ABSTRACT
A fair sample of views appears in Anne Applebaum's entertaining and astute travelogue through the Intermarium. They were collected during her peregrinations between 1990 and 1993. They range from hilarious through curious to downright noxious. On the one hand, they reflect the region's false consciousness, Soviet indoctrination, base ignorance, ethnic prejudice, general confusion, gloomy pessimism, and acute insecurity. On the other hand, they also glitter with national pride, cultural accomplishment, deep faith, tenacious custom, and unbridled optimism. The opinions of the newly liberated people also underscore the uneven level of national consciousness, including even its utter lack in some cases. In Vilnius/Wilno, a Lithuanian politician revealed his fears that the local Poles were in cahoots with the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti, while their brethren to the West wanted to seize the capital of Lithuania. A Lithuanian academic was firmly convinced that "there are no true Poles in the Vilnius region.
