Gotland: Meeting Point

Gotland: Meeting Point

 Speech at Katthamra Gard, Gotland, 21-08-2015

It happened 26 years ago, and from that historical summer of 1989 Gotland Island acquired for Lithuanians a new special political meaning.

The very Baltic space – westward form the Soviet-occupied Lithuania – was a space and spirit of freedom. Across the sea there was the Free World.

For us the Baltic Sea, due to our geographic situation, was the West. Together with fresh air and the winds, it presented freedom itself and real gate, even if closed, to the Free World. And then, what country was there, the closest neighbour of the captive Lithuania? It was Sweden, a democratic kingdom. And what part of it was closest to us? – It was Gotland.

 The site was determined for its role. Also, there was the moment of time.

 The roaring 1989 came as a greatly deciding threshold for Europe. Three dates should be underlined here.

 The first peaceful victory of democracy - that of Polish Solidarity movement over the Communist dictatorship - came in June.  It came for Poland, again European and free, as a fatal breach in the Soviet and Communist satellites’ military fortress called the Warsaw Pact.

 Then there came July-August busy with preparations for very special Lithuanian events, also the one in Gotland. The Gotland meeting and its Communiqué appeared for Lithuanians as one of milestones on our Baltic Way.

 What was the Baltic Way? It was 23 August manifestation, the greatest ever in Europe, of the peoples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, short of 2 million in a live chain from Vilnius to Tallinn standing hand in hand in their historic solidarity for freedom from Soviet captivity. That latter lasted too long, short to 50 years, and that was enough. Indirectly or even directly, it was our blow from the back to the Berlin Wall.

 And on the 9^th of November the Berlin wall crumbled not only in Berlin, but across the whole our continent from the Baltic to Adriatic and Black Seas.

 Those were the main points of 1898, but also there was Gotland with its contribution. This 6 August event manifested the unified will of the Lithuanians around the world to get their homeland free and independent again.

 The participants were representatives and leaders of organizations embracing large worldwide spectrum of Lithuanian will: those acting in Lithuania like Lithuanian Reform Movement Sajudis and the veteran of political freedom battles – the Lithuanian Freedom League, plus Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and Cultural Fund; those from free world like Highest Committee for Liberation of Lithuania and World Lithuanian Community representing also Canadian and European communities and, naturally, very active organizers of the meeting from the Swedish-Lithuanian Community; veterans of earlier resistance movements were also among them. Even a representative of the Communist Party of Lithuania, not yet separated from the Soviet Communist Party, was there as a private observer, but finally he also signed the common document – the famous Gotland Communiqué.

 For its participation in the future national politics and not in repressions and collaborationist services for the Kremlin, but more generously, that local branch of the CPSU, while wishing to be the Lithuanian Communist Party and not that of the Soviet Union, had to be liberated as well. Thus Gotland became an opportunity and a step toward this chance also for our misguided and blundering brothers Communists – as we then sometimes used to say, for a hopeful advance.

Thanks to the Gotland meeting, our Lithuania with her Sajudis Movement’s striving to regain independence, in this way consolidating world Lithuanians for that common goal, became explicit and leading among her Baltic sisters. Finally, not only our nations, but also Finland achieved full independence from enslaving commitments to the USSR and Russia, commonly disgracefully called finlandization. Together with our freedom, “finlandization” was over as well.

 As already mentioned above, synchronically with Gotland, preparations for the greatest common Baltic action were under way, and in two and a half weeks after the Gotland meeting at the Western shore, the Baltic Way was manifested on the Eastern shore of Mare Nostrum.

 Gotland was our Lithuanian contribution in eliminating division of Europe, that fundamental and long lasting division between the free and captive parts of our common continent, common culture and eventual entity.

 How deep was that division of ideas and interests between democracy, its spirit unifying democracies, and anti-democracy of Communism-reshaped Russia, the Soviet Union – stays relevant and tragically evident until now in the ugly Russian war against Ukraine. The Baltic Way now reaches our sister in destiny Ukraine, thus it has no end yet.