Konstantinas Andrijauskas, University professor, Vilnius University, Lithuania on the Panel “Countering Authoritarianism” at the Conference “Defending Democracy and Human Rights”, December 12, 2024 Skopje.
I am representing Vilnius University in Lithuania and obviously for us Lithuanians, the Russo-Ukrainian war is a key issue, but it happens to be an extra personal issue for myself as well. My father, he is ethnically Lithuanian. My mother, she is ethnically Buryat, which the Buryat, they happen to be the largest ethnolinguistic minority in Siberia, and at the same time, the Buryats have been very much prominent in a negative way, in a negative fashion throughout the entire decade of this war. To give you a reminder, the war goes on for 10 years.
The Russians are not stupid. They do understand that there is reality, but they choose to ignore it. This is how authoritarian countries work. If the Russian reality about the war, about their predicament, about the entire history of the country, about their history, particularly since Putin’s arrival to power in 1999, with the bonding of the apartment buildings, which is not a conspiracy theory, you know, FSB and all, it’s the most plausible version. Let’s just start from this, right? If the Russians would suddenly internalize the entire story of their life, because we’ve got a generation of the Russians who knew Putin only, that’s it, it’s their father figure in many ways, then their reality would crumble, and this is their personal choice, right? A very problematic one.
Now, complimenting to the esteemed contributions just made, I’ve got two key recommendations. The first has to do with the fact I very much liked Gudrun Steinackers point about Emmanuel Kant. Obviously, he was born in Königsberg, right? The Russians would call it Kaliningrad, an occupied city in an occupied region, and in fact, and the region is very dear to our hearts, because we happen to be neighbors.
Take a look at what the Russians have done with the legacy of Emmanuel Kant, it’s actually very much telling. There is a house, yeah, but other than that, it’s really non-existent.
Emmanuel Kant is a representative of enlightenment, and the key principle of enlightenment is reason. It is this belief that reason trumps all of the other considerations.
The reality that we’re living currently in is quite different. Our philosophical tradition these days, the writing one, is about deconstruction. It’s post-modern, right? In many ways, it is about questioning everything. It is about questioning the objective truth, right? This brings quite a lot of problems, you know, the Trump effect, the Brexit in general. It creates the environment for propaganda to truly thrive, and this is a big challenge that we’ve got.
So, one of my key recommendations is to make clear whenever we’re interacting is that there is this thing called objective truth. Let us start from deep fundamentals. There is this thing which is called objective truth, so this should be the underlying principle. What the Russians have done with MH17, and you are well aware of methodology, they threw in a huge amount of various versions, and those versions, they’re needed in order to mix up the reality, you know, then the people would say, look, but you know, maybe all of the people on board, they were killed beforehand, right?
Maybe these were the Ukrainians, maybe these were the Americans, maybe the entire thing was, you know, stage managed. This is what the propaganda did from the first days of the actual MH17 related crisis. This is being done in order to confuse, right? You are well aware of this methodology.
And then, the Russians come up with, look, us shooting up the plane is merely one of the versions. It’s not one of the versions, it’s the fact, right? It’s the fact. So, this is the first one about the objective reality.
The second point is about how to speak about the objective reality. It is about the vocabularies that we’re using. What the authoritarian countries have done in the informational domain, in particular, and what they are continuing to do: They’re taking the concepts that we deem to be objective, that are describing social, political, and other phenomena, they’re twisting those, and then provide those back to the informational domain, to the informational market, if you will, right? It’s really fascinating. I also happen to be a China specialist. How would you call the leader of China?
You would say President Xi Jinping, but you would be right to a certain degree. His power lies not within this particular position. His power lies within the position of being the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. This is what we have to talk about, right? We are neighbors to Belarus. You would say President Lukashenko. President Lukashenko is not the president. The president of Belarus is located in my hometown, in Vilnius, and that’s Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The president of Russia is not Vladimir Putin. We don’t know who that is, because what he did during the latest elections was, in effect, an usurpation of power, even according to the Russian constitution. Let us be plain about that.
So, this is only one of the examples of how we are actually playing the wrong game, and there are so many other examples. You know, what they’re very good at, you know, the term Orwellian, twisting the language, right?
And let us not follow their lead, let us release ourselves from that, and let us be very strict about the definitions that we’re using. The Russian Federation is not a federation, first of all, right? It’s only merely a name, right? It does not operate as a federal structure. Believe me, I know, right? It’s not a federation. And this is only one of the beginnings, right? How we would disentangle this entire problem.
D. T.
Camera: Atanas Petrovski/ Igor Chadinovski
Editing: Arian Mehmeti
Photo: Robert Atanasovski/ CIVIL
CONFERENCE, FULL VIDEO, Streamed live on December 12, 2024:
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PHOTO ARCHIVES: #DefendingDemocracy, Panel 1: Democracy under Siege
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#DefendingDemocrcy Panel 3: Countering Authoritarianism
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