LRT — broadcast
20260920 133000 UTC
378 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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[00:00:00] and perhaps a new book about that should be written, but tell our
[00:00:04] viewers, I can, I can briefly
[00:00:07] reveal the very idea. In
[00:00:10] reality, probably two things worked, one thing is that
[00:00:13] there was a lot of
[00:00:17] m secret dissatisfaction in society,
[00:00:20] but it was not publicized
[00:00:22] and people themselves
[00:00:26] did not know that there were so many other people around them who also disliked that system.
[00:00:30] because publicly you wouldn't talk about such things, so
[00:00:33] you could only talk to very close friends or very close
[00:00:37] like-minded people, family members, but for example, with
[00:00:40] colleagues or something you wouldn't talk about such topics, because
[00:00:43] well, everyone knew that there was definitely
[00:00:47] a KGB agent or something, right, in every organization or
[00:00:50] institution, and you would be reported
[00:00:53] quickly, but on the other hand, there were
[00:00:57] people who participated in such
[00:01:00] semi-secret, semi- open
[00:01:03] networks, I'm not talking about social
[00:01:07] networks now, but in various
[00:01:10] gatherings, there were many such gatherings at that time,
[00:01:14] some were quite open, like for example, the philosophers' club, right,
[00:01:18] and already from 87
[00:01:20] there was such a bubbling, especially
[00:01:24] in Vilnius, but also in Kaunas and other
[00:01:26] places, people say that something
[00:01:30] was brewing. In what sense was it brewing? Because there were many
[00:01:33] kinds of discussions,
[00:01:37] various clubs were established, and they were established from
[00:01:40] below, not from above, because of course there were many
[00:01:44] organizations from above, right, and and and the Komsomol, and the party, and
[00:01:48] trade unions, and all sorts of amateur groups, but there were
[00:01:51] also those that somehow from below or
[00:01:55] by using some legal organization, later
[00:01:58] when the Cultural Fund was established thanks to Česlovas Kudaba,
[00:02:02] it was possible to register
[00:02:05] some gatherings through that Cultural Fund, because normally you
[00:02:08] wouldn't register, you wouldn't say that I want to establish organizations here,
[00:02:11] so it would be through the Komsomol, sometimes also
[00:02:15] various festivals, and rock marches were already taking place at that time,
[00:02:18] all sorts of things
[00:02:21] were happening, and what we
[00:02:24] understood while writing this book,
[00:02:27] is that network of all sorts of
[00:02:31] gatherings, it was already quite large
[00:02:33] and in those gatherings, people
[00:02:37] already really talked much more openly and
[00:02:40] they clearly already felt who was not sympathetic to that
[00:02:43] system, so this was the first
[00:02:47] spark, because the question always is who should be the first one
[00:02:50] to dare to do something, because later, when
[00:02:54] let's say a kind of, as they say,
[00:02:57] snowball effect begins, which we also saw, the Sąjūdis was founded
[00:03:01] and then that idea started to develop very quickly
[00:03:04] and it infected people, because people started to see
[00:03:08] that, oh, it turns out there are many like me
[00:03:12] who don't really like that system, but
[00:03:15] who were supposed to be the very first pioneers, so this is what we analyzed, that
[00:03:19] the pioneers were usually precisely those who were in those, as
[00:03:23] we called them, spontaneous civil networks, which means
[00:03:26] spontaneous civil society, that is, those created from above. but
[00:03:30] born from below, and they already spoke much more freely and they
[00:03:34] already understood that there were many like-minded people who disliked that system,
[00:03:37] so look, you
[00:03:40] also emphasized that, can we then say that it was
[00:03:44] a dormant civil society, because today, isn't it? the
[00:03:47] organizations formed
[00:03:50] from below, networks,
[00:03:54] undoubtedly any sociologist would call them manifestations
[00:03:57] of civil society, and in
[00:04:00] the Soviet era, it was a dormant civil
[00:04:02] society, we actually even thought of calling these
[00:04:06] gatherings a civil society, but it sounds very
[00:04:09] strange, but it would sound very strange that in totalitarian regimes
[00:04:13] there is a civil society, although if we look at, for example,
[00:04:17] Poles, Polish theorists and philosophers
[00:04:21] of the Solidarity movement called similar things, they
[00:04:24] specifically used the term civil society, and that's why that idea
[00:04:27] was quite appealing to us, but "here we can
[00:04:31] apply modern authors, like Robert Putnam, for example, who talks
[00:04:35] about, say, completely different things, about democratic countries'
[00:04:38] societies and says that, for example, something like even a
[00:04:42] choir or, as he says, a bird- watching club, which is not
[00:04:46] a political thing, it can become political, because it creates
[00:04:49] social capital, trust between those people,
[00:04:52] trust, and strong trust strengthens civil society
[00:04:56] and well, that's what happened during the Soviet era, right, there was that trust."
