1—
New Winds

The Lithuanian national rebirth of 1988 surprised many observers, but there had long been signs of trouble brewing, the most startling examples being the defection of the seaman Simas Kudirka in 1970 and the self-immolation of Romas Kalanta in 1972. Over the years western correspondents in Moscow had reported trouble within the republic, but there were few public signs of the development of any programmatic opposition. The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, which began publication in 1972, recorded the struggle for religious freedom, and the Lithuanians formed a "Helsinki group" to monitor observance of the terms of the Helsinki agreement of 1975, but Soviet authorities seemed able to prevent the establishment of any public rallying point that might focus and stimulate dissenting thought.^[1]

The past and the future met in the demonstrations organized in Vilnius in August 1987 to mark the forty-eighth anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. At

the beginning of August 1987 a group of Lithuanian dissidents — Antanas Terleckas, Vytautas Bogusis, Petras Cidzikas, and Nijole Sadunaite — announced their intention to gather on the twenty-third, a Sunday, at the Adam Mickiewicz monument alongside St. Ann's Church in Vilnius's Old City. The demonstration would coincide with demonstrations in the other two Baltic capitals of Tallinn and Riga.

The actual demonstration was small. A year later more than one resident of Vilnius told me that people were afraid to attend the gathering, thinking that this was perhaps a provocation organized by the Saugumas, the security forces, with the aim of bringing potential dissidents out into the open. The Soviet press spoke of several hundred demonstrators; western sources raised the number to 5,000. The square where the demonstration took place is itself small, and a reliable observer estimated to me that there were about 300 people in St. Ann's Church, a core of about 500 demonstrators in the square, and some 2,000 passersby who manifested interest in varying degrees.^[2]

In some ways the situation seemed routine. The organizers of the demonstration were well-known dissidents, and they had in their time experienced the repressive forces at the command of the regime. Terleckas and Sadunaite had spent time in prison, yet they persistently dared to challenge the regime.^[3] The government's verbal counterattacks were also standard; it complained about "dupes" of Western "radio voices" as it had since the end of World War II. Despite all the seemingly standard behavior, this time things turned out differently.

On this occasion the demonstrators made no secret of their gratitude to the "voices." Lacking the means to

publicize their meeting themselves, the organizers had to rely on Western media. The Lithuanian Information Center in Brooklyn, New York, announced the plans, attributing its news to "reliable sources" and identifying the organizers as "renowned human rights activists." Western radio broadcasts to the Baltic area repeated the news release from Brooklyn. Sadunaite later told a Japanese journalist, "I asked the Western radios [sic ] to broadcast our call for the demonstration because we cannot use local newspapers or TV."^[4] However it had been publicized, the demonstration stimulated public interest in the next demonstration, whatever, wherever, and whenever it might be.

Since authorities in Moscow pointed to the demonstrations in the Baltic as a sign of "democracy," an accomplishment of perestroika and proof of glasnost, the Lithuanian authorities stumbled in confusion. Security officers pursued and harassed the organizers, warning them against continuing their activity, but in the end the authorities could not enforce their displeasure. The dissidents proclaimed that their persecution proved that glasnost was a fraud, yet at the same time they realized that the authorities somehow did not have the administrative powers of old.

On September 10, in a particularly unsuccessful effort to assert traditional authority, the trade union of the Youth Theater in Vilnius met to condemn the activity of Vytautas Bogusis, a member of their collective. The director of the theater read an indictment indicating that the accused had repeatedly ignored warnings from the authorities to desist in his various activities. Bogusis should, said the director, "switch to some other collective so as not to ruin our theater's reputation." After a few people had uttered routine condemnations,

Bogusis attacked their "Stalinist" thinking, and others rose to his defense. The meeting broke up in disorder with Bogusis still a member of the collective.^[5]

Over the succeeding months the Lithuanian authorities pursued the topic of Western interference in Lithuanian affairs with a vengeance, seeking to embarrass the American government, which had routinely accommodated the demands of Lithuanian emigres for support. President Ronald Reagan, for example, continuing an established practice, had proclaimed June 14, 1987, as Baltic Freedom Day, condemning the "totalitarian persecution of the Balts." The Soviet Lithuanian press published letters from readers protesting American" interference" in Lithuania's internal affairs, and the historian Bronius Vaitkevicius referred to the American government's support of demonstrations as "an insult to my people."^[6]

The Americans remained unrepentant, albeit inconsistent. On the one hand, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Jack Matlock, reportedly refused to accept a protest from a "Lithuanian government delegation" on the grounds that the United States had not recognized Lithuanian incorporation into the USSR.^[7] American congressmen and senators, on the other hand, sent Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders a number of protests and requests concerning affairs in the Baltic in the course of 1987 and 1988. Although the legislators' protests to Gorbachev would seem to indicate a recognition of Soviet rule in the Baltic, the Americans apparently considered themselves justified in complaining but immune to counterattack.

