On the night of 11 January 1991 bombs slightly damaged military installations in all three Baltic republics. The Soviets blamed Baltic nationalists, and Baltic governments blamed pro-Soviet groups including the Latvian and Lithuanian National Salvation Committees. The Lithuanian National Salvation Committee issued a propaganda press release that validated that explanation of events. The release denounced the Landsbergis government, said it would soon be ousted because of its inept style and its inability to govern, admittedly reaffirmed it should heed Mr. Gorbachev's advice, and vowed that Lithuania was and always would be part of the Soviet Union.
The next day Russian Federation leader Boris Yeltsin traveled to Tallinn, Estonia and met with representatives from all three Baltic governments. Russia, Latvia, and Estonia signed a hastily assembled agreement that condemned Soviet aggression. The parties agreed not to intervene in each other's internal affairs, and diplomatic recognition was implied. Lithuania's representatives were expected to sign the agreement, but because they had little confidence in its terms due to its rapid completion, they withheld signing it. On 13 January Mr. Yeltsin urged the assembled Soviet forces to consider the serious consequences of their actions to themselves and to others whose main goal was developing democracy by peaceful means.
His words and agreements were soon undermined. Later that same bleak Sunday the elite state security forces (the OMON or Black Berets) attacked. After brief battles with unarmed civilian defenders, thirteen people in Vilnius and six people in Riga lay dead. These events of the so-called "dark days of January" would not be soon forgot. Nor did these events strengthen support for Mr. Gorbachev among those who tried to carry out his chaotic orders.
For days after the crackdown, both sides waged a strange sort of propaganda war. On Leningrad television Aleksandr Nuserev (a journalist known to have links to the KGB) introduced the claim that those who were killed during the January incidents actually died of heart attacks. Radio Riga responded to the report by issuing a commentary that included the observation that: "People who die of heart attack do not leave blood splatters to the thirteenth floor". The response added that there was nothing so dishonorable as shooting at unarmed civilians. In the obviously spliced together Nuserev segment, the defenders were armed. In reality the Soviets held the only weapons.
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