Vytautas Landsbergis. The Sąjūdis uprising and the revolution of the Baltic Way

‘The thirtieth anniversary of the Baltic Way is a good opportunity to stop and think. Perhaps to also place some punctuation. Sąjūdis, for change in Lithuania, was an uprising. Non-violent and thus victorious.

After prior uprisings in Lithuania – the June Uprising, the LLKS, that of freedom of conscience, a different one matured and erupted universally in 1988. For freedom. For everyone’s freedom, even the conquerors’.

It took just a year and a half for the risen up Lithuania too, on March 11, breach the spiked barriers, which had separated it from the free world. Breach not only for itself.

A big peaceful revolution emerged against injustice, lies and violence and the Baltic Way became its culmination.

We will go and none will stop us! From Vilnius to Tallinn, that’s the project because we held one another’s hands. Three uprisings came to terms and they had a volunteer network of three countries. We have the support of Russia’s democrats, Ukrainian and Caucasian pro-independence figures, the Moldavians and Belarussians are awakening!

A wave of freedom swept across Central Europe, shaking off the usurper commune imposed by the Kremlin and Lithuania is an inseparable link in the chain of freeing Central Europe. The Baltic Way is great, far greater than just three nations at the shores of our sea.

The Baltic Way is a great and unique manifestation of that time and a breakthrough into future Europe, whole and free.

A guideline in the path of humanity, a guideline to life, if only humanity wishes to live,’ Professor Vytautas Landsbertis wrote.

Landsbergis asks Amazon to stop the sale of Soviet-themed goods

Landsbergis posted an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Facebook on the eve of the 80th anniversary of a Nazi-Soviet pact that paved the way for the Soviet occupation of the three Baltic countries. 

“Your creation Amazon goes distributing some consumer goods with symbols of the Communist tyranny USSR — a collaborator in war crimes and those of genocide with Hitler. Concretely, these are ‘sickle and hammer’, depicted on sofa-cushions and children’s T-shirts,” he said in the letter on 22 August.

“I suppose, you personally could be unaware of such business, thus, please, note my appeal and take measures.”

“The day August 23, known as the beginning of the murderous WWII because of the criminal Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939, 80 years ago, would be a most appropriate moment to stop such indirect ‘education’.”

“While cruelty is growing across our planet, nobody should stay indifferent even to ‘funny’ symbols.”