Baltic Blog......Security & Intelligence Briefs, International, Baltic & Russia News June 19- 13, 2008

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Breaking news & commentary......................



Islamic school draws fire
Protest follows arrest of top official on obstruction charge
Gary Emerling (Contact)Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The arrest of a top official at a Saudi-financed school in Northern Virginia has fueled further criticism of the institution following findings released last week that say its textbooks contained violent and intolerant language.
Photo by Astrid Riecken
Christine Brim of Fairfax County, an official with the District-based Center for Security Policy, joins a protest at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria on Tuesday. "They don't have a First Amendment right in this country to incite violence against other groups," she said.
"They're free to come here and worship, but they are not free to come here and teach hate," said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition and one of about 15 protesters that gathered Tuesday morning outside the Islamic Saudi Academy's main campus in Alexandria.
The academy - a 900-student private school with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax - has been the subject of renewed scrutiny after an investigation by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom found that textbooks used in the school contained passages that blame Jews for "discord" and say it is sometimes permissible to kill non-Muslims.
The school's director general, Abdalla Al-Shabnan, was arrested June 9 and charged with obstruction of justice - a misdemeanor count that follows accusations that he failed to report an allegation of child abuse made by a student at the school.
A 5-year-old girl at the academy's campus in Fairfax said she had been sexually assaulted by a family member, according to court documents. Mr. Al-Shabnan, 52, met with the child's parents, documents show, but did not notify authorities of the complaint within a 72-hour period required by Virginia law.
"At no time did [Mr. Al-Shabnan] report the allegations to any child protective agency or law enforcement agency," an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court says. "He further stated that he was not aware that he was required to make such a report."
Court documents also say Mr. Al-Shabnan "stated he did not believe [the girl's] complaint and felt she may be attempting to gain attention." He ordered a written report of the incident deleted from a secretary's computer at the Fairfax campus, documents say.
As part of the investigation, Fairfax County Police searched school offices last month and seized computers, notebooks, student files and disks.
Mr. Al-Shabnan, who is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 1, could not be reached for comment. An academy administrator also declined to comment on the arrest.
Protesters on Tuesday said the director's arrest was another sign of trouble at the academy. The textbook review conducted by the federal panel focused on 17 books used during the last school year and obtained from independent sources.

Astrid Riecken/The Washington Times An armed guard guides visitors to the school Tuesday while monitoring the Islamic Saudi Academy grounds.
The passages found in the review include a 12th-grade Koranic interpretation textbook that states it is permissible for a Muslim to kill those who have left the faith and one that says "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people."
"They don't have a First Amendment right in this country to incite violence against other groups," said Christine Brim, an official with the District-based Center for Security Policy.
At one point, staff and children affiliated with the academy brought bottles of water to the protesters, who gathered near a sidewalk in front of the school holding signs with slogans like "Murder is not a religious freedom" and "Stop Teaching Kids Jihad." But the groups soon began arguing.
"That's absolutely not true," said Rahima Abdullah, the school's education department director. "What we teach here is love and tolerance."
The school has since released a statement calling the panel's report "erroneous" and saying it "contains mistranslated and misinterpreted texts."
"We have new books now, and the ones the commission is talking about have been out of use for some time, and were misinterpreted then," Ms. Abdullah said.



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The Marines Vs. Haditha Smear Merchants

