Vartymasis (from cock)
This is what it looks like to change the name of the Pushkin Museum to "Markučiai Manor Museum", not in a politically correct unison, it is the same as changing the name of a Russian theatre to the old one (ko), and the name of a Russian radio station to "rodnoye" (native), in both cases the content remains the same, in the same language. Pushkin and his family history will remain in the museum, and we can discover this through the events announced on the Facebook account of the Markučiai Museum.
On 20 October, the M. Mažvydas Library hosted its annual event, the scientific conference "Days of the Vilnius Lyceum", during which a discussion was held, titled as if we were living in the rosy 2007s, when Sakhartveli had not yet been invaded, when the legs of the Russo-fascist invaders were not yet in the Crimea, the Donbass and Lugansk: Pushkin - Vilnius - Čiurlionis.
It is sad to see such "good news" shared by a Ukrainian who is forced to witness it in Vilnius, when in his war-torn country there is not only an armed struggle against the invading Russo-fascists, but also de-unification, de-imperialisation and derusification. In that struggle, not only the living occupiers are falling, but also the monuments to the tsars/lenins and the poets/Pushkins who glorified the latter. These are the elements of one struggle, because any surviving cell can metastasize again into an all-consuming cancer.
It is a pity that such events take place in the National Library named after M. Mažvydas, and that the intellectuals are so blind that they do not see or do not want to see the truth.
It is a pity that an imperial propagandist who denied the existence of the Lithuanian nation is being compared to its awakener, K. M. Čiurlionis. No, no and no again! We must remain human beings, repeat the intellectuals, or, in simple terms, latent vatniks. We must build cultural roads, we must build bridges between civilisations, art and culture are innocent. The list is endless.
In this struggle between good and evil, there are no intermediate stops, no minute's pause for reflection, no room for centuries of debate about humanism. Attempts to sympathise with the hungry beast always end in a trip to its stomach. Those who fought the invaders in the forests of Lithuania knew this very well, because they lived in a world so close to the ground, where the rules were not dictated by influencers or know-it-all experts from the couch, but by a fierce struggle for existence, building a state with a gun in your hand, and being rewarded with a horse to work the land for the blood you shed.
It's them or us.
Thousands of people killed and exiled, and we still believe that they are not. There is one Putin at war with everyone. Do not touch the boys. Idols for them.
Pushkin's monument stands where it was, and a street in Vilnius from Ežerelis becomes A. Terleckas. It would be great if it were not so sad that our capital still has streets with a Soviet smell, such as Pergale in Naujā Vilnia or the Russian heart of the Old Town. I am beginning to dream and I can already see a monument to our dissident Terleckas in Markutsi, with a museum dedicated to him and other dissidents.
...I wake up.
I have already asked how this happens, what paths of the cross we have to walk through the labyrinth of the bureaucracy of the Lithuanian Jerusalem, carrying the cross of light into the soul of the people in order to find the hill dedicated to it.
Changing the name is an expensive and time-consuming process, and nobody wants to be involved in it, just as nobody wants to demolish the sculpture and take its rubbish to the Grūtas Park landfill.
Leaving neutral place names with Soviet connotations washes away the harsh reality of the occupation. The attempt is made to suggest that the Soviets are nothing terrible, "just a different form of government".
Now it is different again. But they say we need to be democratic, to take a broader perspective, to be humanists and "not to erase the marks of history". But they forget to add that these are the signs of an occupying system imposed on us.
There is great power in signs and symbols. All conquerors have understood this, rushing to destroy the symbols of the conquered state and build new ones. At that level of consciousness, the occupation is consolidated and unwittingly becomes its own history. We need to be aware of this and to resist it - to build monuments to people and heroes who have done their country good, to change the names created by the occupiers, to sweep away the idols and place names of the occupiers. This is part of the spiritual liberation struggle and a greater guarantee of our future independence.
