Anti-Soviet President Gorbachev Caricatured Protest Sign During Soviet Armed Crackdown on Independence-Bent Baltic SSR

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Anti-Soviet President Gorbachev Caricatured Protest Sign During Soviet Armed Crackdown on Independence-Bent Baltic SSR

Photograph

By: Igor Gavrilov

Date: 1991

Source: Photo by Igor Gavrilov/ Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images.

About the Photographer: Igor Gavrilov is a Russian photographer and one of the most noted and prolific chroniclers of the breakup of the USSR. This photograph is part of the collection at Getty Images, a worldwide provider of visual content materials to such communications groups as advertisers, broadcasters, designers, magazines, new media organizations, newspapers, and producers.

INTRODUCTION

Following the death of Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko in February 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elevated to General Secretary of the Communist Party and leader of the USSR. Following years of economic stagnation, Gorbachev immediately set about revitalizing the USSR with a series of reforms. Its central tenets were glasnost ("Change" or "openness), perestroika ("reconstruction") and uskoreniye ("acceleration") which were launched at the Communist Party's 27th Congress in February 1986.

The most profound impact for those living within the USSR would be the introduction of glasnost. This gave new and comparatively wide-ranging freedoms, particularly greater freedom of speech, which had long been suppressed by the Soviet government. The press became far less controlled and there was an amnesty for thousands of political prisoners and dissidents. Gorbachev also called for democracy within the parameters of the Soviet state and established a limited parliament—the Congress of People's Deputies—with elections in March and April 1989.

The new atmosphere created by the Soviet President encouraged the non-Russians of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to exert their own long-suppressed national identities. Initially this was done in small and ostensibly trifling ways: for instance, in December 1987 the Estonian Heritage Society was founded, and the following year its banned pre-war flag started appearing once more. Emboldened by such moves, nationalism quickly re-emerged in these three states.

It was Lithuania that led the initially tentative moves to break from Moscow. In November 1988, a law making Lithuania the official language of the Soviet republic and restoring its pre-war flag and national anthem was passed. This gave impetus to a nationalist people's front, called Sajudis, which began to articulate an increasingly vocal political voice for its long-suppressed people.

On May 18, 1989, the Supreme Soviet in Vilnius declared economic and political sovereignty for Lithuania. On August 23, 1989, around two million people formed a chain about 370 miles (600 kilometers) long across the three Baltic states to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which had effectively doomed the three countries to an era of Soviet domination. This was followed in December by the abolition of the Soviet Communist Party (CSPU) authority in Lithuania and permission for non-communist political parties to be established. Even set against the backdrop of revolution across eastern Europe, this was a staggering development and it made Lithuania the first Soviet republic to establish a multi-party democracy and discard years of adherence to Marxist-Leninism.

Moscow, caught unaware as its Eastern European client states collapsed like dominoes, was unsure how to proceed. It had countenanced economic independence in the summer of 1989 but seemed unprepared to concede political power. At the same time the three Baltic states continued to test the limits of their newfound national confidence. On March 11, 1989, the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet renamed itself the Supreme Council and declared independence as the Republic of Lithuania. It was followed by Estonia on March 30 and Latvia on July 28. (This would nevertheless not be widely recognized by other countries for a further eighteen months).

For Moscow this was a step too far. That summer it placed a fuel embargo on Lithuania, forcing it to "suspend" its independence. This merely exacerbated tensions between the republic and Moscow and failed to silence its people, who spoke even louder for freedom from Soviet rule.

PRIMARY SOURCE

ANTI-SOVIET PRESIDENT GORBACHEV CARICATURED PROTEST SIGN DURING SOVIET ARMED CRACKDOWN ON INDEPENDENCE-BENT BALTIC SSR

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

In January 1991, the world watched as the USSR sent troops into Vilnius in an apparent attempt to end the move toward secession. The show of strength, though less violently articulated, had echoes of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. President Mikhail Gorbachev claimed to be the recipient of "thousands" of telegrams demanding presidential rule be reapplied in Lithuania; an exact echo of Leonid Brezhnev's response to the Prague Spring twenty-three years earlier. The main flashpoint came on the night of January 13, when Soviet troops fired upon a television center in Vilnius, killing thirteen unarmed protesters.

However, the USSR was not in a similar position in 1991 and was beset by internal differences. Press censorship had largely been lifted in the USSR and widely denounced the attack on the Lithuanian protesters. Rival politicians to Gorbachev, such as Boris Yeltsin, used the events to attack the Soviet President and gain political leverage. Glasnost had seemingly spun out of the Kremlin's control.

The Lithuanians responded by organizing a referendum in which nine out of ten backed secession. Iceland became the first country to recognize Lithuanian independence in February 1991, and Sweden opened an embassy there shortly thereafter.

Gorbachev, for his part, drew up a new response to the growing secession agitation not just in the Baltics, but throughout the USSR. He drew up a new union treaty, designed to create a voluntary federation within the parameters of the USSR. This move would have effectively dissolved the USSR and was strongly opposed by many Communist Party hardliners in Moscow. In August 1991 they tried to oust Gorbachev in a coup d'etat. Although this collapsed within days and Gorbachev returned to power, it crushed the Soviet leader's hopes that the union could be held together. The following month Moscow recognized the Baltic states' independence and on September 17, 1991, they joined the United Nations. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President and the USSR was dissolved.

Full independence was nevertheless replete with numerous complexities attributable to the interwoven nature of Soviet economics and the presence of Red Army troops and ethnic Russians on Baltic soil. However, Lithuania's path to independence was replete with less antagonism than in its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia. Lithuania, where Russians and Byelorussians formed just twelve percent of the population, was not as threatened by the minority problem as were Estonia and Latvia. As such, the citizenship laws of post-independence Lithuania were relatively generous to its minorities and allowed for a relatively smooth transition from Soviet rule. By contrast, Estonia's minority was a third of its population and Latvia's two-fifths. The post-independence citizenship laws in these two countries were based around race and language, were severely prejudiced against those associated with the old regime and socially and politically disenfranchised non-ethnic Latvians and Estonians. Invariably they provoked outrage in Russia (and also the European Union, which held back aid until they were revised) and were a severe impediment to successfully negotiating full secession, particularly over the withdrawal of Red Army troops and border crossings. A complete divorce with the old regime was agreed later and less amicably than had been the case in Lithuania.