By Michelle MalkinWednesday, June 18, 2008
Yet another U.S. Marine, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, had charges dropped Tuesday in the so-called Haditha massacre -- bringing the total number of Marines who've been cleared or won case dismissals in the Iraq war incident to seven. "Undue command influence" on the prosecution led to the outcome in Chessani's case. Bottom line: That's zero for seven for military prosecutors, with one trial left to go.
I repeat: Haditha prosecution goes 0-7. But you won't see that headline in the same Armageddon-sized font The New York Times used repeatedly when the story first broke.
The Times, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa, and the rest of the anti-war drum-pounders who fueled the smear campaign against the troops two years ago should hang their hands in shame. They won't, of course. Perpetuating the "cold-blooded Marines" narrative means never having to say you're sorry.
It means never having to look Lt. Col. Chessani (charges dismissed), Lt. Andrew Grayson (acquitted), Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum (charges dismissed), Capt. Lucas McConnell (charges dismissed), Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt (charges dismissed), Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz (charges dismissed), Sgt. Frank Wuterich (awaiting trial) and their families in the eyes and apologize for the preemptive character assassination they all faced at the hands of the hyperventilating, noose-hanging press.
Murtha and company applied Queen of Hearts ("Off with their heads!") treatment to our own men and women in uniform while giving more benefit of the doubt to foreign terror suspects at Gitmo. It is worth recalling, because the press won't do it for you, what they concluded about the now-crumbling Haditha case in the summer of 2006 before a single formal charge had been filed.
-- MSNBC hangman Keith Olbermann, who couldn't wait to define the entire war in Iraq by a single moment about which he knew nothing, inveighed that the incident was "willful targeted brutality." Due process? For convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, of course. For our military? Never mind.
-- Far-left The Nation magazine railed, "Enough details have emerged … to conclude that … members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment perpetrated a massacre." The publication also judged the event "a willful, targeted brutality designed to send a message to Iraqis." Not content with hanging the troops, the Nation pinned blame on the president and a so-called "culture of impunity" that supposedly permeates the most accountable military in the world.
-- Singing the same tune as The Nation, The New York Times spilled a flood of front-page ink on the case and took things a step further in a lead editorial blaming not just President Bush, but also top Pentagon brass for the "nightmare" killings in Haditha. Times reporter Paul von Zielbauer filed over 30 stories on the case, which the paper wishfully called the "defining atrocity" of the Iraq war.
-- Hoping to facilitate a self-fulfilling prophecy, media tools around the world likened Haditha to the Vietnam War's most infamous atrocity -- from The Guardian ("My Lai on the Euphrates?") to the Daily Telegraph ("Massacre in Iraq just like My Lai") to the Los Angeles Times ("What happened at the Iraqi My Lai?") to The New York Times' Maureen Dowd ("My Lai acid flashback") and the Associated Press, which reached into its photo archives to run a 1970 file photo of My Lai to illustrate a Haditha article.
-- And, of course, there's the permanent stain left by the slanderous propaganda of Rep. Murtha -- the stab in the Marines' backs heard 'round the world: "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
Relatives of the Haditha Marines have called for Congress to censure Murtha, who cuts and runs to the nearest elevator when questioned about the Haditha dismissals. He and the Haditha smear merchants have skated while the men and their families suffered global whippings on the airwaves and eternal demonization in print. Whose "culture of impunity"?
Michelle Malkin makes news and waves with a unique combination of investigative journalism and incisive commentary. She is the author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild .
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Geopolitical Diary: Ireland's Vote and the Fate of the EU
Ireland on Thursday became thus far the only country of the European Union’s 27-member bloc to hold a referendum over the Treaty of Lisbon. The outcome of Ireland’s vote will not be made public until the close of the day on June 13, leaving many EU bureaucrats anxiously waiting to know the fate of their union. The treaty has a slight majority of support inside of Ireland, though the low voter turnout has left it a coin toss of an outcome.
When the European Union was established in 1993 from the European Community, it was made up of only 15 western European countries that were all at around the same level of development. The purpose of the European Union was to be a unified governing and economic body — a hybrid of intergovernmentalism and supranationalism, transcending the different nations’ differences.
Speed forward to today: Now the European Union’s 27 members range from densely populated and wealthy states such as France and Germany to the poor new members such as Romania and Bulgaria. The union now is a mixture of members that have agricultural, industrial or service-based economies and new members that spent half of the last century under the Iron Curtain.
In short, the EU member states have different views of politics, security and economic models; not to mention, many EU members do not exactly fully trust the others — especially those they have been to war with on the continent in the past century.
But, at least symbolically, the EU nations are attempting to come together in creating a framework of how exactly this union should govern. Thus far, no treaty or constitution has been finalized because there has had to be a unanimous decision by every member state. The newest attempt, called the Treaty of Lisbon, is the EU replacement for the union’s constitution, which was rejected by France and the Netherlands in 2005. The new treaty combines bits and pieces from not only its predecessor but also the treaties of Rome in 1957 and Maastricht in 1992. Because so much of the Treaty of Lisbon comes from existing treaties negotiated before the 2004 round of accessions of the Eastern European states, it has had to be seriously watered down in order for there to be any semblance of an agreement.
To sum it up, the Treaty of Lisbon is the European Union’s weak effort to prove it is indeed a union and not just a fractured and ineffective club of independent states. If Ireland votes against the treaty, it is a public demonstration of the latter. But even if the treaty is approved by the Irish, it won’t save the European Union from its troubles.
Ironically, on Thursday — the same day of Ireland’s referendum — the European Union demonstrated the fact that it is not a governing body, but merely a coordinating one, in its discussions on how to react to high energy prices that are leading to strikes and protests in many European countries.
