Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:12was re-established. Files were opened and
00:00:15on some files, "liquidate" was written
00:00:19in red pencil. And we ask why the Sąjūdis became
00:00:23a powerful movement in a short time. This was the first
00:00:26spark, because the question was always, who should be the first?
00:03:40when you are watching the premiere of this history detective show,
00:03:44in 1989,
00:03:47the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union was re-established. Therefore, we
00:03:51decided to learn more about this
00:03:53story.
00:04:03Lithuanian Riflemen today have become a popular
00:04:06organization. Look how strong the Riflemen's
00:04:09Union is now. We have already exceeded 20,000
00:04:13members. However, this was not
00:04:15always the case. The Soviets had destroyed the Riflemen's
00:04:19Union and it needed to be re-established. This was certainly not
00:04:22a simple task, as one might think now. Files were
00:04:26opened and on some
00:04:29files, "liquidate" was written in red pencil
00:04:31and did you know that
00:04:35the first riflemen scared Kelmė communists, they
00:04:38were very surprised,
00:04:41they almost called the police,
00:04:44and they always felt
00:04:48a breathing down their necks, and
00:04:51as we walked in the procession, we saw flashes of
00:04:54cameras and flashes,
00:04:57however, let's start from the beginning. The Riflemen's Union
00:05:01was established during the interwar period, its founder was Vladas
00:05:04Putvinskis, and it was re-established
00:05:07in
00:05:101989 on September 20th. And
00:05:14about that re-establishment, Stasys Ignatavičius, a witness
00:05:17to those events, will
00:05:19tell us.
00:05:23In 1988, the Sąjūdis began
00:05:27and massive rallies where order needed
00:05:30to be maintained. That's how men with green
00:05:34armbands appeared. The beginning was very beautiful.
00:05:37In
00:05:391988, the Sąjūdis, everyone is rushing here. Those
00:05:43initiative groups appeared and
00:05:47there were perhaps even 12 of those security detachments in Kaunas,
00:05:51everything was fine, everything was beautiful, discipline, order, but
00:05:54gradually that discipline
00:05:58deteriorated, and we saw, when here in
00:06:01Kaunas at the beginning of 1989,
00:06:05Caritas was meeting, the re-establishment of Caritas, that
00:06:08re-establishment meeting, that we invite people.
00:06:12People, if there are 20 people in a group, three, four, five
00:06:16come, so that discipline deteriorated and
00:06:19on May 12th, such a
00:06:23meeting was called how to regulate
00:06:26that discipline, that order, so that there wouldn't be such
00:06:30a, when you expect 20, but only
00:06:345, 6 security detachments come, because
00:06:37the responsibility was great, it was necessary
00:06:40to protect the Sąjūdis's events and escort some
00:06:44responsible persons and everything, well, and
00:06:48on May 12th, the commander of the Kaunas security
00:06:51detachments, Romas Zikus, proposed
00:06:54such an idea, that perhaps in the future
00:06:58it would be necessary to re-establish the Riflemen's Union
00:07:01on the basis of the detachments, on the basis of the green-armband security detachments,
00:07:04that idea immediately struck me
00:07:07like a pin, because
00:07:11my grandfather was a Rifleman and was one
00:07:14of the leaders of the railwaymen's rifle
00:07:18detachment, however, let's remember what the
00:07:21situation was in
00:07:241989. The Sąjūdis was
00:07:28strong, but Lithuania was still
00:07:31officially part of the Soviet Union, Soviet
00:07:34laws were in effect, and the Soviet
00:07:38army was in Lithuania.
00:07:41Therefore, not everyone in the Sąjūdis approved of the idea of re-establishing the Riflemen's Union.
00:07:44The Lithuanian Riflemen's Union
00:07:47was an organization during the interwar period, take a look at the Soviet encyclopedia
00:07:50and you will see that it is a bourgeois
00:07:54organization, an organization of Smetonists
00:07:58and it is liquidated, by law we
00:08:01did not have the right to even think about
00:08:05re-establishing the Riflemen's Union according to Soviet
00:08:08Union laws, it was banned
00:08:12and there was that "don't poke the bear"
00:08:15because we are still in the Soviet
00:08:18Union's legal framework, so that's how it
00:08:22is, and, as they say, not to give
00:08:25any signal to Moscow. Such
00:08:29was the caution at that time. These arguments affected some,
00:08:33but certainly did not cool everyone's enthusiasm.
