't religious, we had no quarrels over religious freedom to pick with the government. Rather, my primary motivation was to do as much as I could to take part in a movement toward liberating our nation from being basically a colony of Russia. The incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR by armed force raised -- in addition to the moral offense mentioned earlier -- questions of our civil and political (democratic) rights to manage our own affairs. It raised questions in relation to those freedoms so often advocated by America, and well represented in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the international human rights treaty with which the U.S. has the greatest affinity.
Like many of my compatriots, I became involved in the resistance movement early in my teens. Actually, I was first arrested by the KGB in 1974 when I was only fourteen years old for committing "high treason" by putting flowers on the grave of the Lithuanian national martyr, Romas Kalanta, who had immolated himself in protest against the Soviet regime in 1972. From an early age, I defied the authority forced upon my country from Moscow. It wasn't economic dissatisfaction (my parents had enough of everything: good house, car, money for vacation on the beach) or lack of some specific political rights or freedoms. What freedoms can be so important to a twelve-year-old
{p. 9} kid? It was rather a kind of ever-present internal feeling that something is wrong, that even the air is saturated with oppression. As an instance: kids are always interested in soldiers, but we knew that those soldiers that we saw on the street in our town weren't our Lithuanian soldiers. They were foreign soldiers, they spoke a foreign language (at the age of ten or twelve we couldn't understand much Russian yet).
When you grow up in such an environment, all those little things add up. Why is there a huge portrait of Lenin on the wall, why are we expected to glorify a Russian, why are those songs on the radio in Russian, why ... ? All these things that you encounter in daily life even as a kid make you think. And, of course, there was always the strong influence of one's parents (and especially grandparents) as well as other relatives. Eventually, it informs the children's mindset -- in most families, not only mine. While, my parents never encouraged me to resist existing reality, they rarely explained our situation to me without hiding or failing to mention something. I therefore naturally concluded that we didn't live in a normal country. To make the situation a little more understandable to a western reader, perhaps I might say that our relation to the ethnic Russians sent to Lithuania as emigre-occupiers by the Soviet Union bears some similarity to how indigenous people may have felt at the onslaught of the European settlers.
Little by little, resistance to oppression and non-conformism became a way of life. I became a rebel. While in school, I flatly refused to join any official communist youth organizations. Soon after my first arrest, I joined the underground patriotic youth circle. We challenged the Soviet regime with the same methods used by rebellious teenagers everywhere: graffiti on walls ("Russians Out of Lithuania!"), breaking the windows of some local Communist Party bureaucrat in the middle of a cold winter's night, superimposing pomographic images on Brezhnev's portraits in civic institutions, and such like.
At the age of eighteen, I refused to serve in the Soviet military, and to take part in the Afghanistan war. I was arrested immediately and locked up in a psycho ward. It appeared to be the rule at that time: if you didn't want to become a soldier in the "glorious" Red Army, they truly believed you had to be crazy. However, after a few months, they let me go, and never bothered me again with military service.
I then studied applied arts and writing for some time. However, it was quite difficult for a rebellious non-conformist like me to achieve an advanced level of education in the Soviet Union without compromising one's integrity or adopting what the authorities considered to be the correct consciousness. This was especially true for fields such as joumalism or any other "ideologically sensitive" profession. So I had to constantly struggle to keep a balance between my personal consciousness and the official line of thinking.
At the same time, my involvement within the Lithuanian national liberation movement deepened. In the process, I experienced increasingly serious disagreements with some other Lithuanian dissidents. The major point of contention was religion. Most Lithuanian underground groups in the 1970s and early 1980s were led and financed by the Roman Catholic Church -- hardly
{p. 10} surprising, perhaps, given that at least ninety percent of the Lithuanian population consider themselves Catholic. Many underground dissidents at that time were Catholic priests, monks and nuns. It was natural therefore, that the most important human right and liberty for them was freedom of worship, or more precisely (as they did not agitate much for the religious freedoms of Jews, Muslims or Buddhists, etc.) freedom for the Catholic religion. They may have hated Hare Krishnas no less than they hated Brezhnev's regime and Russian Red Army.
While I wasn't seriously practicing any religion myself, I was always intrigued by the Eastern philosophies. The exotic spirituality of Hinduism and Buddhism fascinated me much more than the orthodoxy of Catholic Christianity. Therefore, the efforts of the Roman Catholic priests and nuns to dominate the Lithuanian struggle made me feel uneasy. To me, they represented another oppression, and this made communications between us often quite difficult.
My alliances became shaky and problematic. I quarreled with my fellow human rights dissidents when they concentrated solely on religious rights, which ohen tumed out to mean rights for Catholics only. Sometimes our interactions became belligerent. Once I became very angry when some of my fellow dissidents tried to convince me of the importance of prioritizing freedom of religion in a formal letter of protest that we were composing. They wanted to put religious rights as the most important thing that the oppressed Lithuanian nation wanted from Russia, over and above national freedom. As a Lithuanian nationalist, I was flabbergasted. I recall voicing my acquiescence to this with the sarcastic remark, "OK, but: only under the condition that you make sexual freedom the next most important right for oppressed Lithuanians ... " They instantly shunned me as a heretic.
Rather than chastened, I broke free from the constraints of Catholic domination and increased my dissident activities. I journeyed across the Soviet Union to acquaint myself with fellow activists from other nations, thereby expanding my horizons to include the great variety of peoples that inhabit the former Soviet Union. I began to place the struggle for the liberation of my Lithuania in the context of the deliverance of all the other countries which had also been subsumed within the Russian-dominated Soviet empire.
This truly international movement strove to overthrow the communist regime in favor of one built on notions of real democracy and human rights. It was neither pro-capitalist nor anti-capitalist; it was rather nationalist and to a large extent, basically libertarian. First of all we wanted to throw off oppression coming from Russia. Since it was communist at that time and had imposed its communism on us as well, we wanted to get rid of their communism regime, too. And after that ... well different people had different ideas about what should come after ... Some dissidents may have imagined the future of their countries as social democracy; others maybe wanted pure capitalism just like in America, and perhaps others wanted something absolutely new and unique. There were anarchists, monarchists, libertarians —all kinds of visions were floated. Even in Russia itself, there were many different trends within their national dissident movement.
{p. 11} I made many friends in Moscow, Leningrad, Tallinn, Kiev, Yerevan, and other places in the USSR, mainly among young pacifists, philosophers, non-conformist artists, writers, underground rock musicians, and so on. Amazingly, they managed to organize summer camps in various places, mostly in the Baltic republics, that each year attracted hundreds of participants from around the Soviet Union. Our campswere sort of like those "Rainbow gatherings" here in the USA, only perhaps less colorful and more oriented toward social activism than passive hedonism.
Such gatherings were only possible because people made them possible through very clever organizing efforts. There wasn't the right in the USSR to form associations of any kind without permission from the government. The KGB harshly persecuted all the illegal—underground—groups. These unsanctioned meetings were absolutely illegal under Soviet law and many people (including myself) were persecuted by the KGB for organizing such youth camps. A few times, camps were even attacked by interior military troops (similar to the National Guard here in the United States). Nevertheless, people from different parts of the USSR kept coming to share their experiences with each other and learn how to resist the oppressive Soviet communist system in nonviolent ways. While a fair amount of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll was also present (hippie ideas arrived to the USSR about ten years late), such things definitely weren't predominant features of youth underground counterculture in the Soviet Union of 1970s and 1980s. The alternative youth movements were more of an intellectual rebellion against all the official restrictions. Again, as mentioned earlier, for different people, there were different reasons to rebel.
In July of 1978, there were plans to hold a big concert in Leningrad near the famous Hermitage art museum. Well-known rock musicians were coming from Europe and even the United States. As far as I can remember, Joan Baez and Carlos Santana were expected, among other American rock music performers. When it became obvious that such a concert could easily be turned into a political action, it was imprudently canceled by the Leningrad authorities just a few hours before opening. It's hard to understand how they could be so oblivious to the likely results of such an action, yet it was this kind of rigidity which continually occurred, leading eventually to the collapse of the system. Frankly speaking, their behavior was stupid. Thousands of people had already gathered on the Winter Palace Plaza. As soon as the concert was canceled, the crowd transformed into one huge protest demonstration, probably the largest spontaneous mass demonstration on that Plaza since the 1917 October Revolution. Hundreds of arrests were made, but most of those arrested were released after only a few hours, because there simply wasn't enough space in the jails for them. The police roughed me up a bit, but not too badly. I still remember this event as one of the most exciting moments in my life. I met hundreds of people there, many of whom I became associated with in the dissident movement.