Even as it denounced enemies abroad, however, the Lithuanian Communist leadership had internal problems. Petras Griskevicius, since 1973 the first secretary

of the Lithuanian Communist Party, had already come under criticism for the party's shortcomings in responding to calls for perestroika.^[8] Even Griskevicius's death on November 14, 1987, however, brought no significant change to the leadership; his successor, Ringaudas Songaila, showed no more enthusiasm for the strange ideas emanating from Moscow. In its personnel and policies the Lithuanian Communist Party appeared mired in the cultural and national policies of Brezhnev's "era of stagnation."

Typifying the party's dilemma and confusion was its second secretary, Nikolai Mitkin, a Russian. In origin from Karelia, Mitkin had studied to be a teacher of history but had then found his career in party administration, eventually working in Moscow as the Central Committee's specialist for the Baltic and Belorussia. He had come to Vilnius in 1986 to become second secretary, a position controlling organizational matters that traditionally belonged to a Russian. Enforcing Gorbachev's call for equal rights for Russians in all parts of the Soviet Union, Mitkin pressed first Griskevicius and then Songaila to increase the representation of non-Lithuanians in the administration of the republic and to pursue all manifestations of Lithuanian "nationalism." As one American observer put it, "While [Gorbachev] clearly is a master of bureaucratic politics, he not only does not understand ethnic feelings but acts in a way guaranteed to exacerbate them even if he does not intend to."^[9] With Gorbachev's own appointee contributing to national unrest in Lithuania, the party leaders had no idea how to handle the new currents abroad in the republic.

The creative intelligentsia in Lithuania, especially artists and writers, responded more enthusiastically to

Gorbachev's calls for reform and local initiative. In 1986, condemning oil drilling in the Baltic as a threat to Lithuania's environment, the Writers' Union took the unprecedented step of circulating a petition of protest. Telephone calls rained in on the union as well as on the Saugumas, asking whether these petitions did not constitute an anti-Soviet act. Undaunted, the union went ahead, and it expanded its activity to other issues, including the use of chemical fertilizers and other factors of water pollution. The writers' debates and discussions reached the public through the pages of Literatura ir menas (Life and Art), the weekly organ of the Writers' Union, and although Griskevicius criticized the "nihilistic outlook" of some writers, the writers pushed other professionals, including the historians, to be more outspoken in defense of the nation and republic.

The artists carried out their own coup d'etat in November 1987, when a raucous meeting of the Artists' Union overthrew the group's old leadership and installed a new president and secretary. Conservatives complained of "unethical" behavior, but enthusiasts hailed the election as a victory for glasnost and perestroika. The legend soon grew that this meeting was the cause of Griskevicius's heart attack: the party secretary was present and he obviously did not enjoy the proceedings. He died that night in his sleep.^[10]

The historians as a group were much slower to respond to the new currents, even though both public and government demanded that they speak. The Soviet press's denunciations of the August 23 demonstration stimulated discussion of Lithuanian history in the schools and in the press, and attention turned to the next controversial "anniversary date," February 16, 1988, the seventieth anniversary of the Lithuanian Tary-

ba's declaration of independence in 1918. Dissatisfied with the answers that specialists had offered, the writers and other intellectuals leaped into the breach.

