The Lithuanian road from Vilnius to Ignalina passes through remote farm country that appears much as it did before Soviet occupation. Horse-drawn sleighs loaded with hay slide along roadsides. Farm houses stand in the center of large plots of cleared land. Many of the people here speak no Russian, only a dialect of Lithuanian called Aukstaitiya.


But this Lithuanian timelessness ends abruptly as the road comes to Snieckus. Here, in the lake-dotted Central Plain of Lithuania 25 kilometers from the Latvian border, is a veritable Russian outpost vested with the duty of running the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant.


In one of those flukes of independence, Lithuania inherited a Chernobyl-type nuclear power plant that they desperately need but cannot properly run without imported Russian labor.


Ninety-six percent of the approximately 5, 000 workers at the station are Russian -- compared to a Russian population of just 9 percent in all of Lithuania.


In January, when oil from Russia was stop flowing through the Mazeikiai pipeline, Ignalina provided 77 percent of the nation's electricity. Today, it provides 90 percent.


The prospect of a nuclear power plant run by Russian labor, which has a precarious relationship with the locals has proved a chilling prospect for many neighboring Scandinavian countries.


As a result, the three-hour drive from Vilnius to Ignalina has become a modern-day pilgrimage for nuclear experts. A delegation per day shows up at the power plant's front steps, according to Deputy Manager of Security, Justinas Noreika.


"I am really fed up with all these foreign delegations", complained Sergey Rusakov, head of the personnel department for the station. "We spend too much time advising them on how to advise us. It is an insult to the Russian people".


But the station's biggest problem is the exodus of its Russian workers. A typical worker earns 20, 000 rubles per month, compared with 30, 000 rubles per month at the plant located outside St. Petersburg, according to Rusakov.


"It's a chance to earn one and a half time more money, be among their own people and speak their native tongue", said Rusakov. "It's like some kind of strong magnet pulling on our personnel".


"The really serious problem is that there are no other specialists to fill the vacancies", he added. "All the competent specialists are already here".


Until Lithuania can train its own specialists, Ignalina will stand on the nation's countryside as an icon to the hard-to-break ties with the former Soviet empire. Unlike political independence, some ties are better severed gradually.