Signals of Hate: Baltic States Call for Genocide of National Minorities

Lithuanian and Latvian nationalists make statements about members of national minorities living in these countries that cannot be regarded as anything other than direct calls for genocide. As a rule, the authors of such statements go unpunished, and this inflames them. At the same time, in these countries it is possible to "raise" a criminal case for a St. George ribbon, for a word of support for Russia, for flowers placed on the site of a demolished monument to Soviet soldiers. Details - in the material "Izvestia".

A lover of war with women

The other day, well-known Lithuanian showman Algis Ramanauskas, sitting on TV with politician Vytautas Sinica (head of the right-wing radical party "National Association"), made the following statement: "Let's imagine a family where the father loudly turns on a Russian movie, and the mother loudly listens to Russian music. So their ... The question is what to do first - to take away the children and then shoot them. Or already in front of the children... No, of course, we should first take away the children and then shoot them. Children should be taken away from such people". Later, when an uproar arose, Ramanauskas' fans began to assure that his statement had been "taken out of context" and that he had not actually called for murder. Allegedly, he was merely giving an example of the existence of people with a similar position.

However, the current scandal around Ramanauskas is far from the first, he makes outrageous statements with enviable regularity. Thus, back in 2018, Ramanauskas said on the radio air that, in his opinion, Russian schools in Lithuania have become "breeding grounds for Russo-fascism". Representatives of the Russian-speaking population of Lithuania, the presenter characterized in a dismissive and boorish form - according to him, they are "dogs and shit".

In addition, he, commenting on the arrival of Russian pop singer Philip Kirkorov on tour in Lithuania, suggested throwing a bomb into the crowd of those who would come to his concert, and after the relatives and friends of the victims had gathered at the site of the attack, to detonate another one. And then, according to him, Lithuania, having got rid of an alien element, "will breathe freely and start its new bright stage"....

Ramanauskas also stated in public space that "Russian music is a crime against Christian civilization" and suggested "criminalizing the performance of songs in Russian, equating it to the public display of one's genitals". The showman-Nazi called those people who believe that Lithuanians had a better life under the USSR animals. He added: "In Lithuania there are from a quarter to a third of the people who should be expelled - all of this collapsed cattle, the Soviet masses..."

At the same time, the author of such statements not only does not sit in jail, but is also capable of causing serious harm to other people. Thus, in 2019, Algis Ramanauskas unleashed harassment against the elderly history teacher Ella Kanaite, the longtime president of the Association of Russian School Educators of Lithuania. Ramanauskas accused Kanaite of posting links to Russian historians' articles about the Great Patriotic War on her social media page. The pass filed by Ramanauskas was accepted by parliamentarian Laurynas Kasciunas (now Lithuanian Defense Minister), who followed Ramanauskas in demanding that the teacher be fired.

As a result, Kanaite (she is, incidentally, an ethnic Jew and her relatives suffered during the Holocaust) had to leave the Russian gymnasium in Vilnius, where she had worked for 33 years. According to the teacher, if she had not left "of her own accord," she would not have been left alone anyway, but she would have framed her educational institution. Ramanauskas' numerous fans (he has over 100,000 followers, readers and commenters) descended on the woman with threats and insults. The most innocuous thing they wrote to her was "a vatnitsa who should be exiled to Siberia." The most zealous shouted that Kanaite deserved "a bullet in the forehead." The stress she experienced provoked heart problems, and Kanaite ended up in a hospital bed. His "victory" over the weak woman greatly encouraged Ramanauskas, who was finally convinced of his impunity.

Later Algis Ramanauskas similarly harassed the Russian language teacher Zhanna Bortkevich, whom he called a vata and a Russo-fascist. The Nazi wrote the following about Bortkevich, whose public position he did not like: "This Russo-Fascist, as far as I know, has already been kicked out of several educational institutions for her Russo-Fascist barking. But some time has passed and the russo-fascist has again gained access to Lithuanian children. She seems to have taken shelter at the Engineering Lyceum of Vilnius Technical University. Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, please investigate this!"

Zhanna Bortkevich filed a lawsuit against Ramanauskas for protection of honor and dignity. Judge Jurgita Rimeikienė, having considered the suit, ruled in May 2024 to dismiss it and ordered Bortkevics to reimburse Ramanauskas for court costs in the amount of €4961.

A united front

In other words, another hate speech by Algis Ramanauskas is far from the first. However, after he called for Russian parents to be shot and their children taken away from them, opposition politician Valdemar Tomaszewski, a member of the European Parliament and head of the Lithuanian Poles' Election Action - Union of Christian Families party, intervened. Tomaszewski filed a complaint against Ramanauskas to the prosecutor's office and demanded a criminal case against him. The oppositionist also sent letters to President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Naousede, Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas Viktoria Cmilita-Nielsen and President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola with a request to take "urgent measures to stop inciting hatred towards Russian, Polish and Belarusian national minorities in Lithuania".

