Do you know what the law does for people whose families left after 1919 but before 1940?

Are their grandchildren also entitled to dual citizenship?

You are right, all the conversations and iccidents that you or your friend had can be simply explained by cultural differences. By saying that we want to bear in mind that cultural differences or certain way of behaviour exist for the reason. And there is no reason to call Lithuanians lacking of cardinal directions. I completely disagree with you on that. First of all you want to consider the difference between Chicago with Vilnius (the largest Lithuanian city). Not even that, take US and compare it with any other European country. You may agree that the difference in size is more than obvious. One state is larger than a country in Europe. Cultural differences also exist for the reason. For me, as being Lithuanian, would sound funny and even ridiculous if somebody would tell me go north or south. Just as Taska said that she would often frustrate people by saying ‘meet me at the right corner’. Lithuanians are not used to be given directions that way, it is uncommon, at least I have never came across, as there is no necessity to. Even though Vilnius is a big city, it is not as big as to use cardinal directions. For me, there is an easier way to explain things. Different objects would come to help, would it be a church, a bus stop, a river, or a bank building. There are not so many of them, and all of them will be quite ditictive, most probably unlike to Chicago. I have never been to Chicago, I would love to go there though. But I really don’t see, how knowing cardinal directions would help me to find a place in Lithuania.
However, this is a piece of valuable information to me. It is very interesting to hear such an insight from a foreign perspective. As a Lithuanian person, I would have never in my life discovered such a thing. Thank you for that.

See my article from today for the latest on the pre-1940 issue, if you like. The short version is, though, that it seems like it will be dead in the water, still.

Last I heard there was something that might change in July 2010, but searching the net, I can’t find it anywhere.

Thanks!

I was also involved in a conversation with someone who insisted that Kaunas is south of Vilnius (latitudinally) because the road (A1) leading out of Vilnius that takes you to Kaunas leaves Vilnius via the southwest corner. But then it bends northwest. Kaunas is mostly west, but it’s also a bit north…

…this is in fact *another* discussion… I got into arguments over whether Gariūnai was latitudinally south of Senamiestis. I maintained that it was, and the person I was talking to insisted that if it’s (latitudinally) south of Senamiestis, it’s by such a small bit to count. It’s due west, my friend asserted. Again, you get on the A1, but you go quite a ways southwest before hitting Gariūnai. (This friend also argued that Savanorių pr. was for all intents and purposes an east-west street. In fact, it runs more or less exactly NE/SW. Whatever.

But it’s hard for me to believe that Lithuanians don’t feel where south or north is. Maybe it’s just me, but I can always imagine where I am in town and which direction I am facing to. But I would definitely have difficulties talking to someone speaking Guugu Yimithirr indoors

But I *do* think that comparison is not only ok but necessary, because it underscores the differences *in kind* of the effects of the regimes. It might be too flip to say “to be arrested is not to be shot into a pit,” but it is a distinction that is of vital importance in understanding the history of the moments. By calling both “genocide” (or agitating to do so), one erases this distinction.

Lucas’s whataboutism sounds like a strawman and decidedly not the tactic I took here or that Freedland took in his piece, collapsed into this point: The GENOCIDE Museum mentions the Holocaust ONCE in the ENTIRE museum, in PARENTHESES, and not by name, but only as a number of additional “Jewish victims” to the total body count (the next time I go, I’ll take a picture of this offense).

Call the KGB Museum what it is: the KGB Museum (as many English travel sites already do). Or, perhaps even more to the point, the “Resistance” or “Partisan” museum (as the tortured/executed partisans make up far more of the exhibition than their torturers/executioners).

I’m not asking that this museum include exhibits on Armenia or the famine in Ukraine (which is what a whataboutist position would seem to demand). It’s fine as it is, save the name. The name pushes a sickening project of Lithuanian political victimization that is offensive in these invited comparisons. And that’s the point Freedland was making and I was hoping to amplify. Even if there is a hidden motive of USSR rehabilitation (by being a Guardian piece), it does not change the fact that Lithuania continues down this path of ghastly, ignorant false equivalence at its own risk.

I find the very attempt of such comparison immoral and driven by the lazy habit which Edward Lucas described as whataboutism where an appraisal of any evil is considered invalid and intellectually dishonest because it does not also make a reference to every other existing evil. It is employed willingly by anyone guilty of pretty much anything anywhere in the world and is always a deflection tactic.

When accusing the Lithuanians (and we deserved to be accused – but not by anyone from the Guardian, which is a point I make rather bluntly as you spotted) of invoking this tool, Freedland cannot help but have a go at playing with the same mirrors.