Gradually I became increasingly involved with various underground publications in the famous "samizdat" networks, and I wrote for them on a regular basis until 1989 when I had to leave the Soviet Union. There wasn't such a right in the USSR as freedom of the press—individuals were not allowed
{p. 12} to start publishing their own newspapers or magazines and all the official publications were censored by the government's special agency called Glavlit. Those who wanted to publish something and avoid censorship had to do it illegally. This is what "samizdat"—which in Russian means self-publishing —was all about. Soviet dissidents were taking a huge risk by doing that.
The best known "samizdat" publication at that time was a weekly news magazine, Express-Chronzcle. I was their reporter in Lithuariia for quite a long time. This magazine publicized as much information as we could access about all human rights violations in the USSR. This might concern the arrest of some well-known dissident by the KGB or just a complaint of some religious group about too much interference from local authorities. During the week, we collected information about such incidents from various sources. It was put together in Moscow on Saturday, and every Sunday, our Chronicle was distributed among foreign reporters and diplomatic personnel in Moscow. Another such network was the Daily Glasnost which emerged in the late 1980s. At that time, there were already fax-machines and even computers available, so it was possible to publish short bulletins every day and transmit them immediately to other countries.
I wrote about a great variety of things at that time: political prisoners, persecution of young people who refused to serve in the Soviet Army, suppression of all kinds of alternative and counterculture groups, such as underground artists or rock bands, repression against non-mainstream religious groups, such as the Hare Krishnas, and so on. Also, I frequently wrote about the forced use of psychiatry in political persecution, because Express-Chronicle always focussed a great deal on the issue of Soviet punitive use of psychiatry and especially on its use by the KGB in the persecution of free-thinkers.
After Gorbachev introduced "glasnost" and "perestroika" in the USSR, a few of my critical articles even appeared in official Soviet publications such as Literatzlrnaya Gazeta, which was a newspaper for the Russian intellectuals or "intelligentsia." Perhaps the most important among those of my articles that made it to the official Soviet press was one about forbidden writers and their books that for very long time weren't allowed to be published in the Soviet Union. This article appeared in the newspaper, Knizhnoe Obozrenie, which was like a special newspaper for the Soviet book-publishing industry.
Later I became the first reporter in Lithuania to "come out of the closet" and work openly for Radio Liberty/ Free Europe run by the CIA—the first to use my real name to sign all of my reports. That meant that I had to say, after each report on the radio who was reporting and from where. While there were many people before me who were gathering information in Lithuania for Radio Liberty, they did it under conditions of anonymity, being reporte}s in the underground. I made most of my contacts with representatives of the foreign media based in Moscow and also with all those various radio stations abroad that were broadcasting to the Soviet Union (not only Radio Liberty, but also the British BBC, Vatican Radio, and others) mainly through my connections among dissidents in Moscow, specifically through people from
{p. 13} Daily Glasnost and Express-Chronicle. I also formed connections with foreign —mostly American—journalists accredited in Moscow. I collaborated with Associated Press and news agencies from other countries.
The only remuneration for such activities one could expect (especially before Gorbachev's "perestroika") could be five or so years in prison camps for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." The whole "samizdat" was run entirely by idealistic volunteers, and if we even wanted to buy a paper, we usually had to pay for it out of our own pockets. Later on, after "perestroika" had already started and when there were more and more connections with foreigners (diplomats and reporters) in Moscow, I think then, there were some financial contributions from abroad that enabled things to get done more easily. No doubt, at least part of such funds originated from the American CIA, but I don't think that there was a lot of money coming from that source. It is my belief that most of the money that the CIA directed towards the needs of the Soviet dissident movement sank into the deep pockets of our "liberators" sitting in comfortable offices in Washington, D.C. or New York, and that quite a few people here in America got considerably richer because of that money.
Most of the financial means used by the Lithuanian liberation movement came from the Catholic Church. Also there were substantial contributions that came from Lithuanians living in the USA, Canada, Australia and other countries. People here simply collected this money in churches, garage sales and special fundraisings. All such funds went to financing our publishing and organizational activities, not to paying people for what they were doing or writing. Sometimes I was reimbursed for my train tickets from Vilnius to Moscow or long-distance phone calls, but this was only a very small part of my expenditures. Usually they were paid from my own pocket—or my dear wife's pocket, to be more exact, because only she worked to earn a living—or from my friends, also poor dissidents. I must emphasize that no one became rich because of his or her dissident activities in the former Soviet Union. To my knowledge, most former dissidents who are still living now in Lithuania or other ex-Soviet countries are even poorer today than they were twenty or ten years ago. Former KGB agents are much better off there these daysthan former freedom fighters.
My reports appeared from time to time in newspapers like the New York Times and the Times of London. They especially appreciated reports of ruthless human rights abuse, state terror and atrocities, anything that could embarrass the Soviets. They used my information for their own news stories. I knew what the Western media wanted from me and I provided as much as I could. There were many things that the Soviets wanted to hide from the rest of the world. In the heat of my anti-Soviet sentiments, I was happy to comply. There wasn't any pressure or orders from anywhere; I simply wanted to do anything it took to make the Soviets feel bad. That system was my enemy, I hated it and so, naturajlly, I did as much as possible to damage it.
In the Soviet system, it wasn't easy to collect negative information. One couldn't find negative facts in the local newspaper. Everything was censored. Many things were kept in secret. We all knew that there were a lot of bad things going on, but how to get more or less objective information about it
{p. 14} was difficult. If so many things are hidden and kept secret, one automatically becomes suspicious that there are probably a lot of reasons for the secrecy.
It wasn't an easy task, for example, to estimate how many political prisoners there were in the Soviet Union at any given time. There were special camps in Siberia exclusively for such prisoners and it was relatively simple to count people locked up in such places (it could be done by someone among the prisoners), but there were also many more political prisoners that were locked up in camps and prisons for common criminals. Some less-known dissidents could spend ten or more years alone in such places among thieves, rapists and murderers, and nobody would ever find out about such prisoners.
If, for example, there were one hundred political prisoners in some particular Siberian camp and I knew that for sure because a friend of mine had just returned home after spending five years there, I estimated that in each similar camp, there should be at least about the same number of political prisoners as well. So, if I needed to provide information about those prison camps, I would say that there were at least one hundred political prisoners in each camp. There were many prison camps throughout the Soviet empire, and we reported that there were thousands of people locked up in them for political reasons. But who, except the KGB, could tell the hundred percent reliable truth as to how many political prisoners were there in reality? I think that there always were at least a couple of thousand political prisoners in the USSR. It's next to impossible to be hundred percent accurate when writing about such things.
I wanted to do everything in my power to damage the Soviets. I felt that if this kind of slightly-embellished information helped us to free even one of those prisoners, then it was well worth the effort. I have no regrets whatsoever. Even if some of our reports were embellished a little bit, there were so many uncounted, unknown and forgotten prisoners that I think even with such an occasional inaccuracy, we couldn't exaggerate the numbers too much. If those reports (underestimated or overestimated—it doesn't matter) could help to free prisoners of consciousness it was very important and well worth doing. Quite often freeing such political prisoners was the same as saving them from certain death. In actuality, those reports did help quute a few people to get out of prison camps, and I would definitely do the same thing again if I had to.
And so again, as it concerned protest demonstrations, if there was some demonstration against Soviet occupation of Lithuania, for example, and there were about 50,000 people participating (as always, a very approximate count), the reports usually said that there were "at least" 50,000 and "up to" sixty or seventy or maybe even hundred thousand participants. If there was at least one person beaten up by police, I would say that there had been victims of police brutality. In our holy war against Soviet Union, information was our weapon.
Indeed, information has always been a weapon on one side or another. For dissidents, usually impoverished, engaged in a struggle against nearly overwhelming odds, and aware that extensive abuses are going on, even if they lack the facilities to document them, such a tendency is perhaps understandable. More problematic, however, is the fact that this tendency, in
{p. 15} turn, can be exploited by other governments—which may be no better as far as human rights are concerned, or even worse—for ends which are not so pure. Also, while dissidents may be able to grasp immediate instances of human rights abuses, they may have greater difficulty in placing the events they witness within the global picture, and the relativity of its evils.
And then, indeed, there are those dissidents who are reacting purely from motives of revenge, or the desire to regain lost privileges. After coming to the United States, I had a lot of business in the circles of immigrants coming from many oppressed nations (including Cubans). For example, at that time I had pretty good contacts with one Cuban who had spent twenty or more years in prison in Cuba for his political activities. He felt he had a pretty good reason for hating Castro just because of that, and would have said anything whatsoever to embarrass the Castro government. And I know that similar behavior is encouraged and agreed to by other dissidents from Cuba and elsewhere whose protests parallel the policy preferences of the United States. It remains a truism of "realpolitik" that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
In mid-1980s, I joined the Liberation League of Lithuania (LLL), the major force in the Lithuanian drive for independence before the emergence of the popular movement, Sajudis. Soon after it appeared, Sajudis attracted a mass following and effectively took over from the underground League. The vanguard LLL was a more militant organization of former political prisoners and younger generation radicals. The ground we turned was utilized by distinguished intellectuals, celebrated writers, prestigious professors, and popular people in the mainstream to bring Sajudis to the forefront of the growing mass struggle for Lithuanian independence.
