January Events

• 1. Introduction

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  The January Events left fourteen civilians dead on the streets of Vilnius over a single night in January 1991. Soviet tanks drove directly through crowds of unarmed Lithuanians gathered around the city's television tower. Loudspeakers mounted on armored vehicles declared that the nationalist government had been overthrown. What the Soviet military did not anticipate was that a small television studio in Kaunas would keep broadcasting through the night, calling on anyone listening to spread the news in as many languages as possible. The questions worth sitting with are these: how did a nation that had only just restored independence find itself defending its parliament with anti-tank barricades? Who were the fourteen people who died? And what became of the soldiers and commanders responsible for ordering them killed?

• 2. A Nation Newly Freed

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  Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union on the 11th of March 1990, ending a forcible annexation that had begun in 1940 and was never recognized by Western governments. The newly restored state immediately faced severe economic pressure. The Soviet Union imposed an economic blockade between April and late June of 1990, cutting off energy and goods. Inflation reached 100% and continued climbing. By January 1991, the Lithuanian government had been forced to raise consumer prices multiple times. Soviet authorities exploited that discontent deliberately. According to Human Rights Watch, the Soviet government mounted a propaganda campaign designed to inflame ethnic tension, using grievances among Russian-speaking factory workers as a pretext for intervention. On the 8th of January, Prime Minister Kazimira Prunskienė resigned after a conflict with Parliament Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis. That same day she met with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who refused to give her any assurance that military force would not be used. Gorbachev's non-answer set the clock running.

• 3. Special Forces Deployed

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  Between the 8th and the 9th of January 1991, several elite Soviet military units were flown into Lithuania under the official justification of restoring constitutional order. Among them was the counter-terrorism Alpha Group and paratroopers from the 76th Guards Air Assault Division based at Pskov. On the 10th of January, Gorbachev publicly demanded that Lithuania revoke what he called anti-constitutional laws and warned that military intervention was possible within days. When Lithuanian officials asked Moscow to guarantee it would not send armed troops, Gorbachev did not reply. On the morning of the 11th, Soviet units moved quickly and with coordination. By noon, they had seized the National Defence Department building in Vilnius and surrounded the Press House, where soldiers fired live ammunition into civilian crowds. Simultaneously, regional defence buildings in Alytus and Šiauliai were taken. At 15:00, a figure named Juozas Jermalavičius announced the creation of a body calling itself the National Salvation Committee of Lithuanian SSR and declared it the only legitimate government in the country. By nightfall, Soviet forces had also seized a television retransmission center and the dispatcher's office of the Vilnius railway station.

• 4. The Night of the 13th

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  At midnight on Sunday the 13th of January, a column of tanks and armored vehicles left a military base and moved toward the Vilnius TV tower. By 01:25, tanks began firing blank rounds. By 01:50 they had encircled the building entirely and soldiers were firing live ammunition overhead and into the crowds. Tanks drove straight through lines of people standing in the cold. Fourteen people died in the attack. Most were shot; two were crushed by tanks. One Soviet Alfa unit member, Viktor Shatskikh, was killed by friendly fire from a fellow soldier. Loudspeakers on the armored vehicles carried the voice of Jermalavičius, declaring in Lithuanian that the separatist government had been overthrown and urging people to go home to their parents and children. By 02:00, the Radio and Television Committee building was surrounded. The live television broadcast, hosted by Eglė Bučelytė, was terminated when the last picture transmitted showed a Soviet soldier running toward the camera and switching it off. Then came an unexpected interruption from Kaunas. A small studio that normally aired a family program once a week had come on air. A lone technician was on air calling for anyone who could help to broadcast the events to the world in every language available. Within an hour, university professors had filled the studio and were speaking in multiple languages. The Soviet army division in Kaunas called twice. The second call ended with a commander stating they would not take the studio as long as no misinformation was given.