Prewar historical works, long consigned to spetsfonds, the collections of forbidden materials, now won new public attention. In Stalin's time it had been a crime for individuals even to own such works; in Khrushchev's time one could own them but not lend them out to friends; now they circulated in the black market and constituted a popular unofficial curriculum for the study of history. People, wrote one author, "are seeking historical truth in prewar literature" — shouldn't, he asked, some of this literature be legalized?^[11]

One work in particular became the center of attention, Adolfas Sapoka's History of Lithuania, first published by the Lithuanian Ministry of Education in 1936 as a textbook and now exiled to the spetsfonds. Almost everyone, paradoxically, recognized the work's limitations. It had praised the authoritarian rule of Antanas Smetona; the basic historical research was long outdated. Sapoka, moreover, had written only part of the work, serving as the general editor, coordinating the work of four other historians. Nevertheless the book became a popular symbol, although no one dared mention it in print until Alfonsas Eidintas, in April 1987, spoke of its costing "several hundred rubles" in the black market. (Eidintas later specified "two hundred" to me, but a friend told me of having paid three hundred rubles for a copy.) In 1988 Sapoka's history became the embodiment of popular discontent with the official historiography.

A possible motive in criticizing contemporary Soviet historians lay in the fact that, in the forty-plus years since the end of World War II, a number of intellectuals

who had considered studying history ultimately turned away from the field because of their dissatisfaction with the people and theories dominating it. This had been especially true in the first twenty years of Soviet rule, and in the latter 1980s such people, now in their fifties and probably well established in other professions, undoubtedly remembered having secretly read Sapoka in their youth. Now they had their own negative thoughts and feelings about the people who had chosen to become professional historians under the Soviet system.

Historians generally resented the public's idealization of older works. Historians all knew these prewar tomes, wrote Juozas Jurginis — the doyen of Soviet Lithuanian historians and a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences — and the work of contemporary historians was far superior to what had been written in the 1930s. Jurginis pointed specifically to the new history of Lithuania by the Academy of Sciences' Institute of History, of which the first volume had appeared in 1985.^[12]

Nevertheless for many Lithuanians Sapoka presented "the true history of Lithuania" (a term much in use in 1988). In July 1988, after Komjaunimo tiesa, the organ of the Communist Youth League, had polled its readers on their favorite books they would like to see reissued, the newspaper ruled Sapoka's work ineligible for inclusion since "this book until now has been almost inaccessible to readers, and therefore unread." Readers, the newspaper noted, were extremely interested in history, but the newspaper's list included no contemporary historians' works.^[13]

Although artists and writers were already feeling considerably more freedom in choosing their topics and directing their efforts, the historians remained a part

of the "command-administrative system," which posed demands from above and provided corresponding rewards. Some obeyed willingly, others explained that they had to go along in order to earn their keep and make some extra money. "The publishers dictate our activity," said one to me. Those who cherished their independence might choose to remain silent, but they forfeited considerable exposure and potential income.

The command-administrative system responded to the crisis of historical science by acknowledging the need to fill the "blank spots" of the people's history, but opinions differed as to what constituted "blank spots." "More personalities in history" was the code for paying more attention to Lithuanian national heroes of the past, but conservatives could respond with biographies of Lithuanian Communist Party heroes.^[14] Calls for studies of "deportations" and "persecution" evoked counter-calls for studies of executions in Smetona's Lithuania and of persecution of Lithuanian Communist revolutionaries both in Lithuania and in Stalin's Soviet Union.^[15] The historians seemed as uncertain of what to do as the party was.

The Lithuanian historical establishment consisted of four major parts: the faculties of the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute and of Vilnius University, and the staffs of the Institute of Party History and of the Institute of History of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. In the ensuing debates, as in the past, the staff of the Institute of Party History constituted the core of the conservative approach to Lithuanian historical study, whereas the staff of the academy's institute provided much of the momentum for reform.

The Institute of Party History, an agency of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, usually laid

down the line for the others to follow. It rather naturally concentrated on "the history of socialism" in Lithuania. When party leaders needed historical documentation or justification, or perhaps just a speech, the institute served as their first recourse. In turn the institute's library apparently had first call on all western publications coming into the Lithuanian SSR, and institute members reputedly had excellent personal collections. In 1988, when the authorities began liquidating the spetsfonds, into which almost any Western work would be segregated, libraries discovered many unexpected gaps in the range of literature released to them; many suspected that over the years members of the Institute of Party History had appropriated the items.

The dominant personality in the Institute of Party History had long been Romas Sarmaitis. The director of the institute until his retirement a few years earlier, Sarmaitis had done much to shape the writing of Lithuanian history; now approaching eighty, he remained a major force in Lithuanian historiography. As recently as 1986, together with Robertas Ziugzda, a historian at the University of Vilnius, he had officially visited other institutions to investigate the reliability of their work and their staffs.^[16]

In 1987 the institute had appeared impregnable, but soon it too came under attack. In June 1988, in a report celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the institute's founding, Vanda Kasauskiene, its director, noted that "the one-sided orientation of the historians" had had "a negative impact on the development of the science of party history";^[17] even conservative historians declared that their work had wrongly assumed "that socialist society develops without conflicts, without any contradictions."^[18] As the reform movement developed momentum

in the summer of 1988, the party institute became increasingly quiet.

