Activities
The new government was sharply attacked by the opposition. It lifted martial law, still in effect in Kaunas and other localities, restored democratic freedoms, and declared broad amnesty to political prisoners. For the first time Lithuania became truly democratic. Communists quickly took advantage of the freedom of speech and held a protest, attended by approximately 400 people, in Kaunas on June 13. The protest was dispersed, but the opposition attacked the government alleging that the incident presented a great threat to Lithuania and its military which the government was incapable of dealing with.
Further allegations of "Bolshevization" were made after Lithuania signed the non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. The treaty, signed on September 28, 1926, was conceived by the previous Seimas dominated by the Christian Democrats. However, this time Christian Democrats voted against the treaty, while Antanas Smetona strongly supported it. It drew sharp criticism as Lithuania exchanged repeated recognition of its rights to the Vilnius Region for international isolation as the treaty demanded that Lithuania make no other alliances with other countries. On November 21, a student demonstration against "Bolshevization" was forcibly dispensed by the police.
Public outcry continued when the government, catering to the minorities, allowed over 80 Polish schools to open at the same time that the Polish government was closing Lithuanian schools in the fiercely contested Vilnius Region. The coalition government went head-to-head against the Christian Democrats when it proposed the cutting of salaries to the clergy and subsidies to Catholic schools from the 1927 budget. Further enemies were made when 200 conservative military officers were fired. The military started planning the December coup.
Read more about this topic: Third Seimas Of Lithuania
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“If it is to be done well, child-rearing requires, more than most activities of life, a good deal of decentering from one’s own needs and perspectives. Such decentering is relatively easy when a society is stable and when there is an extended, supportive structure that the parent can depend upon.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)