3—
Birth of Sajudis

At the beginning of June a new force entered the life of the republic: Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sajudis — the Lithuanian Movement for Perestroika or, as Sajudis spokespersons came to prefer, the "Lithuanian Reform Movement" — came into being as a response to calls from Moscow. To reinforce his program of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev had summoned a special party gathering in Moscow, designated as the Nineteenth Party Conference, at the end of June, and the public debates in preparation for the meeting aroused new excitement. When the party encouraged social groups to submit nominations for the Lithuanian delegation to the conference, the intellectuals responded with enthusiasm, drawing up lists of candidates and submitting topics to be raised at the conference.

For the Lithuanian Writers' Union, as for other "creative" unions, such encouragement intensified what they had been doing for months, expressing concern about the state of Lithuania's environment and the parlous fu-

ture of the Lithuanian language and national culture. In March the writers published a manifesto condemning the central government's ecological policies in Lithuania, speaking of "a colonial style of management," and complaining of pollution in the air, water, and ground. In April they called for Lithuanian to be made the official language of the republic, for the restructuring of the school curriculum so as to use Lithuanian history as the foundation for the teaching of all history, and for greater public discussion of any further large-scale industrial development within the republic. A month later the "creative artists" of Lithuania called on the Nineteenth Party Conference to "strengthen the sovereignty of the national republics," to give each republic greater control over its own economy, and to support the development of the national culture in each republic.^[1]

Despite such activity the Lithuanians seemed slow to translate their words into actions, especially as compared to the startling developments to the north in Estonia, where a Popular Front had been organized and calls for economic autonomy had arisen. Observers abroad spoke of "Lithuania's generally more conservative approach" to questions of the day and of "the Lithuanians' cautiousness, their determination not to trespass the limits of Soviet official toleration."^[2]

Toward the end of May two events galvanized the Lithuanians into action. Emissaries from Estonia arrived in Vilnius and talked with Lithuanian intellectuals about the goings-on in their republic — the Lithuanian press at this point was for the most part still devoting only silence to reports from Estonia. Then, on May 28, the party leadership announced the list of delegates to the Nineteenth Party Conference in Moscow. Despite all the publicized "democracy," old-guard

names predominated in the list; it included only two members of the Academy of Sciences, one writer, and a couple of doctors. The Central Committee had made its decision at an unannounced, secret meeting at a time when nominations were still being discussed in the press. With only three representatives of the world of scholars and creative artists on the list, the intellectuals complained that the Lithuanian party leadership had violated Moscow's recommendations and that the makeup of the delegation constituted a victory for the bureaucracy rather than for supporters of perestroika.

The "unofficial associations" buzzed with indignation. These delegates to the Party Conference had been selected, not elected, declared Vytautas Zemaitis in the Literatura ir menas of June 11; the entire process had followed old patterns without the least concession to perestroika. All agreed that Vytautas Martinkus, the head of the Writers' Union, would carry a difficult burden to Moscow as the only representative of Lithuania's creative intelligentsia. The intellectuals' feelings quickly crystallized around the model that the Estonians were offering.

Several "unofficial associations" came forward with proposals for action. Gathering on May 30, representatives of the economists' club, Talka, and Zemyna learned that the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences had formed a commission to propose changes in the constitution of the Lithuanian SSR in the spirit of perestroika, glasnost, and democracy. Spokespersons for the clubs contacted Eduardas Vilkas, secretary of the Academy of Sciences Presidium and chairman of the constitutional commission, and won his approval for a general meeting on June 3 where interested parties could share their own views on perestroika.

Tiesa 's announcement on June 2 of plans to develop further the industrial complex running through the Lithuanian cities of Kedainiai, Jonava, and Mazeikiai raised new concerns. On the one hand, such industrial development posed the threat of increased pollution of the ground and water of Lithuania and, on the other, it promised a renewed migration of Russians into the republic and the corresponding diminution of the role of Lithuanians in their own land.

On June 2 a meeting of concerned intellectuals and other public figures crowded the Academy of Science's meeting hall on the outskirts of Vilnius to discuss the subject "Will we defeat the bureaucracy?" They agreed on the desirability of a new social organization aimed at protecting constitutional rights. The meeting with Vilkas's Constitutional Commission the next day would provide the occasion for action.