For many years the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences had also been a stronghold of orthdoxy. Juozas Ziugzda, Robertas Ziugzda's father, had directed the institute from its founding until his retirement in 1969.^[19] Bronius Vaitkevicius had then taken over, being promoted from the position of an assistant in the Institute of Party History, and he followed a generally conservative line while tolerating some significant diversity within his staff.^[20] In 1986 Vytautas Merkys, a specialist in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history, replaced him as institute director.

Through 1987 the publication program of the institute remained conservative. As its contribution to the 600th anniversary of Lithuania's Christianization in 1387, it published a collection of papal bulls that had supported the efforts of the Teutonic Knights to bring Christianity at sword's point to the Baltic in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Change came slowly. When it wanted to publish a symposium on the 80th anniversary of the Lithuanian newspaper Auszra, which first appeared in 1883, it had to wait several years to win the approval of the censorship. In the fall of 1987 it dared to use the phrase "Lithuanian national liberation" in a book title, but to critics that seemed a small step at best.^[21]

At the end of 1987, the institute, which included three basic departments — history of feudalism, history of capitalism, and history of socialism — restructured its staff; the public's demands for filling the "blank spots" in Lithuania's history necessitated redirection of the institute's resources. Merkys assigned Alfonsas Eidintas to the task of studying and writing on the origins of the

Lithuanian "bourgeois" republic in 1917-1920, and the institute eventually took the lead among historians in revising the official memory of the past.

Eidintas, a specialist in emigration history, had already thrown himself into the public discussion, responding to the writer Vytautas Petkevicius's comments about historians "who fear everything, for whom one or another conception sent down from above is sacred." Eidintas answered that writers obviously had more freedom because they did not need documents to support their flights of fancy, and he had suggested that everyone would be better off if the authorities would publish needed documents such as the full text of the Nazi-Soviet agreements of 1939.^[22] In the course of 1988 Eidintas strongly influenced public attitudes toward the history of Lithuania between the wars.

In December 1987, when Literatura ir menas concluded its discussion of history and literature by sponsoring a forum of writers and historians, the writers were still attacking, and the historians still seemed hesitant. Vaitkevicius complained about "nihilism"'s creeping into historical study but argued that even "the emigration recognizes, is forced to recognize," the high quality of the academy's recent textbook on Lithuanian history. Leonas Mulevicius, a specialist in the history of the Lithuanian peasantry in the nineteenth century, warned that history is an exact science that popularizers could corrupt.

The revisionists persisted. Petkevicius complained that the historians had done "enormous damage to our Lithuanian culture and literature." He took up the cudgel for more personalities in history, complaining about the Party History Institute's refusal to give him access to its archives and asking why the new history textbook,

about which Vaitkevicius spoke so warmly, had refused to print a portrait of the Grand Duke Vytautas. When Vaitkevicius explained that no one really knew what Vytautas looked like, Petkevicius reiterated that the "depersonalization" of history limited its appeal for youth and therefore compromised its educational function.^[23]

Writing in the January issue of Komunistas, the party's theoretical journal, Vytautas Merkys noted that the writers were justified in complaining about the state of historical writing, and he called the "blank spots" in history "a problem of historical truth." Historians have generally chosen, he charged, "themes that necessitated neither scientific nor civil daring." These shortcomings only benefited "hostilely inclined foreign historians and politicians." Merkys offered suggestions on how to improve the efficiency and productivity of the historians, but he made no predictions as to where the writing of history might go in the next year.^[24]

With historical controversies still growing and February 16 fast approaching, the command-administrative structure mobilized a barrage of articles and books minimizing the significance of the upcoming date. Vaitkevicius and Ziugzda explained why the declaration of February 1918 had been meaningless, and party chief Songaila pointed out that the Soviet Union "is a union of sovereign states." ELTA, the government news agency, issued a communique denouncing Western "radio voices" and "clerical extremists," who "tendentiously, from nationalist positions," distort historical facts.^[25]