[00:05:00] And then I would ask you, the role
[00:05:03] of the church
[00:05:05] during the Soviet era
[00:05:08] ah, and I mean specifically those believers, that was also a certain
[00:05:11] community. "Those who came to mass
[00:05:14] on Sunday, they knew each other, because they simply saw
[00:05:17] each other, right, in that atmosphere that was atheistic and that was hostile,
[00:05:21] that was also, well, a certain,
[00:05:25] let's say, courage, in short,
[00:05:29] not succumbing to that social pressure, let's say,
[00:05:32] yes, for attending church, in the early Soviet era, no one was
[00:05:36] deported for it, but still, in school they would explain that there is no God, that one shouldn't
[00:05:40] go, and so on and so forth, and..." those believers were also a certain
[00:05:44] community, a certain network
[00:05:47] and when Sąjūdis started,
[00:05:50] they immediately joined, didn't they?
[00:05:54] Ah, this is both yes and no,
[00:05:57] I would see a slightly more complex picture here,
[00:06:00] because the church and
[00:06:03] believers and the church itself, it was a bit like
[00:06:07] having a double bottom, on the one hand, there was what
[00:06:11] was allowed... "as you say, for example, to go to church,
[00:06:15] for people who were, well, not party members or
[00:06:17] Komsomol members, well, it was not forbidden, only
[00:06:21] children's catechism and similar things were forbidden, and of course there
[00:06:24] was also, as you know, collaboration of priests themselves with
[00:06:28] the KGB, inevitably, so there was the legal
[00:06:32] church and there was the underground church, and the underground
[00:06:35] networks of the underground were very important
[00:06:38] and for example, later, as we studied." there,
[00:06:42] let's say, even the chronicle of the Catholic church, right,
[00:06:46] it seems that this is just a publication that a few people published, but
[00:06:50] in reality, no, in reality, it was a huge network of people who
[00:06:54] collected information, who distributed it, and all the rest, and under that
[00:06:57] network there were also other gatherings,
[00:07:01] such as the Friends of the Eucharist, a very
[00:07:03] interesting organization, and
[00:07:07] those underground, let's say, priests, who, for example,
[00:07:10] finished their underground priestly training and so on, yes,
[00:07:14] they actually had
[00:07:17] a network of people they could
[00:07:20] trust, and not all priests were part of this,
[00:07:24] of course, of course, and for example, underground monasteries, some monasteries
[00:07:27] were more politically passive,
[00:07:31] while others were politically active, for example, contributing
[00:07:35] to the chronicle of the Catholic church, so in short, that distinction was
[00:07:38] also felt, so
[00:07:41] on the one hand, in our networks that we reconstructed
[00:07:45] before Sąjūdis, that Catholic underground was
[00:07:48] a very important component, especially for the Sąjūdis in Kaunas, the Sąjūdis in Kaunas
[00:07:52] had a really big influence, for the Sąjūdis in Vilnius, it was less visible, the Sąjūdis in Vilnius was more
[00:07:56] nomenklatura-like, well, a bit so, let's say, at least from
[00:08:00] the surface it certainly seems so, yes, so
[00:08:04] one thing is that the m underground
[00:08:07] church and all those
[00:08:10] networks contributed, but the other thing is that... "the church still had broad
[00:08:14] authority, even at that time, despite all that atheization,
[00:08:18] still many people, who even
[00:08:22] belonged to the Communist Party, for example, baptized their children
[00:08:25] and tried to, let's say,
[00:08:29] or a marriage or something somewhere secretly, in another parish,
[00:08:33] yes, at the other end, yes, yes, so
[00:08:36] in short, for example, that very strong support of the
[00:08:39] church for Sąjūdis, it really had." also a very
[00:08:43] big effect, we remember the return of the cathedral and all
[00:08:46] that, so in fact, it was such
[00:08:49] an, I would say, even a legitimation
[00:08:53] of Sąjūdis, the fact that the church had authority in all
[00:08:56] strata, despite all this atheization, because it
[00:09:00] was not really effective, as strange as it may seem,
[00:09:03] well, again, of course, what you consider effectiveness, some might
[00:09:06] probably object here, because it very
[00:09:09] impoverished, it impoverished that, let's say,
[00:09:13] church life, and later we, for example, now
[00:09:17] see that decline in religiosity,
[00:09:20] it can be linked to that impoverished
