LITHUANIA

The rural dimension is critical: in Lithuanian villages like those in Dzūkija and Aukštaitija, men live in profound isolation — the young have left for Vilnius or London, the infrastructure has crumbled, and the nearest anything is an hour's drive on roads that freeze over for four months a year. These men drink homebrewed spirits, tend small plots, and die at rates that would trigger international intervention if they were happening in a more visible country. The Singing Revolution of 1989 — when Lithuanians sang their way to independence — remains the nation's proudest moment, but the men who linked arms on the Baltic Way have been dying in silence ever since. Lithuania's recent alcohol restrictions have begun to show results, but the underlying masculine crisis — a culture that literally has no words for male vulnerability — remains unchanged.