Roots of Independence

On many occasions, among them the last USA-USSR summit in May-June 1990; President Mikhail Gorbachev blamed the Lithuanians for "proclaiming independence through one night," without well-based consideration. Nothing could be further from the truth. The struggle of the Lithuanian nation for independence began just at the moment of the country's occupation by the Red Army on June 15, 1940. The losses in this struggle were tragically enormous for a nation which had a population of about three million. Two thousand of the Lithuanian government's top officials, businessmen, politicians, journalists, and clergymen were arrested and deported to the USSR on the night of 11-12 July, 1940. An additional 34,260 persons, mostly members of Lithuania's intelligentsia, were deported from Lithuania between 14 and 18 June 1941. Anti-soviet resistance war deaths are estimated to be 50,000.

Another 260,000 were deported from Lithuania to Siberia, most of them farmers; total losses in home-grown population in the years from 1939 to 1953 were estimated as 1 million (about 140,000 Lithuanian Jews killed during the German occupation and 50,000 who emigrated to the West and to Poland (150,000) are included). Population losses in Lithuania during the war and during the postwar period could be estimated as the largest percentage losses in Europe. Those figures could explain the fact that, even 20 years after World War II, the population of Lithuania did not reach the level of 1939 (2,954,000) compared to 3.1 million in 1939 in postwar borders. The roots of Lithuania's statehood go very deeply into the history. King Mindaugas in 1253 joined all Lithuanian territories into the Lithuanian Kingdom. Until 1569, Lithuania was one of Europe's biggest powers, and defended its independence successfully from the Russians as well as from the Germans.

From 1569, Lithuania was in confederation with Poland until both countries in 1795 were occupied by Russia. After 123 years of Russian occupation, during which two unsuccessful rebellions in 1831 and 1863 took place, in 1918 Lithuania restored its independence and was a relatively prosperous European nation. It was a member of the League of Nations until World War II. In 1939. Russians and Germans signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which caused the second Lithuanian occupation on June 15, 1940.
Therefore, it would be extremely naive to think that with such an historical heritage the Lithuanians could lose an idea of their nation's statehood. On the contrary, this idea has been alive during the past fifty years of occupation. The historical mind-set explains the victory of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian movement for national revival) during the first free elections since 1940 to the People's Congress of the USSR. Sąjūdis, which was established only ten months before the elections, won thirty-six seats of forty-two. Among an additional sixteen deputies from organizations and creative societies, four-teen expressed their support for Sąjūdis during the first meeting of the People's Congress deputies from Lithuania in Vilnius in April 1989. In such a way, Sąjūdis got fifty of fifty-eight seats in Congress.

In addition, the Communist ideology was never popular in Lithuania. When the tragic events of 1940 began, the Lithuanians were a nation of individualists, so the ideas of vulgar collectivism did not get support. There were 287,380 private farmers in Lithuania who were well expressed individualists because of their occupations. The other large group of individuals was the Lithuanian intelligentsia. It was against these groups that the first blows of the Soviet KGB (then NKVD) were directed. The Communist Party in Lithuania hardly existed; in fact there were no more than 1499 party members, about half of them non-Lithuanians, and they had no real support in the nation. Among the delegates of the 5th Congress of the Lithuanian Communist Party in February 1941, only 30.5 percent were Lithuanians and barely half of them had any education beyond primary school. After the World War, the numbers of Lithuanian Communists grew, but a large number of them joined the Party not for ideological reasons but to ensure the best career possibilities