Needless to say, I was an active participant from the very beginning in the famous Singing Revolution that eventually led to restoration of Lithuania's independence. With my connections among dissidents and activists in other parts of the Soviet Union, I often acted as a sort of middle-person between the Lithuanian movement and other reform movements in the USSR. By that time, I myself was no longer directly involved much in street actions or demonstrations because I had to concentrate mainly on my propaganda work. I reported on these actions behind the Iron Curtain to the Western media and to various intemational organizations, actions such as, for example, the hunger strike that was started in summer of 1988 by two of my friends, both well- known Lithuanian dissidents, reported by my article published in the Russian-language anti-Soviet newspaper, Russkaya Mysl, in Paris, or the huge protest demonstration that took place on September 28,1988, where Soviet police attacked people using tear gas, and later arrested all the participants of the hunger strike at night.
In 1988, I was among the founders of the Lithuanian branch of the Intemational Society for Human Rights (ISHR) which monitored and recorded violations of human rights by the Soviet authorities. This was a fairly right- wing oriented and definitely very pro-American organization headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. The Lithuanian branch of the ISHR had an office in a private apartment located in downtown Vilnius that was under 2hour
{p. 16} surveillance by the KGB. At that time, I usually went about with two KGB "bodyguards" following me everywhere. Even my wife had KGB "boyfriends" sitting on a bench outside her workplace.
As pro-democracy forces grew in the USSR, so too grew the pressure from the KGB and the Soviet authorities in Moscow and in Lithuania to convince me and other activists that our best option would be to leave the country. Some "soft threats" were dropped, such as: "Bad things could happen, my friend—unfortunate incidents, tragic accidents, regrettable food contamination maybe ... " It made me aware that the rarnifications of my actions could indeed be serious. In my twenty-eight years, I had never journeyed anywhere outside the Soviet Union before. The idea of travel abroad was admittedly tempting. Why not go and see the world, I thought quite reasonably, instead of getting hit by a car or poisoned at some crappy fast- food joint?
Pressure intensified, particularly after I renounced my Soviet citizenship in December of 1988 on the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as an act of protest against the continued occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union. I put the renunciation in a personal letter to Gorbachev and delivered it by hand to the Kremlin myself. At first, they didn't want to accept it. I said I would remain there and start a hunger strike right in the building of the Supreme Soviet. They capitulated.
After that, the KGB came down on me harder. In Vilnius, they openly warned me to leave the USSR. They threatened that if I refused to depart of my own accord within a few months, they would arrest me, transport me to some African country and leave me there. They actually did carry out this threat against one wellknown Armenian dissident. They arrested him, put him onto an airplane between two KGB guards, delivered him toAddis Abbaba and left him there alone in the airport. Of course, he simply went to the U.S. embassy in Addis Abbaba and received political asylum here.
After long discussions with my friends and consultations with relatives, I and my dear wife finally agreed to follow KGB orders and leave. When the time to leave came, I was filled with indecision and uncertainty. Not the least among my many problems was the decision as to where to go. Our first destination was Vienna not that we had any choice.
The only category of people who were allowed (more or less) to emigrate from the Soviet Union were Jews, for whom there still remained considerable restrictions. For Lithuanians or Russians, there weren't any legal chances at all if they wanted to leave the USSR for good. The Soviet authorities and the KGB wanted to make it clear for all Soviet citizens that only Jews could leave the country. There was a kind of semi-officially endorsed notion that "we have to get rid of those suspicious and untrustworthy Jews." Therefore, if it should occur that a dissident was kicked out from the Soviet Union for his or her activities, they were usually presented to the public (often even in the media) as "Jews," or at least as having some "secret connections" to Israel. This is why all immigrants and exiles had to leave the USSR with papers indicating their destination as Tel-Aviv. I met quite a few Pentecostal Christians
{p. 17} from the Ukraine who were kicked out of the Soviet Union for their religious activities with papers stating that they were Jews.
These were the kind of papers the Soviet authorities gave to us, despite the fact that neither my wife nor I had any Jewish relative in our families for at least the last ten generations. There was a special route through which Soviet immigrants and exiles had to leave the country (unless they were delivered to Addis Abbaba like my Armenian friend) and it was through Vienna. All those organizations that were helping people to settle in Israel (for those who really were Jews) or apply for asylum in the United States or sometimes also in other countries, too, were located in Vienna. Those organizations also provided some financial support by buying tickets, paying for hotels, etc. But it was our responsibility to reach Vienna first. I don't think that it was at all possible to go to Stockholm, for example, or to some place other than Vienna. The only route out of the USSR was through Vienna because we simply weren't allowed to buy a ticket to any other place and likely couldn't expect any special help or financial assistance elsewhere.
When we boarded the train to Vienna, about fifty friends and relatives showed up to bid us farewell—and around a hundred KGB agents swarmed all over the station. I guess they were afraid that we might change our minds and stay ...
We lived in Western Europe as new exiles for a while. We actually wanted to stay and settle somewhere in Europe, but had few choicesbecause we lacked the financial means to settle down where we pleased. After we had spent time in Austria and Italy, we had to move to America. Everything was arranged by the Tolstoy Foundation—the humanitarian organization that we resorted to for help in Vienna—solely because we agreed to apply for political asylum in the United States. We wouldn't have been able to survive on our own without financial assistance from them. Officials from the Tolstoy Foundation persuaded us to move to the United States as high profile political refugees. I will always remember how somebody from the Tolstoy Foundation's staff in Vienna put it: I had the "choice" between spending the night on a park bench or going to America. . .
There is a very good saying in Lithuania that before cutting one should always measure ten times and only after that, make a final cut ... We could have said to that woman from the Tolstoy Foundation in Vienna, "No, we don't agree to go to the United States." We could have gone to some park and sat on a bench all night and thought everything over and over ten times— after al1 it's not as dangerous to stay out on a park bench in Vienna as it is in New York. I feel sure that, had we done so, after that sleepless night, we would have gone to the Austrian police to ask for political asylum in Austria, and most likely would have been accepted. But prolonged uncertainty had exhausted me and I didn't have much time to think before answering. Ironically, now it's next to impossible for us to move again and settle elsewhere. We aren't political exiles or refugees anymore.
My "yes" answer to the American Tolstoy Foundation was a stupid mistake. I should have thought more before accepting the offer. We definitely
{p. 18} wouldn't have died without having food for just one day—we even had some food that we had taken with us from Lithuania. But after we signed that paper and received money from the Tolstoy Foundation for food and a hotel, we bought some good wine, enjoyed Vienna, became way too relaxed and felt too tired to do anything. We simply went along. The Tolstoy Foundation gave us money to survive and we did all that they wanted us to do. We capitulated without even trying to do something on our own. After all, we didn't seem to be facing a choice between life and death. It was only a choice between spending the night on a bench in some romantic park in Vienna and going to America. . .
Now, as I understand how it happened—how as an exile from the Soviet Union, I was easily duped by the American government's propaganda and lured to this country—I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to swallow the bait. My decision was thoughtless and irresponsible. Today I blame myself for some of the direct consequences that have followed from it. My wife and daughter now suffer a great deal because of our coming here.
Only after we signed the formal agreement to apply for political asylum in the United States were we provided with a room in a hotel and some pocket money for buying food. This is how we "chose" America. This is where our discovering of America began. With this beginning, I should perhaps not have been surprised that our supposed patrons' promises of good things to come turned out to be mostly empty.
When we first came to America, we lived in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Tolstoy Foundation continued to provide us with some financial assistance. They paid for our apartment which was in a basement of some rundown building and had roaches. Also they gave us a little bit of money for buying food. After a week or so, they arranged for us to have welfare assistance and promised to help with finding a job. But when some woman came to us and started to talk about all those options and jobs that she possibly could help us to get, we realized right away that all those offers ranged between work as a janitor and working at McDonald's. When we said to her that we didn't want such ridiculous "help," the Tolstoy Foundation refused to pay our rent any longer. We moved from that basement into the rectory of a local Lithuanian church. The welfare assistance that we received was so small that it wasn't sufficient to rent even the smallest apartment. The priest, a very nice person, invited us to live with him for free if we helped him a little bit with house chores. We were more than happy to do that and it gave us a possibility to relax, and to rest a little bit before taking further steps. I was looking for some acceptable employment, and also we wanted to learn some more English.
