Lithuanians organise for freedom and reach out to Russian mothers

We were born just when our country took independence back from the USSR. We are called "The generation of independence". We're using "took" very consciously here because the war in Europe reminds us that freedom is a right that you have to actively fight for. And our families did fight for it. We were reminded of it every Christmas Eve at the dinner table, every election, every time a generational conflict occurred. We would be lying if we said that countless movies and poems that we had to memorize by heart didn't make us scoff at some point.

We grew up in a privilege of freedom to criticize a romanticized view of heroic fighting, overuse of national symbols, populistic and opportunistic appeal to patriotism. One of us made a photography project critisizing re-introduction of the conscript army in Lithuania, while another has been advocating for a less traditionalist, more feminist-oriented school literature curriculum. And you know what? It's easy to do that when you are safe, free, and not in a survival mode.

The war in Ukraine triggered an intergenerational trauma in Lithuania that was looming under our skin. While we enjoyed the whole package of democracy, unimagined even to the generation before us - voicing our opinions, protesting policies we disagree with, critiquing the government, exploring the vast world without borders, the pain was always there, yet buried deep inside. But now, it all came rushing to the surface.

1. During the years 1940-1953, Lithuania lost 33% of its population.

2. 1.2 million people were deported, sentenced to death, incarcerated, murdered for political reasons, or forced to flee.

3. As a professor of clinical psychology DanutÄ— GailienÄ— wrote, during the years of 1990-2000 the deaths in Central and Eastern Europe exceeded the predicted number of deaths by 4 million people. In her book "Life in Lithuania from the point of view of trauma psychology" she explains that the cause of this was the prolonged psycho-social stress. While Germany admitted its wrong-doing in WWII, Russia never took responsibility for the terror the communist regime caused. And in trauma psychology one thing is very clear - the perpetrator has to admit its wrongdoing or to make retributions for the victim to heal fully.

The Eastern Bloc (or - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus as we know it) has always lived bordering Russia. Russia was always creeping somewhere deep in our political and cultural discourse. Even now, we can track down conversations we had when we were kids, teenagers, young adults. This hypothetical question "What would you do if we were occupied again?" has been appearing in the sandboxes, in the classrooms, during parties in between intense dance sessions.

We've grown up with this image of the Kremlin as a mythological beast that was breathing down the neck of every child that dares to imagine anxiety-free existence.

And now we saw its face.

And now it all falls into place.

And it's appearing before us as flashbacks of history we've already lived through as a country.

1. The Molotov - Ribentrop Pact in 1939 between Nazi Germany and USSR gave Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and a part of Poland to the former USSR. After World War II ended, we were made into a "necessary sacrifice" and stayed occupied for another 50 years.