Landsbergis asks Russia for billions

  • 2000-05-18
  • By Rokas M. Tracevskis
VILNIUS - Vytautas Landsbergis, parliamentary chairman and leader of the ruling Conservative Party, proposed a law that obliges the Lithuanian government to demand hundreds of billions of dollars in compensation from Russia for Soviet occupation. Some opposition MPs say these demands are justified. However, they accuse Landsbergis of posting political ads for himself by timing his initiative on the eve of parliamentary elections due Oct. 8.

In 1997 a Lithuanian government commission headed by former Economics Minister Vincas Babilius concluded that the Soviet Union inflicted $667.7 billion worth of damage on Lithuania between 1940 and 1990. This massive amount took into account virtually every kind of damage: wrongful death of citizens, slave labor in concentration camps, destruction of art treasure, ruined economy and lost revenues. Officials kept these totals in their files until now.

In the leading text to this proposal, Landsbergis recalled a national referendum on June 14, 1992 when 91 percent voted in favor of the withdrawal of the army of the former USSR from Lithuania and in favor of compensation by Russia for Soviet occupation. Russia officially proclaimed itself the successor of the rights and obligations of the USSR.

The Council of Europe demanded Russia compensate the expenses of repatriation of former deportees and their children from the Baltic states when Russia joined in 1996. Russia failed to implement it.

If the law proposed by Landsbergis passes Parliament, each Lithuanian government will be obliged to demand compensation for Soviet occupation. He said Lithuania could collect money for a compensation fund to be established by raising transit tariffs for Russian military transit to its Kaliningrad enclave across Lithuanian territory.

Jonas Valatka, MP of Party Social Democracy 2000, has some doubts about Landsbergis' initiative.

"It would be difficult to get this compensation from Russia. I'm not sure that it is the best time for this demand. I think we should be happy that our country became free. I really don't have great hopes that Russia will pay. Of course, it would be good to remind a neighbor about its former wrongdoings, but I don't see realistic perspectives for this law now," Valatka said.

Vytenis Andriukaitis, leader of the Social Democratic Party, said that this proposal is Landsbergis' attempt to stay in politics after parliamentary elections this fall.

"I guess, it is a tactic of the parliamentary chairman to create some project for a law and then to exploit this theme for three or four years," said Andriukaitis, himself born in deportation near the Arctic Circle and later a Soviet-era political dissident.

Ceslovas Jursenas, leader of the Democratic Labor Party and Andriukaitis' partner in the leftist opposition coalition, was less critical. "We, as well as all Lithuanian citizens, are obliged to follow the results of the nation's referendum of 1992. The only questions are the timing and form of such a demand," Jursenas said. He said Lithuania should demand compensation for the Soviet occupation despite current good relations with Russia.