We felt that, as a journlist, my best chances were in New York where all the media and organizations are located. While in the Soviet Union, I had had numerous conversations with Americans (including diplomats and all those reporters in Moscow that I was collaborating with), all of whom always assured me that if I ever had to leave the USSR, I should go to America and only America. We also heard this daily from all the American radio propaganda,
{p. 19} such as the Voice of America that we had been listening to. As you can imagine, all those people were talking about America as a real "land of opportunities." They dunned it into our heads persistently that America was the only place for "people like us." They were talking to me about unprecedented possibilities and perspectives that were supposedly waiting for me in the USA. I just had to go there ... Of course, I trusted them. They weren't from the KGB. How could I know?
Cumulatively, you might say that the combination of official propaganda, and word of mouth from Americans encountered in Moscow was more effective than a very intensive brainwashing. While nobody promised me that if I come to New York, I would be hired by the New York Times, we naturally believed that in case we were forced to leave our country, I could probably find more opportunities in America than anywhere else. It had never been necessary to make a concrete promise—only to paint a glowing picture.
So we moved to New York. While there, we again lived in a Lithuanian church and helped its priest with house chores, so we didn't have to worry about room and board for a while. My wife also had medical insurance from the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn because she was pregnant with our daughter at that time. I continued to do some writing for Radio Liberty and also wrote freelance for the Russian-language daily newspaperbased in New York, Novoye Rlsskoye Slovo. Since I could make a little money from my writings and we didn't have any big expenses, we didn't need to worry too much about day- to-day survival at that moment. Therefore, I was enabled to concentrate on continuing my anti-Soviet activities.
While in New York, I collaborated with several right-wing American organizations. It had been my goal to get in touch with as many such organizations (not necessarily only right-wing) as possible and maybe eventuaUy even to try to get employment with one. With all my good connections among former Soviet dissidents who had come to the United States before me (and also among Lithuanian emigres in America), it wasn't difficult to get in touch with any organization that I wanted to be associated with. After all the brainwashing, I was naive enough to believe that those connections could eventually lead to satisfying results such as employment in my trade—which indeed, it might have, if I had come to New York in 1979, not 1989. Meanwhile, I wasn't paid any salary or even speaker's fees for my participation in all those activities, which I undertook mainly to try to help my friends that I had left in Lithuania, Moscow and elsewhere in the USSR.
My aim was not so much to assist our American "liberators" as to come to the aid of those people who were really fighting for national liberation and political freedoms inside the Soviet empire. I was successful in doing that by using the numerous possibilities that all those right-wing organizations provided. For example, if I could speak at an important conference in Washington, D.C. about our struggle in Lithuania and my speech was broadcast on C-Span, millions of TV viewers could find out more about what was going on in Lithuania and in the USSR. While they never had to pay me to participate, they did usually pay all my expenses, sending me, for example, to Canada to speak about Lithuania before big audiences in Toronto or Montreal. Had I been forced to finance my activities in America myself, I simply couldn't have afforded it.
{p. 20} I was unfamiliar with outfits such as Freedom House, for example, and took them at face value as straightforward sponsors of freedom without any particular elitist or reactionary agenda. I spoke at various conferences organized by what I now recognize to be the quasi-fascist Antibolshevic Bloc of Nations (ABN), the notorious World Anti-Communist League (WACL), the pro-capitalist Resistance International, and similar groups. I also participated in a few gatherings of American reactionaries, right libertarians, and wealthy conservatives.
Just before starting to write this book, I flipped through the pages of an old booklet that I had found in a stack of papers. It was the program for the 1990 U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC To my shame and chagrin, I admit that not only was I a participant, but I was one of the featured speakers at this conference, side by side with Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm and others ... What should I call men like these? It's hard to pick a name strong enough.
While living in the United States, I have earned a living mainly as a free-lance journalist, writing dozens of articles about life in Lithuania and the former Soviet Union. I also continued my collaboration with Radio Liberty for a short time after my arrival, but soon discovered they were cheating me out of my pay, sometimes paying me less that they supposed to, sometimes not paying me at all—I suppose in the presumption that I would never be able to find out. Not that I was concerned so much about being paid for what I was doing. Rather, I simply didn't want to be cheated and exploited just because I was a newcomer to this system and society. I knew that most of my reports were broadcast to the Soviet Union—I still had friends there who were listening to Radio Liberty every day.
For example, when Sakharov died, I did a very emotional piece and it was repeated on radio at least three times (even my mother in Lithuania caught it on the radio), but I wasn't paid for that particular piece—as if it hadn't been aired at all. I then sent an angry complaint to headquarters in Munich, and only after that did I receive my fee. This is how I realized that they were cheating me. It was nothing ideological, just business! Most likely they wanted to save some money by cheating people that they would dump soon, anyway. The CIA only employs people like me if they can exploit us for their purposes. Once the USSR collapsed, the Soviet human rights activists became less than useless to them and were simply abandoned to survive as they might. But for my part, I was already through with them.
I personally know quite a few former Soviet dissidents and human rights activists who were tricked into coming to America in the belief that America was a progressive country and a sincere champion of human rights. This is not to say that there weren't many others who came for many different reasons. I can't talk for all of them. (One of my former colleagues from the Lithuanian branch of the International Society for Human Rights who now lives in Chicago confessed to me not long ago that his biggest dream since he was six years old was about coming to America and becoming a millionaire!) Others maybe wanted to try something different than they had in the Soviet Union—a different kind of life, new interesting experiences. Many others likely believed that there could be some very tempting opportunities for professional work and a career in America. There were also many people among former
{p. 21} dissidents who simply wanted to start a new and normal life after all those years that they had spent in Soviet prison camps. Many of these simply wanted to start a family and have kids, and they didn't believe that it would be possible for them in the Soviet Union. There were also people who were seeking artistic freedom. Many dissident artists, musicians and especially writers, I know, were deeply disappointed here. Only a very few succeeded. Many of them now suffer a great deal from having been thrown into the dust bin of history. They all were used as naive pawns in the dirty psychological warfare that was going on between the two opposing superpowers, and when the Cold War was over, they were simply dumped. Now, those who had idealistic motivations have had to compromise their idealism in order to simply survive.
I have a friend, for example, who was a very well-known dissident in one of the former Soviet republics, who spent many years in prison for his activism. When he came to the United States in the mid-1980s, he was welcomed as a hero. He was even given a personal audience with President Reagan. For some time, he had a well-paying job as Executive Director of one of the many anti-Soviet centers in New York and Washington, DC. But his career as a professional anti-communist, his ticket to "success" in this system, lasted only until the collapse of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Empire disappeared from the map of the world, the demand for people like my friend automatically disappeared as well. Since there was no longer a "red menace" in the world, there was no need for fighters against it. No need for organizations with sonorous names which, in order to appear authentic and respectable, listed genuine Soviet dissidents as their "executive directors." "The Moor has done his work—the Moor may go ... " Now, that friend of mine works as a used car salesman somewhere near Washington, DC. Totally broken—financially, morally, and physically—he told me that while he was in hospital recovering from a heart attack, he received quite a few letters from the area's cemeteries with "good deal" offers ...
This is theAmerica that shamelessly betrayed people like him and showed its ugly face to many of us. Many of those people—I don't say that all or even a majority, but many—were enticed into coming here and used by the U.S. government (or some anti-Soviet centers here) in order to win the Cold War and defeat the Soviets. Therefore, they expected at least some gratitude from America and Americans. Many of those people had spent time in Soviet prison camps because of what they were doing in the USSR, instigated by the CIA. Their actions both in their native countries and later here in America, helped America's effort to win the Cold War a great deal—whether this had been the motive of all of them, or not.
It also helped many Americans to make a lot of money by manipulating those who were naive and idealistic fighters against Soviet communism. I saw myself the nice house which the American patron of my friend who now sells used cars bought with money that they were receiving from some endowment fund to support democracy in the USSR. And what did my friend get? Nothing. Not even simple gratitude. He was dumped like some waste, like an empty can or bottle!
Most former Soviet dissidents I know can't bring themselves to sell used cars here or work at McDonald's. It was an offence to the human dignity we manifested in our lengthy struggle to be handed what is regarded as the trash
{p. 22} work of this society. Remember, many dissidents had served many years in prison for their causes. While many Americans say that any work is good— and indeed this may be true from the perspective of some illiterate high school dropout here—in the situation of many former Soviet dissidents who have made enormous personal sacrifices, who might have enjoyed good positions and stature within their home countries, and lived out their lives within their own culture and among their own countrymen, had they not made efforts to challenge the human rights abuses in their countries, this is not what many could accept. Such people simply needed gratitude or at minimum some respect for their efforts and sacrifices. I'm not talking about myself now because after all I know about the U.S. government now, I don't care a rap about its attitudes anymore. But I know that many people, former pawn soldiers of its Cold War, are badly hurt by the ingratitude of the United States government.
