All post-independence Vilnius governments have had trouble with Poland. Despite centuries of common history, ties between the countries are oddly twitchy. Poles, more mindful of their own suffering than that of others, forget that from a Lithuanian point of view they can seem like a bullying cultural hegemon. Lithuanians, also prone to introversion, have never delivered on repeated promises to sort out arcane disputes about spelling and property rights affecting the country’s ethnic Poles, who number nearly a tenth of the population. (For example, may they write their names with Polish letters such as “ę” “ą” and “ł”, or are they restricted to the Lithuanian alphabet?) That is all the odder given the avowed pragmatism of Lithuania’s foreign policy under Dalia Grybauskaite (pictured, above), the country’s steely and popular president, who was elected last year.
Read more: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15716044
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