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The Lithuanian Concept of Statehood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Alfred Senn  and
Violeta Motulaite
Alfred Senn
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Violeta Motulaite
Affiliation:
University of Vilnius
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Extract

In the spring of 1990, Lithuanians surprised the world by first declaring their independence and then, after Moscow had declared the act illegal, refusing to retract their declaration even in the face of military occupation and economic blockade. Many foreign observers despaired of their “stubbornness,” but the Lithuanians' determination was based on their newly regained national pride as expressed in their concept of statehood (valstybingumas in Lithuanian and gosudarstvennost' in Russian). Lithania, they insisted, had a right and a historical destiny to be an independent state.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 21 , Issue 2: Special Issue - The Ex-Soviet Nationalities Without Gorbachev , Fall 1993 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. See Alfred Senn, The Emergence of Modern Lithuania (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

2. See Misiunas, Romuald J. and Taagepera, Rein, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940-1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 15–73.Google Scholar

3. Debartines lietuviu kalbos zodynas, 2d. ed., J. Kuopas, ed. (Vilnius, 1972), p. 915.Google Scholar

4. Konstitutsiia (osnovnoi zakon) Litovskoi Sovetskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Respubliki (Vilnius: Mintis, 1987) Articles 69 and 76.Google Scholar

5. See Vernon Aspaturian, The Union Republics in Soviet Diplomacy (Geneva: Drozz, 1960), pp. 102–8.Google Scholar

6. See Konstitutsiia SSSR. Politiko-pravovoi kommentarii (Moscow: Izd. polit. lit., 1982), pp. 205–6, 213.Google Scholar

7. See Ceslovas Laurinavicius, “Lietuvos Pripazinimo klausimu,” Naujas poziuris i Lietuvos istorija (Kaunas: Sviesa, 1989), pp. 105–111.Google Scholar

8. See Ceslovas Laurinavicius, “Del tarybinio valstybingumo Lietuvoje 1918-1919m.,” Naujas poziuris i Lietuvos istorija, pp. 41–59.Google Scholar

9. Pravda, August 1, 1940.Google Scholar

10. Pravda, May 28, 1940, accused Estonia of preferring economic relations with Great Britain to relations with Germany. In explaining to the Germans why the Soviet Union had sent troops into the Baltic, Soviet Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov declared “that it had become necessary to put an end to all the intrigues by which England and France had tried to sow discord and mistrust between Germany and the Soviet Union in the Baltic States.” See Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941, Raymond J. Sontag and James Stuart Beddie, eds. (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1948), p. 154.Google Scholar

11. Anna Louise Strong, an approving eyewitness, called the procedure “imposingly correct.” Lithuania's New Way (London, 1941), p. 58.Google Scholar

12. Misiunas and Taagepera, op. cit., pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

13. See Senn, Alfred Erich, Lithuania Awakening (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 162.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., passim.Google Scholar

15. See his interview published by Pravda in August 1989, reported in Tiesa, August 19, 1989.Google Scholar

16. Lithuanian text in Senn, Alfred Erich, “Su Akiraciu veliava Ispudziai is Lietuvos,” Akiraciai 3 (1990).Google Scholar

17. Konstitutsiia SSSR, p. 213.Google Scholar

18. Texts of the decisions published in The Lithuanian Review (Vilnius) 3 (March 23, 1990).Google Scholar

19. On the events of 1918-1920 see Senn, The Emergence of Modern Lithuania, passim.Google Scholar

20. See Laurinavicius, “Del tarybinio valstybingumo Lietuvoje 1918-1919m., “loc. sit.; Alfred Erich Senn, “Die bolschewistische Politik in Litauen, 1917-1919,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, 5 (1957), pp. 104–5.Google Scholar

21. Vitkauskas, Povilas, “Diskusijos nerimsta: kas isvadavo Lietuva is nacionalines priespaudos,” Komunistas, 1 (1989), pp. 46–54.Google Scholar

22. See Kux, Stephan, “Soviet Federalism,” Problems of Communism, March-April 1990, pp. 1–20; Prunskiene's statement in Pravda, January 15, 1990.Google Scholar