00:08:37I saw that besides me there were three
00:08:40other leaders for the re-establishment, so after
00:08:44that meeting I invited them, I said,
00:08:46guys, why
00:08:50postpone it, if we can form
00:08:53that initiative group and start re-establishing
00:08:57the Riflemen's Union. Having gathered like-minded people, things
00:09:00started moving.
00:09:02On July 8,
00:09:051989, the temporary
00:09:08council of the Riflemen's Union's re-establishment initiative
00:09:12group decided that it was necessary to fully legalize
00:09:16the re-establishment of the Riflemen's Union and announce the re-establishment of the Riflemen's Union, so it was
00:09:19decided
00:09:23to organize the first oath-taking at Vladas Putvinskis's
00:09:26grave, in Kelmė cemetery. And
00:09:30here, it is necessary to remember again that Vladas
00:09:33Putvinskis was the founder of the Riflemen's Union and
00:09:37a very respected man in interwar Lithuania.
00:09:41When he died
00:09:43in 1919, his funeral was
00:09:47filmed and a film about it has survived
00:09:50to this day. Putvinskis was buried
00:09:53in Kelmė cemetery.
00:09:55Therefore, this place was chosen as the site
00:09:58for the re-establishment of the Riflemen's
00:10:01Union. We had decided that
00:10:05this oath-taking would take place on September
00:10:0820th.
00:10:10Because it coincides with one of the founders
00:10:13of the Riflemen's Union, the birthday of its founder, Matas Šalčius,
00:10:17and others, and
00:10:21we decided to organize the oath-taking on that day.
00:10:25We prepared quite meticulously, because
00:10:28we needed to coordinate with the local
00:10:31priest for the mass, we needed to find
00:10:35living Kelmė interwar
00:10:37riflemen, coordinate
00:10:41with the surrounding old
00:10:44riflemen, so we prepared
00:10:48and behold, September
00:10:4920th,
00:10:521989, dawned.
00:10:55In Kelmė, on September 20th, that
00:10:58oath ceremony began with holy
00:11:02mass in the local
00:11:05church, then a procession to Putvinskis's
00:11:09grave and the taking
00:11:12of the oath, and the oath was administered by interwar
00:11:15riflemen, Lukaševičius, who is from
00:11:19Kelmė, Kavaliauskas also from Kelmė,
00:11:23and one of our initiative
00:11:25group members, Juozas Armonaitis, a partisan,
00:11:28they administered our oath,
00:11:3118 of us took the oath and we declared that
00:11:35this is the date of the re-establishment
00:11:38of the Riflemen's Union. Of course, the KGB
00:11:41knew about this action and recorded everything.
00:11:45They followed us, black
00:11:47cars, of course, it was clear
00:11:50who was following, because as we walked
00:11:54in the procession, we saw flashes of cameras,
00:11:58flashes, so we already ended up in
00:12:01those archives,
00:12:03however, times were different and such surveillance did not scare
00:12:07men determined
00:12:09to serve their homeland, on the contrary, they
00:12:12scared the then communist authorities
00:12:16of Kelmė, and we organized such
00:12:20a procession, from Putvinskis's grave
00:12:23to the former Riflemen's Union house named
00:12:26Vladas Putvinskis, at that time it was the Kelmė
00:12:30Executive Committee, we
00:12:32entered our former
00:12:35home, demanded that they
00:12:38vacate it, because we re-established the Riflemen's Union
00:12:42and and
00:12:45politely asked them to leave
00:12:49that building, they were very
00:12:51surprised, they almost...
00:12:55"called the police, and
00:12:58we scared the cleaner, when such a group, you know, comes in with
00:13:02flags, she saw that, went down the stairs,
00:13:05her buckets spilled, and
00:13:09she started shouting "militia, militia!"
00:13:12So, from the oath of 18 men
00:13:15at Vladas Putvinskis's grave, the history
00:13:19of the re-establishment of the Riflemen's Union began,
00:13:22well, you know, we announced the oath
00:13:25in the press, in the deportee's newspaper
00:13:28and in the Sąjūdis newspapers,
00:13:31we announced it, well, of course, some refused to publish
00:13:34our articles and photos, but some, when
00:13:37we announced it, we gave our addresses,
00:13:41how to contact us, if you want to join the Riflemen's
00:13:44Union, and it poured in, it poured in,
00:13:47and by December, in
00:13:501989, from September
00:13:5420th to December, we already
00:13:57had the re-establishment ceremonies
00:14:01for the Riflemen's Union units in Gargždai,
00:14:05in Skriaudžiai, in Panevėžys, we would already go to re-establish
00:14:08units and immediately
00:14:10had our own flag,
00:14:13and here is a very interesting detail that perfectly reveals
00:14:16the situation of that time, everyone understood
00:14:20that it was not possible to openly create
00:14:23a military organization, not even military symbols
00:14:27could be used, this was reflected in the first
00:14:31riflemen's flag,
00:14:35the most important thing is that the first flag, when we
00:14:37sewed it,
00:14:39the true flag is a
00:14:42daudutis with a rifle,
00:14:46we did not put a rifle on the first flag,
00:14:50we put two daudelės through
00:14:54our symbolic crisis,
00:14:57that we are moving away from militarism a little,
00:15:00because it was 1989, you know, if we came with such a flag somewhere,
00:15:04it would
00:15:08not be good.