I have come to understand that the U.S. government has no concept of gratitude. Every day through my kitchen window,∫ in our dumpster. And when I see them, I always remember how war veterans were treated in the former Soviet Union. They all had excellent pensions, free tickets for any kind of mass transport and various other privileges.
Unfortunately, not everyone among us former fighters against the Soviet empire, former Soviet dissidents here that were blown by the winds of life almost straight into the American dump, have had enough interior strength to admit to themselves that "the emperor has no clothes." Many still can't or simply don't want to, or maybe even are afraid to understand and admit that this ugly system is no better than the Soviet system we fought against back home.
As a result, so many among my fellow ex-dissidents continue to suffer as much or some perhaps even more here than they had suffered while living under the Soviet system. Then, we all knew very clearly who and where our enemy was. We had no illusions about that enemy. But when we arrived in America, we all had illusions regarding it. Some of us had more, some less, but we all thought at least that the American system was something absolutely opposite to that evil which we had in our home countries. For some of us, it didn't take long to understand reality. Many others are still drowning in a world of deceptive illusions. A former dissident friend of mine still considers his meeting with Reagan as the greatest moment in his life. He keeps telling me about the "shining aura" that he apparently saw around Reagan's head ...
Part of my intent, in writing this lengthy introduction to this work, is to make it very clear that I had absolutely no animosity or bias with respect to the United States of America before coming here. I also wish to make it very clear that, had I properly understood the true nature of the global struggle in which I have been used, I would never have participated, along with Gingrich and his ilk, in gatherings of right-wing American politicians. If I had prejudices, they were prejudices in favor of—not against—the USA. It may sound bizarre and contradictory, but there was a time when I had a portrait of U.S.
{p. 23} President Ronald Reagan on my writing desk in Lithuania. Clearly, I have traveled a long way.
The truth is, I simply wasn't informed enough to have a very deep understanding of the United States while in the Soviet Union. I knew very little about it or indeed, about the more ugly realities of American capitalism. I was always curious about America and, naturally, I wanted to find out more. From beyond the grim reality of life in the Soviet Union came glimpses of a "shining place," a "good place." All the information concerning the United States that we had while living in the Soviet Union came mainly through propaganda sources: official Soviet propaganda—naturally anti-American —on one side, and official American propaganda such as the Voice of America and Radio Liberty/Free Europe radio programs on the other. Those radio broadcasts were often jammed by the Soviets so I sometimes dashed around the room like crazy with the radio in my hand, trying to catch the "voices" from afar, even climbing up on the roof to be closer to the radio waves coming from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean ... It goes without saying, we tended to believe American sources more. After all, the American propaganda always was much more sophisticated than the clumsy Soviet "agitprop."
All the people in the former Soviet Union were exposed to a tremendous amount of very primitive communist propaganda, but not many believed that propaganda, and of course, nobody was taking it at its face value. Russian propaganda at that time was telling us a great number of bad things about the United States of America. But because it was told by our enemies, we Lithuanians didn't accept what we heard or read. Most Lithuanians simply rejected all that negative information as a lie.
Soviet propaganda was very straightforward. They didn't try to convince people, they simply dictated what people should think and believe. It was this that turned people against what the propagandists said. Soviet propaganda had no sophistication at all. It was filled with cumbersome cliches from some dry "propaganda science" text book ... There was always only two colors: black and white—but the effect of that was to turn everything gray, to take away the breath of life from it, and hence the interest. Even positive propaganda about the USSR itself and other countries practicing Soviet-style "real socialism" was as gray as negative propaganda about the United States and other Western capitalist countries. It was also very primitively made.
On the other hand, the American propaganda was more like some cheesy Hollywood movie with lots of popular music and colorful pictures. These provided a seductive and dynamic vision of life itself. Shopping catalogs that were reaching us—full of colorful photos, nice-looking girls, popular rock musicians and consumer products—were as effective as the radio programs and materials which fell under a more strictly interpreted definition of propaganda.
Today, after all these years of living here in the United States, I understand very well that all the bad things which Soviet propaganda told us about America were not, in most cases, lies at all. More than that, the Soviets gave us only a particle of the truth of all the negative sides of how things really are inAmerica. We heard about poverty, homelessness and unemployment, about consumerism and "trash culture," about violent crime and racial conflicts, but their manner of conveying the information was neither believable nor
{p. 24} affective. We couldn't grasp its living reality. At the same time, people in the Soviet Union were watching contraband Hollywood movies or TV "soaps"— usually on video tapes—and thought they could see for themselves how life was in America. It was a whole new thing in the early 1980s. These fictionalized versions were, for us, less clearly propaganda than the Soviet newspaper clippings and hard data.
Nonetheless, I didn't believe either one. As a journalist by profession and a free-thinker by nature, I was very persistent in ferreting out the truth. Therefore, I usually had a little bit more objective information than it was possible for ordinary Soviet people to have. I certainly didn't have any way- too-rosy illusions: Even so, it wasn't enough to form a clear picture about America and capitalism in general. I had to live in America to learn that.
After we arrived in the United States in July of 1989, we had an opportunity to experience all the ugliness of American reality right away. While living in New York City, we could see all the horrors of what is rightfully called the "urban jungle" in America. We were exposed to what seemed to us to be enormous danger there every single day for over a year. New York seems to me to be one of the most dangerous places on earth, in many ways more like the teeming cities of the Third World than what one might expect of a major city in the world's wealthiest nation. I know one old Russian man, a soldier during WWlI, who wasn't wounded or even scratched by a bullet in the four years that he was on the front line. But after he emigrated to the United States together with his grown-up children and settled in Brooklyn, he was shot twice and very seriously injured.
Three times, I myself saw people shot on the subway. In fact, somebody was shot sitting almost next to me. In Brooklyn, the area where we lived— not the worst neighborhood, nothing to compare with Harlem or South Bronx —we could hear gunfire outside on the street almost daily. Once, there was a shooting at night, and in the morning we found a lot of blood on a sidewalk next to the gate of our house along with what seemed to be parts of a human brain. Nobody ever came to a clean up, so we had to avoid that spot, jumping over it until the rains came and washed everything away. In order to get to Manhattan, we had to ride the subway which in itself was also very dangerous. After seeing two Puerto Ricans shoot at each other and one of them drop dead right next to me, we thought twice before going down into a NYC subway. My wlfe, pregnant at the time, was afraid to go anywhere after the horrible "wilding" attack on a Central Park jogger.
If you compare New York to European or even Canadian cities, it's like a hell on earth. All the big cities in the Soviet Union of twenty years ago— Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev—were completely safe at any time. I remember I could walk safely anywhere at night in Moscow. Now, however, with the introduction of capitalism, we might well expect all of them to be becoming more like New York. They are already many times more dangerous right now than they were just ten years ago and crime has already become a major problem in all the ex-Soviet countries.
Before coming to the United States, I never could even imagine that a human society could be so thoroughly soaked with shameless deception and greed. Not only economic and political relationships, but also personal and social relationships between people here seem to be so distorted, dominated
{p. 25} and undermined by pecuniary motives. Money is absolutely the bottom line for everything here. What can this signify but the accelerated erosion of a wide range of moral standards in American society?
For example, when I arrived in the United States, I wanted to learn a little more English, so I signed up for special classes at a school for immigrants in New York. Those who were going to learn the language naturally couldn't read or even understand much in English. Nevertheless, we were immediately required to sign a lengthy contract with lots of fine print explanations on it. In English, of course. How could somebody with very limited knowledge of the language understand what that piece of paper was about? But without signing it, one couldn't expect to be admitted to the school. So people (including myself) went ahead and signed the paper, usually without even reading it. As it later turned out, all that fine print explanation concerned an agreement to pay thousands of dollars in tuition. This was my first serious encounter with the American kind of deception. Many others soon followed.
After serving our time in New York, we endured three long years of boring hell in the neighboring "garden state" of New Jersey—the painfully dull life of American suburbia. From the urban fire into the suburban frying pan, we simmered in the bland life of low-rise America. Day after day, month after month, we learned more and more about the American way of life. At the same time, we also had to learn how to survive in this hostile system, while keeping our dignity.
I continued to search for and explore new ideas, trying hard to find a differet America, one that would be opposite to life in the fast lane of a New Jersey freeway. I tried to seek out people with more liberated minds and freer spirits than those always-too-busy, overworked, alienated Americans we were encountering day after day. I got in touch with various spiritual groups, some of whom were even living in a communal environment which seemed quite different from mainstream America.
