Dateline: VILNIUS, March 10 (Reuters)
Lithuania on Saturday celebrates 10
years since it declared independence from Moscow, a move that shocked
Kremlin leaders and heralded the beginning of the end of the Soviet
empire.
On March 11, 1990, Lithuania's Supreme Council voted to restore the
independence the Baltic state lost in 1940 under a secret Nazi-Soviet
pact to carve up Eastern Europe.
Annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, Lithuania spent 50 years under
communist rule and saw thousands deported to harsh Siberian labor camps
or killed in Moscow-backed repressions.
Nazi Germany also occupied the country for a time during World War
Two until the return of the Soviets, who rarely relaxed their grip until
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985.
"We proposed to Mr. Gorbachev to immediately normalize relations
between our states and to cleanse himself and his country of the crimes
of Stalin and Hitler," independence hero and current Parliament head
Vytautas Landsbergis told Reuters.
Gorbachev hoped to harness the enthusiasm of citizens under his
Glasnost reforms to support his restructuring of the crumbling Soviet
economy.
BALTS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GORBACHEV OPENING
The plan backfired as independence movements in the Soviet
republics began to test the limits of the new freedoms.
The Baltics led the way, with cautious first steps but then bravely
passing declarations of sovereignty in 1988 and 1989.
Then Lithuania's pro-independence deputies, elected in
unprecedented free elections, took the unthinkable step.
Eager to make good on election promises to restore statehood, and
fearing they might lose momentum and squander their only chance if
Gorbachev or hardline Soviet forces attempted a crackdown, they declared
full independence.
"Speaking honestly, it was the first opportunity and we used it,"
said Algimantas Cekuolis, a founding member of the Sajudis independence
movement that Landsbergis led, and now a columnist and TV journalist.
"The Communist Party of Lithuania had recently separated from the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and got away with it...so that
encouraged us to do the same," Cekuolis said.
There were also worries that Moscow was preparing to pre-empt
independence initiatives with new curbs on secession.
"We were trying to run very fast because of news about what could
happen in Moscow, where it was clear they would try to make a special
decision in the Supreme Soviet to create some new obstacles," said
Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who in 1990 was Sajudis's
general secretary.
The declaration set in motion a chain of events that brought about
the end of Soviet rule, and was met with celebrations by the Lithuanian
community around the world.
"That evening we had a concert scheduled with the
(American) Lithuanian community," said Lithuanian President
Valdas Adamkus, a former U.S. citizen who was then in Chicago.
"Finally we got the text and I went before the crowd of 800
jubilant, screaming, crying people who were singing the national
anthem," he said.
Moscow responded with an oil embargo the following month.
Tears of jubilation then turned to tears of mourning when a bloody
crackdown against Lithuania and the Baltics by Soviet troops in January
1991 killed 14 people in Vilnius.
But the Balts held their ground, peacefully defying Red army tanks.
Finally hardliners, fed up with Gorbachev's inability to control
the revolution he helped start, launched the August 1991 coup that ended
in Soviet recognition of independence for the Baltics, setting them on
the path toward rejoining western Europe and marking the beginning of
the end of the Soviet Union.
Copyright, 2000 Reuters Ltd.
All rights reserved. The following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part,
without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd.
By Burton Frierson
With additional reporting by Jonathan Leff in Vilnius
