As the Rio Olympics were getting underway this summer, I was reminiscing with a friend from Instituto Mises Brasil about a film that both of us found remarkably enjoyable and inspirational. He convinced me to write an article about it. As I have no blog, I figured here would be a good place to start. Believe it or not the following is a movie review… the preface is my own personal take on how this documentary related to me and my experience.
I'm a descendant of the Eastern European displacement of World War II. Growing up in Midwestern USA in the 1980s and 1990s, during a time when the US was thriving and the Soviet Union was crumbling, I always found it difficult to explain the impact of what was going on in Eastern Europe to my childhood friends.
But it was a big deal. Looking back it’s become clear that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major turning point in not only the 20th century, but in a centuries’ long battle of ideas among economic thinkers, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Ludwig von Mises, to name a few. The stunning defaults, crumbling infrastructure, and stagnating freedom of expression that all culminated in the (primarily peaceful) collapse of one of the two world superpowers at the time—the communist one—was a huge, huge victory for the freedom of mankind.
Not that I myself had any real idea what was going on. I was too young to comprehend most of this. But I did know that a large portion of the groundswell for independence was emanating from the place where my relatives lived. A place I had never been to, never seen in person, but had learned about on the weekends in Latvian school, and from stories my father and grandparents told. I was quite aware, and proud, that the first three breakaway nations to secede from the Soviet Union, collectively known as the Baltic States, were Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
But I remember always struggling to bring any comprehension or connection to what I was hearing at home and among Latvian circles to friends back at school. And there was good reason they should have cared. It was a scary time, as the masks were pulled away from the apparatchiks in the Kremlin, no one could be certain how the cards would fall. Would there be large swaths of violence, as the power slipped through their fingertips? The second half of the old Soviet joke, “So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work,” was not holding anymore. Lithuania became the first breakaway nation to declare its independence in March 1990. The first violent attack against this freedom movement occurred in January 1991, when Soviet troops killed 14 people and injured hundreds more in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. The Lithuanians were crescendoing their rallies for recognized independence, forming barricades to protect their institutions (like the radio and television stations, and parliament) from the Soviet troops still on the ground, digging in their heels.
To be clear, this wasn’t the first movement for freedom and independence in the illegally annexed Baltic States. After the Soviet Union occupied the three nations in 1944, for over 10 years there was calculated guerrilla warfare waged against the Stalinist regime, even into the late 1950s. And certainly there were many movements fighting for freedom across the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades. Likewise, the violence in Vilnius in 1991 (and more followed in Riga) were not the first signs of aggression in the Soviet Union against its own citizens (those citizens being illegally incorporated or not).
Back in the United States, we played our own small roles. I recall going to rallies in major cities and seeing my father (always active in foreign Latvian politics and immigrant cultural heritage) speak for independence on the news. I incorporated these events into school projects. But again, I was young, and my friends had more important things to do. I had more important things to do.
And then it happened. Almost with the flick of a switch, the old regime crumbled. The Singing Revolution had achieved its goal, peacefully. Something my grandparents had only dreamed about was finally a reality. Freedom. At last. A white sheet. The Baltics were free, their independence recognized (first internationally by Iceland… side note, it’s always Iceland, how great are they?!). Other satellites such as Georgia and Armenia quickly followed suit in declaring their own independence. Just like that, in December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. Absolutely remarkable.
And just as quickly as it ended, everyone realized they needed to rebuild. Fast. Because these nations were behind.
The key takeaway I believe everyone should remember from this time is how stark the economic and cultural contrast really was then between East and West. How utterly stumped—economically and financially—the Soviet Union was at its dissolution in 1991, when matched against its counterpart nations in Western Europe and North America. And remember, in total, the Soviet Union was the second largest economy in the world. This fact alone, combined with the blunt economic juxtaposition between East and West as the Berlin wall came crumbling down, should make anyone think twice about defending socialism of any kind. People just couldn’t see it. At the time, the combination of propaganda, lack of free press, and lack of internet probably contributed most to this stunning misinformation and misunderstanding between “them,” and “us” (such perceptions no doubt shared equally and oppositely from both sides of the iron curtain). And yet today, with all of our leaps and bounds in technology and understanding, this battle of economic ideas rages on. People lose interest in the past. People forget. So I firmly believe we should remember this particular battle in perpetuity, as for 50 years it was truly the largest scale economic clash of planned versus free societies the world had ever seen. One more note, there is no time here to qualify all the (many) things Western nations didn’t do well in the 20th century. Rather, on a higher level, I find it hard to argue for the completely disastrous, authoritarian policies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It’s hard to argue for socialism.
A lesson worth remembering.
A quick recap on how the Baltic States in particular have gotten on since then. My first trip to Latvia was in 1996, and coming from a life in the US, it was by far the least developed country I had stepped foot in. The capital Riga was completely dark (I mean no street lights, seemingly no lights at all) in the evenings, almost scary at times. Rusted pipes and plumbing no matter where you stayed. Every car on the road was hilariously old. The potted roads would seem a luxury once one traveled a few kilometers outside the capital city to the countryside. If and when you finally did arrive at your rural destination, you almost expected dueling banjos to be heard through the trees. But the music? Far better in fact. Disco. That is, if you could find a café with a stereo. Yet that genre was probably fitting, as it wasn’t a stretch to compare the place to 1970s Western economic levels (if that).
