Visit to the Lithuanian
Parliament (Seimas)
22 years later

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry issued primitive passes for us,
and we managed to get through a long maze of controls,
barbed wire, concrete blocks and barricades that surrounded
the Lithuanian Parliament those January days in 1991. We got
the opportunity to visit this brave Parliament President,
Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, in his office. Here he
lived day and night for weeks while the Soviets
surrounded the building with troops and tanks.

Text and photos: Aage Myhre, Editor-in-Chief
aage.myhre@VilNews.com

This year I marked 13 January in the Lithuanian Parliament Building, 22 years after I in 1991 stood here in this building, along with Professor Landsbergis and looked out the window at the bonfires, barricades and the huge crowd of unarmed people who had gathered to protect their president and the country's future as a free nation.

I came here today with a group of young Lithuanians, most of them so young that they do not have their own memories of what happened here 22 years ago. Yet the memories of the sad events in January 1991 are very much alive and present for them. They want to remember that freedom and independence is not something you can take for granted, and they want to pursue a political career. They are Lithuania's future politicians. They are the future of young, well-educated, smart leaders that this country a few years ago could only dream about.

I walked around with them in the Parliament this 13th January. I saw their interests, and their pride in belonging to a great nation like this.

I also saw large photographs on the walls, with Lithuania's parliamentary history of the interwar time and from the years after the Declaration of Independence 11 March 1990. The sadness I felt when I walked around in these corridors 22 years was gone, now I felt only joy, and optimism regarding the country's future and its political leaders for the years to soon come.

Entrance to the old part of the Parliament.

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