[00:09:24] tradition of the church, so this would be a separate
[00:09:27] discussion, so I don't want to get into that, well, but let's go back to Sąjūdis,
[00:09:31] and here
[00:09:33] m when we talk about Sąjūdis
[00:09:37] today, isn't it, from today's perspective,
[00:09:40] we always say, oh, they were united. the whole
[00:09:43] nation united, but was that really the case, was the whole
[00:09:46] nation so together with Sąjūdis,
[00:09:50] or perhaps simply those who liked
[00:09:53] a that Soviet way of life,
[00:09:57] who were more pro-Soviet, they simply
[00:10:00] became quieter and we simply didn't see them.
[00:10:04] This is an interesting, good question, but I will just
[00:10:07] continue the thought I started at the beginning about how Sąjūdis became
[00:10:11] so powerful so quickly,
[00:10:14] so in reality, at the beginning, if
[00:10:18] we take the initial situation, then there weren't many
[00:10:22] pioneers of Sąjūdis and... later even our subsequent
[00:10:26] studies showed that even in rallies, for example,
[00:10:29] well, which were very massive and large, still only about a
[00:10:33] third of society participated, so you could say that well, it's still not the whole
[00:10:36] society, but what we see further is that
[00:10:39] in reality, such an interesting effect worked,
[00:10:42] when those, here using scientific
[00:10:45] terms, a
[00:10:48] private attitudes that were not very
[00:10:52] good towards the regime, when they became public
[00:10:55] attitudes and a lot of criticism appeared, both, let's say, ecological
[00:10:59] movements criticized the regime, and
[00:11:03] people learned things
[00:11:06] that were secret, like, say, about the Ribbentrop-Molotov
[00:11:10] Pact, or about deportations, for example, deportations were still
[00:11:14] a taboo, people did not talk about it despite the fact that there were
[00:11:17] many deported people around, but it was still a silent topic and
[00:11:21] many people, especially younger ones, did not know, and when
[00:11:25] those things started to come to the surface, that
[00:11:29] disapproval of the regime or approval
[00:11:32] of Sąjūdis, it grew very strongly, and if
[00:11:35] we remember the Baltic Way, some say that about a million people
[00:11:39] participated, well, maybe a million, let's say, is a slightly exaggerated number, but still,
[00:11:43] we are talking about very large numbers, and if we
[00:11:47] remember, for example, the plebiscite on independence
[00:11:50] held in 1991, then 90-something percent
[00:11:53] voted for independence, so what does that mean, it means that in
[00:11:57] reality that idea
[00:12:01] still united all people in the end
[00:12:04] and when we even do, well, all, not 100%
[00:12:08] of course, but a very large part, and when we do, for example, current
[00:12:11] studies, what we see is that Sąjūdis
[00:12:14] and, for example, January 13th are what
[00:12:17] unites everyone, it is such a collective
[00:12:21] memory that unites everyone, not divides,
[00:12:24] today, isn't it? between various political spectra, right, from
[00:12:28] left to right, from extreme left to
[00:12:31] extreme right, Sąjūdis and January 13th are
[00:12:35] for everyone a sacred memory,
[00:12:38] yes, yes, yes, and we can, and of course, but I
[00:12:41] see certain problems when that memory is used, but we can
[00:12:45] remember, for example, such a thing, that when there was, for example,
[00:12:49] the family march in Vingis Park, they
[00:12:52] also walked with, let's say, with
[00:12:55] tricolor flags, right, and said, we felt like in Sąjūdis, they came here
[00:12:59] now to protest, let's say, for LRT or those cultural
[00:13:03] protests, they also went with the name of Sąjūdis, with the flag
[00:13:06] of Sąjūdis, so on the one hand, it's a bit funny when opposing
[00:13:10] sides ostensibly go with the same flag and the same tradition, but on the other hand,
[00:13:14] it's also beautiful, because it means everyone considers Sąjūdis
[00:13:17] their own, feels it as a very important element of their
[00:13:20] identity, so I think that this is our great
[00:13:24] strength. e, that we can rely on this
[00:13:27] collective memory, which is still very, very
[00:13:31] close and familiar to everyone. So,
[00:13:34] ah, when Sąjūdis is remembered, that spirit of unity, it
[00:13:38] is talked about, and probably
[00:13:42] it's no secret to you that it's said from time to time
[00:13:45] that current Lithuania needs Sąjūdis,
[00:13:48] a new Sąjūdis, is it possible
[00:13:51] ah,
[00:13:54] I first ask the question, is it needed?
