It is about history which has no end and also about our present times that are firmly rooted in the past and bring today’s current events to become just tomorrow, a new part of our past in the present.
Despite fiercely insisting seductive calls: “Leave that past, look forward to the future!”, “Let the past stay for historians!” – it is absolutely impossible to do so, even if you agree to undergo the amputation of your brain. To get the entire nations degenerated is even less easy.
Lithuania is usually recalled by those interested in history as a state which has peacefully restored her independence after 50 years of Soviet captivity, and in this way in 1990 she started, as the first one, the dissolution of the huge and terrible Soviet Union, a totalitarian shape of the old Russian empire.
In line with such common understanding, the US Congress praised Lithuania in March of 2000 by the Concurrent resolution of both Houses commemorating the 10th anniversary of this event and my country’s contribution to, what they called, “the leading role” in “the disintegration of the former Soviet Union”. Nevertheless, even this high and dangerous valuation should be commented upon and, in some aspects, corrected.
In a strictly legal sense and that of international law, Lithuania has never been a constituent “Soviet Republic” and only arbitrarily was given this imposed status after the occupation and forcible incorporation in 1940 into the neighbouring USSR. The following 50 years should be presented more correctly as three subsequent periods of occupation during the Second World War. They were: 1940-1941, the first Soviet occupation; 1941-1944, the German one; and 1945-1990, the second and long-lasting Soviet occupation and brutal sovietisation. The latter period also included ten years of our resistance war (1945-1954). It was fought by the lawful underground Government established by all military districts’ commanders unified in the Council of the Movement of Liberation of Lithuania and, certainly, by the real forest army of the occupied Lithuania. No surprise that that huge Soviet force majeure finally prevailed, but the endurance for ten more years of that “War after War” is really surprising and seams unbelievable.
My third remark about our freedom regained 20 years ago is that Lithuanians, when standing for it once again in the late 80-ies, fought for democracy as freedom of yours and ours, even on the scale of the entire USSR, - and the very democracy was our way to specific in methods national liberation, exclusively non-violent but a moral, political and parliamentary one. We followed this way seemingly ignoring the continued presence of the Soviet occupational army and other repressive structures still on our land.
Democracy as a way toward liberation was understood and implemented in both forms: direct democracy and representative one. The first one recalls in our memory huge manifestations of hundreds of thousands of people demanding changes and freedoms and combining hot speeches with warm and conciliatory singing of all those masses together. From there goes the nice name of the “Singing Revolution” which anticipated those other at the later stage called “Rose” and “Orange” revolutions. One of our strongest demands, always correlated with the infamous date of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 23 October 1939 was to denounce that Stalin-Hitler conspiracy document which decided about the Second World War and our long-lasting Soviet captivity.
Among those manifestations one was extremely significant and rightly given the name “Baltic Way”. I will say about it just later.
Twenty years ago, our main political and legal goal in our dealings with Moscow was official condemnation and denouncement in December 1989 by the People’s Deputies Congress of the USSR of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact alongside with its damned secret protocols. This historical decision underlined once more the illegality of the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Stalinist empire of evil. Thus, it was and remains greatly important for our freedom case then and until now. It was also a rare and exemplary event for the fading USSR – to do something honest and undoubtedly right.
The last and well prepared step for us, the Liberation Movement Sajudis, was to achieve real competitive elections, to win solid majority in the Parliament thus acquiring a democratically given mandate by our sovereign people to proclaim restitution of the Lithuanian state.
We were not hostile to the Soviet Union. Our wish and claim was to normalise relations with our Eastern neighbour, returning back to the lawful situation of 1940, before the Soviet invasion. Therefore, we calmly rejected all allegations about secessionism and separation form the USSR. It was not we, but the Soviets, who had to leave.
This was a short review about the happenings with Lithuania putting emphasis on the struggle for democracy. Now allow me to dwell on three more peculiar points, mechanisms and events of that great European transformation, in which Lithuania and the other Baltic States duly participated.
Sajudis and other Movements
The year 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.
Sàjudis 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 today 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, together in Europe.