00:15:10In
00:15:131989, it was not yet an official organization.
00:15:16The Soviet KGB monitored the activists'
00:15:19actions. When we had no place to gather in
00:15:231989. Algirdas Kaušpėdas
00:15:26lent us a hand, he was the director
00:15:30of the Architects' House on Vilniaus Street here in
00:15:34Kaunas, and Romas Zikus
00:15:37got along well with him and said you can come to my place upstairs
00:15:41in the Architects' House, it's a three-story building, on the third floor there
00:15:45was such a small hall, gather here, he said, and
00:15:49discuss your Riflemen's affairs, and there was
00:15:52one evening like that, we were already gathering because we used to gather
00:15:56in the evening, this was in November,
00:15:59Algirdas Kaušpėdas
00:16:02stands there,
00:16:04he says, "guys,
00:16:08run, because he says in the inner courtyard
00:16:12those goats are standing without numbers, well, of course,
00:16:15so you know,
00:16:19we left a couple of our people, Leonavičius
00:16:23Ausonis, we left him to inform others
00:16:26not to enter
00:16:28that building, well, and
00:16:32as they say, he saved us, maybe they had come to arrest
00:16:36our group."
00:16:38Thus, the ice was broken, and when the work was done,
00:16:42the Riflemen's Union was re-established, and relations with
00:16:45the Sąjūdis improved. It was desired to restore the monument
00:16:49to those who died for Lithuanian freedom, well, as
00:16:52there is the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and
00:16:55that pyramid-shaped
00:16:57monument, they asked us, the Sąjūdis already appealed to
00:17:01the riflemen, because stones were being collected from
00:17:05the battlefields of the independence
00:17:08struggles and the Sąjūdis already asked us to
00:17:11join that action and go with
00:17:15the Sąjūdis and representatives of other organizations
00:17:18to collect stones, and we brought them. And further,
00:17:22as the events unfolded, you know very well.
00:17:251990 arrived, the re-establishment council
00:17:29was elected, where the Sąjūdis-delegated people
00:17:32had an absolute majority, and independence was
00:17:35declared. Soviet laws
00:17:39formally ceased to be valid in Lithuania.
00:17:42On March 23rd, 1990, on March 23rd,
00:17:46by Council of Ministers Resolution Number
00:17:5078, 78, such a small number. On March
00:17:5423rd, the Riflemen's Union's statutes were
00:17:58registered with the Council of Ministers. And we already
00:18:01became an official organization.
00:18:03The Riflemen's Union attracted
00:18:06people who cared about the future of Lithuania,
00:18:09they would later form the basis of the Lithuanian army's
00:18:13border guards, we were already entering
00:18:171991, when the January
00:18:19events began, we were already a very strong
00:18:23organization, so everything started with us,
00:18:26and the army's formation started with the riflemen, because
00:18:29the first volunteers, the training
00:18:33unit of General Jozersky
00:18:35and other structures were created only
00:18:39on the basis of the riflemen, border guards, border,
00:18:42everything on our shoulders, our
00:18:45first people were the best to serve in
00:18:49those structures, and
00:18:53in
00:18:551991, the fateful January
00:18:5813th was approaching, of course, the riflemen were
00:19:02those who came to defend our
00:19:04parliament,
00:19:07we received a request from the Ministry
00:19:09of National Defense, after what
00:19:13happened here during the attack,
00:19:15we received Butkevičius's request that
00:19:19the riflemen should
00:19:22stay near the palace, and
00:19:26then, when we came to seemingly stand guard near the palace, it turned out that we already
00:19:30had to be inside, and we started from there, by the
00:19:339th, we were already inside and...
00:19:37On the 11th, all who gathered,
00:19:40not only Kaunas residents, there were also Marijampolė residents, and
00:19:44Panevėžys residents, and Vilnius residents, we took the oath,
00:19:47all defenders,
00:19:51so it was our second oath, because we took the first
00:19:54one at the grave, and then the soldier's
00:19:57oath.