After a session of the commission in the morning of June 3, Vilkas presided over a special meeting in the evening. Some five hundred people crowded into the major conference hall of the Academy, located on Lenin Prospect in the heart of Vilnius; they included academy workers, writers, artists, journalists, students, and engineers, all with no special mandate other than a passion for some sort of positive action in response to the visible problems of Lithuanian society.^[3]

As the speakers became more intense and ardent, Vilkas lost control of the meeting. No one, he complained, seemed interested in the commission's views: "It is now clear that we do not want to meet any more with such a stormy public; this is a useless effort." He tried to end the meeting — some later thought that his opposition was part of a grand plan to give the Sajudis even more credibility as a spontaneous popular creation —

but the assembly went on to demand the formation of some sort of committee.

The speakers demanded daring and boldness. "Three years we have tried to conquer [fear]," said Arvydas Juozaitis, "and only today is it beginning to leave." Vytautas Landsbergis, a music and art historian, proclaimed, "We want something constructive, operative. Not sometime, but now." Zigmas Vaisvila, a young physicist, urged the assembly to nominate candidates to an Initiative Group: "We don't have to call it a popular front if that word frightens anyone." Over Vilkas's continued protests a total of thirty-six names won the approval of the assembly: the Initiative Group of the Movement for Perestroika in Lithuania was born.

The group later denied that its membership had been determined in advance. Privately, some leaders admitted to having drawn up a list of some ten names in advance, but they insisted that most of the names had arisen spontaneously at the meeting. The gathering rejected some nominees, like Sadunaite, and elected others, like Petkevicius, in absentia. Sajudis leaders argued that the failure of the press and of the party leadership in Lithuania to dedicate itself to a program of reform had "reared and developed a feeling of a lack of appreciation" on the part of the intellectuals and had forced them to take the initiative of forming an independent social organization. "Openly, democratically, each candidate was elected by applause," recounted one summary of the meeting; "Have you ever seen a more democratic election?" asked another, contrasting the process to the Central Committee's procedures in naming delegates to the party conference.^[4]

The newly elected Initiative Group immediately retired to the smaller meeting room behind the great hall

of the academy, and its members resolved to meet at least once every week in the future. In the spirit of their founding, they agreed not to elect a chairman; everyone in the committee was equal. At the end of any given meeting, the group would select its presiding officer for the next meeting.

The group nevertheless had to have some standing officers. Julius Juzeliunas, a composer, took the post of treasurer, and observers unanimously agreed that his name offered the best possible guarantee that the accounts would be correct "to the last kopeck." Arvydas Juozaitis and Arturas Skucas became the "secretariat" of the group, and Juozaitis eventually became the editor of the group's irregular publication Sajudzio zinios (Sajudis News). Alvydas Medalinskas, a young economist, undertook organizational questions, handling details of maintaining order at meetings and public rallies.

The committee's search for democracy at times would have confusing consequences. No single member had the right to speak in the name of the group, but the group at times considered it in order to censure a member for expressing a wayward opinion. When Arturas Skucas attacked the party leadership and called for a special party congress, the group called his article "incompetent and irresponsible." This in turn evoked a protest from Arunas Degutis, one of the editors of Sajudzio zinios, who complained that "if a government can stay out of a dispute, it should."^[5] Despite such arguments, however, the committee members, who had previously barely known one another in their respective specialized worlds, grew in their mutual understanding and respect.

At first the Initiative Group had trouble finding a reg-

ular place to meet, but eventually the Artists' Union, of which the president, Bronius Leonavicius, and the secretary, Arvydas Saltenis, were members of the committee, offered it a home. The artists' generosity had its costs: thugs broke windows in the house, located on Kosciuszko Street not far from a militia station, and the union insisted that Justas Paleckis, the supervisor of cultural affairs in the Central Committee, come to view the damage. In addition, Leonavicius had his misgivings about the disruptions caused by the large crowds that came into the building in connection with Sajudis's work, but the cause of Lithuania's renewal seemed to be worth the sacrifices involved.