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 historical date was a reminder of the dark Stalin-Hitler conspiracy to begin World War II, one which included a sentence for the nations in between 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 U.S. 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 2 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” of action 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” with 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 disappeared, 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 (of course, on Stalin-Hitler treaty about good friendship). 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. The Resolution noticed the violation of Peace Treaties of 1920 between Soviet Russia and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia being broken by pact respectfully. From the unlawful pact followed unlawful actions – the breach of peace and war against neighbors located between the USSR and Germany, so, 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”.
May I notice here this that period of Russia’s democratic transformation was increasingly confronted from inside, blocked and hampered, and in ten years, from 1999, turned backward into a new one-partisan format of authoritarian non-democracy with growing features of neo-Stalinism.
The Phenomenon of the Baltic Way
What it was and how to define it briefly?
"The Baltic Way", a magnificent event of 23 August 1989, embraced the features and contents both of commemoration and manifestation. Some 2 million people in a live chain from Vilnius to Tallinn via Riga stood commemorating the tens of millions of victims of Stalin–Hitler conspiracy which began the Second World War then 50 years back. The people manifested even stronger their actual will and demand: to end that war, actually, still WWII, end it in peace and freedom regained by the last captive Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And that came very soon. The will of the people turned out to be miraculous. A way was also opened for others under Soviet captivity. The authorities in the Kremlin exploded in anger, but the masses supported us, most notably in Russia. No surprise that Berlin Wall crumbled. The Baltic Way had its branches to Moscow and Berlin.
Let me now share with you some more special considerations.
If there was a way reopened 20 years ago as a possibly new way for nations, then towards what point, what task and concrete goal could it be extended?
Towards a new quality of life, I may evaluate. Of course, it was about the life in dignity and liberty. And the "Baltic Way" has proved that this was and remains achievable – to travel the way of joyful brotherhood! A utopia for a long term, but reality for a short one.
The very liberty was a task, as well. Discovering what a great deal was achieved not to fear anything anymore, we realised that this was about freedom for all humans and their societies around. The historical motto of Lithuanian and Polish insurgents against the enslaving tsarist Russia of the 19th century – "For freedom of ours and yours!" – was again perfectly and profoundly understandable to everyone then, 20 years ago. At the "Baltic Way", at least.
Freedom for all captive nations – including Russia!
Those were the most honourable times – the years 1989-1992 – in Russia's newest history or, maybe, even in all of its history. Through the fading totalitarian Communist empire new trends and new people, rich in heart and not in pocket, were coming up, approaching in good will, ready to build their new society and state such as has never been before – democratic Russia. Even the last Communist Parliament of the Soviet Union succeeded in condemning and denouncing in December of 1989 the most disgraceful pact concluded then 50 years ago essentially by Stalin and Hitler – exactly that step for which we were calling at the "Baltic Way": Mr. Gorbachev, tear that shame out!
Where is that Russia of prevailing honest people today? Maybe, in a coffin of the Sleeping Beauty.
The failure which came there some years later was the fault and failure of the unwise Europe. There were Western leaders claiming "We need strong Russia!", instead of that mindful, right and honest one, recovering after its bloody dictatorships in a new spirit of humanity. Today we observe, after that fault of the losing Western victors, the unfortunate consequences first of all for the Russian people. Nationalism and expansionism is not a "rebirth", but on the contrary, a spiritual decline backwards. Anyway, the Baltic Way of brotherly co-operation in democracy remains open.
Two events of 1989-1991 proved it be not a utopia at all. The first event was the "Baltic Way". The second one was defence of our freedom and dignity with bare hands of common people, joining once again in live chains around TV tower in Vilnius to resist heavily armed Soviet invaders and killers in January 1991.
That singing resistance was a direct continuity of the "Baltic Way", and again similar were the following days in Moscow, where hundreds of thousands of protesters poured out into the streets carrying flags and slogans: "Freedom for Lithuania!", "Hands off Lithuania!" Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, this was not a mirage. In August 1991, during the putschist agony of bolshevism, Russian democrats gathered in crowds in Moscow surrounding their own Parliament to defend it and were saying: "We do the same what Lithuanians did in Vilnius". Such was then our expansion - not a territorial, but a spiritual one.
