Moscow, December 25, 1991

Nine months before, after Sajudis, the anti-Moscow national front of Lithuania, won the state election, the country bordering Poland had become the first Soviet republic to declare independence. The Soviet emblem on the parliament building in the capital, Vilnius, had been chiseled off and replaced with a canvas depicting a knight with a sword in hand, the emblem of free Lithuania. The new government had taken over public buildings and dropped Russian as an official language.

The conservatives in Moscow were appalled. Gorbachev himself never intended that his changes should go so far. He warned the Lithuanian parliament to submit to Soviet power, and imposed an economic blockade. Troops staged provocative parades in Vilnius, and military helicopters dropped leaflets over the city, urging the Russian and Polish minorities to join pro-Soviet rallies. The intimidation had no effect.

On January 12, 1991, a shadowy pro-Soviet “committee for national salvation” announced in Vilnius that it was taking power. This committee “requested” Soviet forces to seize the television tower in Vilnius, which was broadcasting proindependence material. Unarmed Lithuanians had gathered outside the tower, fearing it would be taken over by pro-Moscow forces. In the early hours of January 13, troops from the KGB Alpha Group, trained especially to fight terrorists, arrived and fired live bullets into the crowd. Thirteen civilians were killed and several hundred injured. One KGB officer was accidentally shot dead by his own men. Gorbachev at first voiced support for the faceless committee of national salvation. He did not disown the KGB assault on the civilians at the TV tower but blamed everything on the Lithuanian declaration of independence, which he called “a virtual nighttime, constitutional coup.”

In Moscow glasnost was suspended, and news of the massacre was suppressed. Central television gave only the military version of events in Vilnius. The lively late-night program Vzglyad (Glance) was taken off the air, and an independent news agency, Interfax, was silenced. TASS described the nationalist defenders of the television tower as “intoxicated youths… singing pro-fascist songs.” It seemed as if the totalitarian past had returned.

Knowing that if sovereignty could be crushed in the Baltics it could be crushed in Russia too, Yeltsin acted quickly. He flew to Tallinn, capital of Estonia, the most northerly of the three Baltic republics, to meet the defiant elected presidents of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There in the barricaded parliament, protected by Estonian youths with hunting guns, he signed an agreement with them to recognize each other’s sovereignty. Yeltsin’s prestige stiffened the nationalists’ resolve to resist, infuriating Gorbachev. A friendly KGB source advised Yeltsin not to take a flight back to Moscow, as it might be sabotaged. He was driven instead the 217 miles from Tallinn to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and from there flew back to the Russian capital.

An energized Yeltsin reported to deputies packing a committee room in the White House that the military crackdown in the Baltics was “the start of a powerful offensive against democracy in the Soviet Union, and Russia’s turn will come.” He was applauded by adoring Russian journalists. Commanding, self assured, and red-eyed with exhaustion, he urged Russian soldiers not to fire on unarmed civilians, saying it would be unlawful under the new Russian constitution. “You are a pawn in a dirty game,” he told them. An army paratroop unit in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk subsequently refused to deploy to Latvia. Yeltsin also announced that the presidents of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan had decided to draw up a treaty to replace the old Soviet Union. “I think I may now say where—in Minsk,” said Yeltsin, slyly, “but I can’t tell you when.”