The problem of bilingualism in Lituania today
During the Sovietic period, the Lithuanian language was replaced by Russian little by little. Russianization was even harder than during the rule of the Russian tsars. One proclaimed a policy of bilingualism which was expressed only by the obligation made to Lithuanians to learn Russian while Russians did not bother to learn Lithuanian. If the written Lithuanian language were more or less protected by writers through newspapers and publishers, the spoken Lithuanian language was degraded. Often, in the institutions, it was only a language of oral communication, the greatest part of technical documentation and correspondence being written in Russian.
School was powerless to opposed the propagation of this false bilingualism. The number of hours devoted to the teaching of the Lithuanian fell, one taught Russian even in kindergartens. The remuneration of Russian teachers for the same number of hours was higher than that of the teachers of Lithuanian. The majority of the textbooks of the other material taught were translated from Russian to a Lithuanian which was not always correct.
The knowledge of Russian had become a social need and, towards the end of 1980, there were already approximately 90% of young Lithuanians from 16 to 25 years old who usually spoke Russian. The Lithuanian people became bilingual while the Russian speakers in Lithuania spoke only Russian. This "bilingualism" degraded phonetics, morphology, the syntax and especially the vocabulary of Lithuanian.