The union has attempted to formulate a response to Europe’s energy dilemmas in the past, but it has always been hit by a roadblock from one of its member states, meaning that decision-making has reverted back to a state-by-state basis. The concept of the European Union seems as if it should allow for some states to share in other states’ pain over any major challenges –- such as high energy prices — but the EU Council announced Thursday that it will hold discussions June 19-20 on loosening the restrictions on each state’s ability to make its own choice on a specifically short-term response.
Each state is most likely going to follow its own path anyway, but the European Union is trying to show it still has some hold on its members, even if it doesn’t. When facing a crisis, especially over fuel, that hits all other areas such as manufacturing, food and transportation, a state will always look out for its own first and not another nation that is on the other side of the continent — unless the ties binding that nation to another are so strong as to be necessary for the survival of both. Right now, none of the EU members know exactly what they can expect to get from the links they have to other members, and thus will likely pursue their own goals.
In the end, the European Union is undermining its own credibility and viability, just as a vote is taking place to show it is still a functioning governing body.
www.stratfor.com

Geopolitical Diary: Implications of Overt U.S. Operations in Pakistan
Speaking at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s June 15 remarks that Kabul would send forces into Pakistan to prevent the Taliban from using the South Asian country as a launchpad for attacks in Afghanistan. Karzai, who spoke after a major jailbreak in Kandahar in which hundreds of Taliban fighters escaped, specifically mentioned the Waziristan-based Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah, the jihadist leader in the district of Swat in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Pakistani authorities have been negotiating peace agreements with these two jihadist leaders.
It is no coincidence that Bush’s and Karzai’s statements come just days after a U.S. airstrike against a paramilitary outpost in Pakistan that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers. Afghan forces alone clearly lack the ability to conduct cross-border operations in Pakistan, regardless of Karzai’s wishes; Afghanistan can barely secure its own capital. U.S. forces — most likely operating outside the aegis of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force — probably would carry out any such move.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are undergoing a shift Stratfor mentioned in May in which the United States is no longer relying on Pakistan to rein in Islamist militants on its side of the border, but is imposing a situation in which it will become the norm for U.S.-led coalition forces to conduct operations openly inside Pakistan. While U.S. special operations forces and CIA teams have been operating covertly in Pakistan essentially since the beginning of the U.S.-jihadist war, this operational tempo appears to have increased to the point that it is poised to become overt. From the U.S. point of view, Pakistan’s new civil-military leadership is failing to respond to the jihadist threat aggressively, and there is growing U.S. mistrust of the South Asian country’s military and intelligence apparatus.
This perception could help explain the U.S. position that the airstrike on (what Pakistan maintains is) a well-established Pakistani outpost was justified. While U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for a joint inquiry into the incident, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen maintained that U.S. forces took action against hostile forces and that the operation was carried out in keeping with operational protocol. It is no secret that Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, whose outpost was hit, is viewed as sympathetic to the Taliban and its allies. This apparently led the United States to take matters into its own hands.
Though it is very difficult to describe the nature of U.S. operations on Pakistani soil, Karzai’s comments offer some insight. By threatening not just Mehsud but also Fazlullah, Karzai was hinting that such operations might not be limited to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas but could extend to the NWFP. This leaves the Pakistanis in a very difficult position.
Islamabad could pre-empt the U.S. move by giving Washington exactly what it wants and engaging in a massive action against the militants and their sympathizers within the Pakistani security establishment. Given Pakistan’s performance thus far, this is probably not likely, however. But the inability to make such a move is contributing to the growing international perception of Pakistan as a dysfunctional state, and only pushes the United States further toward taking unilateral action.
Routine U.S. raids on Pakistani soil could lead to clashes not only with militants but also with local tribesmen and others who might not support the Taliban. This very well could create a major uprising in Pakistan, with a strong nationalist reaction from a population that already harbors highly anti-American sentiments. Worse, such raids could create fissures and possibly even fractures with the Pakistani army. This would be especially true if Pakistani troops end up clashing with U.S. forces — something certainly not impossible, considering the deteriorating situation in Pakistan.
Rifts within its army would greatly destabilize the Pakistani state. The military is the only robust institution in Pakistan, and is the cornerstone of whatever stability remains in the South Asian country. But the recent turn of events means Islamabad must choose between confrontation with the United States and confrontation with the jihadists.
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Lithuanian ban on Soviet symbols
Lithuania's parliament has passed the toughest restrictions anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols.
It will now be an offence in the Baltic state to display the images of Soviet and Nazi leaders.
This includes flags, emblems and badges carrying insignia, such as the hammer and sickle or swastika.
Correspondents say equating Soviet and Nazi symbols in this way is certain to infuriate Russia.
The new law also prohibits the Nazi and Soviet national anthems but does not specify if this extends to the modern-day Russian national anthem, which uses the Soviet music with different lyrics.
BBC Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke says these are the toughest bans on symbols from the Soviet past adopted in any of the 15 countries that emerged from the USSR.
'Blasphemous'
The measures go further than neighbouring Estonia's ban on Soviet symbols, he says.
Estonia's decision to put the swastika and hammer and sickle on an equally prohibited footing was described by Russia as "blasphemous", and an attempt to rewrite history.
Moscow's official interpretation of history is that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were liberated from Nazi Germany by, then voluntarily joined, the Soviet Union.
This account is rejected by those three Baltic States and most other European nations, says our correspondent.
They believe the Soviet Union illegally occupied the Baltic republics as a result of a secret agreement - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
The occupation continued until the collapse of the Soviet state itself at the end of 1991.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7459976.stm

