News

In the article authors cite the work of Guntis Šmidchens, the Kazickas Family Foundation Endowed Professor in Baltic Studies at the University of Washington.

Why Washington hesitated to support Lithuania's independence 31 years ago – opinion

by Bradley Woodworth and Matthew Schmidt

LRT (Lithuanian National Radio and Television)

2021.03.11

Link to the article in LRT English

Thirty-one years ago, on March 11, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania declared independence. As inevitable as it seems today, the United States was very far from supporting this outcome.

Moscow said the action was meaningless, and the administration of George H W Bush worried it could trigger the collapse of what it saw as a new international order made possible with Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm of the USSR.

In March 1990, Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors likewise finally held free elections to their republic-level Supreme Soviets. A year later, on March 3, 1991, the Estonian and Latvian SSRs held referenda asking permanent residents if they were in favor of the “reestablishment” of independence and statehood as the Republic of Estonia and the Republic of Latvia.

Formally, American policy had supported this language, which reflected the official US position that membership in the Soviet Union had been imposed illegally on the Baltic countries. Yet despite this formal position, the US had initially been cautious in its approach to the region after 1989, engaging in what Latvian historian Una Bergmane calls the “politics of uncertainty”, in her forthcoming book by the same name (Politics of Uncertainty: The US, the Baltic Question and the Collapse of the USSR).

With German unification proceeding, Western countries – especially the United States – were worried about weakening Gorbachev, who had opened the door to what Richard Boucher, the US spokesperson for the Department of State at the time, said was a wide-spread belief in a “brave new world of doing things together” with the reformist in the Kremlin.

Throughout 1990, the American press was divided on whether the country should champion Lithuanian independence or stay silent and thus presumably help Gorbachev protect his position against Soviet hardliners.

Members of Congress, pressured by the Baltic diasporas, pushed the Bush administration to support Lithuanian independence. But as Bergmane shows, the administration was willing to refrain from confronting Moscow over Lithuania – as long as there was no violence. When violence did erupt in January 1991, it was, as Boucher noted, “the first example that [the brave new world] wasn’t true”.

For us, Bradley Woodworth and Matthew Schmidt, the first signal that the West might well abandon Lithuania came with a phone call in January. It was pro-forma. A warning.

It was January 1991 and a few days earlier Soviet troops killed 14 protesters outside of the Vilnius TV tower and the Radio and Television Committee building. Over 100 others would be injured that day as well and there would be violence in the neighbouring Latvian capital of Riga as well.

Bradley and his wife Cherie were students in Tallinn, caught in one of the final gasps of violence that attended the collapse of the Soviet Union. Would the embassy force them to leave their studies? They didn’t know.

But the voice on the phone didn’t mention the shootings, or the precarious state of politics stemming from the independence movements that had been newly reawakened by the prospect of a referendum throughout the entire Soviet Union.

Yes, the embassy was calling because it was concerned about the safety of Americans abroad. But not because of Soviet politics. The worried call from the embassy concerned events over 6,000km to the south, in Kuwait.

The American government had launched Operation Desert Storm on the 17th of that month.

The previous September, President Bush had declared the war the beginning of a “New World Order”. At stake was not “just one small country”, but a bright, “big idea” about the as-yet-not-quite post-Soviet world. But the empire hadn’t quit the fight yet. Moscow, or maybe just some subset of the Soviet government, wanted to hold on to a semblance of the old world order.

Washington hedged. Bush declared the crackdown unjust and he reaffirmed the goal of a peaceful process of reform. But he was careful not to tarnish Gorbachev with the responsibility for the shootings, saying he admired “the Soviet leaders who chose that path [of non-violent reform]”, implying that maybe the order to fire came from hardliners. It had not.

And though the Secretary General had approved the use of force, he quickly grew squeamish from the television images of the violence at the Vilnius television tower and told his forces to avoid a similar outcome at later protests. In the course of events to follow, this was a major victory for the independence movement and a fitting legacy for its martyrs.

In the deserts to the south there was no squeamishness. As Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, noted in a call with Gorbachev, there had already been some 80,000 combat sorties flown in a little over a month. What was a horror in, as he said, “a country as small as Iraq [here meant mostly to mean Kuwait, which Iraq regarded as its territory]” was an astonishing proof of the American “revolution in military affairs”.

That is, the Gulf War was understood as having proved the efficacy of the new Yankee approach to war: high-tech, high-speed, low casualty. Iraq was a smashing debut for one of the main tools in building the new world order.

A year later, Madeline Albright, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, would famously scream at General Colin Powell, the top military leader during the Gulf War, “what's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it [to intervene in Bosnia]”.

The revolution of the American military stood foremost in the minds of US leaders, the devolution of its arch rival both an afterthought and an opportunity.

But on that frigid January night in 1991, as Lithuanians gathered around the Vilnius TV tower, Americans’ attention was focused not on Soviet tanks, but on the cold steel of Powell’s military forces.