Since, in America, everything is based on the philosophy (or ideology) of so-called "rugged individualism," everyone here cares first of all about himself or herself. As a result, most people are very alienated from each other. WhenAmericans get into group and attempt to live successfully in an egalitarian community—sharing things, helping each other—they are taking a very large step away from the practice of mainstream society in this country. For indigenous societies, this wouldn't be a big matter at all. But American society is already so far away from any of those natural living arrangements where people felt more like a farnily or at least as friendly neighbors sharing the same Mother Earth and creating a supportive environment, that in this society, such a mode of behavior seems to be nothing less than radical utopian idealism.
I was attracted to such alternative groups because those people seemed to me to be idealists, just like most of the Soviet dissidents were. I would perhaps even call themAmerican dissidents. No doubt many of them are very idealistic, but they have been unable to avoid being poisoned by this society simply because they were born and grew up here. I visited quite a few such communities in Colorado, Virginia, Oregon and other places. While I had a good time and met a number of interesting people, I was still disappointed. Some of those groups seemed to me to be too extreme in their down-to-earth primitivism, others seemed too religious in some weird fanatic sense. And
{p. 26} all of them were very much profit-oriented. First, they always wanted to sell something—it could be books or some crafts—and all were extremely disappointed when I didn't buy.
I soon realized that too many of these groups are simply money-making enterprises operating under the guise of spirituality or religion. Open any American so-called "alternative" or "spiritual" magazine about yoga, paganism, shamanism, etc., and you will see ads offering various commodities and services for unreasonably inflated prices. They are filled with so-called "gurus" offering all kinds of retreats or classes for up to $1,000 per person per weekend. Surely a true guru wouldn't charge any money for his wisdom and would consider it his duty to share it with others. Those who do charge are servants of the Dollar, not messengers of God.
We then decided to try life on the other side of the American continent, moving from New Jersey to Oregon. Eugene, the town where we live, was rated numerous times among the most livable cities in America. But most things remained the same, albeit on a smaller scale: numerous junk-food restaurants surrounded by huge parking lots, highways instead of streets, everybody driving alone in a big car, ugly buildings, people pretending that they are always busy, their smiles strained, danger after dark, and so on ...
We didn't come to America because of what is called "the American Dream"—the unbridled right to own and to do as you please. We had absolutely no intention at all of pursuing this so-called "dream" or of taking part in what is called "the rat race" in order to achieve it. I like what Lily Tomlin said: "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." We didn't want to turn into "rats." We preferred to stand outside, awake, and observe, and to avoid the pernicious American kind of "dreaming" ... But this was not the case with many others who came here.
We have met a fair number of immigrants from various nations here in America. While everyone was unique—there are still no human clones yet—one thing that most of those immigrants had in common was their stunningly naive belief in the almost magical powers of the "American Dream". It is this belief that lures thousands of people here from other countries every year, providing America with more and more fresh blood to survive. They jump of their own will into this melting pot and most of them really melt in it fast, very fast.
People drown in the American melting pot like in a swamp. They often lose their national and human identities and often their souls, frequently mutating into a kind of zombie with no consciousness becoming like "mankurts" as famous Kirghiz writer Chingiz Aitmatov cailed such people in one of his books. When somebody's spiritual values and their soul's immunity to corruption are too weak, then naked materialism takes over very fast. This is what the American way appears to be all about: to replace spiritual values with a "healthy greed." Instead of fostering a truly human consciousness filled with spirituality and idealism, this notion leads to an empty vacuum, as materialistic illusions sneak in and take over the mind. Immigrants all dream of becoming capitalists just by the simple fact of coming here. But in reality, most immigrants have to settle for working for the miserable pay of five or so dollars an hour. The longer they are trapped in this kind of way of living and thinking, the more they mutate, unable to grasp—or admit?—what is happening to them.
{p. 27} The following example is a typical, almost a generalized image of an average immigrant coming to "dreamland" because of purely economic reasons. This Lithuanian family first came here simply to visit relatives in Los Angeles. They overstayed the time allowed by their tourist visa. Little by little, this swamp began to suck them in, deeper and deeper. Naive and credulous, they soon became hypnotized by alluring promises of the American way of life and theAmerican way of thinking, a hypnotism all their experience here has not shaken to wakefulness.
Although our friends have worked like hinnies, their capitalist dream of material success has faded further and further to the distant horizons. On the other hand, they quickly became culturally Americanized, especially their children. Their two kids stopped speaking Lithuanian after just a couple of years of living here. They became ju-st like American kids, with all the problems that American kids face, due to the noxious influences in their culture. At the age of about thirteen, the girl started to bring boyfriends home to sleep while her parents were out working night shifts. When her father unexpectedly came home once and found her in bed with one, he kicked the boy downstairs —the only natural way of dealing with such a situation in Lithuania.
Well, not in America ... The daughter called the police, and her poor father was arrested immediately. He had to spend over a week in a jail because his wife couldn't afford to bail him out. Finally, the daughter changed her mind and dropped her charges against the father. But she didn't change her views concerning her behavior in general. The attitude of the police likely convinced her it was acceptable to sleep with her American boyfriends as much as she wants, even when her parents are at home, because as a result, her parents are simply afraid to say anything against her behavior. The father still remembers very well his experience in the American jail. At the age of thirteen, the girl became what we in Lithuania—and many other countries as well—believe to be nothing less than a prostitute—irrespective of whether she sleeps with strangers for money or not. This is how America had altered the life of this Lithuanian immigrant family—for undoubtedly such behavior would have been nearly impossible in Lithuania twenty or so years ago.
As if that were not enough, the family's teenage son beat his father a few times unmercifully because he asked the boy to speak Lithuanian at home. After almost ten years of living here, the parents still have a very limited command of the English language, so they often simply cannot understand what their children say to them. As they had lived here for quite a long time without any documents, they were afraid "to wake a sleeping dog," as they say, and thus not only couldn't do much to save their children from this poisonous system, but even became at their mercy. In short, they have fed their children to the Moloch of America.
Now that they have won their legal status in the so-called "green card lottery," they feel a little more secure. They still believe in America and still dream of becoming rich. As we don't share their enthusiasm, these people sincerely believe we are KBG agents on a secret mission here ...
Another Lithuanian woman came to the United States in her thirties, right after World War Two. Now she is around eighty and has almost completely forgotten how to speak Lithuanian. However, she didn't manage to learn much English during her forty or so years in America, so today she
{p. 28} speaks some weird mix of the many languages that she has heard on the streets while living in Los Angeles. It's simply impossible for anyone to comprehend what the old lady is saying. Once, when I tried to explain to her why I don't like America, she suddenly jumped from her chair as if she was stung and started to scream in a hysterical voice: God bless Amenca, God bless Ameria! It was really bizarre to see a fellow Lithuanian in such a comical posture.
We also met another old Lithuanian irnrnigrant here whose eyes were always tearstained when he heard The Star Spangled Banner. He was as great an American patriot as anyone could possibly be. The man is dead by now, so his earthly roving is over. During World War Two, he collaborated with the Nazis in Lithuania and was even involved in the exterrnination of Jewish people there. After escaping a well-deserved retribution by flight toAmerica, he became a fanatic right-winger and die-hard American patriot. Among its many immigrants, America absorbs all kinds of human scum from all over the world, many fleeing justice in their countries, many escaping with their countrieg wealth, many complicit in crimes against their countrymen as America's agents in her foreign intrigues and wars. Without millions of such people among the other immigrants—hardworking, naive and dreamstruck—America wouldn't be as it is.
Sometimes I feel here more like a journalist on assignment abroad, or a long-term tourist, living and counting the days until the journey is over. While Lithuania is now a free country and we could go back, things there, unfortunately, did not turn in the direction I hoped they would while fighting for my country's independence. I always projected that a free Lithuania would become more like Denmark or the Netherlands—a relatively humane and just social democracy. Unfortunately, now it is rapidly becoming more and more like America, with an even more direct and open leaning toward criminality. Journalists like me who question authority and stick their noses where they don't belong are simply killed by the Mafia in today's Lithuania. Where before, Lithuanians were oppressed by the political authority exerted by the Soviet state, now in the ostensibly free Lithuania, they are harried by criminals.
How are we to regard this new oppression—as in the natural order of things and having nothing to do with politics? It's very difficult for me to accept the fact that independent Lithuania turned into a corrupt and crime- ridden state. What has happened is very sad. I always have a hard time when I try to explain—even to myself—why everything took such a turn there. While I still can't fully understand all the causes, my guess is that in the first place it happened because after the liberation there wasn't any punishment or disfranchising of those who were actively collaborating with the Soviet regime. Even those Lithuanians who worked for the KGB weren't punished in any way. All the members of high-level Soviet Communist Party "nomenclatura" in Lithuania were able to remain intact as an organized entity. Moreover, they were able to preserve and keep their wealth as well. As a result, they immediately becarne the first capitalists in the newly capitalist Lithuania. They were able to buy all the best real estate, to privatize all industry and most farmland among themselves, and to start new banks. Their money could open all doors for them at even the highest levels of a new government. So, to pr*atize Lithuania, they simply divided everything among themselves.