The Initiative Group also resolved that its meetings should be open to the public. A curious confrontation developed with the party when the Central Committee's supervisor of higher education, Stasys Imbrasas, asked whether he should stay and listen to the discussions. The Initiative Group saw no reason why he should, and it voted that he leave. "Sajudis refuses to cooperate with party organs," Imbrasas huffed as he left the room. Lionginas Sepetys subsequently suggested that the committee accept the role of an advisor to the Central Committee and not seek public support, but Sajudis leaders eventually resolved to take their cause to the Lithuanian people. Meetings would be open; anyone who so wished would have a chance to speak.

In the tradition of Soviet politics, the group first of all needed to define its program. At its first formal meeting on June 8 it formed a series of special commissions and, on June 13, the commissions presented provisional programs. Their reports were not meant to be formal statements of Sajudis; rather, they indicated general lines along which the group intended to focus discussions.

The group gave every indication that it intended to work within the existing Soviet structure in accordance with the principles of Gorbachev's reform program.

The Social Commission, headed by Bronius Genzelis, a philosopher at the University of Vilnius, targeted the bureacracy as its opponent, calling it "a new class of exploiters and parasites." The commission proposed: (1) to end the privileges of the nomenklatura, the Soviet bureaucratic elite; (2) to raise the workers' standard of living; (3) to improve the funding of social help; (4) to review social funds and investment in industry and social matters; and (5) to hold officials, including the party apparatus, accountable for their decisions. Although functionaries of party and government might find these proposals objectionable, Gorbachev himself would hardly raise any protest.

The Cultural Commission, headed by the writer Vytautas Bubnys, proposed: (1) to mobilize the intellectuals' unions in support of saving Lithuania's cultural heritage; (2) to remove the "blank spots" in Lithuania's cultural heritage; (3) to establish social control of the maintenance of cultural monuments; and (4) to pursue closer cooperation with the emigration in cultural matters. The emphasis on cooperation with the emigration, in the sense of there being one unified Lithuanian culture throughout the world, found considerable resonance in Lithuanian affairs in the next six months.

Film Director Arunas Zebriunas headed the Commission on National Relations, focusing on: (1) returning Lithuania's national history to the people and publishing significant documents; (2) recognizing Lithuanian as the official language of the republic; (3) resolving the problems of minorities in Lithuania; and (4) establish-

ing Lithuanian schools outside the boundaries of the republic. In the months to come, the so-called national question would require that they consider the demands of the other national groups in Lithuania but, at this point, Sajudis leaders seemed concerned only with the demands of their own people.

Academician Antanas Buracas, as head of the Economic Commission, called for: (1) economic and political self-sufficiency for Soviet Lithuania; (2) price reform; (3) limitation on interrepublic migration; (4) more rational and ecologically safe management of natural resources; and (5) development of trade. Kazimiera Prunskiene, an economist, added a call for republican khozraschet, meaning that the Lithuanian economy should produce a "profit" for the republic. The relationships between republican khozraschet and republican economic self-sufficiency would be at best confused in the months to come, but the term "self-sufficiency," samostoiatel'nost' in Russian or savarankiskumas in Lithuanian, was deliberately chosen to avoid the political connotations of "autonomy" or even "independence." The question of who should control Lithuania's economy would arouse great debate in the coming months.

Since there was an acknowledged shortage of "socially active lawyers" in the group, Vytautas Tomkus, a journalist, spoke on behalf of the Legal Commission, and the problems he identified included: (1) duplication of effort between the republican and all-union Justice Ministries; (2) the inability of Lithuanian laws to differ from all-union laws; (3) the "strong economic mafia" operating in Lithuania; (4) the government's overreaction to foreign propaganda and demonstrations such as those marking February 16; and (5) the de facto prohibi-

tion of demonstrations by the Vilnius city Executive Committee. These demands emphasized one of Gorbachev's own desiderata, namely the establishment of a state of laws in which open legislation, not the will of administrators carrying out secret directives, provided the norms of social and political behavior.

Speaking for the Ecological Commission, Zigmas Vaisvila pointed to pollution as the major problem and identified as the "hottest points" for the Sajudis's program: (1) regular information about water, air, and land pollution; (2) observing the complex plan for preserving nature adopted by the government two years before; (3) support for the Zemyna club's efforts to pursue ecological questions. Ecological concerns quickly became one of the strongest rallying points around which Sajudis could collect support.