The Pact until now – a General View
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was not a single shameful document among many similar agreements as Mr. Putin tries to insist today, but an exceptional fact of political conspiracy containing the sell-off of entire nations between Germany and Russia, and the greatest crime against humanity. It opened the gates for enormous destruction and losses in the bloodiest World War. Opening of gates was signed by the Nazis’ Reich and Bolsheviks' Derzhawa (USSR) exactly 70 years ago, in a holy month August.
As a consequence of the following war, after it seemingly ended, the nations and lands of Central Europe were further redistributed in an even more radical way and shape. Nobody among the victors has denounced that infamous Stalin-Hitler-produced Pact. It appeared rather amended and approved of in 1945 in Yalta and Potsdam. An exception from the provisions of pact was Finland, thanks to its heroic resistance left to live longer, despite significant losses concerning its territory and some fundamental sovereignty rights.
The first post-war line was drawn on paper by the victors of World War II, and thus it anticipated the Wall. One might say: pre-war Molotov-Ribbentrop line as a result of the war was pushed westward, and that's it. The corrections reflected Hitler's losses and Stalin's gains. The new signatories should replace Mr. Ribbentrop, who became hanged after the biased trial. Molotov was neither on trial, nor hanged.
The line then put the Western part of Germany and Austria under the jurisdiction and lawfulness of Western democracies. The Eastern part was left to the revengeful arbitrarianism and total unlawfulness of the totalitarian Soviet non-democracy. The best example of that style in action was total cleansing of the Koenigsberg region from still remaining there German and Lithuanian civilians. None was left to survive, since the region was given over in Potsdam to Stalin "pending the Peace treaty".
Requiescet in pace, as the Treaty never came. Soviets unilaterally annexed the "cleaned" land, bringing in and colonising it by a new population from Russia.
The Nazi death camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen both were turned to and incorporated into the Soviet Gulag system and served the same purpose. STASI continued receiving instructions from NKVD, similarly as GESTAPO officers used to learn methods of extermination of the people in the USSR until the war.
The forcible division of Europe caused by force majeure of the USSR and the post-war weakness of surrendering Western democracies was soon affirmed still stronger by the erection of the Berlin Wall. It should be wrongly understood as a material building only within Berlin. Really, Berlin Wall was a grim and bloody part of the European Wall as a subsequence of the first line extended North-South across Germany and Austria. Nevertheless, by concentrating attention on the divided city, it became a symbol and utmost transparency of the situation.
Let us look now at the Wall with the bright eyes of spirit and culture. On one side of it there were free nations. Beyond it were captive nations. The enormous prison of the latter extended over Central and Eastern Europe plus Northern Asia as far as Kuril Islands and contained hundreds of millions of captive people.
Individuals seeking freedom on the other side of the Wall were shot down as criminals. What was their crime? To seek for right response, we have to remind ourselves and the following generations about the two systems or civilizations that governed Europe during the Cold War.
Only one of them was shooting prisoners or over-wall refugees from the prison. In the view of criminal totalitarianism, the gravest crime was conviction and witnessing that freedom is the fundamental right and God's blessing, while serfdom or national captivity is a misfortune and injustice to be fought against. Lithuania knows what that fight meant. She fought for freedom in armed resistance against the USSR during the years 1944-1954.
The evil build-up of two Europes – that of democracy and the Soviet one – was finalized indeed with the appearance of the Wall. Therefore, the destruction of the Wall, which came in 1989, was also a destruction of the prison and a denouncement of the political-cultural division of Europe, thus also a removal of barriers from all the roads.
Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were calling for this on their own road – "The Baltic Way" from Vilnius to Tallinn, the world's greatest manifestation of over 2 millions. For what? – for freedom to be regained without delay. Afterwards the Stalin-Hitler pact and the Berlin Wall crumbled together. The Pact was condemned by Congress of deputies as unlawful breach of the international commitments of the USSR, including three trampled Peace Treaties with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and was denounced as being null and void from the very moment when the unlawful signatures were put down.
Even if Germany, disunited or unified, did not yet find time to do the same, the above mentioned adoption of that historical and honourable for Russia resolution of 1989 was a great thing.
Then it should look fine: the Pact denounced, the Wall crumbled. Nevertheless, the picture of the problem seemingly resolved, would be entirely false.
