On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Non-Aggression Pact and the same year, on 28 September, they signed the Agreement on Friendship and Borders which included a secret protocol better known as Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. That was how two aggressive dictators, Hitler and Stalin, divided Eastern and Central European countries into spheres of influence. This subsequently determined the occupation of the Baltic States and their forcible incorporation into the USSR in 1940. The first days of the occupation marked the beginning of waves of arrests, deportations, and killings which did not seize until the early days of the Soviet-German War. The post-war period in 1944-1953 saw the armed resistance against the Soviet occupation in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Supressed by cruel measures and treacheries, it grew into an unarmed resistance movement which sought for liberation from the Soviet occupation regime. Illegal press was published and disseminated. It aimed to sustain the objectives of independence and inform about the human rights violations, persecutions on religious grounds, and suppression of freedom of expression pursued by the Soviet regime. The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania in particular, as well as other underground press, extensively covered the persecution of religious young people. The Lithuanian Liberty League, Moscow Helsinki Group, and other underground organisations of the unarmed resistance lifted the spirit of freedom. Romas Kalanta posed yet another challenge to the regime by sacrificing his life for the freedom of Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Liberty League (LLL) announced its establishment On 14 June 1978. The LLL declared itself a non-party organisation based on democratic principles which aimed at the restoration of independent Lithuania. All its activities until the restoration of Lithuania’s independence focused on raising the issue of illegal incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR in international forums, requesting the termination of occupation and the withdrawal of troops, and striving for the restoration of the State of Lithuania. The objective rested on the maturing consciousness of freedom across the Lithuanian nation, global opinion and the activities focusing on the termination of occupation of Lithuania, including open confrontation with the occupant structures.
In 1979, the Lithuanian Liberty League initiated the Baltic Appeal signed by 45 Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian citizens, and on 23 August 1987, Lithuania was shaken by an unauthorised public anti-Soviet rally by the LLL against the Stalin-Hilter (Molotov-Ribbentrop) Pact and its secret protocols. For the first time, the rally publicly told the truth about this infamous agreement and the after-effects it had on the statehood of Lithuania and demanded the elimination of the after-effects of the Pact. The rally was organised by the following participants in the unarmed resistance movement who were subject to persecution for many years: Antanas Terleckas, Nijolė Sadūnaitė, Robertas Grigas, Vytautas Bogušis, Julius Sasnauskas, Petras Cidzikas, Medardas Čeponis and others. The rally was attended by a great number of people, young ones in particular. Almost 3,000 of attendees chanted “Freedom, freedom!”, sang “Lietuva brangi” (Engl. “Dear Lithuania”) and the national anthem of independent Lithuania. It was a brave and significant challenge which awakened the consciousness of Lithuanians, called to dispel the fear and tell the truth. The rally had reverberations both in Lithuania and abroad.
The rally was not dispersed, but the then authorities denounced its participants, repressive occupant structures persecuted organisers of the rally for this public history lesson to the Lithuanian nation, interrogated and admonished several tens of people. By order of the Communist Party, the media tried to send a message that the rally had been staged by the “Western bourgeois propaganda centres so as to make bad blood between the residents of Lithuania”. On 28 August, KGB officers forcibly took Nijolė Sadūnaitė into a car without a number plate and drove about 30 hours in Vilnius surroundings. They told her that shooting was too-small punishment for her participation in the rally. It implies that after the rally the KGB became worried about the effectiveness of its activities in Lithuania.
The rally at the Adam Mickiewicz Monument was a fresh gust of wind in the fight for the Independence of Lithuania.
Two years later, 2 millions of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians joined their hands to form a human chain – the Baltic Way, demonstrating their firm determination to be independent. On 24 December 1989, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR – the highest body of the USSR at that time – took a decision which recognised the Stalin-Hitler (Molotov–Ribentrop) Pact, its secret protocols, and declared them null and void from the date of their signature.
The public rally organised by the Lithuanian Liberty League on 23 August 1987 and the truth told at the rally about the occupation of Lithuania are part of Lithuania’s history and are imprinted on people’s mind as the manifestation of truth by dismantling the evil empire and paving the way for the freedom of Lithuania.