It has been a long time coming but today I am writing about something that I care about deeply. This letter is aimed at my peers in England as well as Europe.

My name is Monika Levčenkovaitė and I am a citizen of Lithuania - a country that fought for its independence and finally was able to gain it in 1990 on March 11th. However, that came with its challenges as it was hard for the soviet union to accept that we wanted our culture, our language, and our land to be freed from the poisonous soviet regime. In January of 1991, 140 people were injured and 14 were killed in Vilnius - the capital of my homeland.

On the 11th of January, we were presented with an ultimatum from Gorbachev, demanding that Lithuania comply with their request. They requested that Lithuania must restore the constitution of the USSR and revoke all anti constitutional laws. From the morning soviet military units seized the national defence department and the press house in Vilnius. The same happened with the national defence department in Alytus and Šiauliai. Several people were hospitalised because soviet soldiers used live ammunition against civilians who were protecting their homeland. By the evening, a TV retransmission centre was also seized.

On this day in 1991, January 12th Lithuania tried to contact Gorbachev three times but was unsuccessful. Vladislav Achalov (deputy minister of defence of the soviet union) made his way to Lithuania and took control of all military operations. The units attempted to seize the police academy in Vilnius and soldiers attacked a border post near Varėna (my home region). In Kaunas, a soviet military truck kills a civilian in a vehicle while three others sustained serious injuries and had to be hospitalised. In Vilnius, people are serving piping hot tea to civilians as they start to encircle the main strategic buildings to protect them - the supreme council, the radio and television committee, the Vilnius TV tower and the main telephone exchange. On the evening of the 12th, a column of soviet military units leave a military base and move towards the capital.

On Sunday 13th January 1991, another column of military units leaves a military base and heads towards the TV tower. About an hour later, they fire blank rounds but the Lithuanian people do not move, they do not back down. About half an hour later, they began to fire live ammunition into civilian crowds outside of the TV tower. The tanks drive through our people and fourteen are killed. Most of them were shot and crushed by tanks. At 2:00 AM, tanks and other military units surround the radio and television committee building and the soldiers fire live ammunition at it, which narrowly misses the heads of civilians. A live television broadcast was later terminated and the last pictures transmitted are of a soviet soldier running towards and turning off the camera. Half an hour later, a studio in Kaunas begins to broadcast, calling for ANYONE who could help broadcast to the world in as many different languages as possible about the killing of unarmed civilians by soviet soldiers and their tanks. Two threatening phone calls were made to the studio with the request from a soviet commander, who stated that they “would not try to take over the studio so long as no misinformation is given”.

Large crowds of Lithuanians gathered around the Supreme Council building. People built anti tank barricades and set up internal defences in the building. Our people sang our songs, prayed, and made it clear that we are independent. The military tanks, trucks, and other units that were moving towards the supreme council finally began to retreat. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg - ask me about the 1940s and I will gladly tell you everything I know.

What I find disappointing and infuriating is that none of my peers know a thing about the Baltics or my homeland and no, they don’t seem to know anything about Ukraine or in fact, Eastern Europe either. The only thing they can say with absolute sincerity on their part is that the girls from that corner of the world are very beautiful. The only thing that they can point out to me is not my achievements but the fact that I have ‘Russian’ cheekbones/features. They do not want to hear my stories or about my life, because they interrupt me to ask whether everyone in Lithuania speaks in Russian - but aren’t the two languages the same? Aren’t they very similar? But there’s a lot of Russians, right? They ask me, a woman from the land that was raped and defiled by Russians. What a privilege to be in the company of such educated people in the capital of England - ha!

It pains me to say it but these people hold powerful positions in the circles of photojournalism and documentary photography — these people who confused my country for Russia - are in charge of educational institutions, organisations, and foundations that are willingly and openly letting Russians join them, join us. Not only do these Russians get a warm invitation, but also a platform and protection from the very people who taught me about what photojournalism is and can be.

Forgive me if I say that you disappoint me, anger me, and upset me by these narrow minded and spineless actions and takes of yours. Let me make this very clear - you do not get to decide who the good Russians are. You do not get to tell generations of victims of the ruZZian and soviet regimes that we MUST ACCEPT AND WELCOME ruZZian artists to our spaces. How dare you put more weight on their voices and stories over our experiences? You are demanding that we share our safe spaces with your friend, the coloniser who is committing genocide on our land. How dare you use your own anecdotal stories and your relationships with these people who you labeled as “GOOD RUSSIANS” to turn our opinions and morals into something that resembles your own? How dare you overlook our pain and the genocide we saw on our lands and how dare you put our pain aside as if genocide, rape, and invasion mean nothing?

Last year in September I visited the Lithuanian National Museum which hosted two very important exhibitions about how ruZZia used the arts to ‘blur’ the lines between Lithuanian culture and their own in the means of stamping out ours. Their favourite phrase to label our art was ‘unresolved compositions’ - meaning that the artistic level of the work and interpretation of the work which does not conform with the ‘official’ ideological line must and cannot be shown to the public. These works and genuine expressions of our people were replaced with art that had to align with the soviet system and most importantly, CELEBRATED the soviet state and its leaders. And so ruZZian work was showcased, funded, and pushed into our faces in their attempt to shift the historical narrative and go against our collective memory. The soviet regime poured money into programs that allowed ruZZians to spread their narrative of history, which denied that the people of Lithuania were ever unhappy with the occupation. At the same time, the regime also implemented tactics beyond our capital and big cities and targeted our folk traditions (which were always preserved by rural farm communities), practices, art, and music. They were dangerous as they reinforced our national identity which they were so very scared of (and still are).

So I am sitting here, in shock as I see WORLD PRESS PHOTO announced their ‘Europe’ jury with a RUSSIAN photographer, Mary Gelman! The one who traveled to occupied Crimea (Yalta) whose captions haunt me “A seagull flew by and I fired the camera like a gun” and actions of following a woman who did not want to be photographed inspire the same feeling of discomfort. Let’s not forget her filming of a ruZZian soldier who participated in the genocide of Ukrainians. Let us not forget her participation with VII (a dusty, busted, and problematic network of photographers that actually labeled Gelman to be from THE BALTICS) to raise funds to train Ukrainian journalists. Is this what makes her “one of the good ones”? Should I open my arms and welcome her and others like her because of this? The photograph in question is a scene of a ballet class in ruZZia (yes, you are reading this correctly - a photograph of ruZZian ballerinas in ruZZia was presumably bought by people who want to support Ukraine - make it make sense). Ballet also happens to be another propaganda tool of ruZZia but my dear friends in photojournalism don’t know about that, do they? So they fight with me and tell me that this is not perverse — that this is not offensive and that Mary is “in constant danger in St Petersburg”. What a joke.

So no, I will not accept any of your GOOD RUZZIANS, because I don’t TRUST ANY RUZZIANS. I do not want their culture, their words, their art, or their people. I do not accept any of them. So I must say listen to us, learn our history, and learn that you cannot trust any ruZZian in a time of

G E N O C I D E.

on the subject of ‘‘good russians’’ and world press photo

Math