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President Valdas Adamkus at a news conference in Trakai, Lithuania, June 16, 2008.


Lithuania Will Take the Missiles
The United States is in negotiations with Lithuania on the placement of elements of its missile defense system in that country, according to Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski. Washington views Lithuania as a possible alternative in the event negotiations with Poland are unsuccessful, Waszczykowski said. Vilnius initiated the negotiations last month. Spokesmen for the American embassy in Warsaw have denied that information, and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas declined to comment on the claims.
At the end of last month, the Lithuanian National Defense Ministry denied reports that National Defense Minister Juozas Olekas has urged the U.S. to place part of its missile defense system on Lithuanian territory. Lithuania, which is a member of NATO, issued a statement at that time saying that the system in the Czech Republic and Poland will strengthen the security of Lithuania, Europe and Russia. The U.S. plans to place ten interceptor missiles in Poland to defend Europe and the U.S. against attack by such states as Iran and North Korea. Washington signed an agreement with the Czech Republic on May 21 on the placement of radar facilities for the system in that country. Negotiations with Poland have taken a turn for the worse since Donald Tusk became the country’s prime minister. Tusk is determined to maintain good relations with Russia as well as the U.S. Poland is also asking for $20 billion to modernize its army in compensation for the risks associated with the missiles. The U.S. has offered the symbolic sum of $200 million.




No, Lithuania Won’t Take the Missiles
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has denied reports that Vilnius is in negotiations with Washington over the placement of elements of the U.S. missile defense system on Lithuanian territory. “Lithuania is not conducting negotiations on the placement of the missile defense system on its territory,” Violetta Gaizauskaite, head of the information and public relations department of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry told local LTV television. She added that Lithuania “assesses the possibility of the placement of the missile defense system in Poland positively.”
On Tuesday, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister and chief missile negotiator Witold Waszczykowski stated that the U.S. had entered into negotiations with Lithuania on Lithuanian initiative on the placement of elements of the defense system in that country should negotiations with Poland fail. Official U.S. State Department representative Tom Casey told journalists that negotiations with Poland should soon be concluded and no alternatives are needed for the placement of U.S. interceptor missiles. The U.S. plans to place ten interceptor missiles in Poland and the radar equipment for the system in the Czech Republic as defense against the threat posed by Iran. Russia is concerned that the system could be a threat to its security, however. Warsaw is expecting U.S. aid for modernizing its army in return. Warsaw has expressed particular interest in obtaining Patriot PAC-3, THAAD or AMRAAM short- or medium-range missile complexes.

www.kommersant.com

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Lithuania open to U.S. shield talks if Poland refuses
Wed Jun 18, 2008 11:14am EDT
VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuania has held no talks on hosting a U.S. missile shield, but would consider the idea if Washington's negotiations with Poland failed and the Americans suggested it, officials said on Wednesday.
Polish chief negotiator Witold Waszczykowski told Reuters on Tuesday the United States was already in talks with Lithuania. Diplomats say Washington has become exasperated by Warsaw's tough negotiating stance.
"Only if no bilateral agreement was reached between Poland and the U.S. and an official proposal was sent to Lithuania would our country look at it with due attention and responsibility," Lithuania's Defense Ministry said.
It added in a statement that it supported the idea of a missile shield in Europe and was following the negotiations closely. It said it had been informed by U.S. representatives at a meeting in Vilnius in May about the course of the talks.
But it added: "Lithuania does not hold any talks with the U.S. on installation of elements of anti-missile defense systems."
The United States said on Tuesday that only "general conversations" with the Lithuanians had taken place.
President George W. Bush's administration wants to install interceptor rockets in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic to shield the United States and allies from attack by what it calls "rogue states", particularly Iran.
Russia is strongly opposed to the idea, seeing it as a threat to its own security.
Poland has set tough conditions for agreeing to base 10 U.S. interceptor rockets on its soil. It wants Washington to spend billions of dollars to upgrade Polish air defenses after Russia said it would point missiles at Poland in case of deployment.
The United States has said it would seek another site for its European missile defense project if talks with Poland fail. Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania are members of NATO.
(Reporting by Patrick Lannin; Editing by Charles Dick)
Reuters
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Czech official "not surprised" by Baltic shield talks claims (Extra)
By DPAJun 18, 2008, 14:12 GMT
Prague - Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said Wednesday that he was not surprised by claims that the United States is in talks with Lithuania on installing a part of a planned US missile shield in the Baltic state.
'We don't want to comment (on) what belongs to Lithuania or Poland, but I was not very surprised by that statement,' Vondra said.
Vondra reacted to a statement by Polish top missile shield negotiator Witold Waszczykowski, who said Tuesday that the United States were negotiating with Lithuania about a possibility to place 10 interceptor missiles, intended as the Polish arm of the system, in the Baltic state.
Both Washington and Vilnius have since denied holding such talks.
The Pentagon said that the US hopes to strike a deal with Poland but would look elsewhere, including at Lithuania, if the talks in Warsaw fail, while Lithuanian officials confirmed they are open to negotiations on hosting the base.
Washington is close to completing talks with the Czech Republic on placing a tracking radar in a military zone south-west of Prague. The talks in Poland have lagged behind after Warsaw's demands for military aid.
The plan to put the missile shield bases, allegedly designed against the so-called rogues states such as Iran, in the former Soviet satellites has irked Russia, which has threatened to aim its missiles at central Europe if the shield is installed there.
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Medvedev Employs Communists
Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev proceeded with meetings with heads of State Duma’s factions. The yesterday’s guest in the Kremlin was Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the RF (CPRF).
Gennady Zyuganov was the third party leader that met with the new president. State Duma Vice Speaker from Fair Russia Party Alexander Babakov and Civil Force leader Mikhail Barshchevsky had had their rendezvous with the president already. Civil Force has no faction of its own in the lower house of Russia’s parliament but it had been amid the parties that nominated Medvedev the presidential candidate.The sources say Medvedev will meet with LDPR leader Dmitry Zhirinovsky and Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky in the nearest future. As to the meetings with spokesmen of United Russia’s faction, the leader of the latter and today’s PM of the country Vladimir Putin promised to see about it.In the Kremlin yesterday, Medvedev proposed to communists to take part in the matter of national significance. “We have nowhere to step back, it’s time to pass all those documents,” the president said referring to the national program for corruption fighting. “In essence, it’s clear what should be there… But there are nuances, both legal and economic, which could be debated.” The CPRF faction is the second in the State Duma “in terms of significance and authority” and it has its own ideas, so it should be also involved in the process, according to the president.So, the communists were urged to come up with their own counter-corrupt amendments and to join the elaboration of judicial reform. Zyuganov accepted the offer, specifying that the faction has not only the experts and ideas but also the ready bills.
www.kommersant.com


