11-13 January 1990 -- one-half of Vilnius’ 600,000 population
demonstrate for pro-independence, to ‘welcome’ visiting
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Here with the local
communist party leader Algirdas Brazauskas.

By KR Slade

• 1980’s -- economic problems in the USSR; rise of ‘Solidarity’ in Poland
• 1985 -- Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announces new Soviet policies of ‘glastnost’ (i.e., ‘political openness’) and ‘perestroika’ (i.e., ‘political and economic restructuring’)
• 3 June 1988 -- in Vilnius, the Lithuanian ‘Sajudis’ (i.e., ‘restructuring’) movement is founded; mostly artists; 17 of the 35 initial members were members of the Communist Party
• 22 October 1988 -- first Sajudis General Congress meets: first organised opposition to the Communist Party
• March-May 1989 -- Sajudis wins legislative seats in the USSR’s highest body of Soviet administration, the Congress of People's Deputies
• February 1989 -- Sąjudis declares Lithuanian ‘independence’, and that Lithuania had been forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union
• May 1989 -- Sajudis proclaims Lithuanian ‘sovereignty’; and declares that Lithuania's incorporation into the Soviet Union was illegal
• 23 August 1989 -- the “Baltic Way”: mass protest of two million people, linking hands in a ‘human chain’, of 650 kilometres: from Vilnius (Lithuania) to Riga (Latvia) to Tallinn (Estonia)

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