At the beginning of the 1980s, the Cold War between the capitalist West and the Communist East seemed unlikely to end. Many events in the decade that followed, in fact, accelerated the end of the Cold War in favor of the West, from the belligerent foreign policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to the non-violent resistance of two great Polish leaders, Pope John Paul II and Lech Wałęsa. In the Soviet Union, the country’s failing economic system and the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan caused Mikhail Gorbachev to give up Soviet domination of the satellite nations of Eastern Europe. In short order, Communism was abandoned in those countries and the Berlin Wall fell, paving the way for German reunification. While all this brought an end to the Soviet empire, none of this directly caused the end of the Soviet Union itself. That would be instigated by a nation of four million people with one bold act of defiance to Moscow, struck twenty years ago today.
Lithuania is a small lowland country of forests and fertile meadows on the Baltic Sea, with a heritage and a history that go back a thousand years. A stormy history of wars and unsuccessful alliances led Lithuania to be annexed by the Russians and oppressed by the Romanov dynasty. The modern Lithuanian state came into being in 1918 after the end of World War I, along with the other newly independent Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia. Lithuania struggled with political instability and border disputes with Germany and Poland, but it held on to its independence. Then in 1940, in accordance with the pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to divide Eastern Europe between them, the U.S.S.R. invaded and occupied all three Baltic States.
The Soviets set up sham elections that produced Communist governments in all three Baltic States to ensure that they all would join the Soviet Union. The subsequent German invasion in 1941 led many Lithuanians to see the Nazis as liberators for expelling the Soviets. The Germans in fact viewed the Lithuanians as inferiors and planned to deport or kill as many Lithuanians as possible and settle Germans in their place in the quest for a greater Reich. But, as I will point out later, Lithuanian gratitude toward the Germans resulted in a dark and shameful period in the country’s history.
The Soviets regained control of all three Baltic States at the end of World War II, despite the refusal of the Western powers to recognize their incorporation into the Soviet Union. In Lithuania, a guerrilla movement of patriots fought between 1945 and 1952 to expel the Red Army, and Joseph Stalin responded by cracking down on the revolt. More than 30,000 Lithuanians died fighting for their country’s freedom, and many more were sent to Siberia. Through the Cold War decades, though, Lithuanians maintained their ethnic heritage and integrity far better then their Baltic counterparts. Soviet settlement of ethnic Russians – "Russification" - reduced the native population of Estonia to 61 percent of that republic. In Latvia, Russification almost rendered Latvians a minority in their own country.
When Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform and open the Soviet system, he hoped in part to promote more harmony in the country by granting the its fifteen republics greater autonomy. Ironically, his policies allowed the brave people of Lithuania to pull the thread that unraveled the union. Gorbachev’s attempts at openness (glasnost) and restructuring (perestroika) led to political movements outside the Communist party, and in Lithuania, the nationalist Sąjūdis movement began in June 1988 as a result. Led by music professor Vytautas Landsbergis, the Sąjūdis was an anti-Communist group that supported Gorbachev’s reforms but sought a greater expression of Lithuanian culture by restoring the Lithuanian language as the country’s official tongue. They demanded greater protection of the environment, declassification of documents of the oppression of Lithuanians under Stalin, and more truth about the Molotov-Ribbentrop "non-aggression" pact between Germany and the U.S.S.R. that put the Baltic States at the mercy of the Kremlin. Sąjūdis activities and demonstrations were largely peaceful but passionate. The most stunning example of this was the "Singing Revolution." Throughout 1988, Lithuanian patriots, following the example of the Estonians, gathered in public spaces in cities such as Vilnius, the capital, and Kaunas and sang national and religious songs as a form of protest. Lithuanian Communist leaders balked at the Sąjūdis’s activities and Gorbachev’s reforms, but the party eventually had to acknowledge both.
The Sąjūdis won a huge majority in the 1990 Lithuanian legislative elections, and led by Landsbergis, they voted to secede from the U.S.S.R. on March 11, 1990, the first Soviet republic to do so. Estonia and Latvia soon followed suit, and secessionist movements accelerated in other Soviet republics, where free speech reforms fueled nationalist movements among the country’s many ethnic groups. Gorbachev, unable to accept outright secession by any Soviet republic, attempted an economic blockade of Lithuania that caused rampant inflation. The Red Army was then sent into Vilnius in January 1991 to crush the rebellion against Moscow’s authority by taking the Supreme Council building and the broadcasting and telecommunications centers. Thirteen people were killed, and six hundred were injured. Only the intrepid non-violent opposition from the people of Vilnius, who encircled the buildings and set up anti-tank barricades, forced the Red Army to back down. Kremlin hard-liners, in a desperate attempt to keep the Soviet Union together, tried to oust Gorbachev and re-assert the authority of the Communist Party Central Committee in August 1991 and were met with a populist uprising in Moscow. The coup failed, and one Soviet republic after another began to peel away. On September 6, 1991, the Baltic States were free and independent nations once again; more than three months later, the Soviet Union was no more.
As Lithuania (now a member of NATO and the European Union) progresses into the twenty-first century as a free nation with democratic practices and free-market policies, it must deal with the responsibilities of independence. Long prosperous, its economy has recently suffered as a result of the global recession, and Lithuanians must respond to new challenges with the same fortitude they showed in winning their freedom. The biggest responsibility Lithuanians face, however, regards making amends with a shameful and horrible episode they contributed to during the Second World War. Many Lithuanians actively collaborated with their Nazi occupiers and participated in large numbers in exterminating most of Lithuania’s Jewish population, which led to the deaths of 190,000 Jews during the war.
The past twenty years have seen a steady but painful process for Lithuanians in dealing with the legacy of the atrocity. The government has committed itself to commemorating the Holocaust, combating anti-Semitism, and bringing Nazi-era war criminals to justice. While the National Conference on Soviet Jewry has found Lithuania to have "made slow but significant progress in the prosecution of suspected Lithuanian collaborators in the Nazi genocide," many Lithuanians have denied or evaded the issue of Nazi collaboration, despite historical evidence of such collaboration being widespread and voluntary. Also, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has criticized the Lithuanian government for inexcusably moving too slowly to prosecute Lithuanian war criminals. However, Lithuania has officially acknowledged the role many of its people had played in the Holocaust. In 1995, President Algirdas Brazuskas apologized to the Israeli Knesset for his country’s role in the Holocaust; six years later, the issue was addressed head-on in a speech given to the Lithuanian parliament by Alfonsas Eidintas, the historian then nominated to be the next Lithuanian ambassador to Israel. The healing process continues to this day.
The miracle of Lithuania today is how, after so much horror committed against and by its people, the country has been able to acknowledge its unfortunate past even as it strives for a happier future. Years of foreign oppression and anti-Semitic genocide could have easily sentenced such a small country to darkness and despair. But twenty years later, as it deals with its unfortunate history and aims toward a rebirth of freedom, Lithuania has emerged as a proud nation that seeks to chart its own destiny and atone for its own sins with the same will it demonstrated in bringing down a tyrannical empire.
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