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The Nature and Philosophy of Baltic Dissent: A Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

V. Stanley Vardys
V. Stanley Vardys*
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
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Extract

Opposition to Soviet rule has deep roots and traditions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Modern dissentism, however, is a response to Soviet rule different from what we call opposition in the West. In the Baltic republics it must be dated from 1968, the watershed year in the rise of human rights movement in the Soviet Union. In Estonia and Latvia, dissident activity was galvanized to life primarily by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which provoked vocal criticism. In Lithuania, reaction to Czechoslovakia's occupation coincided with the growing concern that an increasingly severe implementation of prohibitive anti-religious legislation will choke off the existence of the Catholic church. Concern for religious rights served as the primary catalyst for the reborn dissent movement in Lithuania.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 1982 , pp. 121 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities, 1982 

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References

1. Dissent is a form of opposition characteristic of the Soviet and other “party-oriented.” Communist systems. Western scholars offer diverse definitions of “dissent.” Recently, I have offered the following formulation. “A Soviet dissenter is an ideological heretic who expresses dissagreement either with the system's rules of the game or with its policies or who questions aspects both of official ideology and of the practices of political culture. The dissenter has sometimes rather limited goals and usually employs modern peaceful means to achieve his ends. He thus differs from professional revolutionary of the past as well as from the fanatical terrorist of the present, both of whom are dedicated to a total and violent overthrow of their target systems. Such ideological heretics of course are found not only in communist but also in democratic systems. A dissident in the Soviet system, however, functions in a radially different political environment. This fact largely dictates his methods and his chances of success.” See Vardys, V. Stanley, “Lithuania's Catholic Movement Reappraised,” Survey, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer, 1980), p. 51 ff. Soviet rules reduce dissent to “counterculture,” an elaborate but essential part of Soviet social system.Google Scholar

2. AS 2481 (Arkhiv samizdata), April 16, 1976. English translation in Documents from Estonia on the Violation of Human Rights (Stockholm: Estonian Information Center, 1979). References on pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

3. Further see Vardys, V. Stanley, The Catholic Church, Dissent and Nationality in Soviet Lithuania (Boulder/New York: East European Quarterly/Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 189ff.Google Scholar

4. Perspektyvos, No. 1 (1978).Google Scholar

5. See Profiles: The Helsinki Monitors. Compiled and prepared by the Staff of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Washington, D.C., December 10, 1979.Google Scholar

6. See “Ukraine, Our Hope…,” an article in the Lithuanian samizdat journal Aušra (The Dawn), January, 1980.Google Scholar

7. David Kowalewski has calculated that in 1966-71, 18.9 percent of all Soviet demonstrations occurred in the Baltic republics. A lion's share of such protest activity fell to Lithuania which accounted for 10.3 percent “of the total number of reported demonstrations conducted by various dissident groups in the USSR in 1965-78.” While recognizing that such percentages should be accepted only in a most tentative manner, one must take them into account. According to Kowalewski, 35.1 percent of Baltic demonstrations during this period were staged by the Jews seeking emigration, 53.2 percent by Lithuanians demanding religious and national rights, and the remaining 11.8 percent by Estonians (2.1), Latvians (3.2) and others protesting national oppression or clamoring for the improvement of their economic condition (6.5).Google Scholar

See Kowalewski, David, “Dissent in the Baltic Republics: Characteristics and Consequences,” Journal of Baltic Studies, Vol. X, No. 4 (1979), p. 310ff; also his “Lithuanian Progest for Human Rights in the 1970s: Characteristics and Consequences,” Lituanus, Vol. XXV, No. 2, p. 45.Google Scholar

8. Lietuvos Kataliku Bažnyčios kronika, No. 41 (1980), pp. 42–48.Google Scholar

9. Publ. in ibid., No. 33. English translation in Lituanus, Vol. XXV, No. 1 (1979), pp. 49–53.Google Scholar

10. A separate study needs to be written of violations of individual human rights in the Baltic republics. Here I can indicate only some of the major sources for obtaining information on individual cases. These include: all Baltic samizdat publications; Arkhiv samizdata publ. in the West; reports by Western correspondents in the Soviet Union, publ. in major U.S., Canadian, and European newspapers. In the English language most information is available on the situation in Lithuania. Periodic reports are in Lituanus, in the annual The Violations of Human Rights in Lithuania, which also gives translations of samizdat, in the publications of the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Radio Liberty Research bulletins. The latter sources contain information on all three Baltic republics. Of samizdat publications, only The Chronicle of the Catholic Church of Lithuania has been periodically translated into English and available from the Lithuanian Information Center in Brooklyn, New York. Other information is also available in the press releases of this Center. See also the references in this article.Google Scholar

