The article, based on a significant body of published and unpublished documents, periodicals, and contemporary testimonies, reveals the complex and contradictory process of relations between the Union Center and the Lithuanian SSR during the period of perestroika. It is shown that in the conditions of democratization of Soviet society, the reform of its political system, popular fronts began to form in the Union republics, supported by the top leadership of the CPSU. In Lithuania, the Popular Front emerged in October 1988 under the name “Sajudis”. Its main programmatic goal was to secede from the USSR. It is stated that separatist ideas began to prevail in the ranks of the Communist Party of Lithuania, which was the first among the Communist Parties of the Union Republics, at its twentieth Congress in December 1989, announced its withdrawal from the CPSU. It is claimed that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Mikhail Gorbachev, only in 1989 began to show concern about the current political situation in the republic, but they failed to change the situation here. Sajudis won the elections of People’s Deputies of the USSR, and then — to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR, which was held on March 11, 1990, and adopted the Act on the Restoration of the Independence of the Lithuanian State. Lithuania refused to take part in the All-Union referendum on March 17, 1991. After the defeat of the GKChP in August 1991, the process of irreversible disintegration of the USSR began, and on September 6 of this year, the USSR State Council recognized the independence of the Baltic Republics.