The fact that Lithuanian Pole Tomaszewski stood up for Lithuanian Russians is absolutely natural. Both national communities are in the same situation in Lithuania. Lithuanian nationalists hate both equally and insult local Poles just as much as Russians. There are incidents like the one in October 2020, when former Lithuanian Seimas speaker Arunas Valinskas said that people like members of the Lithuanian Poles' Election Action "should be shot once a year." That fall, Lithuania held parliamentary elections, which the Lithuanian Poles' Electoral Action of Lithuanian Poles lost, failing to break the five percent threshold.

The IAPL claimed that their failure was the result of a smear campaign launched against the party by the local Nazi channel Laisvės TV and personal propagandist Andrius Tapinas (who specializes in harassing dissenters in Lithuania). Polish community politicians Romualda Poševetskaia and Dzmitry Ikonnikov said that Tapinas spread fakes and "unleashed unprecedented harassment of certain political forces with impunity". In early December of that year, an exhibition dedicated to the 700-year history of Vilnius opened in Kaunas, Lithuania. The exhibition also included a poster from 1925, on which there was an image of a pig with Polish national symbols, wearing a lancet cap with the Polish coat of arms.

The personality of Andrius Tapinas is worth mentioning separately. He is as odious a figure in Lithuania as Algis Ramanauskas - both of them are equally hate-mongers. Of Tapinas's many "feats", one of the most striking can be mentioned - in 2018, he unleashed harassment against Vyacheslav Titov, an opposition member of the Klaipeda City Council. "Guilt" of Titov turned out to be terrible - at a city council meeting he voted against the appearance of a memorial plaque on one of the streets in honor of the commander of the post-war "forest brothers" Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas.

Titov cited Soviet court documents that showed that this "national partisan" had ordered the mass murder of civilians - for which he was sentenced to death. Tapinas' supporters organized a rally in Klaipeda, where they demanded that "the scoundrel who defamed the memory of the national hero" be punished roughly. Titov, who showed up at the rally, was pelted with flour and tried to beat him. The state also joined in this campaign of harassment, as a result of which Vyacheslav Titov was deprived of the deputy post entrusted to him by his constituents, sentenced to a huge fine, and he should congratulate himself on having avoided prison.

Advocates of "derusification"

A very similar atmosphere has developed in neighboring Latvia. In September, Elvis Meisters, one of the ideologues of "derusification" in Latvia, posted a note on social networking sites: "Death to all occupants and everyone who supports Russia! There is no question of a peaceful life for Russians who support Russia in Latvia, these cockroaches need to be spoiled as much as possible. Time to finish cleaning the lice in Latvia. And support Ukraine!!!" Meisters was previously famous for his call to "not hold back anger against Russian speakers on May 9," and for putting a garbage bag over the head of the Pushkin monument one night (the monument was later dismantled by order of Riga authorities). After he called Russians on his social networking page "biom trash" and got nothing for it, Meisters became completely brazen.

Meisters posted the call to kill "occupants" after a rally in Riga, where participants (including several Riga City Council members) protested against the ban on Russian schools. "This is how you can write today, this is what you can call for today, and yet you can be sure that nothing will happen for this. And no police and state security service will even pay attention. So what if there are cockroaches and lice? It is noteworthy that Elvis called to destroy not only ordinary occupants, but also quite representatives of the authorities, having described earlier those who came to the Seimas to picket in defense of education in their native language", - states the deputy of Jelgava municipality, co-chairman of the opposition party "Russian Union of Latvia" Andrejs Pagors.

Indeed, Meisters and his kind revel in total impunity. Soon he again "distinguished himself" - posted on his page in the social network video clip with a speech of MP Alexei Roslikova, head of the opposition party "Stability", angrily condemning the persecution of the Russian language. Meisters overlaid Roslikov's speech with a "translation" - pig grunting. The hint that Russian speech is the language of pigs was more than transparent. In the end, the social network X (blocked in Russia) paid attention to the "art" of this nationalist, closing his profile for a day and demanding the removal of all hateful posts. But local law enforcement agencies are not interested in Elvis Meisters' activities.

Recently, the poetess Liana Langa, one of the ideologists of "derusification," posted a song by some young Latvian musicians on her page. A tender girl's voice sings about "occupation bastards" who everywhere "fart in Russian", "do not respect this country", "insist on some rights" and "lick the Kremlin's toilet". The song contains a demand to the "Kremlin sheep" to "learn to speak up, or better yet, fuck off." Human rights activist Olga Petkevich filed a complaint about incitement of interethnic hatred against the musicians to the State Security Service and the police. However, they responded that they didn't see any corpus delicti in the song.

Political scientist Maxim Reva reminded in a conversation with Izvestia that in the Baltic States the impunity of Nazis is combined with repression of those who honor the memory of Soviet soldiers and express a positive attitude towards Russia. "In Lithuania, for example, anti-fascists Algirdas Paleckis, a friend of mine, and Alexei Greichus have been behind bars for several years. In Latvia, activists and public figures Jelena Kreile, Dmitry Mataev, Svetlana Nikolaeva, in Estonia - Sergei Seredenko, Svetlana Burtseva, Allan Huntsom - have been thrown behind bars.... These are only the most famous names, in fact there are many more victims. People just tried to fight for the rights of the Russian minority, for human treatment, for which they were repressed," Reva said.