Vaisvila uncovered the "hottest" point of all when he inaugurated critical discussion of the Ignalina nuclear power plant near the city of Snieckus with his article in Komjaunimo tiesa on June 9, pointing out problems at the plant.^[6] Lithuanians reacted strongly, raising questions about the site that had never been discussed publicly before, the major one concerning the safety of this plant that had been built on the model of Chernobyl. With people using such strong words as "genocide," the Lithuanian government soon found common ground with its citizens, and it posed its own questions to Moscow.

"Ignalina" and "Snieckus" also became code words for the nationality problem in Lithuania. The vast majority of the people associated with the nuclear plant were Russians. A Russian woman from Snieckus told me that she and her friends relied on Moscow for their cultural life — television and newspapers — and that if

one wanted to read Sovetskaia Litva, the Russian-language newspaper of the Lithuanian Central Committee, one would have to subscribe to it since it did not usually appear on the newsstands. The isolation of Snieckus and Ignalina from the mainstream of Lithuanian cultural life intensified the conflict over the plant.

Imbrasas, who was at this point still an observer, expressed satisfaction with the group's readiness to work with official agencies, but he declined to comment any further on the proposed activities. The group in turn indicated that it was ready to challenge the party: Algirdas Kauspedas, an architect and leader of the Antis rock group, repeated popular objections to the makeup of Lithuania's delegation to the Nineteenth Party Conference, and he proposed that Sajudis organize a public meeting with the delegates. Others suggested that the delegates be identified as "designated" representatives rather than "elected."^[7]

Notably absent from the Sajudis program as tentatively defined at this point was any political program. Although Sajudis had come into being in no small way as a result of hostile reactions to the naming of delegates to the Nineteenth Party Conference, the Initiative Group produced no program for intra-party democracy, much less a multiparty system. Sajudis spokespersons, insofar as anyone dared to speak for the entire group, insisted that the "movement" was just that, a commonly agreed sense of reform without any intention of becoming a permanent organization, much less a political party. Speakers repeatedly insisted that once the party had unreservedly dedicated itself to perestroika, the "movement" would dissolve itself. Time was to show, however, that there were elements in Sajudis dreaming of becoming a political force.

Another major area of Lithuanian life ignored in Sajudis's program was religion and, more specifically, the role of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. Despite the Stalinists' best efforts, the church had survived the bitter postwar years, and with the publication of the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, begun in 1972, believers had established the church's position as the major institutional alternative to Soviet rule. Over the years I had even heard Lithuanian professors of atheism complain of their difficulties in battling the church, although government officials wielded close control over appointments and transfers of church officials. The regime's pressures for atheistic education, combined with its policies encouraging assimilation, gave the church a special mission as a repository of Lithuanian national feeling under Soviet rule.

The church had entered a new era in 1988 with the decision of Pope John Paul II to name the bishop of Kaisedorys, Vincentas Sladkevicius, first the head of the Lithuanian Council of Bishops and then a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Under his direction were 686 Catholic priests, a number insufficient to handle the needs of the 630 functioning Catholic churches in Lithuania. The 137 seminarians in Kaunas had produced 27 new priests in their most recent graduating class. According to church figures for 1987, 32 percent of the babies born in Lithuania had been baptized, and 35 percent of the dead had been buried with religious rites, while 18 percent of the marriages in Lithuania had been celebrated in churches.^[8] Sladkevicius had dared to challenge the government on more than one occasion in the past, and now he acted even more firmly. As he told me in October, "After I became a cardinal, I became bolder."

The intellectuals who made up the Initiative Group

of Sajudis were the products of an educational system that had aggressively disqualified religious believers from intellectual professions and pursuits. Although some members of the group had maintained some religious convictions, on the whole Sajudis and the Catholic Church each had its own distinctive program. The church would not be ready to tie its fate to a temporal grouping of intellectuals, and in turn the intellectuals wanted genuine freedom of conscience as promised in the Soviet constitution. In the summer of 1988 they were going the same general direction but by different paths.^[9]

Yet another force in the land with which Sajudis would have to reckon was the Lithuanian Freedom League (Lietuvos laisves lyga, or LFL), a group of dissenters demanding Lithuania's independence whom the authorities insisted on calling "extremists." The league first announced its existence in May, declaring that it had been operating since 1978 as an underground organization with two tasks: "to raise Lithuanian national consciousness and to develop the idea of an independent Lithuania."^[10] On July 3, after Sajudis had been functioning for a month, the members of the league publicly identified themselves and issued their program. To no one's surprise, the league's council included the organizers of past demonstrations: Terleckas, Cidzikas, Bogusis, and Sadunaite.

