Polish population from Lithuania and Belarus. This decision was soon implemented and most of the population was expelled in an operation organized by Soviet and local communist authorities. In some cases the transfer was voluntary, but not all willing people were able to leave because Poles living in rural areas were forced to remain where they had lived. Vilnius suffered relatively little wartime damage, and most of its buildings survived the war unscathed. However, the decade after the war, both ghetto areas with the famous Great Synagogue and the northern part of German street, as well as the whole quarter on Pilies street, were torn down. By the end of the war, only 111.000 people were left in Vilnius (before 1939 the number was circa 200.000), which had an obvious impact on the city's community and its traditions; what before the war was a Polish-Jewish city with a tiny Lithuanian minority was instantly Lithuanized, with Lithuanians becoming the new majority. Many of the remaining Poles were arrested, murdered or sent to gulags or to remote parts of the Soviet empire. These events, coupled with the policy of Russification and immigration of Poles, Russians, Belarusians from other Soviet republics during post-war years, giving rise to a significant Russophone minority, and slow but steady emigration of the surviving Jews to Israel, had a critical influence on the demographic situation of the city in the 1960s. Vilnius experienced a rapid population upsurge due to the inner migration of Lithuanians from the other parts of the country to the capital. Independent Lithuania Beginning in 1987 there were massive demonstrations against Soviet rule in the country. On 23 August 1988, 150,000-200,000 people gathered in Vilnius. On 11 March 1990, the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR announced its independence from the Soviet Union and restored the independent Republic of Lithuania. The Soviets responded on 9 January 1991, by sending in troops. On January 13, during the Soviet Army attack on the State Radio and Television Building and the Vilnius TV Tower, known as the January Events, 14 people were killed and more than 700 were seriously injured. The Soviet Union finally recognized Lithuanian independence in August 1991, after the Soviet coup attempt of 1991. The importance of Vilnius for Belarus remained at the end of the 20th century. In June 1989 Vilnius was the site of the Belarusian Popular Front conference as the Belorussian Soviet