There remains a very strong connection between new capitalists among former Communist Party "nomendatura" and the former KGB. Therefore, many
{p. 29} of those who worked for the KGB moved into the newly aeated but pretty much similar positions as employees of so-called "departments of vindication" at private banks and other large businesses. These departments might be regarded as a mix of private security police and private seaet intelligence services. So former KGB officials in Lithuania today have no less might and means than they had before—perhaps even more. These departments are very closely linked with the Mafia which, in its turn, also has a fair share of former KGB people in its membership. All Lithuania is covered under this web today. It makes the majority of people feel hopeless and helpless. Everything is in hands of the criminal or semi-criminal element, and nonetheless they call the new system "free enterprise," and the criminals themselves, "entrepreneurs."
Most working people are much worse off economically today than when they lived in the former system under the rule of Russia. Basic survival has become the overwhelming preoccupation of the vast majority of Lithuanians. Many are extremely disappointed and depressed. As my father wrote to me a couple of years ago: "Never has anybody mocked the Lithuanian people so badly as the people in power do, today." This is the view of one who had spent ten years in the Siberian GULag. To many Lithuanians, the state of affairs in today's Lithuania seems even worse than during the almost fifty years of the Soviet regime. As might almost have been expected, there's a new president in Lithuania now who is ... an American. Also there's an army of advisers, consultants, and so on from America—the World Bank, IMF, FBI, CIA, you name it—conducting affairs in Lithuania today. My motherland is rapidly becoming like a little copy of America. Is this what I was fighting for?
For myself, however, the days are past when I could endure the prospect of the KGB poisoning me in a fast food joint, or hitting me with a car. I am in no rush to find myself, by some ironic twist, the victim of a fate once threatened by the KGB, to be carried out by today's Mafia in Lithuania. (I say "Mafia in Lithuania," not "Lithuanian Mafia," because many, if not the majority, of today's gangsters in Lithuania aren't even Lithuanians. For example, one of the most dangerous aiminal groups, called the "Vilnius' Brigade," consists entirely of Russians and other ethnic minorities.) Maybe it doesn't sound very brave of me, but I'm only human, and I must think of my family. Yet even given all of this, as we observe from a distance all the contorted developments taking place in my country, my wife and I still cling to what has paradoxically become our most cherished dream: to return home.
In the interim, we have learned how to survive in America on very little money. We never used any credit cards and we buy all our necessities at secondhand stores. We intentionally refused to have a car, which is very unusual inAmerica. One of the worst disappointments for me in this country was to see people's total dependency on the private automobile. Instead of providing freedom and mobility as Americans claim, the car in the United States has in reality become like a form of enslavement. If somebody asks me what I dislike in Americans' daily life most, I always say that it is their addiction to the automobile and their indebtedness—their total dependence on bank aedit. These two things are, in fact, very tightly correlated. People here are forced to spend a big chunk of their incomes for an obligatory form of transport: the private automobile. Very few can afford to buy a car without taking some kind of loan. Financing automobe ownership keeps most Americans permanently in debt.
{p. 30} The amount of driving necessary to simply exist within this system is stupendous, and terribly expensive. There is no cheap and efficient public transport; indeed, there isn't even any public clamor to have it. Perhaps Americans view the thousands of bike riders in European and other countries as if their countries were simply not developed enough to have upgraded to mass ownership of a family car. While most Europeans do own cars—in fact, there are no fewer cars per 100,000 population than in the U.S.—they aren't forced to use them on a daily basis as Americans do. Unhappily, this elevation of private transport threatens to pervade developing countries, at great environmental cost to the world. Americans live under the regime of endless driving yet they are amazingly unaware of how destructive the automobile has been to their everyday life and world. To an outsider, American culture exhibits the bizarre cultural phenomenon of mandatory car ownership. American cities and towns have already lost all feeling of humanness and warmth because facilities for cars dominate the urban landscape.
Not only automobiles, but today's high-tech frenzy has a tendency to enslave people as well. Our minimalistic lifestyle helps us to stay aside from the global Americanization of daily life. We don't even own a computer. This, of course, goes against the fundamental rules of American consumer-based society which forces people into a materialistic way of life. So we too, are going against the wind once again in our lives, just as we did living in the former Soviet Union.
Little by little, I became a dissident again, unable to abandon my moral resistance to evil of any kind. My life has been one of struggle, and I could never ever agree to surrender and become the slave of any unjust system. The most important thing for me has always been to resist any form of tyranny and oppression. In the communist Soviet Union, there was a totalitarian state tyranny, but Americans live in a system of Erivate tyranny, where all the rules are set by the wealthy few. I soon came to see no difference and to view American capitalism as just as incompatible with humanness as Soviet communism was.
After ten years experience of life in America, I can say today that any of my good expectations turned out to be false, and that the real United States of America has exceeded all the bad expectations that I might have had. Reality here is much worse than I expected and even than Soviet propaganda was describing. In this cutthroat society which is based on a "greed is good" philosophy, unlimited profit seeking, selfishness, fraud and acquisitiveness predominate. In America, the rich are truly rich, but the poor are hopelessly poor and outrageously exploited by the rich. Therefore, in my opinion, the United States today has the most advanced system of private tyranny in the world. Freedom for the market in this country dominates freedom for people. At least two-thirds of Americans are simply robbed by this vampire-like system.
Many Americans today, I believe, are also very unhappy, and feel completely disillusioned and very hopeless about their country. These individuals have my deepest sympathy. However, I can't feel sorry for this nation as a whole. It has been built on enormous crimes, blood, suffering, oppression and fundamental injustice. There is no justification or excuse for what has been done, what has taken place on this continent since colonizers first arrived. There has been no recognition or resolution of the historical grievances of the Native or African Americans, not even an apology. How
{p. 31} can Americans expect to find happiness at home, when they have failed to fully admit what has been done, let alone make amends? That is the point. You can't be happy living on stolen land ...
My first steps towards becoming a dissident here in America came with my discovery that the American right wing had feet of clay. Not only were the policies they advocated against the interests and well-being of ordinary American citizens, but they themselves were arrogant, vindictive, self-absorbed, and willfully blind to the evils that they attempted to wreak on the rest of the population—and the world in general. So I turned toward the other side of the political spectrum, and investigated a number of progressive movements in the United States. Most left-wing groups with which I made contact seemed totally impotent. Many of them were involved in endless disputes with similar micro- groups, fighting each other instead of the common enemy. But the worst thing was the left-wing propensity to demand what's usually called here "political correctness." If I disagreed on any single subject, I again became a "heretic." It reminded me of the Catholic priests and nuns in the Lithuanian underground movement who could not tolerate contrary opinions from anyone.
Unfortunately, many American human rights groups I encountered seemed to be more concemed with the rights of criminals than with the interests of ordinary people. What about all the ordinary folks who are suffering and working against all odds, just to survive? People who are somehow less glamorous because they are not in an extreme situation, people who are simply low wage-earners, temporary workers, etc. Who is speaking for them? Whatever systemic reasons there may be which lead people to commit vicious or horrible crimes, these should not be purveyed in such a manner as to excuse or to confuse whether there has been wrong-doing—particularly in lieu of sympathy, and indeed compensation, to the victims. After all, there are perhaps millions of persons who suffer grave indignities without feeling the right to embark on a program of injuring others.
When horrible crimes are excused, for whatever reason, it leads to a moral debasement in the society as a whole. Indeed, those groups or individuals who align themselves with such perpetrators—even with the intent of using the crime to promote rectification of the conditions—are more likely to have the perception of their own decency and that of their cause besmirched rather than advanced. If the end is to combat or rectify the negative aspects of the system, it seems to me it would be more appropriate to concentrate on this and not tie it to issues that most ordinary people find morally difficult to condone. I must reiterate, however, that this is not to imply, on the other hand, that unjust laws, desperate economic straits and discrimination have not led to grave injustices and the crirninalization of large numbers of people who, under other circumstances, might likely have led normal, fruitful lives.
Just as when I witnessed the political injustices in my native land, so too, when I witness the terrible injustices in America, I cannot keep silent. There seem to be so many things Americans don't know about America, so many mistaken beliefs they have about what is and what is not possible to be done for ordinary folk, because the information they receive about the rest of the world is slanted and distorted.
American corporate propaganda always emphasizes that in European social democracies—"welfare states" as they always refer to them derisively
{p. 32} —people have to pay much higher taxes, for example. In my understanding, taxes in most of western Europe, even in Scandinavia, are just slightly higher than what Americans pay. But what American propaganda rarely touches on, is what people receive in return for those taxes. In Europe, a matchlessly greater proportion of tax monies are invested in the society itself, in the public good. Compare American society to European and especially Scandinavian societies, where still no one goes hungry, no one lives in abject poverty, where few have too much and even fewer have too little. While America is different —bigger and more diverse than any of the European countries—the wealthiest and most technologically advanced country in the world should be able to surmount these logistical difficulties. There is no excuse for keeping and maintaining an evil system of oppression and fundamental injustice which today is becoming a threat to the rest of the world.
