Lithuanian Communists broke from the Soviet Communist Party, rejecting a direct appeal from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and forming the first independent party in Soviet history.
In an omen of future trouble for Moscow, the declaration of independence approved by the Lithuanian Communist Party Wednesday also said it should "consider an independent Lithuanian government as a basic goal," the official Tass news agency said.Communists in the Baltic republic took the defiant step they had threatened for months and voted overwhelmingly for independence from the national party on the second day of their congress in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
"The 20th Congress of the Lithuanian Communist Party today declared itself an independent political organization with its own program and regulations," Tass said. The party approved the proposal to split on a 855-178 vote, Tass said.
The Lithuanian Communists split from the Soviet party three weeks after Politburo member Vadim Medvedev warned them not to break ranks. Medvedev, who spent three days on an intensive lobbying trip, carried a speech from Gorbachev in which the Soviet leader warned of the "inadmissibility" of such a step.
No Communist Party in any of the Soviet Union's 15 republics had ever broken from the Soviet party since it emerged victorious from the civil war that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
The Communist Party in the neighboring Baltic republic of Latvia also is expected to consider going its own way at a congress next year. Such a move would further splinter the Soviet Communist Party, which Gorbachev himself has admitted is losing authority.