Lithuania’s Tillian Moment

Many year ago, Charles Tilly famously said that “war made states and states made war”. By this statement he captured one of the most perplexing questions of intellectual enquiry: what is the relationship between war and state, between military and political dimensions of human interaction. In one sentence, Tilly provided the answer: one cannot exist without the other. The changes in one domain affects changes in another and vice versa. In time, Ch. Tilly and other scholars, like T. Skocpol, M. Mann, explored this idea, provided more nuanced and subtle explanations. According to them, during various historical periods different wartime phases, like mobilisation for war, fighting, post-war affected polities in variety of ways by shaping formation and development of civic activities, state institutions and interactions between various actors in the state. This paper is about such Tillian moment in the development of Lithuanian state after 2014 events in Ukraine. The underlying assumption is that, since then Lithuania is in the state of permanent war mobilisation and accordingly, because of that, serious changes in state and society happened. Events in Ukraine in 2014 became a catalyst of big changes for the Lithuanian politics and political system. It fast-tracked increase of record breaking defence budget, pushed through major military procurement, actively lobbied Western allies and finally made a political decision to bring back conscription. Russian threat and war scare mobilized Lithuanian society to unprecedented level. It is important to emphasize that scope and scale of the changes, which happened in Lithuanian since 2014, was not seen since the 1990’s. For instances, increased importance of defence and military policy led to reconfiguration of power between legislative and executive branches of power, by strengthening the later, more precisely, the Presidential institution. At the same time, clear changes in electoral behaviour, especially, increase of younger voter participation, can be related to the return conscription. Despite being serious political issue, conscription is only a part of much bigger changes in the military and security sector in general. Suddenly individuals, groups of volunteers expressed their interest in defending the state. These activities varied from simple discussion in social media, organised “elf” groups fighting Russian “trolls” to various NGO’s, civic groups fundraising money for the military or going to the shooting ranges, forests to train as paramilitary units. Such civic interest and general activity were not seen since the early 90’s. This society’s interest in defence issues could not be contained and it spilled over into other domains. People became more inquisitive and confident to start civic action concerning issues varying from demands to have better working conditions, to the revival of investigative journalism or opening debates about sensitive issues of the past, for instances, question of Holocaust. In other words, civic community became mature. Taken together with changes in other areas and policies, these developments should be seen as Lithuania’s Tillian moment. The threat of war and mobilisation for it activated and catalysed Lithuania state and society beyond military domain.