[00:13:57] Everyone wants unity, everyone wants
[00:14:00] unity, everyone wants to experience what Sąjūdis experienced, youth
[00:14:04] doesn't know what we experienced in Sąjūdis, so they
[00:14:06] would know, well, yes, and that's visible, for example,
[00:14:10] in these LRT protests, or for example, when there was
[00:14:13] that action
[00:14:16] to support Belarusian protests, right,
[00:14:19] such a connection to the Baltic Way, well, everyone wants
[00:14:23] to feel that again. Or those who haven't felt it, they want to feel it,
[00:14:27] who weren't alive at that time, weren't born yet, they want to feel that
[00:14:30] thing, I understand this, but on the other hand, you
[00:14:34] can't turn back history, this is simply a futile
[00:14:37] desire, frankly speaking, I look a little with caution
[00:14:41] and skepticism at any attempts to create a new Sąjūdis,
[00:14:45] because the historical circumstances are completely different,
[00:14:48] then we had a very clear common goal
[00:14:51] and a clear common enemy, now if an attempt is made to create a Sąjūdis,
[00:14:55] then they start looking for enemies inside,
[00:14:57] well, because why, against whom are you gathering, right, and if you
[00:15:01] start looking for enemies inside, then very bad things happen, so
[00:15:05] I would think that when there is a democratic
[00:15:08] system, there should be other forms of activity, it can
[00:15:12] be, for example, just organizations that pursue certain goals, well,
[00:15:16] let's say, ecological ones, or I don't know, trade unions, or something, everyone
[00:15:20] there has their own ideas and goals, that's great, that's civil
[00:15:23] society, or if you want to come to power, there are
[00:15:27] parties, well, the main mechanism
[00:15:30] is parties, when you try to create some kind of Sąjūdis, which is supposedly
[00:15:33] a party, but not a party, then in reality, you are just hiding
[00:15:37] behind that emotion, that we will roughly create such a Sąjūdis as it was
[00:15:40] in '88, but the principle is completely different, essentially
[00:15:44] you just want to take power and push someone else out of that power,
[00:15:48] so well, I think
[00:15:51] this is a misinterpretation, such a not entirely correct misinterpretation
[00:15:55] of things and an attempt to use those symbols in the wrong
[00:15:58] situation for strengthening one's political
[00:16:02] power. I have another
[00:16:05] question, what if "40 years ago
[00:16:09] social
[00:16:11] networks had already existed and Sąjūdis
[00:16:15] had been born in the era of social networks, would it have been
[00:16:18] able to emerge, perhaps
[00:16:21] it would have been even stronger, or perhaps not, on the contrary, what
[00:16:24] do you think? This is a complex
[00:16:28] question, because at first glance, it would seem
[00:16:31] that social networks greatly
[00:16:34] help mobilization, and we know of
[00:16:37] such cases now, and finally, even those same Belarusian protests, if
[00:16:41] we take them, there the Telegram channel was very
[00:16:44] important and others,
[00:16:46] so indeed, e, what we write
[00:16:50] about networking here, it would seem
[00:16:54] that it would be much easier to do that networking if there were
[00:16:58] social networks as a tool, because for example, how could people
[00:17:01] find out things back then, for example, such simply amazing things,
[00:17:04] like a week before a... I mean
[00:17:07] the founding of Sąjūdis, when a representative from the Estonian
[00:17:11] Popular Front had arrived and a meeting with him had to be organized
[00:17:15] in one day, it seems, how can you
[00:17:18] organize a large meeting in one day when there are no
[00:17:22] social networks and not everyone even has phones,
[00:17:25] there were landline phones, either they find you or they don't,
[00:17:28] exactly, but somehow people knew
[00:17:32] how to organize themselves and knew where to find each
[00:17:36] other, in short, there were
