Šalčininkai - Lithuania
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine put in his mirror a monument to a Soviet soldier that still stands in front of the bus station in Šalčininkai, so I decided to go there and see what it looks like in reality, especially since I have already written about the need to close the border crossing to Belarus, which is now a Russian province.
The day before February 16th, the smell of spring was already present, and the trumpeting of cranes could already be heard.
The last time I was there was 25 years ago, so it was interesting to see places I hadn't seen for a long time.
The road to Šalčininkai is not a trunk road, but passes through several church villages and Jašiūnai, where the Merkys River flows through. The border with Gudija is also here. On the last working day, traffic was calm and it was hard to understand that the road leads to the border, with only one other truck on the road. The roadside signs are entirely in Lithuanian, which was certainly not the case 25 years ago. I catch myself thinking: what do we know about that land? That Tomaševski's Polish Electoral Action still rules here?
The road to the border bypasses Šalčininkai, so I immediately move towards the border, and the sign warning that we have entered the border area makes me worried because I left my passport at home. Unlike a quarter of a century ago, I did not see not only police crews but also border patrols. No sign of the NATO exercises that started a few days ago. It is not that we are travelling without passports that is worrying, but that we are moving towards a terrorist state. The threat of war is coming from that country, where hordes have been coming to kill us for hundreds of years.
The border area is just a few kilometres away and I get to the terminal very quickly. Trucks and trailers with Moldovan, Romanian, Kazakh, Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian licence plates are parked on the roadside, along with some discarded and long-unused cars from across the border.
There is a lot of Russian language at the border crossing and a forest turned into a landfill, with a bicycle parking area. Despite the many bags of rubbish tied to every road sign, lorry drivers are not too worried about the ecology and throw everything out wherever they go. This says a lot about the drivers and their culture, about being under the influence of another world. Most of them are migrants from the East and their willingness to litter here is more than telling.
It's all clear here, we're going to Šalčininkai.
With the closure of Medininkai, this border crossing, sandwiched between forests and marshes, can remain - Vilnius is far away and the obstacle course is easier to set up than on the Minsk highway towards the Western Bypass.
Šalčininkai welcomes us with a beautiful bilingual signboard, and we hope there will be more, but when we enter the city we see many Lithuanian tricolours. The town is ready to celebrate February 16th, but we have not seen any Polish flag, although the new and beautiful bus station also has a bilingual sign.
The monument to the Soviet occupier stands against the backdrop of the modern station building. The monument commemorates the Soviet soldier-occupier, who fought not only the same German occupiers, but also killed and deported local Lithuanians and Poles, Lithuanians and Armija krajova partisans. It was not surprising that several plastic and real flowers were thrown at the monument to the Soviet soldier; what was more surprising was that the boulder stands at the intersection of Vilniaus and Nepriklausomybės Streets.
It's the same as everywhere else, with state buildings adorned not only with tricolours and EU flags, but also with Ukrainian bicolours. However, the district administration has not hoisted it. During the filming, an old woman passed by wearing a hat with a tricolour stripe. A city like many in Lithuania, with suburbs of new houses and apartment blocks under renovation. This is Lithuania, screams the entrance to the House of Culture, which is decorated with bands woven with tricolour motifs.
The municipal building and the square have been renovated, which is not common in a Lithuanian province. I decide to go there and ask what the situation is with the soldier's monument. I had previously called the contact numbers of the vice-mayors, but neither Mr Juzefas nor Mr Valdemaras answered the phone.
On the ground floor of the building, there is a glass-walled office where two women are chatting. I greet them and say that I am not a local and that I want to know about the district, about the ill-fated monument. No problem, I reply in fluent Lithuanian: on the fourth floor, the head of the tourism department will tell you everything.
I go upstairs and go to the office indicated. The head, Mrs Irena, is pleasantly welcoming, and there is no hostility - she is a polite clerk, which is probably not the case everywhere. I introduce myself.
Conversation is light and cordial about the good weather and excellent infrastructure. It's time for serious questions: why is there still a monument to an occupier who murdered not only Lithuanians but also Poles? We applied to the LGGRTC to have it removed in May last year, and I believe that in a couple of months it will be gone. According to Mrs Irena, even 70% of the population is in favour of the removal of the monument, and as the war in Ukraine progressed, people began to understand what it was. In Butrimoni, near Eišiškės, we already took down a similar one a couple of months ago," Irena replies. I am a bit surprised, because I have not heard anything about this in the public sphere.
Tourism in Šalčininkai District is all about rural homesteads, of which there are many, but there are also a few restored manors, continues Irena.
There is almost no industry in the area, mainly agriculture and logistics companies. „The farmers all speak excellent Lithuanian, maybe you accidentally saw them in Vilnius during their protest?“, Irena asked. „I saw them, but I didn't speak“, I replied.
There are refugees from Ukraine, but not many, although Irena's apartment block alone is home to two families. Many of the logistics workers are ethnic Hungarians and Ukrainians. The people of the district work in Vilnius, there has been no wave of emigration, unlike elsewhere, and the demographics have been excellent for a long time, but this January 71 people died and only 21 babies were born. Anxiety and rising prices do not motivate people to have more children, even though the financial incentives are growing every year.
We can still talk about a lot of things, but I'm in a hurry to get home, so towards the end of the conversation I say that I'm Polish-speaking myself, but Mrs Irena doesn't even try to switch to Polish even when saying goodbye. She cordially invited me to come to the commemoration of 16 February tomorrow. I promise that I will be there. And why not?