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MAN IN CHARGE Prime Minister Putin in May.
AFP

Putin's Giant Chess Game: 'Petrostate'
Books Review of: Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia
By MARTHA MERCERJune 18, 2008
Over the weekend, at a meeting in Osaka, finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations warned that high commodities prices are a threat to the world economy. With the price of oil passing $130 a barrel, the American Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, singled out oil-rich countries for not investing enough in production.
As news outlets pointed out, most of the G-8 countries have little control over production. One, however, does, and it has leveraged that control, and its enormous reserves, to regain status as a world power.
Russia's re-emergence as a "Petrostate" is the subject of Marshall Goldman's new book of the same name (Oxford University Press, 244 pages, $27.95). An emeritus professor of economics at Wellesley College and senior scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, Mr. Goldman has spent decades delving into Russian and Soviet economics, and his latest in a dozen books offers critical insight into the country's energy sector.
After the tsarist reconquest of what is now Azerbaijan and the Caucuses in the mid-19th century, Russia began a cycle that has repeated itself in various forms to the present day. Foreign concerns, beginning with the Swedish Nobel family and Rockefeller's Standard Oil, were allowed in to exploit the petroleum reserves and lend their advanced technology, but after the Bolsheviks took over, the foreigners were forced out.
In "Petrostate," Mr. Goldman takes a detailed look at oil production in the Soviet era, and especially the political leverage that ownership of some of the world's largest petroleum and gas reserves offered: the use of oil to gain influence in countries such as Cuba and Pakistan, and the opportunity presented by the 1973 oil embargo, when Western Europe sought to reduce its dependence on uncertain imports from the Middle East. The West throughout the Cold War had held back its advanced drilling technology from the Soviet Union, which oversaw colossal waste through its emphasis on quantity over quality, but by the early 1980s, a natural gas pipeline linking the U.S.S.R. with Western Europe was in the offing, over the objections of President Reagan. It was completed in 1985.
The breakup of the Soviet Union and the division of its spoils provides Mr. Goldman with his meatiest material. While the Ministry of the Gas Industry was preserved whole as a hybrid state corporate entity — in 1989, it became Gazprom, with the gas minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, installed as its CEO — the Ministry of Petroleum privatized its oil fields.
The chaos that ensued, Mr. Goldman writes, was foreseeable. As many Russians traded away the vouchers they received from President Yeltsin's government for a bottle of vodka instead of using them to purchase stock in the country's new companies, a small group of men was preparing the ground for takeovers on a huge scale.
Through the tainted Loans for Shares program, for example, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his Bank Menatep were able, by way of a rigged auction, to gain control of the huge oil fields of Yukos for a mere $309 million, Mr. Goldman writes. The company, one of many controlled by the country's new "oligarch" class, soon had a market share of $15 billion.
With production and the price of oil dropping as the 1990s progressed, Russia again turned to foreign partners, allowing British Petroleum to buy part of the Russian oil concern TNK, and permitting the signing of production sharing agreements with Royal Dutch Shell and Total, among others, to drill in the inhospitable fields off the island of Sakhalin.
But after Russia hit rock bottom with the August 1998 default and crash, commodities prices began to rise again, as did demand for oil and gas in India and China. A year later, and five months after the economy began its turnaround, Mr. Goldman writes, an unknown from St. Petersburg named Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister.
As president, and now again as prime minister, Mr. Putin has presided over economic growth approaching 8% a year. He laid out his economic strategy in a dissertation in 1997: Instead of allowing Russia's oligarch-controlled corporations to focus exclusively on making a profit, they should be used to advance the country's national interests. Russia should welcome direct foreign investment, but Russia alone should retain operating control.
Sibneft and Yukos, which was flirting with the idea of selling itself to ExxonMobil and Chevron, were reined in, and the oligarchs who controlled them were jailed or fled abroad. Production sharing agreements in Sakhalin, which Mr. Putin had referred to as "a colonial agreement," were adjusted in Russia's favor. Companies known as "national champions," such as Gazprom and Rosneft, now check in advance with Mr. Putin before selling assets to a foreign company.
In a welcome contrast to aggrieved Western press reports about Mr. Putin's economic strategy and the subsequent fall of oligarchs such as Mr. Khodorkovsky, Mr. Goldman takes an agnostic view on these developments. "In all fairness," he writes, "the way the Russian government reacts when foreign investors attempt to buy their energy resources is not that atypical of how other countries react in a similar situation. If anything, most members of OPEC, for example, are even more protective."
He does have a stern warning for Western Europe, however. The region has become dangerously dependent on Russia for natural gas, he writes. With its spreading network of pipelines, Gazprom now has the power to let Europe freeze if it so chooses.
Although the deputy chairman of the state-controlled gas giant, Alexander Medvedev, proclaims that "what is good for Gazprom is good for the world," Mr. Goldman points out that over the years, the Soviet Union and now Russia have not hesitated to reduce or halt the flow of gas. Squabbles with Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia over the last few years have made hollow Gazprom's pledges that it is a reliable energy partner. While the Europeans and Americans have sought to break Gazprom's pipeline monopoly by promoting the construction of a bypass gas pipeline under the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, they are getting a late start to what Mr. Goldman calls Mr. Putin's "giant chess game." Russia's power today, he writes, now exceeds the military might it had during the Cold War. With no mutually assured destruction, there is no mutually assured restraint, giving Russia more economic clout than Europe or even the kingdom with the world's largest proven oil reserves, Saudi Arabia.
The chess game continues.
mmercer@nysun.com
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Divided village reflects a deeper divide in Europe
By YURAS KARMANAU
The Associated Press
PYATSKUNY, Belarus — When Stanislava Subach wants to lay flowers on her husband's grave, she puts them in a plastic shopping bag and adds some stones for weight.
The package is then tossed over a metal fence and into what is now another country, to be picked up by former neighbors and placed on the grave.
The border between Belarus and Lithuania, two countries that were part of the Soviet Union, was once little more than a line on a map.
Now a fence runs along the border, representing a new version of the Iron Curtain that separated Eastern and Western Europe until communism collapsed. The autocratic regime of Belarus portrays this heavily policed border as the last line of defense against an encroaching West, represented by Lithuania, now a member of the European Union and NATO.
Here the fence cuts right through the village, separating Pyatskuny on the Belarus side from its Lithuanian half, Norviliskes. Villagers are cut off from the neighbors, the parish church and the cemetery, just a few steps but a whole world away.
People living across the fence can travel visa-free throughout Europe and work there. Those who stay in Norviliskes are paid by the EU to farm their land, and have money to fix up their homes and buy new clothes.
Those on the Belarusian side have little choice but to work on the local collective farm, and they depend on their gardens for food.
Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko, who permits no real economic or political reform, uses the fortified border much as the Soviet bloc once did: as a way to keep people in as much as keep them out.
The Lithuanian border police operate as any in Europe: guarding the frontier with patrol cars and video cameras, chiefly to catch smugglers and illegal immigrants. But on the Belarus side, armed guards patrol with dogs and are authorized to shoot.
Villagers cannot even walk to the fence to talk to neighbors or pass parcels. Just leaving a footprint in the 10-foot-wide raked dirt track along the fence can mean a fine or 10 days in jail.
"Our hearts were left on the other side of the fence," said Subach, 67, as she sat on the border watching a service through the open door of the Catholic church and joining in the prayers. She has not visited her husband's grave for more than two years, nor can she attend Mass in her church.
To travel there, she would have to journey 90 miles to the nearest Lithuanian consulate, wait in line for several days, pay about $90 for a visa (almost her entire monthly pension), travel 60 miles north to a border checkpoint and another 60 miles south before finally arriving in Norviliskes.
Fear rules on Belarus side
This is the only border village that is cut in two. As under Soviet rule, border guards and secret-service agents keep tabs on everyone in the border region, and those traveling here from elsewhere in Belarus need permission.
Three men in leather jackets who introduced themselves as border guards accompanied two journalists throughout a recent visit. Some villagers said they were afraid to speak in the men's presence.
Elderly villagers joke that they have lived in three countries without ever leaving home. Once part of Poland, the village was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1939, which gave one half to Belarus and the other to Lithuania.
After the Soviet collapse in 1991, the border with Lithuania became an international one, but travel rules remained relatively lax and Belarusian villagers were able to cross over to the Lithuanian side on religious holidays.
Then, in 2004, Lithuania joined the EU and NATO, and required visiting Belarusians to have visas, since it had become part of the EU's border-free zone.
Many Belarusians would like to travel west, but the European Union says it will ease travel restrictions only after Lukashenko frees political prisoners and holds free elections.
Yanina Yanovich, 61, says she shouts across the border to communicate with her nephew, Stanislav, who lives in the first house on the Lithuanian side.
"This is one thing the government can't stop us from doing," said Yanovich, wearing old rubber boots and a darned sweater with the lettering U.S.A.
In Norviliskes, many of the 35 inhabitants have cellphones. Pyatskuny's 50 people have only the phone in the grocery.
The store's clerk, Tereza Turkevich, says she often sells food to villagers on credit. "Some survive on bread and water so they can save enough money to travel to Lithuania," she said.
Norviliskes has a recently restored a 16th-century castle that draws tourists year-round, and a summer music festival that attracts thousands.
Marja Dudowicz, 68, who lives next to the castle, sells milk to tourists to supplement her monthly pension of about $275. She also receives more than double that sum from the EU for sowing wheat, rapeseed and oats on her 37 acres of land, some of which she rents out.
"We have problems, but I can't complain after looking across the fence at our Belarusian neighbors," said Dudowicz. She has renovated her house and has groceries delivered to her door. She plies her guests with Brazilian coffee, Belgian amaretto, ham, homemade sausage and fresh brown bread.
For 50-year-old Leokadija Gordiewicz, living in the EU means being able to talk politics without fear. She named her dog Landsbergis, after Lithuanian independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis. Her cat's name is Lukashenko.
"I could be jailed for this in Belarus," she said.
Youth move out
Despite Norviliskes' relative prosperity, most of the young Lithuanian villagers have left, either for Vilnius, the capital, about 50 miles away, or farther afield.
Yan Mikul, 24, grew up in the village but for the past two years has been working in Dublin, Ireland as a plumber, where, he says, he earns up to $4,500 a month.
"Only a fool would not take advantage of the opportunities of a Europe without borders," said Mikul, who was wearing a new green sweater and red jacket. He had driven back to Norviliskes in his used BMW to tend his grandparents' graves, and was also helping to collect the flowers thrown across the fence and placing them on the graves.
Giedrius Klimkevicius, the Lithuanian businessman who restored the village's castle with EU help, would have liked to place the stage for the music festival right on the border as a gesture of unity, but says the Belarusian authorities forbade it.
"The iron fence on the border has become a symbol of the division of two civilizations, to our deep regret," he said.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

