Peace Without Poison

The Soviet occupiers are responsible for introducing both overt and covert methods ofdepopulation to Lithuania in 1949. By the time Lithuania gained its independence in 1990, itstotal fertility rate had been depressed from 3 to 2 children per woman. It had reachedreplacement level fertility in 1978 and the population was engineered to hover there withmathematical precision.The blame for covert population control after 1990 shifts from the Soviet to the Lithuanianleaders, who managed to depress fertility to a lowest low of 1.2 children per woman by 2002 andwho have been poisoning their own people with such abandon as to keep the total fertility rateunder 1.5 children per woman until 2011. It is currently at 1.6 children per woman.That Lithuania’s disastrously low total fertility rate has nothing to do with the use ofcontraceptives is amply demonstrated by the country’s contraceptive prevalence rate, which wasnever higher than 46%.466 | P a g e