Answering a schoolgirl's question in Literatura ir menas, Vaitkevicius pointed out that the study of history is a part of the ideological struggle between different societies and that Lithuanian historians had to rec-

ognize the class backgrounds of historical personages from Vytautas to Smetona. The preparation of good historical works took time, he explained, but when the historians will have had time to complete their work, people will recognize that although "forbidden fruit is the tastiest," it is not necessarily the most nutritious.^[26]

In an effort to help its embattled Lithuanian comrades, Moscow sent Soviet President Andrei Gromyko to Vilnius to assure the people that the central authorities understood their concerns and problems. Gromyko spoke of the need to improve the production of consumer goods and to provide better housing; perestroika, he assured his listeners, was "irreversible." Soviet power, he added, was firmly established in Lithuania, and only lunatics "do not understand this."^[27] Gromyko had no visible impact on the tension building for the upcoming anniversary.

In a remarkable example of quick publishing, editors put together an anthology entitled Thoughts About Lithuanian Statehood, with essays by authors ranging from Songaila to Eidintas, delivered it for typesetting on February 8, and approved it for printing the next day. Eidintas's contribution surveyed historical opinion on the significance of February 16, but the other articles argued heatedly that February 16 did not represent any turning point in Lithuanian history and that the Communist workers' and peasants' government constituted the real expression of Lithuanian statehood.^[28]

Kostantinas Navickas, a professor of history at the University of Vilnius, published a mimeographed "Lecture Outline" on the subject "The Reestablishment and Consolidation of the Lithuanian People and Statehood." Warning that one could not allow "Lithuanian bourgeois nationalists and their protectors overseas to slan-

der history and thereby to mislead our society," he quoted Lionginas Sepetys, the ideological chief of the Lithuanian Communist Party, as saying that historians must show the "reactionary significance" of the declaration of February 16. December 16, 1918, he insisted, was the real founding date of Lithuanian statehood.^[29]

At the same time, contrary trends appeared even in official writings. In Izvestiia (Moscow) of February 9, Eidintas noted that critics were trying to cast doubt on the voluntary nature of Lithuania's joining the Soviet Union in 1940 and were calling Lithuanian Communists "traitors to the national interest of their own people." He welcomed the new interest in history being shown by the people of Lithuania, but he expressed regret that this interest seemed to be "a reaction to broadcasts by radio voices." It was time, he concluded, for "serious public examination" of the relations between the nationalities of the Soviet Union.

Finally, the day, February 16, came. In December 1987 the dissidents had announced their intentions to demonstrate on February 16, and they repeatedly insisted that the demonstrations would be peaceful. Sympathizers nevertheless predicted trouble: "Soviet officials allowed peaceful demonstrations in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, on August 23, 1987," announced the Lithuanian Information Center in Brooklyn, New York, but "since then Soviet officials have shown little tolerance for peaceful demonstrations." The militia, it was claimed, were preparing themselves with truncheons, or "bananas" as the Lithuanians called them, and Sadunaite reported that she had been beaten. Thirty-two U.S. senators appealed to Gorbachev to allow peaceful demonstrations in Lithuania and Estonia.^[30] Authorities in Vilnius banned unofficial meetings and flooded the streets

with druzhenniki, voluntary civilian enforcers of public order.

The occasion passed into Lithuanian history with two distinctly different forms of observation. Officially Lithuanians gathered several days earlier to protest the "crude interference" of the U.S. president and the Congress in the internal affairs of Lithuania. On February 12 Moscow's evening television news, "Vremia," reported protests throughout Lithuania against "the attempts of Western imperialist circles to interfere with Soviet Lithuania's internal affairs and to sow enmity between the peoples of our country." A picture in Tiesa showed a crowd, estimated at 15,000 people, carrying banners with slogans such as "`No' to Foreign Slander." Algirdas Vileikis, mayor of Vilnius, declared, "It is said that history is the teacher of life. Our nation's history teaches much. But some people want to distort both the history and the truth of today's life."^[31]

The Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow arranged tours to Vilnius for foreign correspondents so that they might see how quiet things were. Antanas Terleckas had warned in advance, "The government wants to show that no one turned out. People are being intimidated in all kinds of ways. Students showing up will be expelled. Workers will be discharged." As Terleckas predicted, the correspondents saw little; Felicity Barringer of The New York Times wrote, "The 70th anniversary of Lithuania's independence passed over the Lithuanian capital like a shadow today, marked only by the police and security forces who kept a daylong vigil at the city's national and religious shrines." She reported "public nonchalance," and "not a feeling of hostility," as the most striking quality of the atmosphere in the city.^[32]

