LIETUVOS NEPRIKLAUSOMOS VALSTYBĖS ATSTATYMO VEIKSMŲ 1990 M. KOVO MĖN. 1–11 D. KRONIKA
A CHRONICLE OF THE ACTIONS OF 1–11 MARCH 1990 FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF LITHUANIA

Summary/Abstract: On 24 February 1990, for the first time since the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in 1940, free elections were held to the puppet Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Lithuanian Sąjūdis (the National Freedom Movement) in its official election program pledged on behalf of the new Lithuanian Supreme Council to declare without delay the restoration of an independent, democratic state of Lithuania. This was in accordance with the Lithuanian Sąjūdis striving to abolish the Soviet annexation of Lithuania by parliamentary resolution. After the first round of the 24 February 1990 elections, it already became clear that Lithuanian Sąjūdis candidates would win the election by a large margin. After the second round of elections, on 10 March, the Lithuanian Sąjūdis anticipated a majority of around two thirds in the national parliament of 141 deputies, and obtained a strong majority mandate from the nation to restore the independent state of Lithuania. On 1 March 1990, those Sąjūdis deputies that had been elected in the first round of elections formed their ad hoc working groups, and started the process of drafting legal acts regarding the regulation of the structure and legislative process of the first democratic Lithuanian parliament, as well as of fundamental legal acts for the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania. Working groups had to complete this drafting process before the first session of the new Lithuanian Supreme Council, which was scheduled to start on 10 March. The main working group, then often called the principal Commission, was led by Sąjūdis leader V. Landsbergis. The Commission assumed responsibility for the creation of the basic legal acts regarding the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania. The Commission consisted of 8 deputies from Sąjūdis and one non-deputy lawyer. The author of this article, one of the members of the Commission, when analysing the archival sources of the Commission’s work, reconstructed in detail the drafting process of the Act on the Restoration of the Independent State of Lithuania and four other legal acts logically interconnected with the Act. On 2 and 4 March, the Commission, chaired by V. Landsbergis, started its meetings with a discussion on the mechanism of the restoration of the Lithuanian state – i.e., the structure of the necessary legal acts, the sequence of their adoption, and the principal provisions. On 6 March, the Commission preliminarily agreed that four documents should be prepared and adopted, namely: (i) the Declaration of the Supreme Council of Lithuania on authorisation of its deputies; (ii) the Declaration on the Continuity of the State of Lithuania; (iii) the Declaration on the renewal of the validity of the Lithuanian Constitution of 1938; and (iv) the Act on the Suspension of the 1938 Constitution and the approval of the Provisional Constitution. This article reveals the process of elaborating and improving the legislative language of the abovementioned documents during the Commission’s intensive meetings which took place on 6–9 March. During this time, the provisions of the abovementioned documents were rectified, and the titles of the documents were clarified to better reflect their essences and main principles. The Commission produced a final package of draft legal acts for the restoration of the Lithuanian state on 9 March. This package consisted of the following: 1. Declaration on the authorisation of the deputies of the Lithuanian Supreme Council. 2. Law on the Name and State Emblem of the Lithuanian State. 3. Act on the Restoration of the Independent State of Lithuania. 4. Law on the temporary restoration of the validity of the Constitution of Lithuania of 12 May 1938. 5. Law on the approval of the Temporary Fundamental Law of the Republic of Lithuania. The legal acts named above, in restoring the independent state of Lithuania on 11 March, entrenched the main principle of State continuity. This principle was directly embedded in the Act of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania on the Restoration of the Independent State of Lithuania, declared on 11 March 1990 (“The Act”). The Act proclaimed that: “The Act of Independence, established on 16 February 1918, as well as the Resolution of the Constituent Parliament on the restored democratic state of Lithuania, established on 15 May 1920, has never ceased to have legal force and continues to serve as the constitutional basis for the Lithuanian state”. The application of this principle was also reflected in the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Name and the State Emblem of the restored State. The provision regarding the continuity of the State of Lithuania was also consistently endorsed by the Law on the Restoration of the Validity of the Constitution of Lithuania of 12 May 1938, which was adopted following the enactment of The Act. The Temporary Fundamental Law of the Republic of Lithuania suspended the short symbolic validity of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 12 May 1938, and substituted it as the Temporary Constitution for this transitional stage. In legal terms, the Temporary Fundamental Law restored the continuity of Lithuanian constitutionalism that was interrupted by the Soviet occupation. It prompted new Constitutional development without any connection to the surrogate Soviet constitution that was forcibly imposed on Lithuania in 1940.

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