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Belarus: Study Brands Minsk Worst City In Europe
Minsk ranked last in living standards
(Bymedia.net)
Belarus seems to have a knack for breaking dubious records.U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once famously called Belarus "the last dictatorship in Europe," an epithet that has stuck to the authoritarian regime of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.Now, the country's capital has been branded the European city with the worst living standards.A study released last week by Mercer, a global human-resources consultancy, says expatriates in Minsk are worse-off than anywhere else in Europe. The city ranked last in Mercer's annual living-standards tally, trailing 182 other European cities. Slagin Parakatil, a senior researcher at Mercer, says Minsk fared poorly in most of the 39 criteria examined for the report."One of the criteria in which it didn't get very good scores is consumer goods -- the availability of fruit, meat, and fish; there's also the infrastructure -- we're looking at reasonable, expatriate-standard housing facilities," Parakatil says. "If an expatriate needs to have emergency surgery, the score is relatively low for services provided by both private and public hospitals."The city also got bad marks for its recreational facilities, economic and political environment, airport facilities, and transport connections.Unlike most other Eastern European cities, which have moved up the list since Mercer's previous study, Minsk remains last with consistently low scores.'Nowhere To Go'Do Minsk residents share this unflattering view of their city?Some, such as Valmen Aladau, an architect and professor at the Belarusian National Technical University, have denounced the Mercer study as slander."Minsk is one of the most interesting cities in Europe, everyone who's been here has said so publicly," Aladau says. "This is pure political vileness that is probably targeted against our government and ends up hurting the whole population. We don't have enough hotels. But in terms of being interesting, there should be more such cities in Europe."But a poll carried out by RFE/RL's Belarus Service in the streets of Minsk shows that many residents do agree with Mercer, particularly with regard to their city's recreational facilities."In all European cities, if you're not in a hurry to go home in the evening, there are clubs and cafes where you can spend some time," says one woman. "Here, the only places open at night are the casinos and train station.""Nothing open at night" (Bymedia.net)"There aren't enough places to drink coffee from a nice cup, not a plastic one," says another woman."For children, for instance, there's the Ice Palace, but it would be nice to have something other than just the Ice Palace," a third woman says. "There's almost nowhere to take kids during the summer holidays."Syarhey Khareuski, a Belarusian cultural analyst, agrees that city authorities have done little to preserve and embellish Minsk's historical city center."Take a walk in the center of Minsk, what is there to see? Two churches, and that's all. Museums that were once planned were never built. Instead of museums and exhibition halls, you have ordinary pubs. The efforts of the current authorities have concentrated on selling every square meter of space in the city center, lining their pockets, and allowing as many vehicles as possible to pass through the city center."RFE/RL's Belarus Service contributed to this report
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Window on Eurasia: Russian Politicians Seen Hijacking Construction of Monument to Victims of Communism
Paul Goble
Vienna, June 17 – Just as Vasily Grossman foresaw in his classic work, "Forever Flowing," Russian politicians who openly admire Stalin are now the very people calling for a minute of silence or a monument to his millions of victims, an act of hypocrisy that does no honor to the former and insults the memory of the latter.
Last week, "Novaya gazeta" featured an article suggesting that the Russian government may at long last be prepared to build a monument to the victims of communism in that country, thus ending what the article's author, Vladimir Ryzhkov, suggested is an anomalous and even dangerous situation (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/41/28.html).
Russia today, he noted, "remains almost the only country in the former socialist camp" where there is not a national memorial to the victims of communism. That shortcoming " puts Russia in a hypocritical position: making it appear that we are shamefully justifying the crimes of Stalinism and even in part acting as successors of [his] criminal regime."
But now, Ryzhkov continued, this situation is changing. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has raised the issue twice. Various fractions of the Duma have called for a memorial. And now Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Duma and the number two official in the ruling United Russia Party, is backing the idea.
Such "growing support for the initiative of establishing a memorial center," Ryzhkov concluded, "offers hope that in the near future it will be possible to achieve all the necessary political and organization decisions and include the forces of both society and state in the creation of a monument, memorial and museum worthy of the victims and of the new Russia."
In an essay posted online today, however, Moscow historian Irina Pavlova argues that Ryzhkov's upbeat stance is misplaced for at least three reasons. First, she notes, the politicians pushing the idea of a memorial to the victims of Stalin are admirers of the dictator, a combination that insults the dead and the living (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/m.137810.html).
Second, she points out, these same politicians are interested in using such a monument to legitimate the regime of which they are a part rather than deal honestly with the crimes of their predecessors, again a travesty against the memory of the millions upon millions of people who suffered under Soviet rule.
Indeed, she writes, "the establishment of a memorial to the victims of Stalinist repression today would serve only one thing – the legitimation of the current powers that be that in essence have reproduced the Stalinist mechanism of administration under the cover of 'sovereign democracy.'"
And third, Pavlova suggests, the Russian government is trying to hijack the construction of such a memorial, to reduce to a minimum the role of society and thus to gut the meaning of such a monument for the population as a whole even while the regime seeks to use it to present itself as having "overcome" the past.
It is this last point that clearly concerns her most. Involved with the collection of memoirs of the victims of Stalin's rule for more than 20 years, Pavlova a decade ago published an article arguing that the time was not yet ripe for such a monument because it would be "an indulgence" for the regime and elicit only feelings of "anger, regret, and protest" among the population.
Today, the Moscow historian says, "the atmosphere in the country is worse than it was ten years ago," with the current regime "having cultivated the image of Stalin as an outstanding statesman," a view that public opinion polls show has had a serious impact on the views of the Russian people.
Ryzhkov is of course correct, Pavlova says, when he suggests that Russia is "just about the only country in the former socialist camp" without such a memorial. But he is profoundly wrong when he suggests that such a situation risks creating the impression that Russia is today "a successor of [Stalin's] criminal regime."
That is not an impression, she says; it is a reality. To give but one example: the FSB has not declassified many of the documents about that period in violation of Boris Yeltsin's order of August 24, 1991, and historians working for the organs continue to churn out books and articles celebrating Stalin and his contributions to the country and the world.
Moreover, she asks, "why should we be talking about a memorial to the victims only of Stalin and not of all political repressions? Even in the time of perestroika, the question was framed more broadly. And why should this memorial complex be hidden in the Butyrka prison [as some have proposed] and not stand before FSB headquarters?"
As many have forgotten, Nikita Khrushchev first raised the idea of a monument to Stalin's victims in the party and government at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, and at the 22nd CPSU Congress in 1961, he called for the construction of a memorial to them in Moscow itself.
Twenty-seven years later, at the 19th All-Union Party Conference, the issue was raised again and broadened to include all victims of Stalin. And at that time, efforts to rehabilitate the dictator's victims were resumed after a hiatus of more than a generation. A Memorial was created – but it was and remains an informal organization rather than something else.
Had a monument to Stalin's victims been erected in 1988-89, a time when there was unusual popular attention to the past, that act alone would "not only have united society but had a powerful influence on the future course of the development of the country. But that did not happen, she notes, and it could not happen for reasons that are "now clear."
The emerging political elite wanted to draw on the past rather than condemn it, and in March 1996, on the 40th anniversary of Khrushchev's secret speech unmasking Stalin, no more than ten members of the Duma were prepared to support the late Sergey Yushenkov's proposal to honor the victims by standing up for a moment of silence.
Beyond any doubt, Russia needs a monument to those who were repressed by Stalin and by others, Pavlova concludes. But it must be one created by the Russian people who fully recognize and understand the crimes of the past, not one "put up with the permission of the current powers that be – the heirs of the very organs which carried out the repressions."
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Three Baltic states mourn 1941 Soviet deportees