Soviet spokespersons boasted that the Lithuanians

had rejected provocations. Lithuanian Minister of the Interior Stasys Lisauskas spoke of a "`fiasco' for Western propaganda, which failed to arouse the people to anti-Soviet actions." A Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman pointed to the journalists' reports as proving that Western reports of trouble in Lithuania were false: "The ancient wisdom remains the same — eyewitnesses see better." Party Secretary Songaila later declared, "one can say" that nothing happened on the sixteenth.^[33]

Unofficial demonstrations nevertheless took place in both Kaunas and Vilnius, despite the preemptive arrests of Sadunaite, Bogusis, Terleckas, and Cidzikas. At the Rasos cemetery in Vilnius, people placed flowers and candles at the grave of Jonas Basanavicius, the "patriarch of the Lithuanian national Renaissance"; worshippers filled St. Michael's Church in Vilnius's Old City to overflow for a special mass; and a crowd gathered in the evening at the monument to Adam Mickiewicz, the site of the demonstration of August 23, 1987.^[34] Tricolor flags erupted throughout the city.

The authorities eventually admitted that there had been disturbances, but they dismissed them as insignificant. Moscow reported, "Militia detained 32 persons throughout Lithuania on those days for hooliganism and violations of public order, which, incidentally, had nothing to do with the extremists' calls. The number is even lower than usual. The intended ideological act of subversion against Soviet Lithuania has thus flopped." The Lithuanians, the dispatch concluded, "will celebrate the 70th anniversary of their true statehood on December 16 this year, on the day when Soviet power was proclaimed in Lithuania." For weeks thereafter, the media kept up a drumbeat of criticism aimed at Western "radio voices," including the Vatican.^[35]

The dissidents complained angrily about how easily the foreign correspondents had allowed themselves to be deceived, and they sought to publicize their own stories. Sadunaite told contacts in the United States, "There were as many as 15,000 people. The militia urged everyone to go home. Then this mass of people started down Gediminas Avenue (a.k.a. Lenin Avenue). Since the crowd on the avenue was huge, the militia tried to break it up into small groups by sending people down side streets." The militia, she charged, used violence in breaking up various demonstrations around the city.^[36]

Sadunaite's polemic exemplified the symbols of the day. Gediminas, whose spirit she invoked, was the legendary founder of Vilnius, and his name constituted a constant refrain in the events of 1988. Gediminas Square represented the emotional center of the city. The major building in the square had been until 1956 the cathedral of the Catholic Church, but since that year it had been an art gallery; in 1987 and 1988 calls for the restoration of the building to the church multiplied rapidly. On the hill overlooking the cathedral and the square stood Gediminas tower, the remaining ruin of Gediminas's castle built in the fourteenth century, where the rulers of Vilnius had always placed their flag. Many of the dramatic public confrontations of 1988 took place on this square, and demonstrators looked at the castle as a metaphor of their republic's sovereignty — what flag was flying above the tower?

The renaming of streets and public places, as exemplified by Sadunaite's reference to "Gediminas Avenue," constituted an important part of the revival of the Lithuanian national consciousness. In the early postwar years, the Soviet authorities had given a number of

cities and streets new names. The Lithuanians could do nothing about it then, but in the Gorbachev era counterinitiatives became possible. At the urging of residents of Vilnius, the city authorities had given several streets back their old Lithuanian names. This meant, for example, dropping the Russian name "Gorky Street" in favor of Castle Street and Great Street. The thought of renaming "Lenin Prospect" "Gediminas Street" now took a high place in the Lithuanians' agenda for restructuring the symbols of their daily life.

The Lithuanians understood that their history and their national self-consciousness were connected with every facet of life in the city; the demonstrative acts of laying flowers and candles, of singing, and of waving flags were only small tokens of the issues that had already arisen and of those that were yet to come in the course of the year. In Literatura ir menas of January 23, 1988, Alfredas Guscius had expressed pleasure that people were discussing history ever more boldly: "One after another we are destroying former tabus." The discussions among the intellectuals had yet to reach the demonstrators in the streets, but the day for that moment was approaching faster than most people realized.