Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania rather than political demands. As Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to revive the economy of the Soviet Union, he introduced glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring"). Gorbachev's political agenda went for great and deep changes within the Soviet government, as such, Gorbachev invited the soviet public into open and public discussions unseen before. For the soviet Lithuanian dissidents, and activists, it was a golden opportunity not to be missed, to bring their movements from underground into the public life. On August 23, 1987 (48th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), the Lithuanian Liberty League organized the first public protest rally that did not result
Foreign relations of the Soviet Union power struggles and foreign intervention, requested the neighboring Soviet Union to send military aid. Soviet intervention was seen as a hostile invasion by the United States and its allies, who funded the counter-revolutionary Mujahadeen, and thus led to a return to hostilities which were greatly exacerbated in the following years. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, he sought to restructure the Soviet Union to resemble the Scandinavian model of western social democracy and thus create a private sector economy. He removed Soviet troops from Afghanistan and began a hands-off approach in the USSR's relations