In February, Lithuanian prosecutors reopened an investigation into whether the CIA ran one of its notorious "black sites" on the outskirts of Vilnius in the early 2000s. Evidence has been growing since 2009 that, alongside its secret prisons in Poland, Romania, Thailand, Afghanistan and Morocco, the CIA also ran a Lithuanian site in 2004-05 where they may have tortured "high-value" terror suspects including Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Abu Zubaydah. Both men are currently being held at Guantanamo. The prison likely closed in 2005 or 2006, after news about potential secret CIA prisons in Macedonia, Poland and Romania were reported in the press. Cargo planes with markings associated with Richmor Aviation, an airline now known to have conducted CIA rendition flights, were seen coming and going from Vilnius. Other reports say that when the facility was being renovated, local people who stopped by looking for work were turned away by English-speaking guards. In 2009, when the story about the Vilnius black site was first reported, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė was quoted as saying, "If this is true, Lithuania has to clean up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise that it will never happen again." If proven, this would make Lithuania one of only four European countries to permit the Americans to commit torture on their territory. If you're wondering what the Lithuanians got in return for that, one unnamed CIA official had said they didn't ask for anything at all. Abu Zubaydah eventually sued Lithuania in the European court for human rights for their role in his torture. After it was brought to light, Lithuanian officials opened a probe into whether or not the CIA had in fact opened a black site on the edge of town. Strangely, prosecutors found that the CIA had built the prison with the support of the local security service, the SSD, but said there was no evidence that prisoners were ever held there. The investigation was closed in 2011. In 2013, British human rights group Redress and the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Vilnius lodged a complaint with the country's Prosecutor General, asking him to investigate further. At first the prosecutors refused to reopen the case. Less than a month later, in February of this year, they changed their minds. The investigation will focus on whether Al-Hawsawi was in fact held in Vilnius.
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In Love Songs of the Revolution, I have a minor character, Adolfas the baker, who has given up drinking as a way of resisting the State. The idea of temperance as a revolutionary act may surprise you if you don't know the history of alcohol in Russia. I've recently been reading Vodka Politics by Mark Lawrence Schrad. It's about the role of alcohol - especially vodka - in Russian politics. Today's high levels of alcoholism and related health problems in Russia isn't because of something innate to the Russian soul or even the climate, as some have argued. Schrad lays out a history of how vodka and other forms of alcohol have been used by the Russian state for hundreds of years to earn tax revenues and keep a potentially restive population passive and compliant. It's also been a great tool to keep pretenders to the throne under control. Schrad describes how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great to Stalin the Soviet would force night after night of drinking-until-dawn parties on courtiers, sycophants and diplomats to get them to spill their darkest secrets. It also ensured they were either too drunk or too hungover most of the time to organize a coup. Back in the 16th century, the Russian government established village taverns - кабак - that functioned as "rent farms," turning cheap surplus grain into relatively expensive vodka and selling it to villagers. Over the years, the share of government revenue that came from vodka grew. As the State became increasingly dependent on vodka taxes, they established policies that encouraged villagers to drink ever more. Round about the 19th century, the temperance movement made its way from England and the US to Eastern Europe, and became entangled with the anti-colonial struggle against Russia, which has tried to control smaller countries at its borders since time immemorial. The movement found particularly fertile ground in Lithuania, where a "Brotherhood of Sobriety" was established, though this movement only discouraged vodka. Beer, wine and mead were still okay to drink. Within a year, membership in the Brotherhood topped one million people, some three-quarters of Lithuania's population. Liquor sales plummeted, as did taxes paid to Moscow. Then the movement began to grow within Russia. The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and well-known Christian anarcho-pacifist, earned the enmity of the State for his outspoken views against alcohol. The situation got so bad that the Russian government tried to make sobriety a crime, going so far as to put people in jail for refusing to drink. Many Lithuanians took this position in the Soviet era as well. Refusing to drink kept their money out of Moscow's pockets, and kept them sober and ready for a revolution. One of the books I referred to while doing research for Love Songs of the Revolution was this little tome, a travel guide to Vilnius from 1981. The book was written in Russian by Lithuanian author Antanas Papšys and translated into English by J.C. Butler. It was published by Progress Publishers in Moscow. Here's an excerpt from the introduction: "Vilnius is a city whose rich past is marked by the most important historical events in the life of the Lithuanian people. It is rightly famed for its revolutionary and international traditions; its name is dear not only to Lithuanians but also to peoples of other nationalities living in Lithuania since time immemorial." Some of what's in the guidebook is standard travel material: recommended walking tours, information about the opera and ballet, and what to see if you have only one, two or three days in town. Then there is the uniquely Soviet material, like the full-color photo of a Shop in the Drill Factory. There's a two-page spread devoted to Lenin Square, with both a bird's-eye shot of the park and a closeup of the central statue of the man called Leninas in Lithuanian. During the Soviet era, I learned, the Church of St. John, housed a Museum of Scientific Thought. In 1981, a bus ride from the airport to Vilnius city center would set you back 20 kopecks. If you preferred a taxi, you could order it on the plane from a stewardess. The other great find in this book is this old library card and sleeve inside the front cover. I wonder if anyone else has checked it out since the last time I did. The final page of the book is devoted to this rather charming request to readers: "Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications. Please send all your comments to 17 Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, USSR." I was sad when Google maps couldn't find that address, though I did stumble upon this little gem of a website instead. Here are a few more images from this wonderful time capsule of a book: “Ah, my beloved Vilnius, how I miss you.” That’s how it begins, the first line in my novel, Love Songs of the Revolution. Martynas, your not-so-humble narrator, is in love with his city, even after he is so many years gone from it. Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, the southernmost of the three Baltic nations (the other two are Latvia and Estonia). It’s 115 miles northwest of Minsk in Belarus, 283 miles northeast of Warsaw in Poland. For those of you watching the news these days, it’s 450 miles northwest of Kiev in Ukraine. Grand Duke Gediminas established the city of Vilnius in the 1300s. While out on a hunting trip, Gediminas dreamt of an iron wolf howling on a hilltop, which a priest interpreted as a call for him to establish a city on the hill. Today, the downtown historic center of Vilnius is officially designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site, for its beautiful mix of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and classical buildings. Lithuania was the last pagan country in Europe to convert to Christianity. It’s said that Napoleon called Vilnius the “Jerusalem of the North,” as it was a flourishing center of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe for many years.
It's is one of those cities like Reykjavik or Kinshasa that you’ve never thought of visiting, though you probably should. TripAdvisor says there are at least 165 different things you can see and do, from the "miracle stone" in Cathedral Square to the statue of Frank Zappa in the Užupis district. (Yes, that Frank Zappa.) |
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May 2018
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