Every person makes decisions which may influence his destiny and show what is going to be left after him or how he is going to be remembered by others.
Sometimes the history of the states and nations are made by single individuals. When you are choosing your way there are a lot of things that can influence your decision. Crowds have a big impact on your choice and you may be tempted to choose according to the majority’s wish even if it is wrong but personally useful for someone. You can always find a way to calm the consciousness. An excuse that all people make is that you just do the same thing and it is not smart to resist – current flow is always effective.
The people of our country have a historical chance to show our will or even, I should say, a chance to show strong character in 2014 winter. Let’s ask ourselves: do we really want to see Lithuanian Olympians in Vladimir Putin’s show? Do we really want to be extras in the ugly dictator’s public relations? Do we want to be the puppets without any will which entertain the spoiled Kremlin’s audience? The audience that is full of compromised VIPs who are sitting in the first rows at the Olympic race?
Do we really want to compete before Ramzan Kadyrov or Aleksey Lugavoj, men, who are suspected in murdering Aleksandr Litvinenk and Sergey Magnicki? Why should we do this? Even in the authoritarian Venezuela the opposition gets more than 40 percent of votes. Meanwhile in Russia opposition can’t get even on the voting list. The possibility to participate in the elections is just taken away from them. And there is even no point in talking about fair voting.
Russia’s daily routine is full of political prisoners, persecution of the opposition, forgery of election’s results, unbelievable scale of corruption, and parasitizing bureaucracy machine. Is it really necessary to go to the country in which Stalin cult is still alive and the murder of our relatives is still depicted like a saint? Are we really that masochist?
How we are going to look into the eyes of our brothers Georgians who lost the part of their country thanks to the military conflict that Russia provoked? Or maybe this war was not important? Can we close our eyes before that?
Do we really want to be seen at a single Olympics so badly that we will not pay any attention to the fact that there were billions laundered and the fact that there still doubts about security? Probably, we forgot about the Olympiad which was held in 1936 in the capital of Nazi’s Germany. It was such a long time ago, wasn’t it? Who can say now how the history would be different if Adolf Hitler wouldn’t have gotten so much attention and glory at that time?
Maybe you feel sorry for the athletes who is preparing for the Olympiad? But do you feel sorry for people who are in Russia’s prisons without any reason? Do you feel sorry for prosecuted, oppressed, destroyed or deported people? It is hard to believe that the members of our weak government are able to make this historical choice by themselves. But we all can help them to make this choice because people tend to move to that direction to which they are pushed to.
Let’s not fool ourselves, we should refuse to participate in Sochi Olympics 2014. It is not such a hard decision as it looks like. Some time ago Dalia Grybauskaitė didn’t participate in meetings with Poland and USA leaders and the sky didn’t fall apart even if there were no good reason for our President not to meet them. Meanwhile, there is so much motivation to not participate. And there is nothing to be afraid of. That can they do? Curse us on Russia’s TV? Well, they do that anyway. We got used to that. Maybe they will make gas even more expensive? Well, it is getting more expensive anyway. But we will never have a second chance to make the right choice and to feel that we are already free and honest. You can’t buy this feeling with any amount of money.
