Showdown
Subtitle: The Lithuanian Rebellion and the Breakup of the Soviet Empire
Edition: 1st ed edition
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: March 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9781574880588
Subjects: Revolutions & coups; Warfare & Defence; c 1990 to c 2000; History; Contemporary Politics - Former Soviet Republics; Politics / Current Events; Politics - Current Events; History: World; Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe); Lithuania; Eastern Europe - General; General; Journeys; Krickus, Richard J; Autonomy and independence movements; Travel; 1991-; Autonomy and independence move; Krickus, Richard J.; Politics and government
Description: Showdown explores the revival of the Lithuanian independence movement, beginning in 1988 when the popular front movement, Sajudis, was founded and including its February 1990 victory in the first free elections in the Soviet Union. A month later, Lithuania declared its independence. But as American author and political scientist Richard J. Krickus explains, by 1990 Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had begun scaling back reforms and courting the neo-Stalinists.

Lithuanian independence threatened to upset the Soviet Union's uneasy status quo. The Soviets' deadly response and the movement's ultimate success - with its far-reaching consequences - stunned the world.

. Krickus was in Lithuania as an elections monitor during the momentous days leading to independence. His eyewitness account explains how this nation of fewer than four million set in motion the forces that broke apart the vast Soviet Union. Based on Dr. Krickus's personal knowledge of the dangerous events and the courageous Lithuanians involved, this dramatic account also shows how Americans aided this unforeseen catalyst to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Though the Lithuanians were victorious in their struggle against the Soviet Union, the country's independence and its democracy are tenuous. As Krickus warns, unless the West takes concrete steps to safeguard democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the freedom which was so hard won could be lost again.