[00:18:46] for example, in Germany a,
[00:18:50] in the GDR, that Sąjūdis-like movement we had, they didn't have
[00:18:53] such a Sąjūdis, everything happened much later for them, but then
[00:18:57] much faster, it happened more suddenly, and
[00:19:00] the initial impulse was
[00:19:03] that people met, meaning
[00:19:07] for a rally. They decided
[00:19:10] where and when to hold a rally
[00:19:14] unorganized, because everyone understood that there is a city
[00:19:17] square, which is logically the only place where everyone could
[00:19:21] meet, and masses were held there,
[00:19:24] meaning, and people intuitively felt that after those
[00:19:27] masses in that place, in the
[00:19:30] square, they would be able to find like-minded people, and there
[00:19:34] were so many people who thought that a massive
[00:19:37] rally took place, which then made a breakthrough, so imagine, I mean, how people
[00:19:40] could intuitively organize themselves without social
[00:19:44] networks, so that's it, but social networks, on the one
[00:19:47] hand, would have helped somewhat, but on the other hand,
[00:19:50] again, for example, then it's also convenient for the regime, because you can
[00:19:54] observe, you can control more, incite,
[00:19:57] incite, mhm, the very beginning, isn't it,
[00:20:01] of Sąjūdis, the initiative group
[00:20:04] was formed, through social networks you can say that...
[00:20:07] "that some rejects, some degenerates,
[00:20:11] some in short, from
[00:20:13] from intellectuals detached from
[00:20:16] the world, the first rallies, the first rallies in June were
[00:20:20] small, there were perhaps 100 or a couple of 100
[00:20:23] people, you call them boors,
[00:20:26] and I wonder if at the beginning
[00:20:30] of July, there would have been 1000, and
[00:20:33] in August, there would have
[00:20:36] been 100,000 people at the party, for you
[00:20:39] to insult them in all sorts of ways,
[00:20:43] some of that was still done, because let's remember, for example, in 1987,
[00:20:47] when that rally took place near Mickiewicz's monument. It was
[00:20:50] attempted, it was attempted through the official media
[00:20:54] to call them, I don't remember now, but
[00:20:56] western
[00:20:58] yes, yes, yes, yes, but that thing, first of all,
[00:21:02] didn't really work, because people were smart, as they say,
[00:21:05] they understood where propaganda was and didn't take it too
[00:21:09] seriously, on the one hand, on the other hand, the organizers of Sąjūdis
[00:21:12] were also very smart, they had
[00:21:16] a good intuition about what to do and what not to do, and
[00:21:19] for example. the initiative group, for example, invited people
[00:21:23] like Justinas Marcinkevičius, and he eventually agreed,
[00:21:25] so you couldn't declare Justinas
[00:21:29] Marcinkevičius a degenerate, well, they were simply looking for people
[00:21:33] who were legitimate at that time, but these days
[00:21:37] all sorts of opinions about Marcinkevičius can be
[00:21:40] said, so perhaps even then, during the era of social
[00:21:43] networks, it would have been possible to
[00:21:47] denounce Marcinkevičius and Petkevičius and Vytautas
[00:21:50] Bergis, the famous musicologist,
[00:21:53] with all sorts of words.
[00:21:57] Well, probably that could be a separate research topic,
[00:22:01] and is it easier to incite people
[00:22:04] with social networks, I guess that
[00:22:07] hypothesis could be confirmed, but now,
[00:22:11] of course, we can't turn back history and
[00:22:13] check it, yes, yes,
[00:28:56] sleep, joints, mood or body cleansing. Food supplements
[00:29:00] promising well-being. Tens of thousands
[00:29:03] in Lithuania, studies show that they are consumed by the absolute majority
[00:29:07] of the population, although doctors are categorical, for those living
[00:29:10] healthily, they are not needed at all, about this a discussion in the show
[00:29:14] "Not so simple". This Wednesday
[00:29:16] at 7:30 PM on