Background
On March 26, 1989, elections took place for 42 seats in the Congress of People's Deputies. Despite Easter Sunday celebrations and boycott by dissident organizations such as the Lithuanian Liberty League, the turnout reached 82.5%. The results were a sweeping victory to Sąjūdis: 36 out of its 39 candidates won against the Communist Party of Lithuania (CPL). The communists won only 6 seats; two of them were uncontested as Sąjūdis withdrew its candidates in favor of Algirdas Brazauskas and Vladimiras Beriozovas. CPL, shaken by the defeat, was losing authority and membership. To save the party, its leader Brazauskas moved closer to the pro-independence movements. The party now supported calls for "sovereignty" and cooperated with Sąjūdis. On December 7, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR, then fully controlled by CPL, amended the Constitution of the Lithuanian SSR eliminating Article 6, which established communist party monopoly in political life. The decision meant that Lithuania eliminated legal obstacles for a multi-party system and allowed other parties to compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
During its 20th congress on December 19–20, the CPL separated itself from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) by a vote of 855 to 160. For such insubordination Brazauskas was scolded in a special session of the Central Committee of CPSU and Mikhail Gorbachev made a personal visit to Lithuania to heal the rift in January 1990. However, such measures changed little and CPL (independent) kept slowly pushing for independence. This political divorce was not approved by hardline communists. They established a separate CPL, which was still part of the CPSU and claimed to be legal successor of the "real" CPL. This pro-Moscow group was led by Mykolas Burokevičius and included disproportionately large numbers of representatives from Russian and Polish minorities.
Read more about this topic: Lithuanian Parliamentary Election, 1990
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)