LITUANUS LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   Volume 36, No.2 -Summer 1990 Editor of this issue: Antanas V. Dundzila ISSN 0024-5089 Copyright © 1990 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

DECLARATION ON THE POWERS ENTRUSTED TO THE DEPUTIES OF THE LITHUANIAN SUPREME SOVIET

By the decision of the Lithuanian nation, the independent Lithuanian state was restored on February 16, 1918, and consolidated by the resolution of the Constituent Assembly on May 15, 1920, and by the 1922 Constitution of the Lithuanian State. It became a full-fledged member of the world community of nations and expressed its sovereign power as a nation through the formation of sovereign institutions of the Lithuanian State until June 14, 1940.

On June 15, 1940, through violence and aggression, the Soviet Union restrained the sovereign power of the nation and illegally incorporated Lithuania into the USSR eventually destroyed the structures of the Lithuanian State, and imposed its own structures upon it.

Since 1988, as new possibilities arose, the nation's movement for rebirth and independence began to express itself openly, encompassing the broadest layers of society. The nation's will, expressed openly by civil actions through existing institutions, became an expression of its sovereign power.

The imposition of the structures forced upon Lithuania by a foreign state should not be interpreted as a recognition of its sovereignty over the Lithuanian nation and its territory by the state which forced them upon it, or as recognition of the annexation executed by that state.

On February 24, 1990, during elections to the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet those residents of Lithuania with the right to vote of their own will, presented the elected Lithuanian SSR Supreme Soviet deputies with a mandate to restore the Lithuanian State and express the sovereign power (suprema potestas) of the nation through this Supreme Soviet, which, beginning March 11, 1990, 6:00 p.m. will be called the Supreme Council of Lithuania.

Vytautas Landsbergis
President of the Supreme Council
of the Republic of Lithuania

Liudvikas Sabutis
Secretary of the Supreme Council
of the Republic of Lithuania

Vilnius, March 11, 1990