11. Full text in Hearings Before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Vol. XIII, 96th cong., 2nd sess, pp. 90–94; also the Congressional Record of September 28, 1979, pp. S13722-23.Google Scholar

12. Tiesa, (Vilnius) September 27, 1980, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

13. See Statkevičius' statement protesting such ruling in the samizdat Vytis, No. 5 (1980). pp. 65–69.Google Scholar

14. The Christian Science Monitor, September 22, 1980, p. 9.Google Scholar

15. The Economist, February 21, 1981, p. 41.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.; The New York Times, March 29, 1981, p. 5.Google Scholar

17. See Southerland, Daniel, “He Talked Back to the KGB,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 1980, pp. B1-6.Google Scholar

18. Texts in Documents from Estonia on the Violation of Human Rights, pp. 17ff.Google Scholar

19. See samizdat Ausra, No. 12 (1978), p. 1ff, and samizdat Perspektyvos, No. 9 (1979), p. 49.Google Scholar

20. See a recent text reproduced in Laiks (New York), December 3, 1980; see also Radio Liberty Research 496, December 1976, p. 18ff.Google Scholar

21. For a full story and documentation see Vardys, , op. cit., p. 173-81; for related samizdat documents see Thomas Remeikis, Opposition to Soviet Rule in Lithuania, 1945–1980 (Chicago: Institute of Lithuanian Studies Press, 1980), pp. 292–99.Google Scholar

22. Rubenstein, Joshua, Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), p. 258.Google Scholar

23. Profiles of membership in Profiles: The Helsinki Monitors, op. cit; also, “The Case of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group Leader Viktoras Petkus,” Lituanus, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 58–63; also, “Po puti lzhi i prestuplenii,” Sovetskaia Litva, July 16, 1978, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

24. See CSCE News Release, February 3, 1981. The others nominated with Petkus were Russian physicist, Yuri Orlov, Jewish mathematician, Anatoly Shcharansky, and Ukrainian poet, Mykola Rudenko.Google Scholar

25. Elta, based on U.S. press reports, No. 7-8, 1981, p. 1 Google Scholar

26. Le monde, October 25, 1980.Google Scholar

27. The Economist, October 11, 1980, p. 57; Washington Post, October 5, 1980, p. A20; Radio Liberty Research 384/80, October 17, 1980.Google Scholar

28. Sovetskaia Estoniia, October 14, 1980, p. 4.Google Scholar

29. Full translation from Estonian in Radio Liberty Research 477/80 December 15, 1980; German translation in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 15, 1981.Google Scholar

30. Documents from Estonia, p. 17ff.Google Scholar

31. Full translation from the Latvian in Sanders, George, ed., Samizdat: Voices of the Soviet Opposition (New York: Monad, 1974), pp. 427–40.Google Scholar

32. Aušra, No. 12, p. 3.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., No. 14 (1978), p. 44.Google Scholar

34. The New York Times, December 10, 1980.Google Scholar

35. Radio Liberty Research 193/76, April 12, 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. RLR 496/76 December 14, 1976, p. 19.Google Scholar

37. Laiks, June 27, 1981, with facsimile of the leaflet.Google Scholar

38. Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, No. 21 (1971). English edition by Amnesty International, p. 292.Google Scholar

39. RLR 121/78, May 29, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Text in Documents from Estonia, p. 10–19.Google Scholar

41. Text in Hearings before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Vol. XIII, 96th cong., 2nd sess., p. 94.Google Scholar

42. The Christian Science Monitor, September 22, 1980, p. 1.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., September 30, 1980, p. 1ff.Google Scholar

44. Tiesa, August 27, 1981, p. 3.Google Scholar

45. Izvestiia, February 26, 1981, p. 3.Google Scholar

46. Strike reported in Le Monde, October 25, 1980.Google Scholar

47. Judging from samizdat publications (see Arkhiv samizdata 4142), contacts of the Estonian Mart Niklus in Lithuania were rather extensive.Google Scholar

48. See Vardys, , op. cit., p. 144ff.Google Scholar

49. RLR 384/80, October 17, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Perspektyvos (Lithuanian samizdat journal) No. 9 (1979), p. 49ff.Google Scholar

51. Laiks, June 6, 10, 13, 17, 1981; also see Batun, Information Service of the Baltic Appeal to the United Nations, Sept. 26, 1981, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

52. Vytis, (Lithuanian samizdat journal) No. 5, pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

53. Batun, Sept. 26, 1981, p. 5.Google Scholar