Posted on : 2008-06-14 Author : DPA News Category : Europe
Riga - The three small Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania paid moving tribute on Saturday to the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who were rounded up and deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities. In the early hours of June 14, 1941, some 10,000 Estonians, more than 15,000 Latvians and between 16,000 and 18,000 Lithuanians were herded onto cattle trains and transported to the far eastern reaches of the Soviet Union, where many of them died.
The expulsions were carried out "to persecute and silence" opponents of Josef Stalin's regime, which occupied the three Baltic states first in 1940, and again at the close of World War II following a few years of the Nazi occupation.
"Words cannot express the despair felt by the people sent off towards an unknown destination, with nothing but ephemeral hope of surviving and returning to homeland," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves along with Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Parliament's speaker Ene Ergma said in a joint statement in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
"What must the mothers and fathers have felt, seeing their children crammed in cattle wagons alongside themselves? These mothers and fathers, women and men had little chance of seeing their loved ones again," said Ilves, who himself was born in Stockholm to a family of Estonian refugees.
They were the first of a series of mass deportations that lasted until the early 1950s and saw hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians sent to prison or exile in Siberia as Moscow put in motion a plan to occupy the Baltics.
In the Latvian capital, Riga, a group of former political prisoners and leaders laid flowers at the city's Freedom Monument in the drizzling rain.
Maroon and white Latvian flags with black ribbons of mourning tied to them fluttered about as Latvian President Valdis Zatlers told a crowd of several hundred people not to forget those who were deported to their death in Siberian gulags.
"It is a painful day in our history ... we can never forget those who remained in Siberia, those who were killed there. We have to tell the world that our nation suffered from many occupations." Zatlers said.
The Soviet occupying force sent Balts to camps and prisons in the most disadvantaged regions of the USSR in on June 14, 1941. The deportations recommenced after the Soviets reoccupied the countries from Nazi Germany and then again after World War II during the partisan resistance movement that lasted until the mid-1950s.
In Lithuania, leaders marked the Day of Mourning and Hope by laying flowers at a special memorial.
"More than 60 years ago, occupiers took our country, launched their plan to rid Lithuania of Lithuanians. For thousands of our citizens it meant death, deportations, broken health, and broken lives," said Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus at the monument to victims of Soviet oppression in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
Some 50,000-60,000 Lithuanians - every third prisoner or deportee - died in exile. Only half of the deportees returned home decades later.
In all, Soviet authorities deported about 150,000 people from Lithuania, most of whom died.


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European Parliament commemoration of anniversary of first mass deportations from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia June 14th, 1941.
The ceremony will take place on Wednesday, June 18th, at 2.30 pm in the visitors area of the Louise Weiss building in Strasbourg before a memorial plaque that was presented to the President of the European Parliament in June 2006 by three Baltic delegations of the EPP-ED group together with the British MEP Christopher Beazley.
We will lay flowers in front of the plaque and show our respect for the tens of thousands of victims who were taken from their homes by the Soviet totalitarian regime, a significant number never to return.
June 14 is marked every year in all three Baltic states as a national day of mourning. We thank you for sharing in this event with us by your presence or through your good thoughts.
Background information
In May 1941, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government adopted a joint directive “On the measures to cleanse Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR of anti-Soviet, criminal and socially dangerous element”. Security forces were directed to repress five categories of inhabitants of these countries, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940 on the basis of the August 23, 1940 Stalin-Hitler Pact:
Activists of the counter-revolutionary parties as well as members of anti-Soviet, nationalistic and “White Guard” organizations;
former policemen and prison officials;
former big land-owners, factory-owners and civil servants;
former Army officers;
the criminal element.
These “measures” meant arresting all people belonging to those arbitrary and ambiguous categories, sentencing them to 5-8 years in forced labour camps and then to 20 years of exile in the remotest parts of the Soviet Union; all their property was to be confiscated. The term “Counter-revolutionary parties” included all non- Communist political parties; the term “anti-Soviet and nationalistic organizations” included all NGO-s and patriotic formations.
All family members of persons belonging to the first four categories were destined to 20 years of exile along with the confiscation of their property. The same measures applied to families whose head of household had gone into hiding.
Approximately 50,000 Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian nationals fell victim to the June 14, 1941 deportations. Considerable numbers of deportees perished, some of them – most often the elderly and infants and small children – died in the cattle cars before ever reaching their destinations in remote regions of Siberia. Their confiscated property was never restored by the Soviet authorities. Most of those who managed to return were subjected for decades to social and economic discrimination.
Tunne Kelam
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SCHUMER JOINS PUTIN TO OPEN NEW RUSSIAN GAS STATION CHAIN IN NEW YORK
Schumer: more competition and new sources are the best way to loosen OPEC's stranglehold on New York and America
OPEC's newly-announced cuts of nearly 1 million barrels of oil a day will raise prices further – Schumer says alternative to OPEC supplies is desperately needed
1,200 Lukoil gas stations will sell Russian gasoline in regionUS Senator Chuck Schumer and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation celebrated the grand opening of Lukoil Oil Company’s new service stations in New York City today, with Schumer saying that because Lukoil's gas is not governed by OPEC, these new gas stations will help New Yorkers fight price hikes caused by OPEC and Saudi Arabia manipulating oil supplies.
"These new gas stations will – in the long run – help bring down gas prices by introducing the OPEC monopoly to good old-fashioned American competition. OPEC and Saudi Arabia have held New Yorkers in the palms of their hands for too long, jacking up our gas prices at will. When President Bush says we have to cut our reliance on oil form the Middle East, I couldn't agree more – but for most of us, we've had no choice until now. Lukoil's huge investment in New York gives us a choice – an opportunity to cut our reliance on Middle East oil without having to drive our cars any less."
Lukoil's presence in the US cuts American dependence on Middle Eastern oil and responds to President Bush's strategic decision to diversify oil imports. Lukoil is Russia's largest oil producer, and they have made a major commitment to the US market. The 1,200 Metro New York stations – former Getty stations – will bring in $400 million in annual revenues, and will pay $50 million in gross receipt taxes and over $4 million in real estate taxes to New York City. Lukoil will employ more than 1,000 people at its services stations in New York City.
This week, OPEC announced that it is cutting oil production by nearly 1 million barrels a day. Schumer said that energy experts have told him that because most OPEC members are not currently meeting their production quotas, the majority of the reduction in oil production will come at the hands of Saudi Arabia – meaning the Saudis are once again reducing oil to the US to flex their muscles. Energy experts warned yesterday that gas prices are likely to go up more because of the OPEC cuts, with at least one expert saying that OPEC decided on the production cut precisely because US gas prices were coming down slightly.
While gas prices are down 10 cents over the last month nationwide, Schumer yesterday released data showing that the average for price of a gallon of regular gasoline in New York City and Long Island remains stubbornly high. The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in both New York City and Long Island is 17 cents higher than a month ago, and Schumer asked the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate.
"These new gas stations in New York are an easy win-win. It obviously benefits the Russian economy to be able to tap further into the American gasoline market, and a stronger Russian economy is a net plus for the United States and the West. If there's one thing New York drivers need, it's lower gas prices, and that comes from good-old American competition. This Russian gas should increase oil alternatives in our market and will, we hope, help drive gas prices down."
Schumer and President Putin were joined today at a new Lukoil gas station on Manhattan's west side by Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov.###

