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Lithuania's Comeback Kid

The Washington Post

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 16, 1998; Page A15

VILNIUS, Lithuania—When Valdas Adamkus retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last summer after almost three decades with the federal government, he told colleagues about his future hope. "The most desirable situation would be to enjoy my golf game," he said. "But I believe that's not in the cards."

He was clairvoyant. Adamkus, after a half-century of life in the United States, is about to be inaugurated as president of his native Lithuania, a country to which he returned only six months ago.

The significance of his election victory last week probably lay beyond his future role as shepherd for foreign and defense policies, referee in parliamentary squabbles and ribbon cutter. In Lithuania, the longings of an American immigrant to be fully Lithuanian again coincided with the desires of a small Baltic nation to be Western, maybe even a bit American.

"The victory showed everybody that Lithuania is on its way to the West," Adamkus told supporters at a victory celebration.

"Adamkus comes from the West with Western ideas and understanding, so we think that's good. Even more golden, he comes from the United States. For many people here, America is still paradise. If Adamkus had come from Germany or Sweden, there would have been less impact," said Arturas Racas, a columnist for the Lietuvos Rytas newspaper.

Adamkus is not the only native son who has returned from the United States to make his mark in Eastern Europe. Many a gray-haired emigre has returned to his homeland to participate in the wave of independence and democratization that followed the ebb of Soviet power in Europe since 1989. Naturalized Americans hold government office in almost every former Warsaw Pact country and in some former Soviet republics.

Adamkus's electoral success arose from a struggle over Lithuania's identity. The country desperately wants to leave behind any vestige of its Soviet history, Lithuanians say, and an Adamkus presidency lets them project a new image to the world.

"We evidently wanted to get away from the old Communist system or any semblance of it. Where better to go than to an American who has been gone for so many years?" said Kazys Bobelis, another naturalized American turned Lithuanian politician. A member of Parliament for six years, Bobelis was knocked out of this year's presidential race in the first round of voting.

Adamkus won a razor-thin runoff victory against Arturas Paulauskas, a young lawyer and reformed Communist. The outcome was a stunner. In the first round of voting, Adamkus trailed Paulauskas by 27 to 45 percent. In the second round, Adamkus came back to win by a scant 12,000 votes. At 71, Adamkus is Lithuania's Comeback Kid.

Paulauskas was undermined by contradictory suspicions. On the one hand, rightists murmured that he was close to the old Communist nomenklatura and would bring back Soviet habits. On the other hand, impoverished Lithuanians feared he would institute harsh free-market reforms in a country where energy and agriculture are still subsidized.

Adamkus was more of a blank slate. His platform, while pro-market, was more vague than his rival's. As an outsider he carried little political baggage and campaigned as an independent, even while bearing the standard of the Center Union party. He also could maintain distance from a series of corruption scandals in recent governments.

"We didn't know much about him, and what we knew was good, so there was little to criticize. He was hazy. The big question for us now is who will advise him," said Jonas Cekuolis, a political commentator on television and radio.

Both Adamkus and Paulauskas back Lithuania's entry into NATO and the European Union. Virtually everybody in Lithuania believes devoutly in those twin goals.

But Lithuania has had disappointments on both fronts. NATO has issued its first invitations to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The EU has named Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia as prime candidates for membership. Lithuania was relegated to a second wave.

Adamkus said that, realistically, his country will not be invited to join NATO until sometime early in the next century. In the meantime, he said, Lithuania should build up its strength. "That way, we won't go in as beggars. We can wait," he said in an interview at the presidential offices here.

Estonia's place in line ahead of Lithuania for EU membership "is not a tragedy," he added. He acknowledged that Lithuania has been conservative in protecting subsidies and that changing economic policies "will not be an easy task."

Adamkus, who speaks in heavily accented English, fled Lithuania for the West when in his teens, as the Soviet Union took back the country from Nazi Germany, which occupied it from 1941 to 1944. As a youth, he had published an underground anti-German newspaper, then fled with his family briefly to Germany. He was interned in a camp for displaced people before making his way back home to wage a losing fight against the Soviets.

He recalls that he arrived in the United States with $5 and a suitcase. He worked in an auto assembly plant, then joined U.S. military intelligence and taught at an army language school at Fort Riley, Kan. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and, beginning in 1969, served as deputy director of the Ohio River Basin regional office in Cincinnati. In 1971, he joined the EPA, and 10 years later he was named Midwest regional director.

Adamkus left the EPA with a gold medal and memories of a dramatic moment of integrity. In 1981, he testified before a congressional committee that a report from his office had been doctored by higher-ups in Washington to downplay dioxin pollution purportedly caused by the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich. Adamkus told the committee that the report was modified "in headquarters."

It is a moment he remembers proudly. "That affected the entire agency and the entire country. I felt somebody had to speak up because the agency was becoming ineffective," he told an interviewer recently.

During the Cold War, Chicago, his American home town, was a hotbed of Lithuanian nationalism with a large Lithuanian-American population. He belonged to numerous Lithuanian emigre organizations and spoke on the Voice of America in favor of his homeland's independence.

Starting in 1972, he renewed direct ties with Lithuania through trips to the Soviet Union as an EPA official. His visits to Lithuania were designated as private so as not to suggest U.S. acceptance of Soviet rule there.

On his first visit, police detained him and some Lithuanian relatives because they ventured beyond the 15-mile limit outside Vilnius that was permitted to travelers. He visited frequently in years after, trips that he feels kept him in close enough touch to be regarded as presidential material. "I'm a known entity. My name is a household name. Someone known for making good," he said.

"If some regard me as an outsider, it's because I can demonstrate that I am a member of no political party and carry no baggage of the past," he added. "People could choose change."

The idea of running for president first arose in 1993, when Adamkus campaigned for Stasys Lozoraitis, a friend who ran unsuccessfully for president. "People asked me, 'Why don't you run?' I had never thought of it before," he recalled.

Lithuanians kept asking him, he said, and eventually, he felt he had to say yes: "I had devoted my life to the cause. The logical final act was to run, to get fully involved.

"I don't consider myself a carpetbagger. People believe I will help Lithuania's image, but I say over and over, don't expect miracles."

The Center Union party nominated him, and he fought successfully in court to override a residency requirement for candidates. His wife, Alma, opposed the move at first but became an active campaigner.

Adamkus, who will be inaugurated Feb. 25, sees himself as a kind of Mr. Smith Goes to Vilnius. "First, I want to reestablish trust. Nobody here believes anybody," he said.

Golf hasn't taken hold in Lithuania, he noted. But if a foreign investor wants to establish a golf club in Lithuania, the new president will welcome the move. "I will be happy to be its first member," he said.