Despite the fact that its government exhibits so little care for theAmerican people, the United States pretends to be the most advanced society on earth, an indispensable nation, the leader and the best country in the world. "Only America can lead the world," asserts Newt Gingrich. And so on ... Even ordinary people here sometimes try to argue with me when I say that life in America isn't that good. They usually insist that in many so-called "Third World" countries life is much, much worse, giving as an example places such as Rwanda, Haiti, Somalia. But these are not true examples for comparison! Yes, I agree that in Somalia, life may be much worse than in America, but the most important point is: Somalia does not pretend to be the leader of the world! Perhaps it is to engender just such a misunderstanding that the most frequent images of other countries purveyed to Americans are those from the most devastated sections of their populations, rather than those showing techrtological development and growth.
I have now spent almost ten years observing American society. Not only observing, but studying, analyzing, and comparing it to other societies. When I lived in the Soviet Union I thought that the Soviet communist system was the worst possible social order. At that time Russian communism truly seemed to me to be the only incontestable evil in the world. Evidently, I was wrong. The more I scrutinize American reality, the more deeply I am shocked by all the evil and injustices that I see here. I haven't changed my opinion about the totalitarian aspects of Russian communism, but now I no longer think that it was the only evil system in this world and that with its demise, all systemic evil is finally gone. I see that the American variant of capitalism is not the lesser evil, and in some aspects it may be even worse than the Soviet system was. But then, what was called Soviet communism wasn't really even an alternative to capitalism, but rather only a totalitarian form of state capitalism.
While living in Lithuania, I always actively opposed the totalitarian Soviet system and fought against it at every opportunity. As a result, eventually I was expelled from the Soviet Union. So, one cannot say that I came here with a pro-communist mindset. I always hated the mock Soviet version of socialism or communism, which distorted and defiled the very concept of socialism, and my opinion on the whole remains unchanged. The totalitarian Soviet system made claims to be "real socialism," but it wasn't socialism at all. At least, it wasn't characterized by the democratic egalitarianism that I define as socialism, and that I would like to see in the world.
{p. 33} After I contrast capitalism as it exists in extreme in America with defunct Soviet communism, I judge this system as no better than the other. They are like two ends of the same stick. It makes no difference with which end of the stick you strike. Both cause the same pain: both enslave and brutalize. Moreover, after living here, I realize that perhaps the American system is worse ...
There can be no doubt that only a very few people in the former Soviet countries would claim that the communist system was perfect or even good, but perhaps even fewer would say that what they have there now is betteL Everyone would agree that the Soviet system had very serious flaws, but in some ways— actually many—yes, it was considerably better than what people have here in America. I'm of the opinion that for the vast majority of working people anywhere, the Soviet system, bad as it was, would have been probably more acceptable than this American version of extreme capitalism, if they had a choice.
One can see now how disillusioned the majority of people in the former Soviet countries are today, after they have tried out the reality of "free markets" on their own backs. Most people that I personally know, my close friends, relatives, and acquaintances who live in post-Soviet countries, including my native Lithuania, acknowledge today that even the Soviet system wasn't so terrible when compared to American-style laissez-faire capitalism.
According to recent reports, the average life expectancy at birth for Russians has plunged dramatically since the fall of the Soviet Union. The collapse of the USSR and the subsequent restoration of capitalism has already created an unprecedented demographic catastrophe there. As one of those reports stated: "The magnitude and steepness of the fluctuations in mortality rates and life expectancy in Russia are without parallel in the modern era."' My native Lithuania, too, leads the world in suicides today.
A wild and free market fury has led to a massive drop in the standard of living and to cultural decline in all the former Soviet countries. Health care and education have sharply deteriorated. Almost all of the social gains won through the hard work and sacrifice of generations of people have been destroyed. On the other hand, the power of the old Communist Party "nomenklatura" has not only remained intact, it has grown. Former party and KGB functionaries have enriched themselves enormously. They have become ardent champions of private property, today. They now dream not only of matching the wealth and luxury of the American capitalists, but of exceeding it.
The Russian economy today, as we all know, is in severe crisis. Social differentiation has reached a very sharp level in Russia, as well as in all other post-Soviet countries, and brings about quite different moods within the various layers of society. Those few criminals who have accumulated enormous wealth are, of course, happy with the changes. They want to preserve the status quo so they can hang on to what they have plundered. At the other pole of society is the overwhelming majority. These people have been thrown into an existence marred by poverty, spiritual devastation and exhaustion. From their perspective, the present state of affairs appears like a complete social disintegration, tantamount to the end of civilization and culture.
After living here and having myself seen the American capitalist reality in extreme for long enough, I have no doubt about it, either. All those horrible developments in Russia, Lithuania and elsewhere are coming mainly from here, from America. I see these very things around me here every day. That is
{p. 34} why I no longer have illusions about this country and the capitalist system. What I have seen here is fundamental injustice, brutal exploitation, ruthless competition, vulgar materialism, rampant consumerism, morbid individualism, obscene greed, odious hypocrisy, ad nauseum ... This whole society is like one huge Jerry Springer show. It is totally sick.
When I had to study the works of Karl Marx in school, I wasn't attracted by his ideas very much. It was required work, assigned with little inspiration. But my experiences have enabled me to see more clearly. Perhaps the "old fellow" Marx was right about more than he was wrong. It took me years of living in the citadel of capitalism to comprehend how it really works, and to become a staunch supporter of a democratic socialism. The sickening reality of America has transformed me from a sort of pro-capitalist libertarian into a socialist to the core. My ideal for the future now is a truly democratic socialist-oriented society built upon justice, rule by the people, cooperation and solidarity.
With this book, I will try to illuminate what should be the all too evident human rights violations that the United States of America refuses to discuss or even admit. After almost ten years of living in this so-called "land of opportunity," I don't see any light at the end of the dark tunnel. America claims to be "the land of liberty and democracy." In reality, the United States of America is a land of misery and plutocracy. ...
{p. 35} Propagandistic juggling of human rights issues has always been one of the integral parts of U.S. foreign policy. American propaganda has always been very outspoken in blaming other nations for violating human rights, but the United States violates human rights no less than other oppressive regimes. The way this nation treats its poor is a clear mockery of fundamental human rights.
While living in the former Soviet Union, I was myself a vocal advocate for human rights. But it now also should be made clear that at least some of my dissident activities at that time were incited from abroad, from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. From here, from America ... After serious thought I understand now that, quite often, I was simply used as a pawn by the U.S. government to further its plans in the dirty Cold War game. The United States' government, through the CIA and its other intermediaries such as Radio Liberty/Free Europe, encouraged us to think that all our fundamental human rights were terribly violated by the Soviet system. It was sort of an inspirational hypnosis for us. As a result, we—a handful of Soviet dissidents—fought against what were sometimes only imaginary injustices and violations of our rights. The American CIA was, no doubt, the conductor and orchestrator of many of such activities. They used us as an assault force in their psychological war against the Soviets.
I don't want to claim that there weren't any violations of human rights in the Soviet Union at all. And of course, I'm not talking now about the earlier Stalinist period of Soviet history. I was born later and did not live through that. True, as I have already said, there were always many serious violations of people's political and civil rights such as freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But whenever the United States commented about human rights in the Soviet Union, it was always with reference only to political rights. During the Cold War, the United States touted civil and political rights as if they were the only human rights, loudly proclaiming U.S. superiority on that basis.
However, in my opinion, the right to have a guaranteed job and to make a decent living, the right to get free medical help when you are sick, the right to free education, housing, social security—are all much more important material needs for the vast majority of people than political liberties or freedom of worship. When most people get seriously sick, they undoubtedly would prefer to see a doctor first, not a priest.
In the modern world, the realization and exercise of rights and opportunities in the socio-economic sphere form the basis for the quality of life enjoyed by the citizen. Moreover, social and economic rights form the basis for all the other rights and freedoms of the citizen. Without economic and social rights, civil and political rights are fairly meaningless. Political rights are mere gestures if people are denied the right to guaranteed work and, therefore, to subsistence. The freedom to speak his or her mind is little consolation to a starving person. ...
{p. 36} So this book is intended not just as a warning to those who might wish to emigrate to America, but also to those who value their greater humanity, evidenced in their social policies and infrastructure. European and developing world intellectuals and policymakers must truly consider: if this is theAmerican Way, why should the world be rushing to embrace it?
September 1998
{end}
To buy Discovering America As It Is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932863299
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