Vytautas Landsbergis celebrates 94th birthday

Vytautas Landsbergis, the first head of state of restored independent Lithuania, turned 94 on Sunday, LRT reported. Friends and associates, along with the Aidija chamber choir, congratulated him in the capital at noon.

Parliament Speaker Juozas Olekas also congratulated Landsbergis, a professor and signatory of the March 11 Act. He thanked him for his courage and determination during decisive days for Lithuania, saying Landsbergis had brought people together and defended the nation’s right to decide its own future.

Olekas said Landsbergis’s contribution to restoring and defending independence was an inseparable part of Lithuania’s history. He wished him good health, the warmth of family and the everyday joy of music and poetry.

Landsbergis was born in Kaunas in 1932. He studied music at the Juozas Gruodis Music School and later at the Lithuanian State Conservatory in Vilnius. He began teaching while still a student and continued until March 1990, working at several higher education institutions.

In June 1988, Landsbergis was elected to the initiative group of the Lithuanian Reform Movement Sąjūdis. He was later elected to its council at the movement’s founding congress and became its leader.

On March 11, 1990, Landsbergis was elected chairman of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. He chaired the session at which Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence. Under the provisional constitution, he became the country’s highest-ranking official. In June 2022, parliament granted him the status of head of state by law.

From 1990 to 1991, Landsbergis chaired Lithuania’s state delegation for negotiations with the Soviet Union. In July 1991, he and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the treaty establishing the basis for relations between Lithuania and Russia. The treaty took effect in 1992, and Russia recognised Lithuania’s independence.

Landsbergis also signed the Helsinki Final Act on behalf of Lithuania in 1991 and the Paris Charter in 1992. He was among those who secured an agreement for Russian military units to leave Lithuania within a year. He is also a chess player, art, culture and music historian, cultural scholar and publicist. He helped establish the conservative party Homeland Union and led it from 1993 to 2003.