I moved to live in Latvia full time 10 years later, in 2006. The Ladas had been swapped for Volkswagens. The city had brightened up in a big way. Booms in construction. The disco remained. Fair enough. But the gap was closing.
10 years later it’s 2016 and I’m still here. The country is still one of the least wealthy in the EU—to be expected when its Western counterparts had such an economic head start—but it is light years ahead of what I witnessed in 1996. Latvia joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year, so it seems we can now call it a developed nation, country #35 to join that club. Though I’m Latvian, I’ve had plenty of travel and work experience in Estonia (also in the OECD) and Lithuania, each beautiful and progressing in their own right. Most importantly, they have their freedom.
But this journey, all these years, for me, was personal. I had some understanding, and knew the backstory. Thinking again about that kid growing up in Midwestern USA, observing the collapse of the USSR back in the 1990s, and since then increasing my own understanding (perhaps more than the average person) of how this was an incredibly meaningful, positive change for society—how could I have more persuasively expressed it all back then to my childhood friends? To my community? More importantly, how can I today still express how crucial these (ongoing) battles for freedom and independence really are?
I’ve had old friends come visit me over the years, make the trip to the Wild Wild East, see that it’s not so wild anymore. Sure, they’d hear some stories of the grind from communist times, the bread lines, the black markets, the survival mentality my family members had to take in certain situations, even tales of Siberian deportations after the Second World War. But today, if you visit, those things seem very far away. Today, things are pretty damn comfortable and pleasant here, so it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come. Remember, 25 years ago you couldn’t even own real assets in Eastern Europe.
So I keep coming back to these same questions. 25 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union—why should anyone care about what happened here? How do you illustrate this amazing fight for freedom against the world’s most authoritarian superpower at the time? How do we keep inspiring others in the same fight? Do people really understand how important the economic, political and individual freedoms being chased today by those in Ukraine, Bahrain, Iran, Myanmar, Cuba and plenty of other places around the world really are?
A few years ago, I came across a film that addressed all of the aforementioned questions, and more.
Something entertaining, something interesting, something thought-provoking.
Something for history buffs; something for people who don’t care much for history at all.
Something for sports fans; something for people who couldn’t care less for sports.
Something for those with national pride; something for those who lack that spark and interest in where they come from. Something inspirational… about liberty.
The film is called The Other Dream Team.
The fight for freedom and independence, inspired. The story is told through the eyes of the 1992 Lithuanian Men’s Basketball team competing at the Barcelona Olympics. The same Olympics where Magic, Michael and Larry stormed Las Ramblas in Barcelona with 8 other Hall of Famers (and Christian Laettner!) known as the Dream Team. A true treat to watch, the first time pros competed for the US at the Olympics, and they were a hurricane. But what many forget from that same Olympics in 1992—a whisker in time after the Soviet Union fell apart—was who took the podium after an extremely intense bronze medal game.
Lithuania. Free Lithuania. It was a game in which a newly independent Lithuania faced their former Soviet teammates from the CIS team, and in a way their former Soviet occupier.
I cannot recommend this film highly enough. I’m not even Lithuanian. But my brothers across the border who have come to be known as the Green Machine in international basketball are truly an inspirational group—both then and now—and this story puts a human touch on their nation’s ultimate fight for freedom during that volatile time. Again, this film is not just about sports, and will match almost anyone’s attention span. It will show you what life was like during Soviet times, and the tremendous obstacles they had to overcome. This is the movie, back in the 1990s, I wish I could have just pressed “play” to, when attempting to explain to my friends and community what the hell was going on in Eastern Europe, and why it was time to give freedom a chance. Watch this film, and you will understand.
Oh yeah, and the Grateful Dead played a role, too.
It probably goes without saying that I think this story is just as important today. I’m not much for politicized debates about a resurgent Russia or a militant US or how China should fit in or the proper balance of global hegemony that some pundit believes is most appropriate. But I am a sucker for inspiration, especially when it’s conveyed effectively and poignantly and unabashedly in favor of freedom and liberty. These are the stories we need to be reminded of. And not only in Eastern Europe. I genuinely hope to see many more tales of hope and freedom from athletes and teams peacefully chasing their goals against the odds under oppressed regimes around the world today. Sometimes we all need a little inspiration. It is an Olympic year, after all.
If you have any other stories to recommend (Olympics-related or not), I for one would be delighted to hear about them.
As I’ve done for many years, I urge everyone to check out this film. I promise you will not be disappointed.
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A small Coda. 24 years after Barcelona, the Olympics in Rio are over. The Lithuanian Men’s Basketball team started strong, going 3-0 in its first three games, but they limped into the quarterfinals after losing the next two in the group, and didn’t make it past Australia in the round of 8. A disappointing outcome for them, but as a country of only 3 million, on the international basketball stage they continue to punch well above their weight.