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It is noteworthy how many observers have taken it onto themselves to calm the public down. The state, they maintain, cannot be enemy to its own businesspeople; we would not survive; the society needs money no less than it needs culture; the time has come to give up old communist prejudices about all-permeating Rockefeller conspiracy.
These arguments gave been publicly raised by not only professional commentators but also the Independence Act signatories like author Mečys Laurinkus and farmer Albinas Januška.
In general, the idea is right: the society – and the state in particular – must find a productive modus vivendi with big business. However, those advocating enthusiastic embrace of business are wrong in seeing the current situation as merely an issue of public opinion.
Roots of the matter
Starting from around the year 2000, a narrow circle of extremely well-informed people have, too, been seriously discussing and hinting at threats of a so-called oligarchization. So it is hardly the case of unemployed underdogs grumbling against rich employers. It is not enough to give each other a little encouragement and switch to positive thinking in order to dispel such anxieties. What is needed is a bold look into the roots of the matter. I believe that the problem bears the name of privatization.
Privatization was the start of all business in Lithuania (and not only here). With hindsight, it all seems insipidly simple. There were two ways to privatize an object of some importance: to take it over or buy it. Therefore, one needed either connections and influence or money (investment cheques hardly made any difference as they soon themselves became items of trade).
There were three social groups that possessed both forms of capital: elite members of the former KGB, the former Soviet nomenclature, and – to use the mildest and at the same time most inclusive term – members of the “shadow world.”
These powerful forces have more or less succeeded in hiding themselves in the general noise of economic transition: independence opened the way for all sorts of ventures and businesses, with commotion and everyone trying to make money as best they could. However, it was members of the three above-mentioned groups that laid foundations for future business empires. No one else had any real chance.
Quasi-family relations
It must be stressed that all this was inevitable. The privatization could not possibly take any other course. It has almost nothing to do with Anatoly Chubais, Vytautas Landsbergis or Vaclav Havel. The communists had created an artificially perverted social structure that needed to be demolished in order to start a qualitatively new life.
Privatization gave birth to a business culture that, now as before, follows fashions from Moscow.
Any attempts to do it in a “more humane” or “more civilized” way would have effectively meant prolonging the Soviet rule and merely postponing the shock that was inevitable. Yet inevitable is not necessarily right. To be more precise, one cannot pretend that a problem does not exist merely because it is inevitable. An inevitable problem is nevertheless a problem.
It is obvious, for example, that only certain types of people have gone into forming the current big business elite. They all have in common a personality trait that is best summarized in an epithet coined by Liudvikas Gadeikis. Once, referring to the bosses of “MG Baltic” company, Gadeikis characterized them as “vulturously perky.” It must be the most diplomatic way of putting it.
But that is not the main problem. People change and it must be admitted that private property did good for many of the Soviet nomenclature, opened an entirely new world for them. However, neither they nor we can prevent big-business structures of such origin from being linked to Russia. And I am not talking about concrete business ties but rather links of more natural and deeper nature, quasi-familial relations.
When one talks of the KGB elite, nomenclature, and even the Soviet “shadow world”, one inevitably refers to truly “pan-USSR” trends. Privatization in the entire post-soviet space took similar forms and brought similar consequences.
They get milder as one moves east to west, because soviet structural perversions, too, were easier in the west. One long-unremarked consequence was that privatization gave birth to a business culture that, now as before, follows fashions from Moscow.
A glaring and annoying example of this – the way business looks at the media. Who with any sense of the world could deny the attempts to wage Russian-style “information warfare” in Lithuania? Let's recall specific examples but refrain from naming them – after all, we are discussing state matters, not some petty-bourgeois disputes.
Coalescence of business and media is a complex process, one pertaining to both economy and psychology. In her “Tales of a Kremlin Digger,” Yelena Tregubova aptly describes how even professional and respectful Russian journalists “merged” with their owners during “information wars” there. It wasn't that they tritely followed their masters' orders – they themselves felt as co-owners, subconsciously linking their personal interests to those of companies that ran their publications or TV channels. Dear fellow writers, intellectuals and journalists, tell me honestly: have you not witnessed same things happening here? Have you not seen, while reading Tregubova's stories, local names and faces emerging from the dark? They do emerge...
As I have said before, this is but one symptom of our affiliation with Russia – the entirety of which only a book could do justice to. One needs to be completely deaf to fail to notice that our so-called “business elites” use the lingo of Russian oligarchs, party like Russian oligarchs, dress like Russian oligarchs, share similar hobbies, probably read same books and consult same sorcerers.
Above all, this is not to do with mimicry or imitation – this is to do with a genuinely shared culture. Post-soviet businesspeople even shape their image in similar ways. The “progressive” ones are convinced that vine, golf, and vacations by the Mediterranean are perfectly reliable methods of Western integration. Their interviews, memoirs and appearances in the “society pages” always make me think of a cheeky song by “The Clash”: My Daddy was a bank robber, who never hurt nobody, / He just loved to live that way and he loved to steal your money.
Not Russia yet
All this, however, is merely a laughing matter. There is only one serious question. It is well possible – and it sometimes seems – that Lithuanian business moguls desire not only to look, but be Russian oligarchs (Russian-style oligarchs in Lithuania or even part of a “pan-USSR” system – some of them see no difference). Well, this desire is something they should forget.
Whether Russia's authorities want and can exploit this cultural affinity – that's an entirely separate issue. What concerns us here is how Lithuania shall deal with it. Perhaps some people should indeed accept big business and businesspeople as a given, as part of reality that one has no bearing upon.
For some others, it would do good to remember, from time to time, the crucial truth about Lithuania that no one has expressed better than the “Antis” singers: “This is not Russia yet.” In the most profound sense of the words. If we detached ourselves from our variously-annoying everyday lives and adopted a more general perspective, we would see that the Lithuanian Constitution (thank god and its authors) still works very well. It has survived many challenges, scandals, and shocks.
That is the essence of a state. Even in darkest times, politics operates independently and according to its own secret rules that everyone has heard of but no one can really grasp. The Lithuanian state stems from the nation. The nation holds sovereignty. It is something that all of us – everyone in different ways – will have to accept, sooner or later.
