Lithuania is being shaken by an unprecedented teachers strike, which has now entered its fourth week and is causing severe anxiety, distress and panic among the ruling class and its political representatives. Already, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis has been forced to sack not only the hated Education Minister, Petrauskienė, but also two other Ministers: for Culture, and the Environment.

We are publishing this letter from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, as it gives an interesting insight into how degenerate the bourgeois parties that dominate the political scene there have become, with rabid racist propaganda accepted as a legitimate way of winning votes.

We have receieved this letter from Lithuania from one of our readers. The letter explains the situation in Lithuania, with austerity packages carried out at the expense of the working class and how capitalists have benefited from cheapening labour and attacks on the welfare state.

There is an old Lithuanian saying: “labour embellishes the person”. But the situation in our country calls to mind more to the Latin proverb “labor hominem firmat” (“labour hardens the person”). It certainly hardens the mind of the beer-producing company ‘Svyturys-Utenos Alus’ (part of the ‘Carlsberg Group’), as the workers had a chance to witness for themselves.