Sąjūdis
Sąjūdis began not as a revolution but as a meeting. On the 3rd of June 1988, at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius, a group of 35 people gathered, most of them artists and intellectuals, roughly half of them members of the very Communist Party they were about to challenge. They called themselves the Sąjūdis Initiative Group, and their stated purpose was cautious enough to seem almost harmless: to support Mikhail Gorbachev's program of glasnost and democratisation from within. What happened next was anything but cautious. Within two years, this group had guided a nation of three million people to declare independence from one of the most powerful states in modern history. How did a room of artists and academics pull off one of the late twentieth century's most consequential political feats? And what happened to Sąjūdis after it achieved the impossible?
Lithuania's Communist Party leadership in the mid-1980s was among the Soviet bloc's most resistant to change. When Petras Griškevičius, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania, died in 1987, Moscow's replacement was Ringaudas Songaila, a man described by observers as another rigid communist. Reform was not on the table. Yet the atmosphere was shifting. Gorbachev's rhetoric of glasnost was filtering through, the Solidarity movement in Poland was gaining strength, and Baltic independence activists found encouragement in signals from both the Pope and the United States government. Public demonstrations began appearing in Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius, cities that shared a history of forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union nearly five decades earlier. That shared history would soon become the organising principle for the largest human demonstration the Baltic states had ever seen.
On the 21st of June 1988, less than three weeks after its founding meeting, Sąjūdis drew a massive crowd to Soviet Square near the Soviet Palace in Vilnius. Three days later, a gathering at Gediminas' Square served a pointed political purpose: delegates about to travel to the 19th All-Union Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were briefed on what Sąjūdis stood for, a calculated effort to carry Lithuanian concerns into the heart of Soviet power. When those delegates returned in July, roughly 100,000 people greeted them in Vingis Park. Then, on the 23rd of August 1988, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, about 250,000 people gathered in a single protest directed at that pact and its secret protocol. The secret protocols had divided Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and Lithuania's absorption into the USSR traced directly to that agreement. Alongside these mass gatherings, Sąjūdis ran a media operation. Its samizdat newspaper, "Sąjūdis News," first appeared on the 19th of June 1988. A legal newspaper, "Atgimimas" (meaning rebirth), followed in September. By the time the movement had consolidated, about 150 different newspapers had been printed in support of its cause.
Sąjūdis pressed a cluster of demands that mixed the cultural with the political. Restoration of Lithuanian as the official language sat alongside calls for environmental protection, a halt on construction of a third nuclear reactor at the Ignalina nuclear power plant, and full disclosure of the secret protocols of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The movement also demanded honest accounting of the Stalinist years. Communist Party leaders initially avoided Sąjūdis rallies, but by mid-1988 attendance had become, in the words of observers, a political necessity. Algirdas Brazauskas, then the party secretary for industrial affairs, attended a Sąjūdis rally on the 24th of June 1988. By October of that year, Brazauskas had been appointed first secretary of the Communist Party to replace Songaila, signalling a shift in how Moscow and the Lithuanian party leadership chose to deal with the movement. Threats of a crackdown came and went; mass protests held them back. In the elections to the newly created Congress of People's Deputies, Sąjūdis candidates won in 36 of the 40 districts where they ran, a result that demonstrated the movement's reach far beyond intellectual circles.
Vytautas Landsbergis was not a politician by training. A professor of musicology, and notably not a member of the Communist Party, he became chairman of the 35-member council elected at Sąjūdis's founding conference in Vilnius in October 1988. His background set him apart from the apparatus figures the Soviet system had produced. The movement's first issue of "Atgimimas" described Sąjūdis as a reformist initiative led by intellectual authorities with a goal of sparking national awakening. In February 1989, Sąjūdis formally declared that Lithuania had been forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union and named the restoration of independence as its ultimate objective. Lithuanian sovereignty was proclaimed in May 1989, and the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union was declared illegal. Then came February 1990. Sąjūdis representatives and candidates backed by the movement won 101 of 141 seats in the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR. Landsbergis was elected chairman of that body, and on the 11th of March 1990, the Supreme Council declared the restoration of Lithuanian independence, with Landsbergis becoming the first leader of restored Lithuania.
