In Europe

in Cell 19, in 1948. There were seven of us. All students. I was with the partisans.’ He sighs deeply, taps his chest. ‘Emotions, yes.’ He points to the door of the solitary cell. ‘I was in there for three days. Then they sent me to Siberia for twenty years. Digging. Chopping. I was thirty-seven by the time they let me go.’ He has dark brows and sunken eyes. ‘This is where it all began. I was so afraid!’ He has difficulty going on, he has to dredge up the German words from deep inside, and he becomes more and more upset.
    An important political barometer for the region is the
Baltic Times
. The weekly, only three years old, is put together by a dozen journalists working in a few jumbled rooms. A brief selection of this week's news: ‘Female President of Latvian Association of Models Arrested for Drug Trafficking’, ‘Parade of Waffen-SSVeterans Divides Latvia’,‘Estonian Parliament Broadens Language Demands: all Russian businessmen, civil servants, waiters and physicians must now speak Estonian’.
    There is an article about anti-Semitic posters at the Lithuanian embassy in Warsaw. The text reads: ‘All crimes are instigated by Jewish Freemasons, and carried out by Jews.’ A demonstration by the elderly: ‘My retirement pay is just enough to pay the heating bill, but the Riga City Council doesn't care. How am I supposed to buy groceries?'The mayor of Visaginas has hanged himself: an investigation had been started concerning his alleged corruption and ‘pro-Moscow activities’. There is a report on the Estonian province of Polva, where the farmers have lost their Russian export market. ‘Unemployment, poverty, the young people are leaving by the hundreds. The locals, worried about their future, no longer dare to have children.'The Latvian prime minister, Vilis Kristopans, is interviewed: ‘If you want to see what Latvia should look like, look at the Netherlands.’
    Steven Johnson, a young American, has been the weekly's editor-in-chief for the last two years. The supposed unity of the Baltic States, he feels, is only there when viewed from a distance. ‘Just look at the capital cities. Vilnius was built as the capital of a huge empire, Lithuania. Tallinn is and remains an overgrown Danish village, every bit as Scandinavian as the rest of Estonia. Latvia always was more or less a remote Prussian province, and you can see that as well: Riga is a true German trading town, and always has been.’
    In recent years, Johnson says, the differences are becoming marked. After 1989, Estonia immediately established an excellent image in the West, and still leads the pack. Until 1996, Lithuania was still half communist. ‘The three countries may be working at the moment on a kind of economic community, but they are developing at very different rates. And that leads to a great deal of tension. You regularly hear Estonians in Riga or Vilnius shout: “What do we need these people for?”’
    And what about the Russians? ‘After all those years, that intertwining is more complicated than ever. I know of a city in the south-east of Lithuania where eighty-five per cent of the population speaks Russian. In that same region there's a city that is dependent on one dairy factory, which is in turn totally dependent on the dairy consumption of a number of Russian cities. That still works, but for how long?’
    According to Johnson, there are also huge differences between the Baltic States in terms of their relationship with Russia. ‘Latvia has always had the worst relations, Lithuania the best. Right after independence, Lithuania granted citizenship to all its Russians. In Latvia, only those Russians between the ages of fifteen and thirty were allowed to be naturalised. But if you were thirty-one and your native language happened to be Russian, then it was no go, even if you had lived there all your life. Latvian Russians are still in a tight spot: their pension rights are limited, they enjoy few or no social facilities, and they have no say in things.’ Latvia would rather focus on the Baltic, and forget the rest, Johnson feels. ‘The president is always talking about the Nordic Six. In his view, the Baltic must become the Mediterranean of the North.’
    The young people in these countries, Johnson says, are very optimistic. The older generations simply let all the changes roll over them. ‘They've become cynical, they've been through too much already, they don't trustanyone, including the West. The last