The situation of the Polish minority in Lithuania has caused occasional tensions in Polish-Lithuanian relations during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. When Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sought help from the Polish minority. The Polish minority, still remembering the 1950s attempts to ban the Polish language, was much more supportive of the Soviet Union and afraid that the new Lithuanian government might want to reintroduce the Lithuanization policies. A pro-Moscow anti-independence movement similar to Internationalist movements in Latvia and Estonia was formed in 1989, called the Unity. The organization was supported by many Poles of Lithuania, making it perhaps more popular with the Polish minority than with the Russophone minority of Lithuania. This might have surprised the Poles of Warsaw, then seeking a de-communization in Poland and declaring the question of the Polish minority in Lithuania an internal matter of Lithuania. The pro-Moscow stance of some leading Poles of Lithuania compromised at times the activities of more Lithuania-friendly Poles. At the election to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, two Poles (one of them Jan Ciechanowicz) were elected to that body, both pro-Moscow.