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Lithuanian interactive KGB show replays brutal past 2008-05-08
As Lithuania's post-Soviet generation comes of age, a local theatre troupe is making sure the evils of the communist past are not forgotten, offering a three-hour refresher course -- as KGB prisoners.
"These few hours should provide a quintessential Soviet-era experience," said Ruta Vanagaite, producer of the interactive show that runs in a former bunker in Naujasode, 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the capital Vilnius.
"By the end visitors should feel how, under a totalitarian regime, they are nothing," she said. "They should realise how much progress there's been over the past 17 years."
Before heading four metres (13 feet) underground, participants begin a journey back in time by swigging a cup of ersatz coffee and donning a "fufaika", the quilted cotton jacket worn by prisoners in the Soviet gulag.
From then on, the curious tourist is treated as a simple "comrade-prisoner" -- obliged to respond to barked questions and commands from a half-dozen actors with a simple yes or no.
After saluting the Soviet flag, participants are made to perform physical exercises, such as squatting, running and rolling in a blanket while wearing a gas mask.
The ryhthm is dictated by an actor in KGB uniform, who screeches orders in Russian as his German shepherd dog strains on its leash.
The Orwellian show is set in 1984, and takes place in a bunker that until 1991 housed emergency radio and television transmitters which were meant to be used if a NATO attack knocked out other Soviet facilities.
Lithuania, which was occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, declared independence in 1990 and won international recognition a year later as the Soviet bloc crumbled.
In the early years, Soviet rule was notoriously brutal.
Some 360,000 Lithuanians were jailed, killed or deported to the gulags of Siberia and central Asia in the 1940s and 1950s.
In later decades, lower-level repression became the norm, although in a last gasp the Soviet regime cracked down on the Lithuanian independence movement in January 1991, killing 14 civilians.
Today's Lithuania is a democratic, free-market nation with previously unimaginable opportunities for a new generation in its population of 3.4 million -- notably since European Union membership in 2004 opened road for tens of thousands to work abroad.
For Lithuania's teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings, the Soviet era is a non-existent or distant memory, while a swathe of older people who missed out on the benefits of change are nostalgic for the relative economic security.
"Half the population of this country misses the Soviet period and around half a million young Lithuanians never lived through it," Vanagaite said.
In the bunker, visitors are forced to sit through Soviet-style May Day speeches, littered with praise for global communism and homages to steelworkers and the people of Cuba.
They are also treated to a medical check-up, where a doctor threatens to use a vintage dental drill on them.
The most unpleasant part of the show, however, remains to come.
The entire group of around 30 visitors is made to face the fall with their hands up, then a male participant is picked out.
In a booming voice, an actor playing a KGB interrogator browbeats the hapless individual into confessing that he has stolen from the factory where he works -- an act of "anti-Soviet sabotage".
Trying not to crack under pressure, or even attempting outright resistance, is a bad idea: the bunker has its own solitary confinement cell.
The tension only falls towards the end, as the "released" visitors are allowed to visit a Soviet-style store and leave with a toilet roll that is a soft as sandpaper.
School pupils make up a large slice of the bunker's visitors, although they are given a toned-down version of the show.
Adults have to sign a disclaimer which informs them that they risk verbal abuse and will have to perform physical exercise.
During AFP's visit, an elderly man was asked to leave after refusing to kneel and coming to blows with one of the actors. Once outside, he called the police to report having been mistreated.
After the show, visitors are treated to an ultra-Soviet supper of tinned beef and a glass of vodka.
"I was curious to get taken back to this period, but for me it was really just a show, because I've drawn a line under the past," said Lina, an accountant who was in her early teens when Lithuania won its independence.
Jolanta, a teacher in her forties, added: "Young people must come here to feel even a little bit what we went through."
In the depths of the bunker, the herd instinct is strong.
"That's exactly what I want to show young people: that in the Soviet era, they too would have followed the crowd and wouldn't have behaved any different from their parents," Vanagaite explained.
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Cavaliers won't allow Lithuania's Ilgauskas to play in Olympics
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLEVELAND - LeBron James will be the only Cleveland Cavaliers player going to China this summer.
The Cavaliers have declined permission for centre Zydrunas Ilgauskas to play for Lithuania in the Olympics.
Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry says Ilgauskas is a higher-risk player because of his injury history. The seven-foot-three Ilgauskas was plagued by foot injuries early in his career and the Cavs are concerned about his lower back.
Ilgauskas needed permission to play because his contract is not fully insured.
Ilgauskas viewed the Beijing Olympics as his last chance to play for his country.
© The Canadian Press, 2008