Kremlin Threat Chills Easter’s Joy in Lithuania

As Lithuanians returned home Sunday from the peace and spirituality of their Easter celebrations, their television sets and radios were waiting for them with a worrisome reminder of the Kremlin threat that hangs over their heads.

“Tonight the blockade will begin,” Vilnius Radio warned listeners Sunday evening, in reference to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s threat to impose economic sanctions unless the Lithuanian Parliament renounces laws it has passed since declaring the Baltic republic independent last month.

Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis refused to respond to Gorbachev during the Easter holiday. But for all the defiance and pride that suffused this year’s Easter celebration here, it was marred by a fear Lithuanians cannot escape that the resurrection of their nation will be stifled in these delicate days after its rebirth.

“I am worried about everything today,” said Galiniene Anastazija, 58, as she filled a Mason jar with holy water outside a cathedral in Vilnius. “Earlier it was like a holiday for us, this day. We visited people and spent time with our families. But now we are watching TV all day long, waiting for news.”

Gorbachev’s warning, delivered to Vilnius on Friday night, was the latest in a series of ultimatums from the Soviet president that has kept Lithuanians on a roller-coaster ride of pride in their new nation one minute, and fear of retribution from Moscow the next.

The tough Kremlin response to Lithuania has also prompted expressions of concern from Washington. On Sunday, the Communist Party daily Pravda called on the United States not to make Lithuania a friction point between the two superpowers.

In an article headlined “Is It Really Back to the Confrontation?” Pravda contended: “In reality, there . . . cannot be a Lithuanian problem for the United States. It is really an internal matter for the Soviet Union.

“One can say the whole world has undergone perestroika (restructuring),” Pravda said. “It would be reckless to throw it under the feet of the Lithuanian nationalists who have lost their sense of reality and responsibility.

“There is not much time left before the summit (in May between President Bush and Gorbachev), and we should use it not by inventing arguments over Lithuania but by preparing concrete agreements on disarmament on which the success of the summit depends,” Pravda said.

Even as Pravda warned Washington to refrain from criticizing the Kremlin over Lithuania, Pope John Paul II included a special greeting in the Lithuanian language to the republic in his annual Easter address at the Vatican. He expressed support for Lithuania and for its aspirations, underlining a telegram he sent to the Lithuanian cardinal Saturday.

Coming as it did on Good Friday, the ultimatum from Moscow was met with anger as much as with anxiety. More than 90% of Lithuanians are Roman Catholic, as are virtually all of the republic’s Poles. The timing of the Gorbachev letter was seen in Lithuania as an obvious attempt to spoil the Easter weekend.

Landsbergis, however, vowed that his countrymen would not let politics interfere with their celebration of Easter.

In the 17th-Century Archi Cathedral in Vilnius, Landsbergis attended Mass early Sunday morning. The church was filled, and Lithuanian television cameras recorded the historic event of a leader of a republic publicly attending Easter Mass for the first time in 50 years.

There in the cathedral, Lithuania’s clerics echoed Landsbergis’ defiance with words of their own.

“Spring is green after winter, and our nation is reborn like the rebirth of Jesus Christ,” Archi Cathedral’s Msgr. Kazimieras Vasiliauskas said in a Mass later that morning. “We’re gladdened by the national renaissance of Lithuania, and we are proud that the leader of our government was here in the church today.”

Also at the Mass, Cardinal Vicentas Sladkevicius said that he prayed for Lithuania’s freedom, and he urged the republic’s citizens to stay tough in the face of the threatened embargo.

The openness with which church leaders were able to express their views here is relatively new even if the views themselves are not. The church has played a central role in the Lithuanian independence movement for years, with clergy repeatedly emphasizing in their sermons Lithuania’s right to be free.

“The church was the only thing that was left to people when there was a void of everything else,” said Father Viktoras Iulis, a leader of the pro-independence Sajudis movement.

“The church believed that, in an independent Lithuania, the rights of believers would be respected. In this way, the church maintained the yearning for independence, the desire to not become just blind slaves of the regime,” he said.

For years, the church here paid dearly for its nationalism. Of the five bishops in the republic, four were exiled and imprisoned until the late 1960s. The Lithuanian cardinal was forced to live in a small town in the countryside here, and public appearances by him were forbidden. One-quarter of all the republic’s priests also were imprisoned, and Msgr. Vasiliauskas himself was exiled to Siberia for 20 years.

In the 1970s, Lithuanian clergy printed and distributed a collection of political articles written by dissidents. The samizdat, or underground typewritten collection, was published abroad. But in 1981, the publication’s five editors were sent to Siberia and imprisoned.

When the Sajudis was founded two years ago, its rallies often began with an invocation by a priest. Four priests later became members of the Sajudis ruling council.

Mass conducted at the Archi Cathedral was one of 24 such rites celebrated in churches throughout the republic. Some worshipers wore traditional Lithuanian peasant garb. Most sought to gather strength from their faith to face what lies ahead.

“I think church is some kind of communication between all people,” said Ausra Kalvaityte, 20, standing with university friends in the cold wind outside the Archi Cathedral. “It gives us a unity. If we were alone, how could we strive for something so great, so pure as this independence of ours?”

Times staff writer Masha Hamilton, in Moscow, contributed to this story.