Vilnius and the “Singing Revolution”

After the Second World War, Lithuania found itself in the occupation zone of the red totalitarian regime (1). The Soviet empire seemed to be an invincible superpower to several generations of people (2). However, a systematic crisis developed in the Soviet Union in the 1980s (3). National liberation movements came as a surprise not only to the researchers of the West but also to the national liberation movements themselves (4). In this process Vilnius deserved the title of a symbol of the epoch marking not only a change in the political system but also that in the global historical order.(5). Mass meetings, patriotic songs and quiet respect for the opponents in Lithuania became the essential feature of a peaceful revolution (6). Though the “perestroika” programme started as early as 1985, Lithuania had to wait for the beginning of changes for quite a long time. The organisers of the protest staged in Vilnius in August 1987 against the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the participants in it were persecuted (7). The meeting held in Vilnius Cathedral Square on 22 May 1988 was brutally dispersed, and some of its participants were arrested (8). In June 1988, when the Lithuanian reform movement “Sąjūdis” was founded, a widespread mass movement began, raising cultural, economic, and later political demands. Lithuanian Sąjūdis co-operated actively with the national liberation movements in the neighbouring Republics of Latvia and Estonia. In August 1989 a live human chain connected people of the Baltic States from Vilnius to Tallinn (8). The demands to re-establish Independence echoed ever stronger. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first soviet republic to have declared its independence. On 11-14 January 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev visited Vilnius (9). The Kremlin imposed an economic blockade on Lithuania, and sought to isolate our country from the surrounding world by all possible measures and in all possible ways. Also, in January 1991, the Soviet military killed fourteen peaceful residents who defended Lithuania’s freedom (10). Lithuania regained independence, and Vilnius could deservedly be considered to be not only the capital of tolerance but also that of freedom of the nations of the Soviet empire.