I never penetrated the Iron Curtain and I have never visited Russia. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, I have been to parts of former communist Europe—Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania—which are now independent countries. Slovenia was not part of the USSR thanks to strong leadership by Tito (Poland benefited similarly from Jaruzelski’s strong leadership) and is a beautiful Adriatic country which seems relatively unscarred by its communist past. I know one very successful and senior lawyer there who, when asked how different it was under communism, says ‘it was just the same’. I am lucky to work in Slovenia regularly and one university there did me the honour of making me a doctor of their university. Latvia and Lithuania were both part of the USSR. I have only passed through Latvia a few times and I once visited Lithuania. But something that took place in Lithuania made a great impression on me and may be relevant to the present situation in Ukraine.
I arrived in Lithuania with a handful of colleagues to attend a conference in Klaipėda. The airport, called Klaipėda airport where we alighted from a Baltic Airways flight, was a long way from the city called Klaipėda. A single somewhat battered taxi was waiting outside but we were determined to take the bus to town and studied the bus timetable, in Lithuanian, on the bus stop. It appeared there may be a bus along any minute. The taxi driver looped over to us to ask us if we wanted a ride, but we proudly pointed to the bus stop and waved him away. He resumed his position on the opposite side of the road. No bus arrived and the clock ticked way past the time which was indicated on the timetable. The taxi returned and when we indicated our wish to take the bus the driver, who had clearly been on Google Translate, told is ‘bus only run Tuesday’. We never found out what was special about Tuesday but as we were standing there on a Friday we piled into the taxi.
The journey to the city showed a barren landscape and my joke that the national dish was probably potatoes proved not to be so funny after several days of eating little else. The hotel was nice, but it is the only time I have opened a hotel room door to be confronted by ten steps down to the actual room. The room was large and long with what would have been an excellent view of The Baltic but for the cranes and cargo boats in the docks. The hotel had its own built in lap dancing club which opened at 10pm and was still going when I went for breakfast. It was even possible to order ‘room service’ if you know what I mean. My only other memories of the hotel after a heavy night on the town was forgetting about the steps down to my room and landing face first at the bottom and, in the morning, finding a very distinguished colleague still asleep in the reception where we left him the previous evening. The conference was unmemorable.
I got the impression of a country that had been filleted by communism and, while independent, was not entirely free of its communist past. The incident to which I referred above happened on our night out on the town. Two young local ladies from the conference offered to show a few of us round Klaipėda. Suffice to say that this did not take very long and culminated in the city square. One of the girls pointed to a balcony outside what looked like the city hall and proclaimed that it was a very important location to Lithuanian people. I asked why and she said that when he came to the city, he addressed the people from that balcony. ‘He’ it transpired was none other than Adolf Hitler.
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