00:20:00January 13th did not pass without human casualties,
00:20:03people who loved freedom and who
00:20:06sacrificed what they held dearest, their
00:20:10lives. An oath is not empty
00:20:13words, an oath is
00:20:15a commitment that must be kept.
00:20:19In the Supreme Council, we were entrusted
00:20:22with guarding together
00:20:26with
00:20:27officer
00:20:30courses, students
00:20:33were entrusted with the second palace to the riflemen and
00:20:38to the officer course students, led by Colonel
00:20:42Lisbaras, and we, as they say,
00:20:45fulfilled our duty, I myself
00:20:48had to be there from January 8th
00:20:51to February 15th without leaving, and the
00:20:54leadership of the Riflemen's Union also stayed,
00:20:58and two of our members died near the tower,
00:21:02the riflemen Gerbutavičius and Šimulionis,
00:21:06they were our young riflemen, 17-year-olds,
00:21:09because the palace
00:21:11had
00:21:13an excess of defenders,
00:21:16and some other
00:21:20objects still needed to be guarded, so they were
00:21:23the Iron Wolf's Riflemen, and they
00:21:26were at the tower at that time
00:21:29and
00:21:30did not die,
00:21:33so we truly fulfilled our duty.
00:21:36And that duty
00:21:41posed a danger, now we truly
00:21:44know that the KGB was preparing plans to liquidate
00:21:48the Lithuanian state. The re-established Riflemen's
00:21:51Union was one of the most important
00:21:54targets.
00:21:56In Arvydas Nušauskas's
00:21:58book,
00:22:01"Top Secret KGB," there are
00:22:04documents. When the Moscow
00:22:08unit in Lithuania,
00:22:12the KGB, received instructions that first it was necessary
00:22:16to destroy
00:22:19the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry
00:22:21of National Defense, the State Security
00:22:25Department, and in third place was the Riflemen's Union,
00:22:29which means that if the putsch had won, then we
00:22:32would have all been destroyed,
00:22:35and we have some copies of our
00:22:38files,
00:22:41also former commander Jankus, and some
00:22:44active riflemen of ours, files
00:22:48were opened for them. And on some files, "liquidate" was written
00:22:52in red pencil, do you understand?
00:22:56The re-establishment
00:23:01of the Riflemen's Union required
00:23:04both courage and sacrifice, it is very
00:23:07important that today's riflemen do not lack
00:23:11either courage
00:23:12or sacrifice.
00:23:23After the break, you will see an interview with sociologist Ainė
00:23:26Ramūnaitė about the Sąjūdis phenomenon. This was the first
00:23:29flash, because the question was always, who should be the first, or
00:23:33not, who dares to do something.
00:23:45Without exaggeration, it can be said that our current state was born
00:23:49from the Sąjūdis. Therefore, it is especially important
00:23:52to understand how that wonderful
00:23:55popular movement that we
00:23:59called Sąjūdis came about. We talk about this with
00:24:02sociologist Ainė
00:24:04Ramūnaitė.
00:24:11Thank you for agreeing to participate in the history detective
00:24:15show, and we will talk about
00:24:18a truly very important period that you also researched, namely
00:24:22the Sąjūdis, and you published a book
00:24:2615 years ago, as it turns out now, but it is still
00:24:29relevant, it seems, so it is called
00:24:33"In Search of the Origins of the Sąjūdis" about that network
00:24:36that fed the Sąjūdis, but still, even after reading your book,
00:24:40I have such a question that many people also ask,
00:24:44how did it happen that
00:24:48the Sąjūdis became
00:24:51a huge force in just a few months
00:24:54in the summer of 1988, because in
00:24:58May 1988,
00:25:01no one was talking about anything, but
00:25:04in August, 100,000
00:25:07people were in Vingis Park,
00:25:11in October, the whole of Lithuania was talking about it,
00:25:15how did that great force
00:25:17emerge so quickly?
00:25:20Indeed, I think now, one could
00:25:23write a second volume and a continuation of this book, because
00:25:27in reality, that book was dedicated
00:25:30more to the very origins, about how it even
00:25:33appeared, how it could have appeared, it seems in such a seemingly
00:25:37passive society, an adaptive
00:25:40society, how could the Sąjūdis have been born
00:25:43at all, but this question that you
00:25:46raise, what happened after that, from that, let's say, birth?
