Crossing Lithuania and Kaliningrad by Bike
by Barry D. Wood

It’s compact, friendly, cheap by Western European standards, and flat. What more could a touring cyclist ask? Indeed, crossing Lithuania, this West Virginia-sized, soon to be EU country is a cyclist’s delight.

Lithuania is a poor and rural land. While cycling, I can’t help but think that it’s a miracle that this little country—so recently part of the former Soviet Union—is actually about to achieve EU and NATO membership. Even five years ago this seemed an impossible dream. I suspect the average person on the street in France or Germany has no idea of just how poor rural Lithuanians are and how much support they’re going to seek from the EU budget. The average monthly wage is $380, and with prices except for housing now nearly at Western levels, it’s hard to imagine how Lithuanians are getting by on less than $5,000 a year. For example, according to Lithuanian statistics, the farmer I watch splitting firewood on his 6-acre farm will be earning about $200 per month. A pensioner I encountered—stooped in old age as he surveyed his stock of turkeys, geese, and hens—gets about $100 a month in social security.

But lovely Lithuania brings some pluses to the EU. It has arguably the best road network in the former Soviet Union. Lithuania has political stability, and relations with its Russian minority are free of tension. The pace of farm mechanization is moving quickly. Tractors are common, although I did see a woman planting a 2-hectare field by hand. Economic growth has exceeded 5 percent in each of the past three years, about four times the EU average. And last year Lithuania registered 6.7 percent growth, the highest in all of Europe.

Klaipeda is a delightful old town with storybook north German houses from the 18th century, and is the gateway to the Courland Spit, one of northern Europe’s most compelling natural attractions. The spit is a 60-mile long sand dune, seldom more than a few hundred meters wide, that extends far out into the Baltic Sea. It proceeds southwest from Klaipeda into the Kaliningrad region of Russia. Because the entire region was a closed military zone during Soviet times the spit—particularly on the Russian side—is relatively untouched. I encountered numerous elk and wild boars. The seaside cottages of fisherman and vacationers from a century ago are charming.

Klaipeda stands in stark contrast to the neglect and absence of facilities on the Russian side of the spit. The first village, Rybachy, is a dilapidated place of rutted dirt lanes, cottages without paint, a derelict Soviet-era community center, and unemployed people on street corners drinking in mid afternoon. Its redeeming attraction is its 1870s church, one of only a handful still intact from what was until 1945 German East Prussia. The once vibrant German resort town of Kranz is now Zelenogradsk. It too is desolate and dispirited. Everything—except for a single modern hotel—is run down. A large workers’ resort under construction on a prime seafront location when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 stands unfinished and fenced off. Only a handfull of people stroll the sandy beaches where waves roll in from the open sea.

It’s apparent after only a day in Kaliningrad district that almost everything that was German was obliterated in the early decades of Soviet rule. Not only were tens of thousand of Germans killed, but all traces of their several-hundred-year-presence were expunged: the German inscriptions on buildings were removed and even the gravestones are gone. Saying that Kaliningrad faces an identity crisis is an understatement. At Potsdam Stalin demanded and got this part of East Prussia, with its fine, ice-free port, as war booty. The region of more than 1 million people remains Stalin’s gift to Russia, and Germany has foresworn any claim. However, as of May 2004 Kaliningrad will be surrounded by the EU and travelers on buses and trains bound for Russia proper will have to have special permits to cross EU member state Lithuania.

I spend a morning in the city of Kaliningrad. Most visitors here wonder why the main street is still Lenin Prospect, which intersects Soviet Prospect. Lenin’s statues remain as they were. The district’s second city is Sovietsk. Two pensioners who scrape by on well under $100 a month explain why Kaliningrad clings to its Soviet past: "This is the only history Kaliningraders have. What are we supposed to do, go back to the German names as if this were not part of Russia?"

Riding south from Kaliningrad toward Poland I am struck by the sense that economically this region is slipping as the neighboring postcommunist states advance. In Lithuania, despite their poverty, rural people now own their farms. They often work their fields late into the evening and on weekends. Yet here in Kaliningrad, with the same fertile countryside, family farms are few. After 80 years of communism and czarist serfdom before that, people have little sense of and interest in private property. Institutions such as the church, which serve the Lithuanians and Poles so well, are fragile and new here. Yet Russia and Kaliningrad have opened to the world. People are warm and generous to travelers even though they have little to share. Border formalities are professional and courteous. Fear is gone from this part of Russia.

My guess is that if the new Europe is going to produce any economic success stories that could rival the East Asian Tigers of the 1990s, it’s going to happen up here in the Baltics. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all small, open, and relatively flexible economies that are not burdened with large governments. While corruption is a problem, it’s not as widespread as in many East European countries. Public spending is not as big a percentage of GDP as in most parts of either Eastern or Western Europe. The three Baltic states have already shifted their trade westward and are benefiting greatly from foreign direct investment, particularly from Finland, Germany, and Sweden. Far from being dispirited or cynical, their populations are enthusiastic about joining the West and supportive of governments whose policymakers tend to be young and highly educated. Against all odds and starting from a low base, the Baltics are determined to catch up.

Barry Wood, an economics correspondent, is riding a bicycle across Eastern Europe from north to south assessing how people’s lives have changed since communism collapsed.