The Roaring Year

A MercatorNet exclusive: the first head of state of Lithuania after the break-up of the Soviet Union recalls the heady days of 1989.

I was then in the Lithuanian liberation movement, Sajudis, just recently elected to lead its Council. We followed with great concern the events and developments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and the USSR, by no means only waiting to see what would happen. Lithuania was full of initiatives to move forward – toward liberty, "of yours and ours", to change the surrounding world with a specific Lithuanian and Baltic contribution.

Sąjudis already had its own Seimas, elected by the politically active society as an alternative democratic parliament of the Lithuanian people, more representative and legitimate than that appointed by the local Communists with Moscow’s approval. The Sajudis Seimas convened on 15-16 February 1989 in Kaunas and adopted a "Declaration on the liberation of Lithuania from unlawful Soviet captivity", a liberation which had already begun and "would not stop at half-ways".

The Declaration, accompanied by manifestations in Vilnius, was not only a political demonstration but a basic manifesto to direct the next steps and goals of Sajudis. The first real elections in the USSR were approaching, in March. In that election of "people’s deputies" to the Congress in Moscow, Sajudis defeated the local Communist administration in a tremendous victory, taking 36 seats to their 6 after publicly promising citizens it would fight to regain freedom in the very heart of the Soviet empire.

In May we held a joint Assembly of the three Baltic liberation movements in Tallinn, Estonia, elaborating there the principles and goals for the fast approaching common fight in Moscow. As I see it, the importance of the two first Congresses of People’s Deputies in 1989 is now strangely underrated. The tremendous changes in the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Hungary in 1989, not to mention the captive Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, could not have happened without that battle for democracy in Moscow. The Soviet system and leaders were challenged by a fundamental choice: either to make changes that included self-determination for those captives, or to enter a swamp of half-measures and decline. The leadership of the USSR was unprepared to meet such great challenges in a bold and candid way. It continued to rely on force, and the empire crumbled down.

Back at the start of 1989, in January, when Sajudis was still planning its Seimas session with the resolution on breaking for freedom, we sent an invitation to Mr Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s "Solidarity" movement. In response we received a letter of solidarity from the leader of "Solidarity", who also passed on the support of other Polish democratic opposition leaders, namely Jacek Kuron and Janusz Onyszkiewicz. That brought us joy, and encouraged us to believe that a free Lithuania and a free Poland would be able to put former abuses and animosities aside in the name of a common future without Communism.

The victory of "Solidarity" in Poland in June was a good omen for us as we continued working in Moscow in fruitful cooperation with Latvians, Estonians and democrats from Russia. Among the latter, two names are of great historical significance: Andrei Sakharov and Boris Yeltsin. One focus of our work was a parliamentary investigation of the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Tbilisi on 9 April.

Also among the key efforts of the Balts and Russian democrats in the Congress was a special commission on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. I was a member of that commission, whose official title was of course different. It was chaired by Alexander Yakovlev, then still an ally and aide to Mikhail Gorbachev. We wanted to adopt and announce our commission’s conclusions still in the summer, before the 50th anniversary of the pact on 23 August. That historic date was a reminder of the dark Stalin-Hitler conspiracy to begin World War II, one which included a sentence of condemnation for the nations inbetween the USSR and Germany. The day had been used for remarkable political rallies in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius already from 1987, just two months after US President Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, called for an end to the Berlin Wall.

In 1989 we were planning, together with the Latvians and Estonians, the greatest and most impressive manifestation yet for the 50th anniversary. We also sought an official Soviet condemnation of the full Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, including its secret protocols whose existence Mr. Gorbachev had consistently denied. On 23 August 1989, the three Baltic liberation movements organized a magnificent manifestation in the form of a live chain of some two million people joining their hands over the 600 kilometers from Vilnius to Tallinn. Known as "The Baltic Way", it was and remains the world’s greatest ever political demonstration. Cautious and indifferent Europe could no longer pretend not to notice the will and the actions of the Baltic nations. The manifestation was clearly noticed not only in the West, but also in the Kremlin, which exploded in a dreadful statement of anger. No armed response followed (until January, 1991), only a "dialogue" that involved a stream of intimidations coming from Kremlin.

Meanwhile the entire system of closed societies and captive nations under totalitarian Communist regimes that had been imposed in Central-Eastern Europe and maintained by the imperial USSR was challenged at the Berlin Wall. People wishing to reach liberty by escaping from the GDR were still shot dead as late as early 1989, and no Sajudis-type dualism of governance in self-transformation as in Lithuania, no "Solidarity", no round table-type of common effort for democratic changes as in Poland, could be applied in that artificially created, stagnating, Soviet-obedient part of Germany under the Orwellian name of the German Democratic Republic.

To open the gate, to "tear down this wall" – as Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Gorbachev to do already in 1987, would mean openness to liberty not only for the Germans. The opening came, at first with measures taken by the still Communist regimes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. On 23 August 1989, the same day the Baltic nations joined hands in The Baltic Way, Hungary opened its border with Austria, a border ripe with significance for both the nations, which before the Communist era were never divided. This breach of the Iron Curtain gave a long-awaited chance to thousands and thousands in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, who "voted with their legs". The puppet leader of the GDR, Erich Honecker, resigned in October. From 9 November, when "the Gate" opened, until 22 December, when the Wall finally crumbled, several million people demonstrated for the freedom they desired at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin and in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate. Only a year later, precisely on 22 December 1990, Lech Walesa was democratically elected President of Poland.

In November-December 1989, the Velvet Revolution took place in Czechoslovakia; Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted and executed, and the whole system of occupied and subjugated Central-Eastern European nations, the great bloody creation of Joseph Stalin, came crumbling down.

And again, in the chain of coinciding events, developments in Moscow were of extreme importance. On 24 December 1989, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR voted to adopt the "Resolution on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact". The pact, with its protocols, was denounced as an unlawful breach of the international obligations of the then USSR and was declared null and void from the moment the signatures of Viacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop were put down. From the unlawful pact followed unlawful actions – the war against neighbors located between the USSR and Germany, and the occupation and incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR. Absolutely evident, the resolution was additional legal basis for us to be independent again.

The evil empire had stepped into a period of essential transformation toward democracy and freedom of choice for entire nations. It was something that we, the undying idealists of the Lithuanian Sajudis, used to call "perestroika to the end".

The events of 1990, including democratic elections to the Lithuanian Parliament and the proclamation of the re-established independent Lithuania on 11 March 1990, came already outside the chronological framework of the roaring 1989, but as a strong consequence of it.

Vytautas Landsbergis was the first head of state of Lithuania after its independence declaration from the Soviet Union. He is currently a member of the European Parliament.

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