Politics, by generally accepted standards, is an unclean, arduous, and often dangerous business. Therefore, when women are engaged in it, it becomes clear to what extent extraordinary personalities they are.
Today’s President of Lithuania has been leading his country for the second time, and the fact that she has not only purely female virtues is forced to admit her most irreconcilable political opponents.
Partisan daughter
In countries that gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet colossus, especially in the Baltic countries, even a distant connection with the power structures of the communist regime is especially disastrous for the career of any politician. In order to eliminate the opponent in the struggle for power, it is enough to dig out in the biography - his or his relatives - even a slight hint of cooperation with the authorities. Moreover, for a long time of the "Soviet occupation" units managed to completely avoid interacting with similar structures to build a career of any scale.
The stability that today's President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite has is also surprising from this point of view, because she was born in the family of a participant in the Great Patriotic War, who fought in the Soviet partisan detachment, and after serving in one of the district departments of the NKVD. Polykarpas Vladovich Gribauskas, born in 1928, like many veterans throughout the Union, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War II degree on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Victory.
A senior daughter delicately claims that her father was just a driver in a fire department and did not take an active part in hostilities or in repressions against opponents of the communist system. The positive point in this position is obvious: the current president of Lithuania has never announced a public renunciation of the parent.
An example of a successful career since the USSR
Her mother - Vitaly Petrovna Gribauskene - was a salesman by profession and gave birth to a daughter in the spring of 1956. Dalia graduated from high school in Vilnius without any particular brilliance, was fond of basketball, which is considered almost a national sport in Lithuania. After school, she worked for some time as an inspector in the personnel department of the National Philharmonic and moved to Leningrad, where she managed to enter the Zhdanov State University.
She studied at the evening department of the faculty of political economy, and in the afternoon worked as a laboratory assistant at a fur factory. The position of laboratory assistant was considered a working profession, it was not subject to restrictions on admission to the party, as is the case with the intellectual stratum in Soviet society, so in 1983, in the year of graduation, the future president of Lithuania became a member of the CPSU. This was a significant factor in accelerating a career in any field.
PhD in Political Economy
Since 1983, for seven years, Gribauskaite taught political economics at the Higher Party School in Vilnius, defending her PhD thesis in 1988 at the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow. It was impossible to achieve such successes without perseverance, willpower, and determination, even in times of moldy stagnation. It is no coincidence that Dali’s other sporting interest, karate, is a source of courage, self-confidence and quick reaction.
There is no doubt that if the CPSU had so far remained the only and ruling party in a vast country, the current president of Lithuania would have reached the highest levels of party nomenclature at the republican or even all-Union level - this was her brilliant political career under the "occupation regime". But the Union broke up, the Communist Party of Lithuania split, and the teacher of the Vilnius Higher School of Economics Dalia Grybauskaite was left without work in 1990.
Into a new orbit
It was impossible to return the ballistic missile that had already gained speed to the launch mine - it was also difficult to stop the career of the future leader of Lithuania. The driving force for her was, in addition to outstanding personal qualities, impressive knowledge in the field of economics and knowledge of foreign languages.
Gribauskaite’s confident English was appreciated by Algirdas Brazauskas - today is the former president of Lithuania, and then a politician who was just starting to form the cadre elite for a reviving country. In 1991, Grybauskaite was studying at Georgetown University in the USA at the Institute of International Economic Relations.
Diplomat, Minister, European Commissioner
Soon Grybauskaite, a professional in socialist political economy, became an expert in the processes taking place in capitalist economies, especially in the field of interactions between different countries. From 1991 to 2004 she held high posts in European structures and in the Lithuanian government:
- Director of the European Department of the Ministry of International Economic Relations;
- Plenipotentiary Minister of the Lithuanian Embassy in the USA;
- vice minister of finance;
- Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Minister of Finance of Lithuania;
- Commissioner of the European Commission for Budget and Financial Planning.
Lady president
For such a politician, the highest post of executive power in the country, the President of Lithuania, became quite attainable. The biography of the presidential candidate in the 2009 election Gribauskaite was almost flawless, and the fact that she was a graceful blonde may have become an additional factor in her victory, although among the 7 candidates, besides Dali, there were two more women - thus, she won in a beauty contest.
Just over half of the voters took part in the elections, but the result of Grybauskaite - victory in the first round with an indicator of 68.2% - is the best for Lithuania in all the post-Soviet time.
Winning the election four years later was more difficult. In the first round, she was not able to get more than half the votes, and in the second round she beat the social democrat Balchitis by 17%. And yet, from July 12, 2014 she again took up her high post. What is its success based on?
"Steel Magnolia"
She calls her "iron lady" her ideal in politics - Margaret Thatcher. And although the scale of their achievements is still difficult to compare, Dalia Grybauskaite firmly follows the principles of the most famous woman politician. The protests of her opponents in Lithuania look like “talk in favor of the poor”, although they serve as an excellent illustration of her methods.
It is alleged that the victory in the 2014 elections was made possible due to an agreement with the leaders of the Lithuanian opposition on the provision of solid posts in the government and in European structures, which they never expected. An attempt to inflate the scandal due to the inaudibility of some facts of Gribauskaite’s biography (it was said about her training at closed institutions of the KGB, about patronage from the security forces at all stages of her career) failed due to strict censorship from the presidential structures of Lithuania.
The fact that she has been the president of Lithuania for many years (of which there are now 8) is “guilty” of her skill in owning the main tools of politicians in the post-Soviet space. The main ones are calls for overcoming the difficult communist legacy in economics and politics, for growing into a united Europe, for maintaining national identity.
The fighter against the "Russian expansion"
Of the updated slogans, the “Russian threat” is successful: the President of Lithuania is now at the forefront of the fight against the “imperial aggression” of Russia. Grybauskaite’s claims of a neighboring state as “terrorist,” declaring an open war on the free world, Putin’s declaration of loyalty to Stalin’s disciple and the follower of the Stalin’s case seem extreme even to the staunch opponents of Russia's growing role in Europe and the world.
It is difficult to say what is more in these speeches - personal beliefs or pure politics, and what is their goal, but one of the results has been achieved - the Lithuanian president with a well-groomed appearance of a woman who successfully confronts the time, has the authority of granite rock among the soft hillocks of European politics.
In the world, as usual, there is no harmony ...
“She is married to Lithuania” - a clumsy, from the point of view of the Russian language, expression was put into circulation by one of the advisers to the father of the new Lithuanian democracy Vytautas Landsbergis - Ramunas Bogdanas. “Work, work, and again work,” he loves to answer questions about Hobbies Dalia Grybauskaite. The personal life of the president under reliable protection from print and electronic media of varying degrees of yellowness. They are trying to develop the theme of her non-traditional sexual orientation (which Grybauskaite denies), but for a tolerant Europe this is not a “bomb” for a long time.
The attitude to the personality of this politician in different circles is explainable subjectively, and the question of the absence of a family and children as a necessary victim for achieving success in a woman’s career is intertwined with more philosophical discussions about happiness in life, and also often does not have a clear decision. An indisputable fact is the existence of such a unique figure in many senses as the President of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, who has not yet said the last word.