Gorbachev, perhaps now nervous before the Americans over the deaths in the Baltic, is desperate to prevent more bloodshed, as he tells Aziz in a late night phone call on February 23. He pushes to be the one to broker the end to the war in the Gulf. Aziz, however, sizes up another desire in Gorbachev as well: to keep himself and the Soviet Union relevant.

“We do not view the USSR as a mediator or as an intermediary between us and the Americans,” he teases. “But as an effective power with principled positions.”

“You have correctly assessed our role,” replies the Secretary General. He adds, in reference to holding firm against Lithuania’s independence, that “some are counting on the fact that, due to internal difficulties, the Soviet Union may give in to pressure, and deviate from principles. But that won't happen.”

In another call that day as part of his campaign to end the war, Gorbachev speaks with Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister, who laments: “Unfortunately, in the mass media of many countries a situation has emerged where the truth does not count. There are literally waves of disinformation.”

Gorbachev concurs, “It is true, they [the media] have a great potential in the sphere of information. We see it in the context of the conflict that we experienced in Lithuania. It had not only internal, but also external causes […].” Thus, the events of January 13 become a passive event experienced by him, not the carrying out of an action he actively approved.

Through the spring and summer of 1991, the Bush administration demonstrated a cautious acknowledgement of elected, non-Soviet governments in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia while taking care not to be seen as confronting Moscow.

In Washington in May to attend a meeting of the Helsinki Commission in the US Congress, head of Lithuania’s independence movement Vytautas Landsbergis, Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis of Latvia and Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar of Estonia met briefly in the White House with President Bush. The language of the White House press release after the event called for “fair and constructive negotiations [as] the only way to resolve the complex problems between Moscow and the Baltic governments”.

As late as July, the US was working to improve trade with the USSR through granting it Most Favored Nation trading status, while holding out the possibility of increased contact directly with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The United States wanted it both ways – to support Gorbachev and at least be seen as supporting the Balts. This was the line that Bush scrupulously held to in his final visit to Moscow at the end of July – just before proceeding to Kyiv, where he warned Ukrainians against “local despotism”.

“Americans,” said Bush, “will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” But this was a non-existent middle ground.

For Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, events throughout 1991 were playing out on a level completely different than they were for Gorbachev and Bush. In the Baltics, the two superpowers believed they were looking at something small.

For the people in their homelands, life was increasing, getting bigger, more momentous. They may not have had tanks or jets, but they did have their own sense of who they were and who they wanted to be. They were ready to sacrifice in order to redeem the independence taken from them so many years before. Even under attack on the night of January 13, Lithuanians were committed to a non-violent revolution – a drive for independence that together with that of the Latvians and Estonians was the Singing Revolution:

Dear son, the Fatherland calls you,
Dear son, the Fatherland calls you,
Lithuania will be free again.
Lithuania will be free again.

But if some day I must depart
From this dear country that I love,
Girl, don’t you mourn for me, because
I will return to you again.
– Guntis Šmidchens, The Power of Song

In his study The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution, folklorist Guntis Šmidchens recounts the events of that night: “The pavement shuddered under a roar of engines and tank treads. Gunshots and screams filled the dark. The song morphed into a rhythmic chant, ‘Lie-tu-va! Lie-tu-va! Lie-tu-va!’”

Later that day, Supreme Council Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis spoke to people gathered around the Seimas, encouraging Lithuanians to hold back their anger, to not strike back: “Song has helped us, it has helped us for hundreds of years,” he said. “Let’s sing now, let’s sing sacred hymns, only let’s not call each other names, let’s not curse and let’s not get into fights […] Let’s be what we ought to be, and our Lithuania will be bright and happy! Let’s ignore the shooting, let’s sing!” Like a Greek god, January begat March.

Thirty years later, America experienced a revolution of sorts on January 6 when rioting protestors stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC, where members of Congress were certifying the election of Joe Biden as president. But the contours of this protest make analogies with Lithuania’s confusing, even tortured.

Americans are even split on what to call it. Was it an insurrection against the government? This would weirdly put American liberals in the position of Gorbachev, who saw the Baltic Singing Revolution as an illegitimate form of protest.

Was it a glorious retaking of an independence stolen by an authoritarian regime through an illegitimate election? This is the view of the rioters/insurrectionists. They believe they were forced to use violence to overturn an equally illegitimate election.

So now we Americans, too, exist in the politics of uncertainty.

Maybe Tariq Aziz, of all people, is right. There is no such thing as just one small country. History passes through even small countries in big ways. And big countries like the United States can learn much from the experiences of smaller ones.

In our own uncertain times, the best thing we can do is be what we ought to be – to be our most true, humane selves. As our great poet Walt Whitman said, to sing the song of ourselves. Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians showed us the way.

Matthew Schmidt is Associate Professor of National Security and Political Science at the University of New Haven (Connecticut, USA), where he also is Director of the International Affairs programme. He formerly taught strategic planning at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies.

Bradley Woodworth is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Haven and Coordinator of Baltic Studies at Yale University. In 1990 and 1991 he worked as a journalist for the newspapers The Estonian Independent and Baltic Independent, published in Tallinn.

Photo above: January 1991 events / P. Lileikis photo