Welcome!

I’m so glad to see your interest in the dissident movement! You might think it’s a thing of the past, but it’s not. It created a foundation for our constant care for human rights that remains important to this day. Anyways, let’s start from the beginning.

You probably already know that after the First World War, during the interwar period, Lithuania was a free and independent state, with all the gears of a functioning country. However, in August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact, better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as well as its Secret Additional Protocol, dividing Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Originally, Lithuania was part of the German sphere, but when the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939 and took over the Soviet-controlled Lublin and eastern Warsaw, the Soviet Union was compensated for this loss by acquiring Lithuania into its sphere of influence. This Secret Additional Protocol of Lithuania’s transfer provided the justification for the Soviet Union to occupy our country on June 15, 1940, thus establishing the Lithuanian SSR.

Within the first year of this occupation, the Soviets caused tremendous losses for us. The “Sovietization” of existing political, religious, and even cultural policies destroyed the economy and led to the imprisonment of thousands of political activists.

Then, on June 22nd, 1941, the Nazis invaded the Lithuanian SSR.

Their rapid advancement was due, in no small part, to us. Lithuanians gave the Germans help because we saw their military as partners who would eventually help us re-establish our own independence. Huge mistake on our part. We found ourselves occupied by the Nazis and our thriving, prosperous Jewish community was almost completely liquidated in the Holocaust. In 1944, as part of the Baltic Offensive, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania and reinstated all of the repressive laws and policies aimed, once again, at Sovietizing Lithuanian culture and our sense of nationality as much as possible. Their goal was to create an obedient, Soviet-worshiping nation, exiling and deporting the potentially rebellious part of the population to Siberia. Armed resistance by the so-called “forest brothers,” our partisans, gave a valiant effort, but within 9 years or so, it was mostly over, leaving over 30 000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters dead.

Nevertheless, as the years of Lithuanian occupation continued, us dissidents - peaceful activists who stood against human and civil rights abuses - started finding ways to resist the oppressive Soviet policies.

Here in Lithuania, each year our dissident movement grew stronger. The religious community prepared the “Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania,” which recorded numerous political and human rights abuses and became the longest lasting underground publication. Various underground writers and publishers created anti-propaganda and pro-independence publications, known as “samizdat,” most of which were self-printed. Through these and other means, Lithuanian dissidents networked with dissidents from other parts of the Soviet Union and established connections in the Western world, trying to find a unified way to voice, loudly, the abuses going on in the USSR. Detentions, interrogations and searches by the KGB were common. Many dissidents throughout the USSR were kept in mental institutions as a result of “sluggish schizophrenia,” an invented disease created by Moscow professor Andrei Snezhnevsky, who used it as a tool to lock up dissidents indefinitely. But, because we were not alone, we persisted.

But as I said, you probably already knew all that. But now, let me show you some places, and introduce you to some friendly faces. I’m sure you’ll want to join us once you see how we work, where we meet, and whom we share this path with. Let’s meet at the Monument to Adomas Mickevičius.

First stop: Monument to Adomas Mickevičius, Adomo Mickevičiaus skveras, Vilnius