Sorry, but the Berlin Wall does continue to exist. Similarly, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is not out of business. Where can you see it? – One should ask. – Look at "the Putin-Schroeder pact" on Baltic pipe signed once more beyond our backs, with the new eventual navy wall across the sea, but first look into the particular mentality of mutant Soviet Communism turned into today’s nationalism with preferences of its elite to subjugate the neighbouring nations and territories again and again.
They claim "post-Soviet space" as being something just and normal in Europe with alleged exceptional rights for one big foreign country there. Being big, it comes dictating, and the weaker European listeners do listen carefully: yes, sir. Otherwise, democracies should call that allegedly existing geopolitical space of Russia's interest directly and clearly: "Molotov-Ribbentrop space", with the Baltic States desirably inside the line until today. Supposedly, the EU would disagree to recall Molotov, as such level of transparency about the space seems too straightforward and impolite. But why they speak about "post-Soviet space"?
One more nickname for the Kremlin's geopolitics after the Cold War was then quite soon invented in Moscow: "the near abroad". The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe forbade in 1996 to use that dividing classification of sovereign states labelling them into normal and special ones. Nevertheless, various efforts to influence our concepts and papers will be continued thus deliberately destroying the European identity and unity. We have to penetrate such influence of immortal Soviet mentality on some European neighbours and partners, to show the true facts of the past in present, and call for a sobriety before the whole Europe is turned to become a "near abroad". To avoid this, democracies should help Russia to make a better choice of its current trend to an over-centralised and hyper-controlled non-democracy.
Both old and new Orwellianisms must be rejected. No textbooks praising Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and great manager Stalin, who “left Russia larger as he had inherited”! Our message to European partners in the Kremlin should be short and warm: "Dear Colleagues, tear down this wall from your minds, please".
The main European challenge now comes when the very concept of democracy is targeted.
When usurpers of power anywhere do not allow people to make their free choices, there are no free people yet (if not to call openly “captive”) and the regime is a non-democracy. It does not matter, if the usurpers call their own regime any special title of fake “democracy": that of “People’s”, “ruled”, “manipulated”, reviewed, Orwellian, Islamist, Socialist or Stalinist, “sovereign democracy”, etc., no true democracy which is freedom of mind and choice and law established by truly elected representatives, can be found there.
This line of distinction, while not even drawn on paper, does define by the features of political culture where is Russia today and, inter alia, Ukraine of tomorrow. Both of them may develop differently, if Ukraine is not absorbed by Russia’s backwardish political culture and stays more Western-like. That latter would be good example for Russia as well.
Now allow me to present you, finally, with two recent statements of two great experts Zbigniew Brzezinski and Vaclav Havel.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 25-10-2009
“The independence of Central Europe was one of the major watersheds in modern history and the fulfilment of hopes for many millions.
Something that will have to happen and something that – which happens and when it happens – will mean the end of the imperial system that for so many years has been depriving the Ukrainians of their right to freedom.
Twenty years after independence Ukrainian independence today is less secure than it was twenty years ago. And that is something that Ukrainians have to understand, have to access and from which they have to draw conclusions regarding the national unity, regarding the national independence, regarding their right to be part of a larger Europe."
Thus, Z. Brzezinski, who was born in Ukraine, while addressing a Conference in his native town Lviv, put an emphasis on the destiny of Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is extremely important for both Europe and Russia.
Vaclav Havel made a note of profound significance. It is about spiritual and moral challenges that both Europe and the world should have to overcome.
Vaclav Havel, 25/27-10-2009
“I have an intense feeling that the global civilisation, based on the idea of incessant growth, which also implies a constant increase in energy consumption, has unwittingly led many politicians and current European political institutions to adopt peculiar kinds of policies. It seems as if a smooth input of oil and natural gas were more important than human freedoms, than human rights. I believe that politics where economic interests are put above basic political values are not only immoral, they are suicidal.
We should not give in to evil; concessions to evil do not result in its diminishing in any way, but rather in its expansion and strengthening.”
Let us share the hope that our civilisation will manage to overcome these challenges of "concessions to evil" and will survive for Europe's continued role in the world
Lecture at Bern University, 27 October 2007
