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Every tidbit of information about Ukraine reminded me of the events that followed January 13, , when troops from the Soviet Union killed 13 peaceful civilians in Vilnius, Lithuania. Lithuania had declared its independence in March , beginning a long and winding road for the first breakaway republic of the former Soviet Union. The Baltic country entered a period of danger, uncertainty, and insecurity, the logical result of the threat it posed for the slowly dying Soviet empire. Eleven months before the dissolution of the USSR, the slaughter of the 13 stripped the empire of its remaining political and moral legitimacy. And yet Russia evaded denunciation. The world knew that Kremlin aggression had nothing to do with the opinions of the Russian intelligentsia—not to mention Russian dissidents. One of them, Sergei Averintsev, an eminent cultural historian and poet, publicly recited his poem depicting Vilnius as a city of freedom on whose stones the blood of innocent people was shed. Meanwhile, court journalists and various Soviet sycophants went so far as to suggest that Lithuanian snipers were killing fellow citizens to compromise and discredit the peaceful and progressive Kremlin. Some columnists observed that gay and lesbian athletes were for homophobic Putin what Jesse Owens was for racist Adolf Hitler. Putin readily sacrificed his imperial chauvinism by buying foreign athletes and offering them Russian citizenship. Had Hitler been less fanatical in his mad racist mythology, he might well have tried to buy medalist Owens for the glory of Germany in the Berlin Olympics. For instance, the political clown Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, launched a campaign of enlisting military volunteers to save their Russian brethren in Ukraine, a grotesque way of exploring how far the Kremlin would go to boost the pugnacity of court patriots. Labeling all Ukrainians Banderovites terrorists or fascists is morally repugnant. But it also highlights the cynical, misguided, and misplaced nature of Russian public political discourse. Calling Ukraine fascist camouflages the rise of fascism in Russia itself. Coupled with homophobic legislation and crackdowns on NGOs and civil society at large, this product of widespread hatred and xenophobia only dramatizes the failed democratization of Russia. In other words, defending everything that modern Europe stands for, including the fight against real, not imagined, fascism. Endorsement of the letter, issued by the Ministry of Culture, dismayed many people who had tried to convince themselves that the revisionist state and its revenge-seeking regime would be met with contempt, or at least reservation, by respected figures in Russian music, theater, film, and art. Among those who discredited themselves were dozens whose accomplishments in the arts are unquestionable. Yet the fact that conductor Valery Gergiev and violist Yuri Bashmet signed the disgraceful document hardly came as a shock. Both have long been court musicians—overpaid, easy to manipulate, and silent about independent political views that might, God forbid, contradict those of Putin. The question floating in the air was, simply put, What happened to Russia? They and others refused to sign the letter. Choosing The Heart of a Dog seemed to leave no doubt how the director viewed the Soviet Union and its legacies. It was widely assumed that Russia was on the way to putting behind and rejecting its horrible past—even to the point of putting Putin aside. Alas, that was not to be. The Master and Margarita portrays that kind of Eastern European existential anxiety. In contrast, the anxiety of Western Europeans and Americans was found to be rooted in feelings that they were manipulated and their moral character was deformed. A central question is what chance nobility of character has in a world in which we have failed not just to identify evil personified by Satan, calling himself Woland in ourselves, but also to understand how it underpins our very way of life. Most dangerous are moral relativism, faithlessness, and the nihilistic rejection of everything not associated with power or mere physical survival. Now we can only bid farewell to our postmodern fantasies about a postmaterial, postnational, and posthistorical world. Ironically, in the movie hope comes from Woland, played by Oleg Basilashvili, who in real life had the courage to condemn the Russian invasion of Georgia and refused to sign the letter in support of Crimean annexation. He chose his conscience over the brutality and cynicism of his country. Yet it possesses an ambivalent tone unnoticed by general audiences when it was released in That was it. We tried hard to conceal this dangerous thought, yet it kept returning to us. Both military dictatorships were based on the perception of the world as full of enemies and haters of their master race and hegemon class, and Ordinary Fascism was finally about the USSR, not Nazi Germany. With horror, Romm questioned whether the fascist plague was over. Instead of racial supremacy, there are ravenous pursuits of gas, oil, and political power unencumbered by social or political narratives. Present-day Russian fascism comes from an Orwellian mafia state mentality. Power is exercised for its own sake while Ukraine and the best in Russia fight for freedom and the soul of Europe. This was the springtime of our discontent, and it followed the winter of our discontent. The Euromaidan revolution in Kiev appears to have been a genuine anticriminal uprising that dealt a blow to the Kremlin and scared Putin. The criminalization of politics and the politicization of the criminal world were and continue to be the sword and the shield of the system created by the Russian president and his clique. Wherever they manufacture ethnic conflicts, we see criminal gangs in power. By the time this is published, we will know whether Russian ambitions in Ukraine went beyond Crimea, but here in Kaunas there is a strong sense of history repeating itself. Such code words as Munich, the Sudetenland, Hitler, Daladier, and Chamberlain resonate stronger than at any time since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I predicted that in Russia the rise of a revisionist state with a strong sense of injustice would result in a wave of chauvinism, neoimperialism, and fascism. Some colleagues took this remark seriously, yet others especially Germans thought it was overblown. I leave it to my gracious readers to decide who was right. Kaunas is deeply embedded in the 20th century, with its cult of power and cruelty, violence, criminal regimes, and the politics of forgetting, as Milan Kundera would have it. Kaunas was the provisional capital of Lithuania before the Second World War. In this spot, the history of prewar Lithuania ended abruptly in with the invasion by the Soviet Union. Kaunas was immediately hated and feared by Soviet authorities, and throughout the Soviet period it was a symbol of independent Lithuania and the stronghold of Lithuanian nationalism. Two Vytautas Magnus presidents have been American scholars of Lithuanian background, and English is the second language of instruction. With the Soviet occupation, Lithuania seemed to be on a precipice, with no loyal and committed nation-friends in Europe. But Lithuania today, like the two other Baltic States, finds itself in a different world. Even now, when Russia threatens the world order and challenges the balance of international relations, Kaunas and Lithuania are safer and more secure than ever before. Leonidas Donskis is a Lithuanian philosopher, writer, and political commentator. He is finishing his term as a member of the European Parliament — and resuming his academic work as professor of political science at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Letter From. Letter from Kaunas, Lithuania: Springtime for Putin. By Leonidas Donskis June 9, Permission required for reprinting, reproducing, or other uses. Enter your email address to subscribe.