Last year Lithuania celebrated one thousand years since it was mentioned for the first time.  Today it celebrates its twentieth birthday.  During the past thousand years Lithuania managed to create its statehood in medieval times, then lose it again and again.  Throughout the thousand years it was a struggle to keep it going, to keep trying.  There were many glorious victories and achievements, many mistakes and disappointments.

If Lithuania managed to keep alive while sandwiched between two neighbours like Russia and Germany it did something right.  On the other hand, perhaps because of our wrong choices we lost our statehood so many times.

However, in the last twenty years of its statehood, the Second Republic of Lithuania could be regarded as a manifestation of the dreams of all previous Lithuanias come true we are part of the West and we have never felt safer.  Hence, as many say, let’s not in the past, let’s live for the future.  Will history give Lithuania a chance to live for another forty, fifty or more years in the way we aspire to live? 

Recently Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis noted: look at Sweden, how lucky they are with their geographical location, only if we could had a chance to keep our Independence at least fifty years.  Mr. Jónas Baldvin Hannibalsson the Iceland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1991, when his country was the first in the in the world to recognise Lithuania’s Independence said at a meeting with students at Vilnius University on 9 March, ‘Let’s not forget that at the beginning of the WWII we, the Nordic and the Baltic states, lived through a similar experience.  After the war we received a second chance, and you, the Baltic States, because of the accident of geography, did not.’

We received the chance, and we did incredibly well during this time.  The anniversary comes at a very unfortunate time, during the worst economic crisis.  We have acquired many skills, and we have done so extremely quickly.  However, one of the biggest shortcomings we have is that we never managed to learn one of the most important skills needed in the liberal economy: we simply do not now how to present ourselves, how to advertise ourselves, brand ourselves, well, basically how to brag.

Another thing we need to learn is how to plan strategically, that is long-term planning.  As Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said on 10 March, we need “a new and ambitious vision for Lithuania for the coming 20 years and collect our efforts for its implementation.”  It is not an easy task to look to the future when you have such a long past.  With all due respect it is less difficult for our Baltic sisters of Latvia and Estonia to look to the future in this way.

Lithuania should decolonise its mind, and put its efforts toward anchoring itself to Western Europe.  We must become such an integral part of the West that it would be simply inconvenient for our biggest neighbour to draw us back.  Just look at Estonia, which is already better integrated with the West via Finland.  It is bound to make another step towards this integration by successfully adopting the Euro next year.

Perhaps Lithuania should attempt to integrate itself into the West through the Nordic states, which is a shortcut in comparison with our efforts to integrate via Poland.  At least for the time being, it seems that the President and the Prime Minister understand this well.  We have attempted to do so via Central Europe for the last thousand years.  Maybe the time has come to change paths.  Perhaps it is not original to say, but let us name our vision for 2030 Lithuania: ‘Lithuania – just another boring Nordic country’.  Lithuania has all of the possibilities to achieve this goal, only if we want that.