Lithuania turned August 23 from condemned protest into independence claim

LRT has traced how the meaning of August 23 in Lithuania changed over five years, from Soviet condemnation of a small dissident gathering in 1987 to mass demonstrations linked to the country’s drive for independence.

August 23, 1939, is regarded as the date the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact was signed, an agreement that meant the end of Lithuania’s statehood. The date also came to symbolise Lithuania’s path to liberation, from limited commemorations to nationwide protests.

On August 23, 1987, the Lithuanian Liberty League publicly mentioned the pact’s secret protocols for the first time at a rally near the Adomas Mickevičius monument in Vilnius. A year later, the date was marked by a major rally in Vingis Park, and in 1989 it was commemorated with the Baltic Way.

In 1990, attention focused on the issue of the Lithuanian Polish border. In 1991, the commemoration was associated with a period of relief and the factual end of the Soviet Union as a state.

In 1987, August 23 fell on a sunny Sunday. Foreign radio stations had already announced plans for a Black Ribbon Day commemoration near the Adomas Mickevičius monument in Vilnius. Similar actions were held in Riga and Tallinn.

At the time, the Soviet Union described the secret protocols of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact as an alleged Western provocation and denied their existence until the middle of 1989. The Black Ribbon Day, which had begun to be commemorated in the West in 1986, was therefore met with a particularly harsh response in occupied Lithuania.

“It is the same Black Ribbon Day, August 23, which fanatical conservatives have been trying to introduce in North America since 1986 and now would ‘spontaneously’ like to bring to us. It is as Baltic as Disneyland,” Algimantas Čekuolis, then editor of Gimtojo krašto, wrote.

A broad campaign of vilification accompanied the official response. Several hundred people who gathered at the monument were closely watched by television cameras. The footage was later used to make the propaganda film Akmuo užantyje, which included personally discrediting information about some participants, particularly Nijolė Sadūnaitė, Robertas Grigas, Alfonsas Bumbutis and Leonas Taurinskas.

The Soviet press fiercely attacked the rally. LRT said the coverage also reflected a shift associated with perestroika: instead of suppressing information about the event, the authorities reported it while attaching a wholly subjective interpretation.

The article was prepared using LRT archive material and articles published in Tiesa, Komjaunimo tiesa, later Lietuvos rytas, Atgimimas and Respublika.