As published, the league's program differed little from the announced aims of Sajudis. It demanded the principle of Lithuanian citizenship, the establishment of Lithuanian as the official language of the republic, and Lithuania's right to maintain its own army. Its cultural program demanded greater attention to Lithuanian history and permission for religious instruction in

schools. The group called for the establishment of "historical truth" about the events of 1918-1919 and 1939-1940 in Lithuania, condemnation of the internal and foreign policy of Stalinism, and the full rehabilitation of all persons deported from 1940 to 1953 as a result of "Stalinist genocide in Lithuania." Its economic program called for a separate republican currency and restrictions on migration from other Union republics. Its "human rights" section demanded freedom of personal convictions, freedom of speech, abolition of internal passports, full right of emigration, and the release of all political prisoners. Above all, the league wanted to make clear its dedication to the principle of Lithuanian independence, "a free Lithuania in a confederation of European nations." The realization of the various planks in its program, it declared, "will create the bases to restore Lithuania's sovereignty and independence."^[11]

Among the league's leaders Terleckas and Sadunaite enjoyed a special renown at this point for having been part of a group of prominent Soviet dissidents with whom U.S. President Ronald Reagan had met during his visit to Moscow in late May. Tiesa had criticized that meeting, whereas emigres and dissidents welcomed it. Ironically, Terleckas and Sadunaite were rather dissatisfied with it because its highly structured format gave them no opportunity to make their own case.^[12]

The official establishment took note of the Freedom League at the beginning of August, calling it a throwback to the dreams of liberation at the end of World War II. Claiming again that "radio voices" had evoked the league, Tiesa pointed out that the group wanted to work with Sajudis; the authorities thereby apparently hoped to compromise both groups.^[13] Although Tiesa 's attack would later be frequently cited as a comprehen-

sive exposé of the league, it in fact offered little real information about the group or its program.

The members of the Initiative Group were themselves somewhat divided in their attitudes toward the Freedom League. The league's program essentially coincided with the aims of Sajudis, but one could not be too sure what the league's hidden agenda might include; many members of the Initiative Group considered the league too "nationalist," and some even referred to it as "extremist." Some other Sajudis members, however, actually welcomed the league as a sort of "finger of God," offering a position on the left that made it easier to occupy a centrist position. Several members of the Initiative Group undertook to establish contact with the new group, and for their efforts they discovered that they had "tails": they were being followed by Saugumas officials.^[14]

Supporters of the league, especially in the emigration, viewed Sajudis as too cautious, although they eventually gave it credit for helping "the Lithuanian creative intelligentsia to recover its voice and its self-respect."^[15] Sajudis and the league, they acknowledged, had put forth similar programs, but the league, they insisted, wanted an independent Lithuania and would not put up with the diplomacy and pussy-footing of the Sajudis intellectuals, who were in fact a part of the system. The league looked for confrontation: to ask the government for permission to hold a rally, declared Terleckas on one occasion, "would betray all our principles. They kick us, hit us and keep us under house arrest. That's why we don't ask for permission."^[16]

Some league supporters, moreover, considered Sajudis cool or even unfriendly to the Catholic Church and other fundamental Lithuanian traditions; the league, by

way of contrast, tried to identify itself with the church. Sadunaite, for one, tended to be identified as a Catholic rather than as a political dissenter.^[17] Church officials, including Cardinal Sladkevicius, however, shied away from tying their institution's fortunes to any passing political movement, especially after the government showed increasing signs of willingness to deal directly with church officials.^[18] Both the league and the church, of course, found their work facilitated by Sajudis's activity.

