Brazdžionis' arrival in Lithuania was a fitting expression of the emotions and sense of unity of the times. The poet was carried aloft by cheering crowds and his speaking events resembled national demonstrations. Photographs from the day record expressions and gestures that speak to a condition one feels when a long-held dream finally comes true. Uncomplicated patriotic poems fulfilled the people's need to hear the words "Lithuania" and "Homeland" spoken aloud, and their need to speak about historical grievances.

 

This was a time when everything merged into one movement. Everything and everyone seemed to march in unison: the national consciousness that smoldered in the Soviet era and that was blazing anew, the religious movement reemerging from the underground, the followers of Eastern religions, environmentalists, youth subculture groups, even rock music enthusiasts.

 

In the words of literary critic Audinga Peluritytė, around 1988 "all the possible lines from all contexts intersect. It is the time of the official and unofficial recognition and the dominance in literature of the works of writers born in the 1930s and those a decade younger: Justinas Marcinkevičius, Janina Degutytė, Alfonsas Maldonis, Bronius Radzevičius, Romualdas Granauskas and Juozas Aputis."

 

The works of Bernardas Brazdžionis also reappeared from a more distant time, with the publication of 125,000 copies of his full poetry anthology Poezijos pilnatis. No other work of fiction had been published in such great numbers in Lithuania before.

The need for unity and the concurrent diverse and hybrid cultural face of the Sąjūdis era is perfectly illustrated by a photograph showing the writer Jurga Ivanauskaitė and musician Nėrius Pečiūra-Atsuktuvas at the Rock March in Šiauliai in 1987. Pečiūra-Atsuktuvas' jacket is studded with safety pins, while Ivanauskaitė's head is painted with symbols, dominated by the historical Columns of Gediminas, sign of the medieval ruling dynasty, and the eye of Providence. And much like on the stage of the Rock March and at Sąjūdis demonstrations, this image unites the most important groups that had perhaps earlier been at odds with each other or had shown indifference to one another, and that had sought to create alternative ways of life and existence under the Soviet regime: the religious underground, the national consciousness movement, youth subculture groups. Ivanauskaitė, dressed in black clothing matching her black hair, wears a triangular Sąjūdis pin in the lapel of her jacket. Black was one of the dominant colors worn by the alternative youth groups in the Soviet days, demonstrating their common roots with the black romanticists, goths, and others. Photographs of Rimas Burokas are also worth remembering here, showing him often dressed in black.  Dalia Ibelhauptaitė remembers:

 

 

This feeling of unity and rallying to a common cause gave birth to the last underground cultural magazine Sietynas. The editorial group – Darius Kuolys, Liudvikas Jakimavičius, Virginijus Gasiliūnas, Valdas Papievis, Gediminas Mikelaitis, Vytautas V. Landsbergis – refused to take the magazine for publication to Glavlit, the official Soviet publishing house, or compromise their work in any way. The magazine's popularity and relevance is evidenced by the number of illegal copies produced by other persons that were not connected with the organizers.

 

The magazine, whose name stems from the meaning—among others—to unite, to join or to rally, published in its first issue a detailed program for unity, common efforts and community:

 

 

The magazine's creators understood politics to be a means to reach common solutions for common problems and thus paradoxically positioned itself as one of the first magazines to blend culture and politics in a country where everything, it seemed, was politicized.

Thus this period was permeated with a short-lived sense of unity, when all generations were bound by a shared thread of memory and united for the creation of a common strategy for cultural action. Later, this feeling would be remembered like a long-forgotten dream.

 

Alongside literature and publications by the former Siberian deportees, the quiet voice of the prose writer Antanas Ramonas was also heard; some of the last slogans of the hippies and rebellious youth came from the lines of Rolandas Rastauskas' poetry Lenktynių aitvaras; Talmantas Žuvėdra (The Racing Kite; Talmantas Žuvėdra); texts written by Ričardas Gavelis in the absurdist style (e.g. Durys, arba Taurus kasdienybės prasmingumas. Marazmatinė poema iš korektorių gyvenimo (Doors, or The Meaningfulness of the Noble Routine. A Marasmic Poem from the Life of a Proofreader) were published alongside neoclassical poems by Vaidotas Daunys.

 

Another unequivocally significant event in prose was Vilniaus pokeris (Vilnius Poker) published in 1989 by Ričardas Gavelis, one of the best examples of Lithuanian postmodernism that dethroned not only Soviet, but also the as yet unchallenged national ideological myths of the day, for which the work received particularly mixed reviews, much like Jurga Ivanauskaitė's novel Ragana ir lietus (The Witch and the Rain), of 1993. A more uniformly positive welcome was given to the first novel by Jurgis Kunčinas, entitled Tūla (1993), which tells the story of the life of a vagrant artist at the end of the Soviet era. The Svetimi (Strangers) group also attempted to shock and rebel with poetry, becoming, in all likelihood, the last avant-garde rebel group of the 20th century.