• 5. The Barricades Hold

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  After the attacks on the tower and the television committee building, people from across Lithuania converged on the Supreme Council building. During the night, 20,000 people gathered; by morning more than 50,000. They built anti-tank barricades and set up defensive positions in surrounding buildings. Provisional chapels were established inside and outside the parliament. People prayed, sang, and called for independence. Two of those standing at the barricades were basketball players who would later represent the Lithuanian national team: Gintaras Einikis and Alvydas Pazdrazdis. Soviet columns of trucks, armored vehicles, and tanks moved into the area. They did not attack. Strong Western reaction, combined with pressure from Soviet democratic forces, placed Gorbachev and his government in a difficult position. No large open military encounters followed after the 13th. The treaty signed on the 31st of January would reflect that shift in the balance.

• 6. The Fourteen Who Died

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  Thirteen Lithuanians were killed by the Soviet army that night. A fourteenth civilian died of a heart attack at the scene. All victims except the Soviet soldier were awarded the Order of the Cross of Vytis on the 15th of January 1991. The youngest was Darius Gerbutavičius, born in 1973 and attending a vocational school; he was shot five times. The oldest was Apolinaras Juozas Povilaitis, born in 1937 and a metalworker at a Lithuanian Academy of Sciences institute, who died from bullet wounds to the heart, right lung, upper arm, and thigh. Loreta Asanavičiūtė, the only woman among the victims and born in 1967, worked as a seamstress and fell under a tank. She became the most widely remembered of the fourteen. Vytautas Koncevičius, a shopman born in 1941, had been deported to Siberia with his family in 1945; he was shot and died in hospital about a month after the attacks. Algimantas Petras Kavoliukas, born in 1939 and a butcher at a grocery store, had already been wounded by a rubber bullet on the 11th of January while protesting near the Press House; on the 13th, he was struck by a tank and is believed by some witnesses to have been the first victim killed that night. Twelve of the fourteen were buried at the Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius. Streets near the television tower were later renamed after nine of them.

• 7. International Response

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  The Supreme Council immediately issued a letter to the people of the Soviet Union and to governments around the world, calling the attacks an act of aggression against a sovereign nation. Norway's government appealed to the United Nations. Poland expressed solidarity with Lithuania and condemned the Soviet army. The United States response was measured. President George H. W. Bush called the events deeply disturbing and said they threatened to reverse the process of reform in the Soviet Union, but he was careful not to criticize Gorbachev by name. His administration was focused on the imminent onset of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq and wary of provoking the Soviets at that moment. Iceland moved fastest of all. During a visit by an official Icelandic delegation on the 20th of January, Foreign Minister Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson said his government was seriously considering recognizing Lithuania. Iceland kept its word: on the 4th of February 1991, just three weeks after the attacks, it formally recognized the Republic of Lithuania and established diplomatic relations. Back in the Soviet Union and neighboring states, gatherings of support were held in Kyiv, Riga, and Tallinn. The referendum held in Lithuania on the 9th of February 1991 drew 84.73% of registered voters to the polls; 90.47% of them voted in favour of full and total independence.

• 8. Justice Decades Later

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  In 1996, two members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Lithuanian SSR, Mykolas Burokevičius and Juozas Jermalavičius, received prison sentences for their roles in the January Events. In 1999, a Vilnius court sentenced six former Soviet military men who participated. Hearings for a much larger case opened on the 27th of January 2016, with 67 individuals facing charges including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and unlawful military actions against civilians. The case filled 801 volumes of documents, with 16 volumes comprising the indictment alone. On the 27th of March 2019, the Vilnius District Court found all 67 defendants guilty. The majority were sentenced in absentia. Former Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov received 10 years in prison; Mikhail Golovatov received 12 years; Vladimir Uskhopchik received 14 years. On the 31st of March 2021, the Lithuanian Court of Appeal increased the imprisonment terms and awarded non-pecuniary damages of 10.876 million euros to the victims. The presiding judge said that as soldiers drove tanks over the people, they understood perfectly well what they were doing. Russia and Belarus refused extradition throughout and Russia began criminal proceedings against the Lithuanian prosecutors and judges handling the case. The European Parliament condemned that move as unacceptable external influence and politically motivated. Meanwhile, Robertas Povilaitis, a surviving son of one of the victims, asked Lithuanian authorities to investigate Gorbachev's own role. The Vilnius Regional Court summoned Gorbachev to testify as a witness in October 2016. Russia refused to cooperate, and as of 2021, most of the 66 remaining defendants remained out of reach.