Although Sajudis gradually united people of all vocations in Lithuania, intellectuals provided the leadership of the movement, and about half the Initiative Group, seventeen, were party members. The party members justified their participation with the thought that they wanted to encourage the party leadership to accept the imperatives of perestroika, and they provided important channels for communication with the authorities in Lithuania. To be sure, when Sajudis members began to rise in the party hierarchy, a new set of problems would surface, but this situation was as yet far in the future. For the moment, the party members in the group had to defend their activity from higher-ups in the party itself.

Other subgroups within the Initiative Group gave Sajudis special entries into public life. Writers such as Bubnys and Petkevicius, the opera singer Vaclovas Daunoras, and the poet Sigitas Geda all gave the movement considerable public visibility; academicians Antanas Buracas and Raimundas Rajeckas, together with other personnel of the Academy of Sciences, gave it political clout; and younger members of the group such as the philosopher Juozaitis and the economist Medalinskas gave it youthful energy.

Notably absent in the membership of the Initiative Group were historians. One was elected, Inge Luksaite, a specialist in Lithuanian cultural history, but she immediately resigned saying that she had simply too much work to do justice to such a responsible task. Her resignation left the Steering Committee with just two women and no historians.

Although some observers bemoaned the absence of workers in the Initiative Group, its members were unabashed by their occupations. Vytautas Petkevicius was particularly outspoken on this account, insisting that one of the problems of the Lithuanian Communist Party itself was its past discrimination against intellectuals in its membership and leadership. Intellectuals, he argued, "must organize government and lead society. We know well where Lenin's romantic statement `Any cook can administer the state' has led us."^[19]

Petkevicius was one of the Initiative Group's most visible and controversial figures. Frequently said to be a former "defender of the people," liaudies gynejas or stribas, depending on one's point of view, he was a popular novelist whom some now considered the conscience of the establishment. Others, however, refused to forgive his past. Asserting that Lithuania's future was inconceivable outside the Soviet Union, Petkevicius held a prominent position in Sajudis's public activities through the summer and fall although, as its program became more demanding, he tended to hold back.^[20]

Whatever the visibility of the older members of the Initiative Group, it was the youth who carried Sajudis's message through Lithuania in June and July. For many members of the older generation, Lithuanian youth had in fact seemed apathetic; rejecting the formal history in school and also rejecting the oral history of their elders,

they seemed on the whole to have little national consciousness. The younger section of the Initiative Group, however, spoke the requisite language for communication. From June 20 to July 2 a group of bicyclists toured the republic, organized by the Zemyna society with the support of the Central Committee of the Komjaunimas, the Communist Youth League. Their effort, covering nine hundred kilometers and twenty-four cities, began as an ecological crusade aimed at making the people aware of problems of the environment but, as local officials hindered their efforts, they became more political. In Snieckus they experienced an ugly confrontation with the Russians. Nevertheless they carried Sajudis's name throughout the republic.^[21]

The Initiative Group also decided that it was necessary to publish a newsletter. In the words of Algimantas Cekuolis, the editor of Gimtasis krastas, the group had to establish a "forum as a means of mass information" against "a wave of reactionary opposition" to Sajudis. The result was Sajudzio zinios (Sajudis News), printed in a small format that did not require submission of copy to Glavlit, the state censorship. Beginning with the third issue, dated June 28, the publication adopted a formal masthead: Sajudzio zinios: Lietuvos persitvarkymosajudzio leidinys (Sajudis News: Publication of the Movement for Perestroika in Lithuania). The first issues carried names of writers but designated no editor. No. 16 of August 2 identified Gintaras Songaila (no relation to the party secretary) as the editor but, beginning with no. 18 of August 8, Arvydas Juozaitis officially became editor. The publication was distributed free, and readers were urged to pass the copies on when finished with them.

At its birth Sajudis seemed an oddity; legally it

amounted to little more than the "unofficial" associations out of which it had grown. The press paid little attention to it; only Gimtasis krastas and Vakarines naujienos (Evening News), the daily organ of the Vilnius party committee and of the Vilnius city council, published the list of members of the Initiative Group. Party officials apparently considered it a nuisance that would perhaps disappear if one isolated it. During the first two months of its existence, the group found itself engaged first of all in a struggle for survival, identity, and recognition.