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Freedom Collection

Interviews with Vytautas Landsbergis

Interviewed May 16, 2024

It was a very important day — and the idea and implementation of such a manifestation. Until now it was the greatest manifestation in the world, in the longitude of 700 kilometers. And about one and a half million of people standing in a living chain and holding each other’s hands.[The “Baltic Way” was a peaceful demonstration organized on August 23, 1989, where an estimated 2 million people formed a human chain across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to protest their countries’ subjugation to the Soviet Union.]

Sometimes it is not so clear today, because the approaches of cooperation even with evil, dictatorial regimes can be seen as travailing. We are maybe in the middle of the process. And the first of September of 1989, just after the Baltic Way manifestation, the chancellor, Helmut Kohl, [Helmut Kohl (1930 – ) is a German Christian Democratic politician. He served as chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and presided over the reunification of Germany in 1990.] spoke at the Bundestag [The German Parliament].

It was his famous speech, condemning the Teufelspakt made by Hitler and Stalin, not Molotov and Ribbentrop. [Teufelspakt is German for “devil’s pact,” referring to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany that divided Central and Eastern Europe. Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop were the Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers that negotiated the treaty. Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945) led Germany’s Nazi regime between 1934 – 1945. Josef Stalin (1878 – 1953) was General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party between 1922 and 1952.]

He said Hitler and Stalin, which caused the sufferings, losses in justice to so many nations, including [the] Baltic nations. He named then. And then he should be aware after the Baltic Way manifestation. So it could not pass unnoticed by the world. That it is not political activism of some groups, being for democracy and bringing problems for some plans or the established about the new world order promoted by Mr. Gorbachev, in which on a price of diminishing or ceasing of nuclear confrontation.

The Soviet Union would be assisted by its former enemy, the democratic West assisted. And accepted, approved in its borders, including all annexations, all occupations, all conquests of that longstanding continental colonial empire, because all conquerors of all the Russia, were on the same continent, spreading around. As czars used to say, “To every sea, to reach every sea and nations were for nothing.” So there were quite a lot of what we called illusionists in the Western political elite. Illusionists about Soviet Union, about a possible future of cooperation, accepting this empire in a more softer [form].

We should know to break through that cautiousness and limited mind about a real and possible democratic future for all the nations, not for themselves only. And it was maybe the historic overall of liberation movements in central Europe. But also in the Baltic states, because after the liberation of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and East Germany [was] even allowed to join with [West] Germany. And the process could stop on the borders of Soviet Union. And what about us? Then we had to stand up and to say, “Hey, gentlemen. It´s not all yet.” And this way, we served not all for ourselves only, but for all [the] nations of [the] Soviet Union.

The window was open. If Baltics may do it, go openly claiming that they are nations which want to be democratic nations in Europe, why not Ukraine? Why not the Caucasus? Why not Moldova?