On the 23rd of August 1989, the exact 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's signing, two million people formed a human chain stretching 600 kilometres from Tallinn in Estonia through Riga in Latvia to Vilnius in Lithuania. Known as the Baltic Way, the demonstration was a coordinated effort across all three Baltic nations. It drew international attention to the independence aspirations of peoples who had lived under Soviet rule since the early 1940s. The federal Supreme Soviet, days after the rally, publicly acknowledged what Baltic activists had long insisted: that the Baltic republics had been forcibly absorbed. That acknowledgment, extracted by the sheer scale of peaceful public action, carried weight that political arguments alone had not. By December 1989, the Communist Party of Lithuania had seceded from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and agreed to give up its monopoly on power, a step that cleared the path for the elections of February 1990.
About a month after independence was declared, Sąjūdis began to fracture. Reform communists and Vilnius liberal intellectuals left the movement, partly because of what they described as a growing nationalist rhetoric. Some of those who departed formed a new Independence Party. Liberal-leaning members helped found the Liberal Union of Lithuania. The movement that remained was increasingly associated with the Kaunas faction, a wing described as inclined to divide the population into "patriots" and "communists." Sąjūdis also alienated rural Lithuania by pushing agricultural and land reforms that cut against the interests of most collective farm workers and employees. Support held in Kaunas and Panevėžys but shrank elsewhere. In the late summer of 1992, Sąjūdis and several smaller parties formed an electoral coalition called "For Democratic Lithuania." The coalition finished second in the Seimas elections of that year, winning 61 seats and 21.17 percent of the vote under Landsbergis's leadership, while the Democratic Labour Party, formerly the Communist Party of Lithuania, took the victory. Landsbergis and many of the movement's core members later formed the Homeland Union, which became the largest centre-right party in Lithuania. Sąjūdis itself endures as an organisation, though with little of the influence it once commanded.
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Common questions
What was Sąjūdis and what was its main goal?
Sąjūdis was a Lithuanian political movement, initially called the Reform Movement of Lithuania, established on the 3rd of June 1988. Its primary goal was to restore Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union, a goal it achieved when the Supreme Council declared independence on the 11th of March 1990.
Who led Sąjūdis and what was his background?
Vytautas Landsbergis, a professor of musicology and non-communist, led Sąjūdis as chairman of its 35-member council from its founding conference in October 1988. He later became the first leader of restored Lithuania after the independence declaration of the 11th of March 1990.
When was Sąjūdis founded and who formed it?
Sąjūdis was founded on the 3rd of June 1988 at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius. The initiative group comprised 35 members, mostly artists and intellectuals, of whom 17 were also members of the Communist Party.
What was the Baltic Way and how did Sąjūdis contribute to it?
The Baltic Way was a 600-kilometre human chain formed on the 23rd of August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, involving approximately two million people stretching from Tallinn to Vilnius. Sąjūdis was a key organising force on the Lithuanian end of this coordinated demonstration across all three Baltic nations.
How did Sąjūdis perform in the 1990 Supreme Council elections?
Sąjūdis representatives and movement-backed candidates won 101 of 141 seats in the February 1990 elections to the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR, an absolute majority. This result led directly to the declaration of the restoration of Lithuanian independence on the 11th of March 1990.
What happened to Sąjūdis after Lithuanian independence was declared?
Sąjūdis lost much of its coalition within a month of independence. Reform communists and liberal intellectuals departed, with some founding the Independence Party and others helping establish the Liberal Union of Lithuania. The movement's popularity declined further after it alienated rural voters with agricultural reforms. In the 1992 Seimas elections, Sąjūdis finished second with 21.17 percent of the vote and 61 seats, losing to the Democratic Labour Party.
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2 references cited across the entry
- 1The Move Toward Independence, 1987-911988-06-03