00:25:50In just a few months, how did it become such a great force, so I now, frankly
00:25:53speaking, have answers for myself, but they are not all, not all
00:25:57written down and perhaps a new book should be written
00:26:00about it, but give us a hint.
00:26:03I can, I can roughly reveal the very
00:26:07idea. In reality, two things probably worked. One
00:26:10thing is that in society there was
00:26:14such a secret
00:26:16dissatisfaction, there was enough, it was just
00:26:20not publicized, and people themselves
00:26:24did not know that around them there were other people who also
00:26:27disliked that system, because you wouldn't publicly talk about such
00:26:31things, so you would only talk to very close friends or
00:26:34very close like-minded family members, but for example, with
00:26:38colleagues or with someone else, they wouldn't talk about such topics, because
00:26:41well, everyone knew that there was definitely
00:26:45some KGB officer, right, in every organization or
00:26:48institution, and you would be reported
00:26:51quickly, but on the other hand, there were
00:26:55people who participated in such
00:26:58semi-secret, semi- open network.
00:27:03I don't mean social networks now,
00:27:06but various gatherings, there were already many
00:27:10such gatherings at that time, there were completely open ones, like
00:27:14for example, the philosophers' club, right, and already from
00:27:171987, there was
00:27:19a bubbling up, especially in Vilnius, but also in Kaunas
00:27:23and other places, people say
00:27:26that something was brewing, in what sense was it brewing
00:27:29here, it's because many things were happening. the highest.
00:27:33such discussions, all kinds of clubs
00:27:36were established and they were established from
00:27:39below, from above, because of course there were many
00:27:42organizations from above, right, and and the Komsomol, and the party, and
00:27:46trade unions, and all sorts of amateur collectives, but there were
00:27:50also those that were created from below somehow, or
00:27:53under the guise of some legal organization, then
00:27:56the Culture Foundation appeared when it was established thanks to Česlovas
00:27:59Kudaba, already through that Culture Foundation. it was possible
00:28:03to register some gatherings, because otherwise you wouldn't register them there,
00:28:07you wouldn't say, I want to establish organizations here,
00:28:11so it was through the Komsomol youth, sometimes there were all sorts of
00:28:14festivals, and rock marches were already taking place
00:28:17at that time, all kinds of such
00:28:19things were happening, and what we
00:28:23understood while writing this book,
00:28:26was that network of all sorts of
00:28:29gatherings, it was already quite large.
00:28:33and in those gatherings, in some places, people were already talking
00:28:37much more openly and they clearly felt who
00:28:41did not sympathize with that system, so
00:28:44this was the first spark, because it's always a question of who should be
00:28:48the first, right, who dares to do something, because
00:28:51then, when, let's say, such a
00:28:55snowball effect, as they say, which we saw,
00:28:58the Sąjūdis was formed and then that idea
00:29:01started to develop very quickly, develop and it infected people, because
00:29:05people started to see that, oh, it turns out there are many
00:29:08others around, just like me, who don't really like
00:29:12that system, but who had to be those very first ones, so here we
00:29:16analyze that the first ones were usually precisely those who
00:29:20were in those, as we termed them, spontaneous civil society
00:29:23networks, what does spontaneous civil society mean, it means those created from
00:29:26above, but born from below and they
00:29:30would already speak much more freely and they already understood that there were many
00:29:33like-minded people who didn't like that system, so here,
00:29:36look, you also emphasized that, can
00:29:40it then be said that it was a dormant civil society, because
00:29:44today, right, those organizations
00:29:47formed from below networks, without any
00:29:50doubt any
00:29:53sociologist would call them manifestations of civil society,
00:29:56but in the Soviet era it was a dormant
00:29:59civil society, we actually.
00:30:02even had the idea to call those gatherings civil society, but that would sound
00:30:06very strange, that under the conditions of a totalitarian
00:30:09regime, civil
00:30:12society, although let's look at, for example, the Poles, the Polish
00:30:16Solidarity movement's theorists,
00:30:19philosophers, they called similar things, they precisely used the term
00:30:23civil society, and that's why that idea was quite attractive to us,
00:30:27but here we can apply modern authors as well, like
00:30:31Robert Putnam, for example. who talks there, let's say, about completely different
00:30:35things, about societies in democratic countries and says that, for example,
00:30:38something like even some choir or, as they say, a bird
00:30:42watching club, which is not a political thing, it can
00:30:45become political, because it creates social capital,
00:30:49trust among those people trust, and strong trust
00:30:52strengthens civil society and well, that and
00:30:56in the Soviet era, right, there was that trust, then I would ask them.