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A nationwide protest demonstration organised by the Latvian Popular Front against the possible armed coup and the Soviet army's armed actions in Lithuania is held on the 11 Novembra krastmala in Riga. Around 600 000 to 700 000 people took part. Helicopters of the Baltic Military District dropped warning leaflets. The Chairman of Popular Front of Latvia Romualds Ražuks called for barricades to be built. After the demonstration, the participants marched to the Freedom Monument. The people of Latvia began to form barricades and guard the Supreme Council, the Council of Ministers, the Radio and Television Centre in Zakusala, the Radio in Doma Square, the Riga Telephone and Telegraph centre, and the Riga bridges. “In the early morning hours of January 13, a major tank and infantry attack took place against Lithuanian civilians guarding the Television Center in Vilnius. In the massacre fourteen civilians died and more than two hundred were wounded. Riga (Latvia) became like a front-line city at once. Dainis Īvāns, the first deputy chairman of the Supreme Council and a popular leader in the Popular Front of Latvia, began broadcasts on the radio at four o'clock in the morning, appealing to people to come immediately to the parliament building, television tower, International Telephone and Telegraph Center, and other key locations. His appeals were repeated every half-hour throughout the morning. On their television screens people saw the massacre in Vilnius, videotaped by a team of Latvian cameramen and foreign journalists, and were almost sure that similar events would take place in Riga soon. But no panic arose: people braced themselves for what seemed inevitable and had been in fact anticipated since the Awakening began in 1988. A member of the Defense Commission, Supreme Council Deputy Odisejs Kostanda, together with a group of activists and advisors –some former military officers among them-made a detailed plan to protect the inner city, called Vecriga (Old Riga) with barricades. Such key buildings as that of the Supreme Council and Radio Latvia are located there. An emergency Defense Headquarters was established at the Supreme Council, coordinating, advising, and directing people who offered their help. At 2 P.M. (13 January 1991) more than five hundred thousand people came to a mass rally in the Old Riga to protest Moscow's assault and to express solidarity with their Lithuanian neighbors. After the demonstration a considerable number of participants remained and formed human barricades around the parliament building and other locations inside and outside of the Old Riga. All the streets leading into the inner city were blocked with buses and other vehicles. These makeshift barricades were later reinforced with heavy trucks and tractors loaded with rocks, concrete blocks, sand, timber, etc. Bulldozers and other heavy machinery were also put into service. Defenders completed these structures with metal bars, barbed wire, fishing nets, sandbags, etc. Some of the barricades were made easily flammable turn them into walls of fire if attacked. The usual antitank “hedge-hogs“ were also made. The defenders kept round-the-clock vigils at the barricades. Every barricade had a commander. Two or three adjacent barricades formed a “sector,“ which also had a commander. People were provided with meals, firewood, rooms for rest and sleep, medicines, and gas masks. All this work was being done voluntarily and on societal initiative, coordinated by the Defense Headquarters of the Supreme Council, Popular Front Headquarters, and other bodies. The barricades were formed in order to keep off or hinder for a while the most probable kind of attack-that of tanks or armored cars with infantry, which was a “classical“ method for attacking civilians in the USSR, “tested“ before in Tbilisi, Baku, and Vilnius. A written “Instruction for the Defense of the Old Riga“ was distributed among people at barricades in the inner city. It specified how to behave in case of an attack. To be sure, most people understood quite well that their barricades would be no real obstacle to a determined army attack. Still, they hoped that the Soviets would refrain from an attack if many civilians were blocking their way and the expected casualty rate could be very high. If the worst came, however, many of them were psychologically ready to die, hoping that their self-sacrifice would eventually help their homeland to gain independence. The expected major army assault did not come on January 13 1991 or later. The plans of the hard-line Communists were most probably stopped by the resoluteness of the defenders, combined with international protests and efforts to preclude another massacre.“ “Nonviolent action in the liberation of Latvia“ by Olgerts Eglitis (pelecalasitava@) 👇 Facebook: Twitter:
