Lietuvos konservatorių idėjinės savivokos problema
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Politika; Politinė filosofija; Konservatizmas; Konservatoriai; Politinės partijos; Istorija; Ideologija; Patriotizmas; Tėvynės sąjunga (Lietuvos konservatoriai); NATO; Politics; Political philosophy; Conservatism; Conservatives; Political parties; History; Ideology; Patriotism; Lithuanian Conservatives; Lithuania; Europe; NATO; Europos Sąjunga (European Union).
ENThere is no conservative tradition in Lithuanian politics. Lithuanian Conservative party under the name of Homeland Union - Lithuanian Conservatives was established only in 1993, though Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, nowadays acting political parties, had existed even before independent Republic of Lithuania was declared in 1918. Besides, in the realm of the history of ideas one would hardly trace what might be called "conservative tradition of thought" to which Lithuanian thinkers and literati of the last two centuries could have contributed. Hence it is sometimes stated that "Lithuanian conservatism" is nothing more than an invention of politicians. There is also trend to think that even as such it cannot be called "conservatism" in a sense attributed to this word in the political tradition of the West. In this article the statement mentioned above is discussed together with the counter-statement by which a particularistic claim to find "national roots" of Lithuanian conservatism is put forward. Particularists argue that there is no such thing as conservative ideology. They are apt to stress cultural and historical differences ignoring common principles and ideas, which make conservatism as such politically definable. According to them, in Lithuania conservative stance is expressed through voters' eagerness to declare for European Union and NATO and, in general, through so-called "common sense". In this view, each country may have got its own unique conservatism. Moreover, each Conservative Party's leadership may decide what "common sense", which is considered the core of conservative stance, should mean. The problem is that all parliamentary parties in Lithuania declare for EU and NATO, and there are not any parties at all that would declare against the common sense.So what is in question is Lithuanian Conservatives' political identity in a deeper sense of the word "political". Economically minded pragmatists in the party as well as their postmodernist counterparts in the academy speak about "the end of ideology", assuring that politics is going to transfigure into ideologically neutral practice. However, pragmatists' assurance that conservatism as the tradition of ideas should be a matter of political theory rather than political practice was itself refuted on practical grounds. After the British Conservative defeat in the elections of 1997 Mr. David Willetts wrote in the Political Quarterly (Vol. 69, No. 2, 1998): "...One of the reasons why we lost is that we allowed Conservatism to atrophy. Conservatives only seemed comfortable talking about economics. We became the economics party". Now that Lithuanian Conservatives seem unlikely to do well in the ongoing elections to the parliament, reasons for their political decline could be found, more or less, in what Mr. Willetts points out. Disregard to the conservative tradition of ideas and political principles essential to it, as well as feeling comfortable only talking about economics, are striking features of Lithuanian Conservatives' style of ruling in the period of their being in power. Up till now political conservatism in Lithuania has been tightly connected with anti-communism. Lithuanian Conservatives have their roots in Sajudis - rightwing popular movement that was in opposition to the Communist Party in late 80s and early 90s. That is why many of them still give much support to ideas that are more conceivable as slogans of a movement for independence or national revival than basic principles and political goals of a party named "Conservative".There is much zeal for "recasting national values" in the conservative circles of Lithuania, but hardly even those who stand politically for such an ideal know what they have in mind so as to make it clear to an undecided voter. Part of the Conservative electorate and some party activists tend to see nowadays politics as a prolongation of resistance of the patriotic "right" to the communist "left". What they ignore is liberalism that spreads under various guises through Lithuanian politics so as to sweep away or ideologically absorb conservatives and former communists as well. As Alasdair Maclntyre puts it, "so-called conservatism and so-called radicalism in these contemporary guises are in general mere stalking-horses for liberalism: the contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals." This is what our post-soviet and pre-liberal conservatives are going to face in Lithuania soon if the country stays on its course - and it certainly will - for political modernisation and westernisation. How Lithuanian Conservatives will cope with this ideological predicament depends on their ability to stick to the political, cultural, moral and economical principles rooted in the conservative tradition of thought. [From the publication]
